Is Finding Love on Your Summer Bucket List?
You are on a lifelong love journey. I believe the purpose of this journey is to learn how to both give and receive more love to yourself and others. In other words, we are here to evolve into more skill at being loving, which requires a deeper understanding of love and commitment to its embodiment.
Love is, by its very nature, spiritual. To love is to have a profound experience of the soul.
The spiritual nature of love might seem obvious when you think of being a parent, or say, the love of humanity. But we often feel more disempowered when it comes to romantic love, and especially the idea of true love, because we’re told it’s based on random luck. As a certified matchmaker and love coach, I’ve had a 12-year professional education in romantic love. Because it’s my job to help people find and keep true love, I’ve had a front row seat to witnessing how love happens for many people. The often overlooked but essential element that blocks many from true love is a lack of connection to their larger spiritual love journey.
A New Definition of True Love
From childhood, many of us learn stories of damsels in distress being rescued by the only means possible—true love in the form of a handsome prince. The scenery has changed, but from romantic comedies to love songs to marketing everything from diamonds to makeup, we’ve been taught to see true love as a magical cure-all that comes from a high-status partner. And then we’re rewarded by living Happily Ever After. No instructions included.
In my new book, How to Find True Love, I redefine true love in an empowering and accessible way. True love happens within a relationship rooted in unconditional love and respect, intimacy, safety, adoration, joy, and commitment. To experience true love with another person, you must first cultivate these elements within yourself. Who you partner with is important, not because you’re incomplete without them, but because together you will co-create something that’s never existed before—your relationship.
The Dating Phase of Your Love Journey
Meeting someone available, compatible, and capable of co-creating a true love partnership is one goal of dating. With this new definition of true love in mind, consider how this practically applies to where you are now on your love journey. What other goals might you have if you saw this as an important chapter in your spiritual growth? Dating skills are love skills. Communication, vulnerability, discernment, compromise, healthy boundaries, emotional and physical intimacy…to name a few. Your entire love journey benefits from your growth at these and other relationship skills. There’s no perfection required for true love (love itself is the perfection). However, when you learn the spiritual lessons of your romantic experiences, clarity and flow on your journey increase.
Because so many people approach dating from fear, it’s easy to only extract fearful lessons. These lessons make the journey more difficult. For example, a fearful lesson might be, “I’ve learned people always lie and take advantage of me so it’s not safe for me to love.” Fear is the opposite of love, so any conclusion that reinforces a fearful belief is inherently unloving. Whereas a love lesson is always in your highest good, so it will empower you to feel more love confident, not less. For example, “I’m learning that it’s important to listen to my intuition and allow myself to receive from others, not just give” is a critical lesson in self-love.
Understanding Your Spiritual Assignment
Along with fear, a common reason people get stuck on the true love journey is misunderstanding their spiritual assignment. Despite what your mind might tell you, your assignment isn’t to control or predict how your journey unfolds. When, where, and who your true love partner is (and there’s more than one for everyone—love is abundant like that) can’t be predicted, so don’t waste your precious romantic energy ruminating on unanswerable questions. There’s what you can do and what only the universe, or God, can do. These details are squarely in “the universe’s department.”
The same applies to the scarcity (fear) mindset that is so prevalent when it comes to romantic love. Rather than focus on how many eligible singles there are or aren’t in your location/demographic (the universe’s department), be intentional on cultivating more faith in love’s abundance. At some point, we must ask ourselves what we believe about God, spirit, the universe. Do you believe that for some reason you are exempt from the abundance of love? It will always be a surprise how you meet your true love partner. The odds will be defied, as they always are in the unlikely ways partners meet.
Serendipity, intention, intuition, and divine timing are forces of the universe. Like love, joy, and creativity, they’re divine forces we tap into, not something we have to create. The true love journey is one that calls you to deepen your faith, trust in divine timing, and surrender to the multitude unseen ways love will show up for you when you show up for love.
How to Align With True Love
True love is something you get to choose. There are certainly more transactional approaches to romantic love, and I don’t judge anyone for whichever path they take. But I hope you choose based on what you truly want, not based on what you think you must settle for. Think of aligning with true love as finding your most loving, open-hearted self within. Combined with an intention for a true love partnership, this version of you embodies a higher level of romantic energy.
Romantic flow can and does happen when your romantic energy is high, which admittedly can be a challenge in today’s relationship culture. And so your commitment to true love must be reaffirmed until it’s your new default romantic baseline. Taking high self-worth action, validating yourself, and being kinder in how you talk to yourself are some examples of how you normalize true love within.
If you do have the intention to co-create a true love partnership, then I encourage you to embrace self-compassionate curiosity as a key self-love skill. It is a simple and powerful practice that cuts through shame and gets you to a place of healing. A simple question to begin is: How can I be more loving to myself and others in this moment? Whatever answers you come up with fall under “your department.”
Remember that perfection isn’t required—you get to be human and still have true love (in fact, that’s the only option). Find the meaning in what you’ve been through, especially the painful experiences. Discover what love is asking of you, right now. Is it more gratitude? More vulnerability? Higher self-worth boundaries? Less rigidity and more acceptance? More comfort with receiving? Self-compassionate curiosity will unlock the right answers.
True love is a calling of your soul and you have the power to answer. Be patient and kind with yourself as you go.
Francesca Hogi helps people find true love inside and out. She’s a certified matchmaker turned coach, TED speaker, podcast host and author of the new book, How to Find True Love: Unlock Your Romantic Flow and Create Lasting Relationships.
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