Cabot O’Callaghan is open to love—he’s just not chasing it. And that makes him happy.
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Well, those who speak know nothin’
And find out to their cost
Like those who curse their luck in too many places
And those who fear are lost
—Sting, Shape Of My Heart
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I’m in a good space right now. I’m happy. I can’t remember the last time I’ve felt this comfortable in my skin.
That doesn’t mean I’m “everything is how I’d like it to be” happy. That’s not happy, that’s bullshit. I’ve largely given up on pursuing that premise. Now I desire new experiences, variety, adventure. The unknown. I can’t have those things without embracing chaos. It’s realizing, and accepting, that I’m capable of controlling far less than what I think I can control. I will make mistakes. Things will go wrong. The unexpected will ambush me. These things are the forge of strong hearts and personal growth.
It’s not hard to see that in our culture control is king. It stains everything and love is no exception. If I’m not constantly trying to achieve the desired outcome, I’m terribly uncomfortable. I feel like I’m failing, which fills me with fear and despair. This creates a shit-ton of needless suffering. Maybe I’m not ready or circumstances are not appropriate and I’m presently incapable of recognizing that. Maybe I’m blinded by naivety, or *gasp* dysfunction.
Introspection can reveal unwelcome truths.
Accepting that I can’t control my chances to experience romantic love is especially difficult. So of course, I think about it a lot. “Alone” and “lonely” are home to greet me with a candle lit dinner every night to remind me.
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Accepting that I can’t control my chances to experience romantic love is especially difficult. So of course, I think about it a lot. “Alone” and “lonely” are home to greet me with a candle lit dinner every night to remind me.
This is where someone says you feel lonely because you can’t enjoy being alone. So, loneliness is weakness. This is also where I punch you in the face. There’s nothing worse than shame and blame advice. It’s a goddamn epidemic. We are social creatures and “alone” makes us nuts. It causes pain. Even physical proximity to another human means nothing because our relationships are rife with disconnection. The loneliness is baked in. It’s easier to play the blame game because the truth is far more disturbing.
It’s a cultural ill, not a personal one.
I digress.
Put the alphabet in math.
—Satan
I’m against trying to validate myself by telling others what I think to be true. I don’t have a clickbait 10 ways to find true love. There’s so much of that crap in the world it makes me want to puke. I find myself in an almost perpetual state of WTF so I just write about my experience. I’d be stupid to assume I that I can define Eros universally. All I can do is attempt to define it for myself and invite you along for the ride.
Love is fucking hard to grok, man. People math is hard and it’s harder calculating my own. At best I have my half of the equation and I’m lucky if I have that right.
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Love is fucking hard to grok, man. People math is hard and it’s harder calculating my own. At best I have my half of the equation and I’m lucky if I have that right. Finding my x means wading through great migrating herds of duality and irony. This is probably why I’ve always hated math.
I mean, do you think you can make romantic love manifest? I feel many of us keep ramming our head into the wall because we feel if we don’t try, we’ll never get it.
After my divorce I dove into online dating. I was never much of a dater in my youth and now I was divorced, middle aged and a single parent—a literal baggagefest. I tried detailed profiles. I tried minimalistic profiles. I tried funny and deeply serious ones. Trying to figure out proper protocol was pointless because there wasn’t any. Some women were shallow eye candy. Flakes and cowards abounded. The same old gender and courting stereotypes were systemic. Authenticity was a starving child and I felt like an emotional unicorn. The few dates that went well had no chemical spark. But what was I to do? If I didn’t seek, how could I find? I’d try for a while, become frustrated and disgusted, then stop. Aloneness would eat me alive in the interim and then I’d try again. I even tried a FWB relationship. It was weird and only lasted a month.
Spinning wheels, spinning wheels.
Authenticity was a starving child and I felt like an emotional unicorn.
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Eventually I stopped doubting my efforts and realized the real issue was that I wasn’t being authentic with myself. Pursuing love might work for others but it isn’t the shape of my heart. My x is a sensitive symbol that vanishes if computed forcibly, like a subatomic particle. It’s like hating the shape of your nose and believing if you concentrate on it long and hard enough, you’ll wake up one day and it will be just how you want.
I’m better off just waltzing along.
Photo—slalit/Flickr
Thank God. CLOSURE. After all these years. I thought didn’t want my girlfriendship because of me. Because of who I was as a human. Now I can stop the wonderment of it all.