Can I have you all to my shelf, because you’ve got FINE written all over you. Let’s find love between the covers because you’re good for my circulation. We’re PRATTically meant for eachother.
Did you also see these book-related puns Enoch Pratt put in their most recent publication? How tender is it that we live in a city where even our library loves love.
Step 1. Read books
My grandfather had some strange ideas about love. In 1960, a year after my mom was born, he had two other children by two other women. He was 18. Both women lived around the corner from Dolphin Street, where my mom was born. He thought, meh, it’ll figure itself out. And it did. I grew up with all of my aunts and uncles and their moms.
This weekend, I visited my cousin and we talked a lot about love. He said, hearing me talk, I’m a mix of old school and new school. A boomer’s mind in a millenial/genz cusp’s body. He says I need to be less judgemental and more open to what love can look like.
My friends have some strange ideas about love. My one friend is convinced Skip Marley is her side piece. My other friend is convinced she’s a foster girlfriend– the girl guys date before they meet the actual love of their life.
I think, and I’m not sure, but I suspect that maybe there isn’t a love of my life. Or, that I already met him. And he died a few months ago. It wasn’t romantic, because he was my grandfather. We were so much of each other. And yet, complete opposites. It was pure, simple, true, and connected. He used to say, don’t forget to give me my medicine. Which meant, Don’t forget to call me. We talked everyday. I needed my medicine too.
Step 2. Stop telling people your dead grandfather was the love of your life.
Cacao is supposed to open the heart. I first learned this at a nudist retreat in the Poconos back in 2020. I took the round bitter charm into my mouth and winced. And now, My Skip Marley friend and I occasionally have cacao ceremonies after divining for guidance using I Ching. I hate the taste of anything remotely chocolate. I drink it anyway.
Step 3. Open your heart.
I am chronically single. I don’t often meet people I like. Most people bore me.
Person 1: A serial fantasist looking for a pretty robot wrapped in flesh, but not a real person.
Person 2: A serial monogamist (or polygamist) looking for a warm body because they’ve been too busy in and out of relationships to have developed their own personality
Person 3: Doesn’t like to read.
Person 4: Seems normal but has very irritating quirks (i.e. policing everything you eat or not clipping their toenails so they’re always knifing you in the bed)
My track record is every 3 years. It takes that long. But who wants to wait one thousand nine hundred and ninety five days to feel something?
Maybe I’m not dating the right way. Maybe I need to be more of a pick-me. Maybe I need to facetime their mother before agreeing to coffee. I’m a bottom feeder when it comes to dating. I give out my number. And wait for a text. Most people want to text you to death. I have a job; I don’t have time. Just call me. Other people don’t want to meet up. Others are just looking to sleep around. Which is cool, but I don’t want a stranger touching me. And speaking of strangers, did I mention I don’t trust them? Yeah, I think I do better with a recommendation. Got any?
Step 3. Go off referrals
One thing that frustrates me about our culture is its preoccupation with romantic love as the only kind of love that matters. This is why most people are awful friends.
I love friendship. I might have the most friends an adult person can have. People are always saying it’s so hard to make friends as an adult. I disagree. I make new friends every year.
Knowing a person takes years. People aren’t fantasies. People are really complex. That’s what I love most: getting to know someone through the seasons.
My best friend says friendship is forever because you don’t have to want the same thing. For example, if I want to live in Spain and you want to live in Dundalk, we can still be friends. Or if I want a baby and you never want a baby, we can still be friends. But romantic relationships don’t work that way.
I like to talk to my friends about our relationship; about how we’re relating.
My one friend said it makes her uncomfortable because she only talks to her husband like that.
I agree. It makes me uncomfortable too. But I don’t know how to be in a relationship with someone I care about and not tell them the truth. Even if it takes me years. It’s that or I’ll walk away.
Step 4. Focus on friendship.
I also don’t trust people who don’t have long friendships. That’s a red flag. Like what happened that nobody from your life over the years remains? Were you too focused on a romantic relationship? Or were you just not interested in someone after they showed their person-ness? I believe it’s important that people see you over time in a less high stakes-first last-and-forever kind of way.
I love lesbians. I am one. But I don’t trust u-haulers. Or really any couple who breathes each other like air. The only codependent relationship I want to be in is reading and writing.
Step 5. Work through your trust issues.
Romantic relationships are triggering. They bring up insecurities, emotions, behaviors that need to come out. And, you hope they’re coming out alongside a healing, supportive, trustworthy person, but that’s not always the case.
I want to be empowered in a relationship. Not critiqued or held under a microscope.
I want to be with someone emotionally attuning. Someone who isn’t constantly choking on the same wounding I’m aspirating on. I want to be with someone with a driver’s license and a car.
I think one reason my “dating life”– FKA a series of 3 month situationships– is the way it is is because I don’t date up. I date what’s there. I ride the Ferris wheel until I wonder why I’m nauseous from going in circles.
I guess it means I have to believe that relationships can be fun? And that I should put myself out there and be vulnerable? Pfft.
Step 6. Change core limiting beliefs
I love my friends. We talk about love all the time.
Each of us believes we should want what we want and not decide what we want is not wantable before wanting it.
Step 7. Wait.
