I found love during the lockdown.
How did I manage to do so while being self-isolated during a global pandemic? Let me explain.
No, I didn’t have to use Tinder, Plenty Of Fish, or any other mobile application or online dating website.
No, I didn’t have to break social distancing rules and go into public situations.
No, I didn’t have to slide into the direct messages of my former lovers.
Instead, what I did have to do was learn a valuable lesson: how to love myself.
My Search for Love
I consider myself to be a romantic at heart. I long for deep and genuine connections with others, and sometimes this can be to a fault. I often feel incomplete without these connections.
After so long without any of these connections present, I have been left with a feeling of emptiness in my heart.
I have been searching desperately to fill that feeling on emptiness for a long time that predates COVID-19. My search led me to start new relationships in order to feel loved, validated, and praised.
These new relationships did make me feel full for a time. However, when those relationships would end, that feeling of fullness ended with them. This occurred because that feeling of fullness was not coming from a sustainable source; I was only feeling full based on the love others gave to me.
Although relationships could remediate my feeling of emptiness temporarily, no passing love could ever offer the sustainable feeling of wholeness that I craved.
As a result of this truth, many of the relationships in my life — romantic, familial, platonic, etc. — have suffered. I struggled to love others properly because I had too much expectation for them to fill that feeling of emptiness for me.
I struggled in relationships because I was looking for others to do the work of filling that emptiness for me, rather than doing it myself. I made relationships more about ‘me’ rather than about ‘us.’ I was focused on filling my selfish longing for wholeness, rather than building something new and beautiful with my partner.
To find love during the lockdown, this old pattern had to stop. To stop this pattern, there was a valuable life lesson I had to learn.
The Lesson I Had to Learn.
To start a new relationship during quarantine, there was much learning to be done. I had to learn that only I could fill my feeling of emptiness for myself. I had to learn how to be comfortable being alone, enjoy my own company, and self-value my worth. I had to learn how to love myself.
Learning this lesson made me realize that the only way for me to love someone else in the future properly was to be able to love myself right now.
I always knew during my search that this was a lesson I would have to learn. Despite knowing this to be true, I actively put off learning it for so long due to a substantial fear: the fear of having to be alone.
I didn’t want to learn how to love myself because I didn’t want to be alone.
I believe in some fundamental universal occurrences that I would define as truths. Two of them that applied here to me while learning this lesson were the following:
1: Lessons in life will repeatedly present themselves until you finally stop being stubborn and learn them.
2: If you don’t make the changes necessary to grow, the changes will happen for you instead.
These two fundamentals occurred for me during this journey of learning to love myself.
In accordance with the first fundamental:
The life lesson of learning to love myself had presented itself in many forms over the past few years. Each time it presented itself, I actively denied learning it. Instead, I would distract myself from the truth by actively seeking new temporary solutions — often in the form of new relationships.
I had a habit of getting so caught up in the excitement of these new relationships that I would become infatuated to the point of blindness from reality. Through my blindness, I denied the lesson time and time again. Each time I would end up with my heart broken and the feeling of emptiness still ever-present.
In accordance with the second fundamental:
Since I was unwilling to make the necessary changes in my life in order to learn the lesson, the changes happened for me.
My will over the past years was to actively avoid being alone; that was my choice. By making that choice, I never established the conditions necessary for learning the lesson.
The universe would only let me avoid the lesson for so long. It was only a matter of time before the change was made for me. The lockdown forced that change. Like everyone else, I was forced into isolation.
I was isolating myself individually in a place far away from home with very few accessible relationships to provide a source of love. I was situated in an environment that would allow for the lesson to present itself again.
Since I couldn’t rely on external relationships, I had to work on properly loving myself.
Being in lockdown gave me no choice but to find comfort, validation, and self-worth within myself. It made me focus and take the time to grow as an individual, to recognize my value, and to love myself.
It’s been a challenging, uncomfortable, and exhausting process, but I am thrilled I have made headway. I did the work in the most isolated and focused way possible. I can confidently say that I learned the lesson.
My New Relationship
With the lesson learned, I have started a new relationship.
This new relationship is one filled with a sustainable source of love that makes me feel whole.
I love their company. They encourage me to my highest and best self.
They make me feel good. I exercise to become my best self for them, nurture my body, and even cook healthy meals for them.
They bring out my creative side. I read for them. I sing for them, sometimes off-key — they don’t even seem to mind.
They make me feel giddy and break out into dance all around my apartment in my sweatpants like a goofball.
I feel comfortable with them.
I trust them.
I am at peace with them.
They fill the emptiness in my heart.
Who is this person, you ask? Well, that person is me.
During the lockdown, I fell in love with myself and am beyond excited to see where this new relationship takes me.
With love,
bravenewmatt
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This post was previously published on Hello, Love and is republished here with permission from the author.
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Photo credit: Unsplash