Quick Fix to Finding Love

By Francesca Gentille

Just last night, a 33 year old man wrote me asking for a Quick Fix to finding love. He felt the pain of longing. He wrote of being impatient, lacking in finances, disbelieving that training in love would work for him, confused about the signals he gets from women, needing a woman NOW, irritated at feeling abandoned by professionals from which he sought free counsel.

Each of us has times of:

• Impatience
• Financial lows
• Disbelief and despair that we will ever get the help or knowledge we need
• Neediness
• Irritation with the lack of generosity in others
• Confusion in reading signals

This is normal and common.

What is unusual (but becoming more common) is the Break Through In Awareness that allows us to become aware that WE HAVE A CHOICE in our lives!

Shit happens (job losses, relationship losses, bad parents, abuse, ill health, accidents, etc), yet in each case we have a choice in how we react to these circumstances.

Do we dwell on how bad life treat us? How confusing people are? How angry or sad we feel? Do we feed our own justification in our despair and lack of self worth?

OR

Do we dwell on compassion for the shared suffering on the planet? Do we deepen our understanding of how confusing we may appear to others? Do we encourage ourselves to celebrate what we do have and empower our vision of what we desire? Do we feed our hope and self love?

THE QUICK FIX IN FINDING LOVE:

You may have heard it before, but this time I invite you to hear it newly and take it in more deeply.

Love your SELF. Like an action. Like a date. Like a lover. Like a best friend. Loving your radiant light (gifts, skills, talents, hopes, visions and dreams. Loving your radiant dark (pain, longings, sufferings, angers, sadnesses, despair).

In “The Artists Way” Julia Cameron has us take a weekly Artist Date with ourselves! At least 2 hours of listening deeply and inside for what nourishes our Inner Child, Inner Lover, and Inner Artist. Then going out or staying in to do things like:

• Go for a walk in nature
• Go to a delicious dinner
• Cook a delicious dinner with candle light and music
• Go to a movie with all the trimmings
• Make love to yourself with music, candlelight, lotion and appreciation
• Go dancing with yourself because you love dancing and music
• Go to a museum, artists opening, or concert
• Go to a poetry reading

I took this on and it changed my life. I went from confusing, painful, blaming, shaming, criticizing relationships to one of love and ease. It took time. It took effort. It took being in the forge of transformation. It took holding onto my pain in the fire until it was transformed into compassion.

I used to be a Sex and Love Addict. I used to be hungry and needy for someone else to take my inner pain away. I used to be confused about men, angry, needy and overgiving. It took hitting several despairing bottoms to realize that I was looking at men like a commodity to fill my emptiness. I was so busy, I thought I was fulfilled. I was so overgiving, I thought I was a caring person. I was so emotionally suppressed, I thought I was nice.

When we feel the most need for someone else to arrive to save us, entertain us, pleasure us, and make us feel loved is when we most need to fill up our own well of depletion.

The SAD NEWS:

No one is there to save us as an adult. No one is there to be our care-giver. If we had a shitty childhood and that opportunity at that time was missed, no adult will want to be our mommy/daddy.

The GLAD NEWS:
We can save ourselves. It is challenging, simple but not easy to find the Inner Little One, learn to listen to her/him and to love him/her. And when we do, we will notice that we have come out of the underworld and frightening woods. We will notice that love and abundance are all around us. We will be able to ask for what we want without neediness or demand. We will be able to receive generously. We will be able to set boundaries with compassion around our time, energy, heart, body, finances, and creativity.

The Quick Fix to Finding Love is to turn around and look inside. The love of our life is waiting in a dark place. Lonely, sad, sometimes angry. Waiting for us to come home.

The Star Goddess says: “ And thou who thinkest to seek for me, know they seeking and yearning shall avail thee not unless thou knowest the mystery; that if that which thou seekest thou findest not within thee, thou wilt never find it without thee. For behold, I have been with thee from the beginning; and I am that which is attained at the end of desire.”

Blessings,
Francesca