getting real love 10: how do I know you’re the one?
“drive all blames into one” Lojong slogan 12
A question I get asked a lot in my consulting room is a simple, yet powerfully life changing one: how, in this vast digital marketplace, can I know that she/he is The One for me?
This question often comes on the back of a succession of dates made after relentlessly reading profiles in various date sites, where the vast proliferation of choice out there in all of its confusing array actually makes finding a romantic partner often more difficult. This, coupled with the heightened expectations and actual anxiety of meeting up and finding Mr or Ms Right can sabotage the opportunity to relate in an authentic manner.
The truth is that we don’t know, and we really won’t ever really know if the person we’re sitting next to on a date, or in a relationship with is or will ever be The One, indeed perhaps The One is nothing but another relationship myth.
Or perhaps you are The One.
What do I mean by this?
The Lojong (Buddhist mind training, above) slogan points this out by suggesting that we take a long hard look at ourselves-perhaps it’s our own anxiety and need for certainty that drives us to suppose we can find what we are looking for “out there”. Shantideva, the 8th-century Indian Buddhist monk and scholar outlined a more practical approach to our difficulties in life when asked by a member of the Royal family how to avoid getting their bare feet hurt by stones on the road ahead-the Royal had suggested covering the Earth with leather. Shantideva replied:
To cover the earth with sheets of hide-
Where could such amounts of skin be found?
But simply wrap some leather around your feet,
And it’s as if the whole earth had been covered!
The lesson here is a very simple one: drive all of this into us.
There is no absolute certainty in relationships, we are living and breathing in contingent relationships that we have to work on and nurture throughout our lives.
Pema Chodron in her book Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change suggests we should be “fully present, feel your heart, and leap”-touching in and recognising our anxious need for certainty as ours and not projecting that blame onto others, touching in and feeling this in a heartfelt way that is truly connective, then taking the courage to leap in to a new relationship makes us more robust that living with the expectation that anybody else might be The One.
Nobody will ever be The One who brings us everything we need or want, we are required to get this from ourselves. Getting real love might mean we are The One then living courageously with uncertainty.
