Calling in a soulmate

Letter to a friend on intimate love.

Dear readers,

And now, an open letter to a friend of mine, shared with his permission. Thanks to Lucas, for your question, and thanks to you, for reading along.

But I’m just one voice in this chorus of perspectives. Got any thoughts to share on this topic? There is a comments section, you know…

Peace,

Andrew

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Dear Lucas,

I’m only just now approaching your question. I’ve been avoiding it because it’s a good one, and I’m intimidated by it, and I want to do right by you.

Do you have any advice for someone who wants an intimate love but doesn’t currently have one in their life?

I’ve actually been avoiding this question before you called me into it. I posted a story two days before Tana and I got married last summer, and Jacob dropped a version of your question in the comments.

Where does self-love and acceptance come in? Tana is your person, your soulmate, but did you have to love yourself before the rivers converged? Were you only ready because you walked?

All right. Here we go.

First, I want to deal with the part of me that says I am not qualified to answer your question. Tana and I haven’t even known each other for three years. How can I be so sure that the intimate love you seek is one that I am truly living? It could all go up in flames tomorrow. Maybe I’ve deceived myself. I’ve deceived myself before, with other would-be soulmates. And I watched my parent’s 18-year marriage fall apart over the course of a single morning when I was 15. How can we ever know for sure that the seeds of some hidden catastrophe aren’t planted inside the love we think we’re living?

Well, I guess we don’t. We don’t know what we’re signing up for, in love. And actually, we can be assured that catastrophe is included. You will not survive unscathed. You will be marked by this love, if not completely obliterated. And obliteration isn’t a bad thing, I don’t imagine. When I am obliterated—when she dies, or when I have to die first, or when it all goes down in flames—I imagine it will mean that I have loved with all of myself, and there is nothing more that I want than that. But we’ll see. Ask me post-obliteration, if I’m still around. I’m only three years in. Er, not even three, technically.

But that’s how it’s always been with Tana. In the early days it was, “Sheesh, how has it only been two months?” Then it became, “Wait, not even a year yet?” And just the other day, “Holy shit, we’re still under three years.”

Maybe that’s something something I can say to you about it. That the intimate love you are looking for may feel much older than it is. That it may not make sense. That it doesn’t need to.

Early on, I had a dream that every human, every individual, was its own kind of species, and that lo and behold, Tana and I were the same species. I drifted awake from that dream back into the dream I was now living with her, in that tent, before dawn, that first weekend of meeting each other in-person, and I whispered, “I just had a dream, and in it I told you, ‘I think we’re the same species.’”

She understood.

We’re not the same person. We’re actually quite different. But we’re the same species. Look for that one, your equal and opposite in the singular species of you.

What to do, though, until that one shows up?

Well, you can practice. Have a go of it with someone, if you think they might be your person. Take the dive. You might get hurt, confused, even shattered, a steep price, yes, but what you’re paying for is priceless. Wisdom: it’s not the inevitable outcome of experience, but without experience it doesn’t happen.

Mom said to me once, years ago, “Before you get married, you should have your heart broken at least twice.” It was three times, for me. Three times, that my heart really, truly opened up to the possibility that this might actually be my person, the one with whom I could unfurl the great sails of my heart at last and let myself love the way I knew I was born to. Three times, I was brave enough, and foolish enough, to begin that unfurling. And three times, I had to reef my sails and ride out the dark storm of feeling betrayed, feeling culpable, feeling anger and loneliness and that goddamned longing again.

Why is this a good thing? Because you learn how to sail. How to survive. How to ride the rollers of yourself. How to see love in the dark. The despair I felt in those breakups was another form of love. Can you see that? The grief, too, was another aspect of love. Even anger is love. How many forms of love are you ready and willing to feel? It helps to know what they really are when they come for you in their transmogrified expressions.

The first two breakups, I had the deed done to me. The third time, I was the one to do it. Every time, it hurt.

I guess you don’t have to get your heart broken. Surely there are some of us who knock a grand slam out of the park on the first pitch. I raise my glass to those lucky ones, but I don’t count myself unlucky. I am blessed by every breakup I’ve ever been through, even the littler ones, the merely uncomfortable ones, the awkward ones. They come with teachings, the dark teachings of love. Each taught me something about who I am, how I want to be, what I need, what I want, and what is non-negotiable for me.

What have you learned about your non-negotiables, Lucas? What do you want? What do you need? Stay loyal to those coordinates. Don’t veer off course from them now that you have them. And also, don’t forget it’s impossible for you to go off course, ultimately. That every squall and every doldrum and every roller and breaker and whirlpool is on course, here to teach you the next lesson in what your soul has come here to love.

Because you have come here to love. I believe that’s what’s going on here. I believe we come here to love. To love what? To love what is, because that’s all there is. There’s nothing else we could love. All there is, is what is. So when it comes to loving, we start, and continue ceaselessly, with what is.

Or at least we can try.

Can you love your loneliness, if loneliness is what is?

I think I did well by my loneliness, before Tana. I think I learned to love it, not necessarily enjoy it, but love it, love myself in it, appreciate and respect myself for enduring it as one endures a fast or a marathon or any rite of passage.

Rites of passage don’t just serve the person going through them. They serve that person’s whole community. Can you conceive of your passage through loneliness in that way? Imagine this time before that intimate love comes into your life as a rite of passage. Imagine that you are sitting vigil, tending a fire all night, fighting to stay awake as if all our lives depended on it, on you, your willingness to stay awake in the dark. You are tending your longing for us. Imagine that. That you are ours. That your being with the what-is-ness of your life right now is a labor that benefits your people.

I hope this is helpful. If I’ve become a bit meandery, perhaps a concise list will suffice re: advice.

1. Remember that, ultimately, it is your own love you are seeking to know and to realize in relationship with another, and that this love, your own love, is not waiting for anything. Your love is here and now. Use the here and now to practice, explore, and express your love.

2. Believe, with all your heart, in the existence of that intimate love you so desire with another. Believe it, Lucas. Know it. Know that your soulmate is real, goddamnit. If that’s what you want. Is that what you want? If it is, then let yourself gaze joyously, maniacally into the eyes of your doubt. Strike fear into the heart of your doubt. Let your doubt begin to doubt itself. Let it think, “Wait, does he know something I don’t know?” You are not going to lose this game of chicken. Period. You will not be the one to flinch. You are the madman who believes in the great love story you’re here to live. Believe like that.

3. But believing like that is vulnerable. Because what if you let yourself want it as much as you really do, but then it turns out it doesn’t happen? After all, we can’t know our destiny. Our destiny could be 100 years of solitude. Welcome that vulnerability, the vulnerability of risking your whole-hearted wanting. Because what you are wanting—this intimate love—IS vulnerability. Intimate love is the epitome of vulnerability. It is to bare yourself and share yourself, all of yourself. It is to bear and share the vulnerability of the other. And then you’ll have to let it all go, give it all back, everything you’ve ever made together. What could be more vulnerable than that, this great letting go? Vulnerability is the name of the game here. If you really do want to play, you’ll have to pay. You can put down a deposit by starting now, opening to the vulnerability now, by allowing yourself to want this intimate love as much as you do, knowing full well that it might not happen this time around.

4. But believe that it will happen this time around! Make your doubt start to get nervous with your crazy eyes. Don’t forget that part.

5. These bullet points aren’t as concise as I was hoping they’d be, except for that last one.

6. So I’ll just do one more.

7. Fucking celebrate yourself, dude. Walt Whitman style. Celebrate, how beautiful you are. How gorgeous, your longing, your prayer for intimate love, as tender, as hopeful, as resplendent as the first daffodils of spring. How true that prayer is, no matter how it’s answered. How pure, no matter our shadows and egos and pain. How life-giving, our heart’s secret desire to know another and to be known. And how sweet, too, the fear and the doubt. How sweet, man. Can you feel that? Can you feel me? Can you feel your worthiness? Celebrate, yourself. Pour libations of milk and wine and honey (literally, why not?) in gratitude for who you are, and observe, if you can, how these libations slake the thirst of the earth’s desire for us to know ourselves as her own: cherished, claimed, beloved. See how your celebrations feed the gods, feed your relations, feed your ancestors and all the little (big) ones to come. Celebrate yourself, brother. Your way. Your life. The one who is here to love you will recognize you by the way you celebrate your marriage to yourself. Those vows start now.

8. Okay, this is the last one for real: Make stuff with your longing. Poems. Prayers. Tirades. Declarations. Manifestos. Plays. Jokes. Rituals. I wrote a song to Tana before I knew her. Now we sing it together in harmony. Express your longing. Move it. Make it. Like you did here with me, with your question. Because that intimate love, and your longing for it, isn’t just yours. It’s ours. Give us the goodies. Tap into it and see what it wants to create.

All right, bro. Thank you so much for the question. It’s a privilege to be asked, and to be asked by you. I wonder what will come of it all, for you. Let me know, okay?

Love you,

Andrew