How Do You Find Love: Inside Yourself and then With a Partner

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We think, sometimes, that by finding our ultimate partner (our soulmate) we will finally be healed of our loneliness. That’s not how it works. Still, we try to find healing in our lover. We seek a beloved who will “complete us.” But, over and over, I have to remind myself, I must be whole by myself before I can ever find someone to be complete with. I will not FIND happiness with a partner.

We Must Heal Ourselves

After each breakup, I hope you take the time to rediscover yourself. Sure, we need to pay attention to what went wrong, what red flags we ignored, what emotional vacancy was within us or our attempted partner. It failed. What are the reasons relationships fail?

lack of emotional bonding
one or both partners have more personal/emotional work to do
infidelity (physical or emotional)
loss of inspiration (the quest for the next high of “new love”)
poor relationship skills (how you ask for what you need, and how you flex towards what your partner is asking for)
trying to fix or change the other person
gregarious flirting >> becomes >> interest becomes passion/distraction >> becomes >> a change of horses

All of these problems are fundamental misses. There is a flaw in our logic when we think another person is going to make us happy. Happiness is an inside job. Let’s stop between our dating failures to reassess and reset our ambitions and our own internal happiness. Can you identify the parts of your own life that give you joy?

Identifying What Brings You Joy

kids and family connections
creative production and self-fulfillment
spiritual contemplation and meditation
self-awareness
mindful practices
sexual intelligence (even on our own)

And then making a commitment to yourself first: I will not give up or reduce my own joyful activities and interests. It’s actually the “other” features of a potential partner that really perk my interest. “Tell me something you are ecstatic about.” And then listen. Do you hear a resonance with their passions? Do you hear their own inner light and joy? Do you hear them taking ownership of their own happiness train? When you find a partner who is passionate about some “extra” parts of their life, you are finding a partner who can fascinate you for the rest of your life. (Okay, that was a leap, but that’s the idea.)

Seeking another partner when you are IN YOUR HAPPY PLACE is the surest way to find a real person with potential. We want to maximize our potential partners, be quick about dispatching the near misses. We want to move on to NEXT so we can get on with finding THE ONE. I know, sometimes, my focus on THE ONE might seem a bit obsessive, but here’s my experience: I’ve been a Single Dad Seeks for 11+ years. I’ve come close. And I believe, I keep getting closer. But the closeness comes from MY INTERNAL LOVE. Seeking the love of another person while we have not solved for self-love is a setup for disaster.

Opening Your Heart to The Big Love

If you keep missing your mark in love, you might need to reexamine what your goals and ambitions are. Perhaps, you are not looking for THE ONE, or even your next LTR. But, in my world, THE ONE is the goal.

First, however, along the path, I have to keep finding myself. I have to find my inner love. My inner joy. My inner sexual chemistry. I know that last one sounds weird, but it’s a fact. If you are confident and solid in your sexual being, you will be a stronger partner and a well-balanced lover. We don’t need to get 100% of our needs met by our partners. This is part of the fallacy of the soulmate. There is no ONE out there for us. We create our own soulmate. And the first part of that quest is finding the soul of ourselves, understanding our own passions and ambitions. THEN, we can begin to seek a partner to join us. Not to heal us. To join with us in our mindful hearts and minds. We find our soulmate, our beloved, by becoming the beloved first.

If, like me, you are seeking THE ONE, The Big Love, the ultimate relationship, then you’ve got to get your own house in order while you are single. While you are alone, you can sort out your life without distractions or misdirections. A lover can really alter your universe. And if you find a NEAR MISS you might stay attached to this almost-lover for way too long. Here’s the thing: love is easy, sex is easy, long-term compatibility is a bitch. But if we keep picking partners by sexual chemistry when the mental chemistry is still out of whack, we’re going to spend a lot of time with frogs rather than princes and princesses.

Kiss frogs, yes, but move on the second you discover the long-term match is not going to work out. If you want a long-term partner, then focus on THE ONE. Every “hello date”, every second date, every setback and recovery, all are indicators FOR or AGAINST this potential beloved.

Seeking Our Beloved

I believe that a core connection with a partner is my path towards spiritual fulfillment. I know that’s going to sound like a contradiction. But here’s the deal: I can be happy alone. I AM happy alone. But I am HAPPIER and MORE CONNECTED to God when I’m loving my beloved in a deeply open and satisfying way. Even the issues, when dealing with a beloved partner, are opportunities for growth. Not healing. Growth. Evolution. We need to grow and change and aspire towards BIG LOVE or forever be swimming in the backwater eddies of the river.

I seek 100% connection. I will break off any GREAT relationship when the disconnections begin upsetting my own inner balance. I learned in my marriage, that I cannot give up my joy, my energy, my enthusiasms, for another person. Even the mother of my children is a miss when I find I’m diminishing my joy, compromising my goals, and giving up my own inner peace for some demand that has been put forward as a condition of satisfaction for the other person. Simple things like infidelity, are binary.

Near misses can get really close and still be missing some fundamental component. It’s a lifetime quest. Until you find THE ONE inside yourself you will be seeking a healing partner. What you want is a healed partner. A partner who is also standing in their inner power, their inner spiritual badass. Don’t give up on that quest. Ever.

Seek 100%.

Seek a fulfilled partner.

Seek a mindful journey alongside another seeker.

Be here now.

Be here beside your beloved, supporting, and loving them just as they are. You cannot change another person. You can ask them to change (please stop drinking so much, for example.) but the change must be from within them. Asking or waiting for another person to change is a clear RED FLAG. Let’s eliminate red flags and find options for moving forward together, side-by-side on this ultimate quest for love and life. Amen.

Namasté,

John McElhenney – life coach austin texas
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