It’s RETREAT SZN, babies!!! I have one in May and one in June…
MAY 15-17 in Boone, North Carolina (think: Sound-of-Music-style mountains in the springtime): If you want to hear me talk ALLLL about it, here’s a handy Instagram interview below to fulfill that wish! Registration HERE!
JUNE 16-21 in Wyoming (think: where the buffalo roam): Fun fact: I get to teach at this ranch because I myself registered for a retreat here upon seeing the photos!! I was so taken by the magic of it, and I’m over-the-moon to get to share that magic with some creative (or creative-curious ;) souls in early summer (think: you belong among the wildflowers) Registration HERE!
I’ve talked about breakups. I’ve talked about dating. Now let’s talk about love!
After all, I have been married for 6 months now, so I am a certified expert! Well, as in, I have a marriage certificate.
Okay nobody is really a love expert—especially me—but I am an expert in failing a LOT and I like to think I pick up lessons along the crooked way.
Here are some notes on finding and being in love, from a certified, official, expert novice:
It takes the time it takes.
The #1 way to get through a breakup? Time.
The #1 way to find love? Time.
The problem with humans (the only one!) is that we live in Human Time. I don’t think you could fault any of us for that, but it puts us in severe danger of rushing through life, finding all sorts of ways to be insecure, and skipping over feelings that are begging us for airtime.
Love, and loss, and all the largest forces we will ever encounter in life, work on a different time. They’re extremely unconcerned with societal standards, biological clocks, stages of grief, linearity, logic, and how long we’ve been suffering on dating apps.
That’s why some people find love without even lifting a finger and others of us start feeling so at home in the dating trenches that it’s startling when we finally see daylight.
It doesn’t mean the first batch is more lovable or more interesting or that they have a better skin care routine. It just means Love worked fast according to Human Time for them.
But even if someone finds love at 98—and I know someone who did—that’s fast-working love too. Human standards of “late in life” and “I’ve been dating since I was 15, I’m exhausted, where is he!?” aren’t a good fit for Love’s work and wisdom.
It would be like trying to measure the pace of a heartbeat with a ruler. Wrong tool.
A therapist gave me this nice illustration when I started feeling like Love just wasn’t ever going to happen for me. It seemed so easy for everyone else—what was I doing wrong? (I judged “easy for everyone else” based on Human Time—it happened faster, according to clocks.)
She reminded me that what I was looking for was something very rare.
And, it’s entirely possible that people around me were not looking for that.
It’s possible that people I was comparing myself to had found a different type of relationship than the one I wanted, possibly a less deep level of connection that was more common and easy to find.
“Mari, most people don’t want what you’re looking for,” she enlightened me.
I took this to mean that, comparatively speaking, I was looking to become an astronaut. And I was looking around and wondering why everyone was employed, so to speak, except for me.
And then I had to remember that becoming an astronaut is really hard and really rare and takes a really long time!
An admin job, while challenging, is simply much more common. An astronaut isn’t better than an administrative assistant, but it’s a different job that requires a lot more training and a lot more luck.
No one would ever say to an astronaut, “Why is it taking you so long to get a job!?” because they’re on their own timeline, one that is dependent on the caprices of availability and lottery and what’s going on in OUTER SPACE.
Knowing that I wanted something rare helped me remember that time was not a good measurement of my ability to be loved. Time just isn’t relevant here!
We try to squish love and grief and our calling and all these sorts of trans-rational mysteries into something rational like a calendar, because it gives us a sense of control. We are so cute that way. But letting Love work on her own intergalactic time gives us greater reverence for her surprising and satisfying ways. And I am certain that she comes right on time.
A word about heartbreak: It also works on its own time.
My friend said about heartbreak, “It’s like the world was so full one day, and all of a sudden it’s so empty.”
It’s human for us to try to fill the world back immediately, but I’ve found comfort in deeply grieving the empty world, allowing for the full awful experience of loss.
It takes time for growth to reappear, and can be as agonizing as waiting for green shoots to emerge in the spring, but the crying and shedding during the grief period feed the soil. They are not a waste of time; they are necessary.
I think there’s also something to be said for knowing that it’s going to take time, and filling up that time with reliable ways to get through it: Pick a funny TV show with LOTS of seasons, a VERY time-consuming new hobby, or a goal at the end of the month that will require you to go all in.
Grief will surely still interfere, but it has a lot of respect for someone who respects its time.
Assume the best.
I’m reading this super interesting book right now called Humankind: A Hopeful History.
I’ll gush more about it during my end-of-April recommendations round-up, but for now all you have to know is that the author totally dismantles every commonly-used example we have to prove that human nature is cruel/selfish/evil/whatever.
This is fascinating, and very relevant to the research I’ve been doing for my book, but its biggest effect has been on my personal life, wondering Which common beliefs of mine do I need to dismantle in order to be happier?
I’m remembering how many beliefs I firmly held during much of my dating era:
Dating is hard.
Dating in [city] is especially hard.
Dating as a [age]-year-old woman is especially hard.
Men aren’t trustworthy.
Men only want [whatever I’m not].
I could go on and on and on.
But these are just what I called them: beliefs.
There is evidence for them, and there is evidence against them. They aren’t the truth.
So, it was REALLY important for me to stop believing all this crap if I had a fighting chance to find that rare deep Dr. Zhivago Love I was on the hunt for.
I had to start assuming the best. And this is really hard for humans to do—when it comes to dating, when it comes to demographics (all men, etc), and even when it comes to human nature in general.
That’s because cynical beliefs are protective. They keep our squishball little marshmallow hearts safe. Isn’t that nice?? It’s kind of nice, until we realize that maybe “I hate dating” isn’t the BEST mantra to go into your dinner date with.
I started telling myself that everyone on those apps were really brave for putting themselves out there, even if their profile could have used a serious edit. Trying to find love is the most vulnerable silly mortifying cringe thing ever. Leaning into that inherent dopiness makes it less hatable and more endearing.
I also mean, assume the best about people early on and then some:
When I go back and read the early texts I sent to Mr. Mari, I want to find the nearest garbage can and hide my face for the rest of my life. Everyone is embarrassing at first. Actually, everyone is embarrassing always. Be gracious with each other.
No one is more qualified than you to be loved.
You’d think being married would get rid of some of my insecurities, but, nope, they’ve decided to join right on in!
I still question my ability to be loved, and there’s a chance that I always will, but part of my healing is learning that there’s no trick to being loved. There’s just grace.
Don’t get me started on manifesting, but once I stopped believing that people who found Love just wanted it more than I did, I found more people to envy:
I learned that there are people out there who don’t experience jealousy. I learned that there are people who aren’t afraid to be rejected. I worried that, if this was the case, then I must be as high-maintenance as an ancient villa!!
But then I learned how to really love someone else. And he’s not immune to jealousy, and he has emotional needs (imagine), and, somehow, he’s easy to love! It’s not work to honor his feelings/baggage; it’s like tending to a garden that brings me daily joy.
Or, a better example, it’s like learning how to give affection to my kitty cat—don’t pet her here, scratch her here, she prefers this food. I love honoring her mysterious little complexities and I’m happy to work around her sensitivities. None of that is a burden for me.
I still wonder if people around me have figured out things about Love that I haven’t, and are therefore more lovable.
People in polyamorous relationships often say that their lifestyle mandates that they become excellent communicators, and requires that they work on themselves as a person—particularly their possessiveness and acceptance of uncertainty.
But that sounds like any type of relationship to me, and I don’t see possessiveness or uncertainty as burdens to get over, but states of the human condition.
So, basically: No one’s an expert at this. No one arrives to a relationship beautifully healed with no pesky emotional needs to get in the way. Nobody’s found a way to be in relationship with other humans that doesn’t involve miscommunication, messiness, and states of the human condition.
There’s no special trick.
In fact, that’s the biggest thing I had wrong in my path (mountain climb?) to love…