I always thought that I would have just one great love in my life. I thought I would meet her when I was relatively young and we’d get married when I was between 28 and 32 and then have some kids. I thought meeting my lifemate would be one of those “When the student is ready, the master will appear,” kind of situations but it wasn’t, not for me. The universe seemed to be not paying any attention to my thoughts and plans. But one day she showed up. She was around a corner that I could not see around. And she had been looking for me, too. I met my soulmate when I was 38 years old, at least 5 long years after I was very ready to. My optimism was tested. I had just about given up hope. I was about ready to settle for something less than what I was hoping for but I’ve never been the settling type. And then I met her. In one day. And everything changed. It was worth the wait.
Waiting for her that long would have been hard enough but the hardest thing about the waiting is that I wasn’t sure that I was waiting. I wasn’t sure if a bus was on its way or if I was just hanging out at a bus stop for no good reason. It’s a paralyzing position to be in.
I remember one day when my friend told me that love was a numbers game, meaning that you had to ask a lot of girls out, get rejected by some, date some and break up with some until you found the one that you wouldn’t break up with. I knew what he was getting at but I had always thought love was a different sort of numbers game, a numbers game of one. I thought that there was one girl out there for me and that I had to find her. That sort of sounds like the same thing that my friend said, so let me explain how I think it’s different.
Let’s say you’re playing baseball and you’re trying to hit a homerun. You see a lot of pitches—fastballs, curveballs, changeups, and sliders—and you swing at all of them trying to hit your homerun. These pitches are all over the place. Some won’t even in be the strike zone. You’ll get tired and bent out of shape if you swing at all of them. It’s a hard game to play. Another approach is to focus on your swing and work on that. Find your natural stance. Find the right height to swing the bat at to get the most force behind it. Work on digging your heels in. Notice your breathing. Relax. Be patient. Be yourself. Don’t worry about the pitches that are too high or low for you to hit. Just show up, be in the park, play the game, swing like a natural, and wait for the one pitch that was meant for you. Then knock it out of the park.
One of my friends had dated a lot of girls and thought that he had loved some of them but after a lot of dating he still hadn’t found someone to marry. He wasn’t sure if the nice feeling he felt towards these girls was the same thing that other people felt towards their lovers. Then he met the girl that he would marry. Upon finding love with this woman who is now his wife and the mother of his children, he said, “Ooooh, so THIS is what they were talking about!”
Don’t worry about how you’ll know when you find your love. What you’ve heard is true: You’ll know when you know. How will you know when you find love? That’s like asking how you will know when it’s warm or cold outside. You will just know.
I hope you don’t have to wait as long as I did. But however long you wait, it will probably feel like it was a bit of a wait. All I can say is this: If there’s one thing worth waiting for, it’s love. If there’s one thing worth getting up early for, staying up late for, and chasing, it’s love. Enjoy the fact that you can’t just call someone and order it up like a pizza. It feels very special because it is, and it will be worth the wait.
“The waiting is the hardest part.”
—Tom Petty
Here are some practical tips.
Put yourself out there.
Be proactive in your wait for love. Make sure that are putting yourself out there. You’re not going to meet someone staying at home or by going out but hiding in the corner not talking to anyone. I had a general rule that I would always go to any event that someone invited me to, especially if there would be a lot of people that I didn’t know there. When I needed help striking up a conversation with someone, I just reminded myself that she might be standing over there waiting for me, wishing that I would come over and talk to her. Only one way to find out.
If you want to go out with someone, then ask them out.
This seems like a simple rule but you’d be surprised how hard often it’s not followed. I read a story written by a guy who was friends with a stunningly beautiful woman. She was a cheerleader for a professional football team and he said that she was so beautiful that whenever she would walk into a room, it would get quiet for a few moments while everyone was bedazzled by her beauty. The question he was answering was something like, “What is dating like for very beautiful women?” He said that she actually had a hard time dating because most guys were so intimidated by her beauty that they assumed she was already with someone one or that they wouldn’t be good enough for her. She used to come over and babysit his kids because no one ever asked her out. In the end, she ended up marrying a pretty normal guy whom the storyteller introduced her to.
One day in the beer garden at grad school, I mentioned to my friends, “There’s the veggie burger girl.” The veggie burger girl was a girl whom I had first seen at a grad student barbecue. She was in line in front of me at the barbecue and she ordered a veggie burger. I thought she was cute. After I pointed her out to my friends, they said, “That’s her?! Well, you have to go over and talk to her!” I said, “No, I don’t!” and I continued to sit right where I was for several moments until I reasoned that she was just a girl drinking beer at that table over there and she was probably just like the girls drinking beer at my table who were telling me that I should go talk to her. So I did. I did this crazy thing. This crazy, simple thing. I walked over there and introduced myself. We met for coffee later that week and ended up dating for several months. It turned out to be a very special relationship, which started from nothing. It went from nothing to special because I got up and introduced myself. Too often I see it go from nothing to nothing for people who just sit there and watch their chances go by. Be brave. Don’t just sit there.
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