Your Task is Not to Seek Love, But Destroy Your Barriers

Its been a year since I became single. I think even if 2020 hadn’t been the grueling, punishing year it is, I still would feel like it’s been much longer since my last relationship. I don’t recognize the person I was yet I intimately know her. Somehow, I was a stranger to myself. I’ve always preached you have to be okay being alone with yourself before you can be with somebody and I wholeheartedly believe it. I consider this my relationship gap year and highly encourage it for everyone. EVERYONE. But don’t do it so you can say on day 366 you served your time.

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.“

Rumi

I’m no closer to being in love than I was one day of the break up last year. No dates, no apps, just me trying to do the work I need to do, without it being for anyone else besides myself. I wish it was easier to do hard things for yourself. (You know, the real self-care, doing the hard work you need to do, not just getting massages. Is it self care or a face mask? This is all from a conversation we all had on Instagram a few days ago.)

Do you love yourself? Like, really? I can say this is a daily ebb and flow, but I am proud of who I am now. I can’t say I fully love myself. Parts of me, sure, but I still obsess over the things I only know about myself that my mind says, “Aha! That’s why you won’t ever be in love again! You blew your chance!”

I’m on a journey to fall in love with myself, for all the parts. Not for my appearance or any outward reasons, but because I have accepted myself for I am. How can I know what real love is when I can’t even find a way to show that to myself, without it being in the construct of being the right person for someone else?

I can name every barrier I’ve built or is naturally there to not love me, yet not why someone could love me. That’s where the work is.

Do the Work For Yourself, Not Someone Else

Why do we spend so much time trying to become the right person for an unknown partner when we could be the right person for ourselves?

If you can’t be alone with yourself, you shouldn’t be with someone is what I’ve always felt about relationships. Perhaps it’s my codependency coming through, but it’s so easy to do the work FOR someone else instead of yourself. Its hard to admit you need to do hard work for yourself. You can so easily justify why you aren’t worthy of it. Why it’s not worth just for yourself. For me, I am 10,000 times more likely to give up on something for myself instead of someone else.

Here’s the deal, people keep telling me my Mr. Right is going to come out of nowhere. “Just keep doing the work and he’ll show up.” Maybe he will, but more than likely he won’t. I think we need to re-frame that we need to do the work to get the person/partner we want. What good is it if I do all the work to try to bring out the right person for me but I did it all for them and not for me to also be the person I need? Why do we put so much pressure in finding the right person for us instead of finding out who we need to be for ourselves?

Do I Believe in Love?

Yes, but not how you think. I believe the greatest love I’ve ever had has never been romantic. It’s been my friendships, or other relationships that were in no way romantic. I have nothing in my life that leads me to believe I’ll be another relationship. To be honest, my life has really been enhanced being single.

I adore that this phase of life means fewer complications. I don’t have to ask what someone else wants for dinner. Or talk about finances. To name a few things no one likes talking about. I do what I need to for myself and Eleanor and I like that nothing ties us down. I have the love of many other people but not a partner and I still have a loving, fulfilling life.

To be honest? I don’t know that I’ll ever fall in love again. For some reason I have this gut feeling I only have one more shot at it. In my moments of honestly with myself, I’m afraid I’ll miss that one chance. So maybe I’ll never date again because that fear will keep me from experiencing it. Is it better to just not know you missed your chance at life?

We have got to stop the idea that the most fulfilling, loving relationships are romantic. They aren’t, they can be, but there’s nothing that makes these the right “love.” I’m so thankful for my friends who show me endless love deeper than any relationship I’ve had.

Part of me whispers to myself, “Are you writing this so you can look back and say what funny timing you wrote this and then you feel in love?” Like a weird reverse psychology thing or something.

Perhaps part of me wants to be proven wrong that it’s not going to be a challenging road ahead in any aspect of love. All I can say is when I look back on love in my life, I hope I never overlook the many ways I was loved and overcome the ways I’ve tried to remove the barriers to be loved. I have so much work to continue to remove the barriers that I’ve built against myself. I look forward to the day I can look at this blog post and know I’ve done exactly what I need to.