How many of you are frustrated with love? Frustrated about finding love? How many of you feel like, no matter what you do, no matter what app you try, no matter what method you try, you still can’t find somebody amazing?
How many of you have honestly, right now, given up and are ready just to settle?
I want to tell you something. Love doesn’t come to quitters. Love doesn’t come to settlers.
Love only comes to people who are willing to love themselves first.
People who are willing to love others unconditionally. Love only comes to people who are willing to give love all day long, so the energy of love is all around them. Most people just give love to their greasy, grimy, cell phone screens. Throwing hearts and likes on social media. Praising their friends’ dumb comments. That’s NOT how love comes. Do you want to know how I found love?
I went on a world tour.
Literally.
I went around the world to find and to attract my person, my love.
It started back in April of 2012. My daughter’s mom and I split up. We went our separate ways. The relationship did not work.
There’s no reason to go into details here. It was over 5 years ago and there’s no reason to rehash the past. But once I healed, I went on a world tour. I got into a couple of mini-relationships.
Those mini-relationships taught me a lot about myself, where I was, how I was healing, and what I was looking for. I didn’t say yes to them, even though they were wonderful women. I kept going. I met other women along the path, got intimate with them and had sex. I felt lukewarm feelings for them. But I knew that they weren’t the ones I really wanted to be with, commit to, honor, love, adore, and cherish.
Not that there was anything wrong with them. They were just not the ones I wanted to be with. There were times on this world tour that I took time off of dating. I didn’t have sex for 9 months at a time. There were times when I literally stopped all correspondence with women. Sometimes felt like I would never find that connection.
But I kept going.
I kept swiping. I kept flirting in public. Every time I went to New York, I would go out on dates with women there, thinking, maybe my love is in New York City. Wherever I went, the world tour followed. It followed me everywhere. I was always open to dating everywhere. There were a couple of maybes, but that feeling lasted for a short time and life is not about maybes. So I listened to my heart, my gut and my instinct and I knew they weren’t the ones for me. My best friend in the world basically told me that I would never quit the world tour.
I started feeling like Brett Favre or Tom Brady, never wanting to leave the sport that treated me so well. But I always knew deep down inside that when I met her, I would feel something that I’ve never felt before. The ability to let go. The ability to be seen. The ability to feel adored. And the ability to feel so safe and so secure with her words, actions, and presence.
I knew it would come my way because of all the work that I did, all the risks I was willing to take. All the dates I was willing to go on, I never stopped. I never stopped going, even though at times, I might have stopped believing. But that didn’t stop me from doing what I was doing.
So if you truly want an adoring, safe, loving relationship…
Then NEVER stop. Even when you feel down and you feel doubt, even when you feel like you’re never going to find ”the One”…
Even when you go on another bad date, when someone dumps their lifelong anger and problems on you…
Even when you read another book or read another article about love…
Never let the candle blow out.
You’ve got to be willing to go on a world tour.
You’ve got to get rid of the stories and get more into your heart. You have to ask your heart what it desires and you have to stand up for your own personal love. And you just can’t quit. If you quit, it’s all over. And if it’s all over, then it will never happen because only you, by going on a world tour, can make this happen.
The feeling at the end is worth all the bad dates.
Life gives you more of a sense of purpose when you’ve connected to that one other person. But you just can’t quit your world tour, no matter how long it takes, no matter how many bad dates you go through. You need to dust yourself off every morning and do it all over again. And for those of you in a non-loving relationship, I know how hard and difficult it is to leave it, because the unknown is scary. I know how hard it might be for the kids to understand what mom or dad is going through, but let me tell you something.
It’s all worth it in the end.
Love truly is the final frontier and love is truly something that is magical beyond any drug, glass of wine, alcoholic beverage, or whatever you fancy. The question is… Are you willing to go on an extended world tour with many sleepless nights… With many tough decisions… With a lot of criticism from friends… A lot of people wanting you to compromise just because they did… Are you willing to go on a world tour? Because if not, love will never happen.
