(June 5, 2019)

Last week I was in the middle of a phone appointment with Therapist when he imparted some of the most valuable wisdom I’ve ever paid $75/hour to hear.  Luckily for you, I am going to share this little grain of truth with you for free!  We had run the gamut of pertinent topics in my life- new jobs, new homes, anxieties, etc- and now we were on the subject of my love life…my favorite! 

“I’m afraid I’m not going to feel those things I felt in the last relationship ever again,” I bemoaned.  “I’ve never felt anything like that in my life and if THAT wasn’t the real deal, I’m scared I’ll NEVER find it.”

“Kathie,” he said, “when you find ‘The One’ you’re going to feel something way stronger than that and it’s all going to align-the head AND the heart.”

I paused for a moment, then presented him with a question.  “You’re an intellectual man.  A trained counselor with a multitude of degrees and certifications and hours of learning about the human mind.  Do you mean to tell me that a learned individual like yourself believes in the fairy tale of ‘The One’?”

And that was when he hit me with the golden nugget of truth.  “When I say ’The One’ I am not implying that there is one special person in the 7.5 billion people on Earth that you are supposed to be with.  What I am saying, is that out of 7.5 billion people, you are extremely compatible with 1% of them.  That means you still have 75 million people to choose from.”

Wow.  What a way to put things into perspective!  We often get so pigeonholed into the smallness of our daily lives that we forget how truly big the world is.  Let’s look at it this way: if I’m compatible with 75 million people, that means I have my pick of roughly half the population of Russia or the entirety of Turkey.  Or for even more perspective, you would have to fill 1,153 Johnson City’s with eligible people to meet that number! 

This culture of love songs, Hollywood and Hallmark cards has led us to believe we have but one shot at happiness.  One soulmate to complete us and make us feel like a whole human.  A lot of the loss we feel when we lose these relationships comes from the despair and worry that we missed our ship.  That was our one true love and if that didn’t work out, we will never find it again.  It’s scary to feel passion on such an intense level and be so absolutely vulnerable with another human being and have things fall apart.  Every human craves love, to feel desired and appreciated by another and we have been told our whole lives that there is only one person out there who can do that for us.  That is a horrifying thought, made even more terrifying by the aging process.  We feel less desirable as we get older, like our options are getting slimmer with each passing day. 

This new information that seems so obvious has made me realize it’s going to be ok.  I need to expand my horizons, because 10x the population of Hong Kong is out there waiting to meet me!  Therapist made another good point I want to touch on.  When he said, “your head and your heart will align,” there was another extremely important message that I want to share. 

In my last relationship, I was running off pure emotion.  I allowed the things I was feeling in my heart to completely cloud my judgement about the obvious flaws with this person and the relationship as a whole.  If I had stepped back and let my head make some decisions, I would have never been involved in the first place, and subsequently wouldn’t have endured the most painful experience of my life to date.  This was an experience in my life I had to go through to teach me this lesson and make me grow as a human.  The right relationship with the RIGHT person not only makes you feel those passions and highs, but it also makes sense practically.  There aren’t glaring red flags and obvious no-no’s that under normal circumstances we would even consider compromising our values and self-worth for.  On the flip side of the coin, you cannot find a relationship that looks good on paper but is lacking emotion.  My marriage was that way.  My ex-husband was safe, reliable and predictable, had a job and a strong family structure.  But emotionally there was no fire, and thus it fizzled and died.  The head and the heart MUST be in alignment or else it will fail every time.    

If you’re like me and sometimes you feel like giving up in the love department, before all else, do some soul searching and learn to love yourself completely first.  This is my biggest challenge and one I am working on whole-heartedly.  I have no desire to connect with another person until I reach a point where I am totally in love with who I am inside and out.  At that point, I challenge all 75 million of my soulmates to come try to love me more than that.  I also intend to travel and meet as many people as possible to increase my odds of meeting my ‘One.’ 

I hope this information proves to be as beneficial to you as it was to me.  And look, you won’t even have to Venmo me $75 for sharing it…this time.