In today’s world, being open to the possibility of finding love can be both a complex and daunting experience. Over the past year, within my vocation as a facilitator of wellness events, in my private therapy practice and with my close friends, I have been observing and speaking with men and women about how we are navigating modern love in what can feel like a rather hostile climate. It has become clear that many people believe a thick skin, perhaps even armour is now required. A steady head seems essential to dodge the bombs that can be mistaken for love and to wade through the endless stream of Instagram dating advice and TikTok philosophies that bombard us daily, shaping how hardened we have become toward one another.
As women, many of us seem to have become so tired of relationships that we have given up altogether. I know countless women who like myself, are in their fifties living beautiful lives, sharing time with one another, enjoying the fruits of successful careers, and reaching the end of many years of caregiving to families, with absolutely no drive or deep desire to reconnect with a partner.
The potential loss of calm and peace feels too great a sacrifice to our hard-won equilibrium. The horror stories we share with each other of being dragged down by dull marriages at best, or broken by horrific narcissism and abuse at worst, have, by the time we reach the liberation of our wisdom years, put many of us off even attempting a search for love.
Even belief in love as a construct seems to have been erased from the hearts and minds of so many men and women. What even is love now, and what happened to it? What have we done to the very concept of love?
“True soul love is the willingness to extend oneself to nurture the spiritual growth of oneself oranother”
Eric Fromm The Art of Loving 1956
Does anyone even talk about love anymore? It is an off limits subject, and anyone who dares to admit they are searching for it, open to it, or believing in it risks being shot down as insane, wildly romantic, ridiculous, or just plain weak and pathetic.
If you admit to wanting sex, you will be met with great support and enthusiastic encouragement. There are no shortage of people eager to offer advice on how to find it, how good it will be for you, how fulfilling it is, and how wonderful you will feel about yourself once you finally get back under the sheets with some random stranger or a willing friend. But to admit to wanting love? That will likely earn you blank stares around the dinner table or pitiful remarks about how sad it is that you would even contemplate such a deeply weak desire.
Men are constantly bombarded with stereotypical messages suggesting they are hardwired to desire multiple women purely for sexual pleasure, without any deeper connection. Meanwhile, women are inundated with advice on how to handle the manipulation, deceit, and misuse of power that men supposedly wield over us, until all trust in the male species feels as though it is being eroded to the point of extinction.
“If women and girls in patriarchal culture are taught to see every male, including the males with whom we are intimate, as potential rapists and murderers, then we cannot offer them our trust, and without trust there is no love.”
Bell hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love
Women are told to be permanently on guard. We are cautioned to watch for red flags, low effort, and words that do not match actions. Being ‘left on read’ for more than a specific number of hours or days is seen as a violation of a set of rules we are meant to adhere to if we are to navigate the minefield of relationships with men.
Women will raise their eyebrows as if you are ridiculous for not ‘seeing the signs’ early on, if a man dares not to pass the harsh tests designed to assess his worthiness to do what exactly? What are we measuring him for? Texting? Liking your posts or replying to your story? When were these skills present, or even vital, to any relationship prior to 1997 when mobile phones became commonplace? Where is there a historical poet or author of great love and romance who thought it fitting to depict love as an assault course of speed and intensity through communication via technology?
If a man were truly capable of loving you, he might not survive the rulebook we have created for him. He could be too slow, too hesitant, too unsure at first and struck off before any slow, organic, steady growth of love has a chance to shoot up like a sprouting seed cut down before it can rise toward the sun.
Potential lovers now face a bewildering rulebook dictating how love must progress, from the first connection to ‘talking’, through ‘seeing’ or ‘dating’, then navigating the quagmire of whether we’re in a ‘situation’ or a ‘situationship’, and perhaps one day arriving at ‘exclusive’. Is that the same as a relationship, or does anyone really know anymore? Gone are the days of eyes meeting, hearts beating, and love naturally finding its way through desire and fondness. Now we must endure an onslaught of labels and prescribed, passion killing stages, like a hierarchical ladder that forbids the heart from opening freely until it reaches a particular rung deemed “safe.” It’s enough to dampen the fire of love’s abundance for anyone still capable of feeling deeply.
The epidemic of technological false love through pornography and online dating only adds to the confusion and dilution of true soul love as a concept. Men search for the ideal woman. Has she become a warped representation of the feminine, without feelings or needs, not requiring care or honour, the miracle of her body, her ability to create life, and her deep capacity to love and desire a man?
Women, instinctively recognising that to be desired they must suppress their need to be cared for or honoured, lose touch with the miracle that they are. Their connection to themselves fades, as women disconnect from their now inconvenient menstrual cycles and any desire for deep, fulfilling, lasting love. Love in relationships, love for a family, love for their community, all die alongside the acknowledgment that there is even a call to remember and search for true, life changing love, love that nurtures the growth of another, that seeks to be part of the rising of another, and that dedicates a life to caring for and being cared for.
“When men lie to women, presenting a false self, the terrible price they pay to maintain ‘power over’ us is the loss of their capacity to give and receive love. Trust is the foundation of intimacy. When lies erode trust, genuine connection cannot take place.”
Bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions
I find myself coming to the end of this year of listening to how others are learning to love again with a much deeper understanding of the war we have made on love and how it now lies buried under many mounds of rubble. The hands of love reach out from the bomb sites that lie to waste asking us to let go of these constructs that lead us further away from connecting to each other. Men and women are so far apart on a battlefield, a cold wasteland we have come to believe is just the way this has to be. True, open hearts and soul level fiery explosive passion have amongst many of us, been extinguished.
In this last twelve months, I personally have tried dabbling with dating sites again after many years but never made it past responding to a message. The sheer number of men sending likes and messages was completely overwhelming, and as my children rightly put it, “Mum you are fresh meat.” I found the whole experience clinical, prescribed, and generally unwholesome, never to return. I am sure there are success stories out there, although it seems a larger proportion of confused, sometimes heartbroken and demoralised men and women have been left bewildered and drained by the pursuit of online romance.
One afternoon at the beach, I was talking with a friend about my refusal to believe that a dating site was the only way to find a partner. We discussed karma and destiny, the idea that what is meant for us will come and nothing that is meant for us will ever pass us by. Applied to dating, it meant trusting that if true soul love were to find us, it would, in its own time.
That very evening, on a late train to Bristol to go out dancing, the most beautiful man sat next to me. Our eyes met, we smiled, and chatted for the rest of the journey until his stop. We did not exchange names or contact details, yet I felt life was showing me that love could appear anywhere, anytime, and that was enough.
Spending time talking with male friends about their experiences of finding relationships, many of them are equally despondent about whether love still thrives in our world. They describe the harshness and coldness from women who often expect deceit and falsehood from them. They feel the pressure to move quickly into bed and then face finger pointing when the initial rush fails to meet expectations.
Female friends tell me they have been suspicious of men who wanted to sleep with them and seemingly even more suspicious of those who do not, fearing a mans desire for connection must be rooted in some other kind of manipulation, be it to enhance their career, status or satisfy their ego. Perhaps they are right and in many cases they may well be, but the idea that a man might simply wish to connect seems unfathomable in our loveless world. The scrutiny around any single woman both from other women and through social media is intense. The pressure to ‘get on with it’ and sleep with someone can at times feel almost shaming, as if our worth, even among other women, is measured by how many men find us attractive.
As women we tell ourselves and each other, that to be independent, single and without need or desire for love, partnership or connection is the way forward. To be without need of another shows us to be strong, resilient, courageous and brave. To offer any desire for anything other, shows weakness and is futile. Our modern Western, patriarchal and capitalist society, puts the narcissistic self centred life on a pedestal. When the majority of the rest of the world live in community, as extended families and rarely in solitude, we rank this ability to live alone happily and lovelessly as a desirable way.
Are we closing ourselves off, shutting our inherent need for love out, as an attempt to live and experience our hostile world in a positive light, when deep within us we long for and are in desperate need of a true love?
So what have we done to love and how do we find our way toward it? Can we call off the search in the rubble and find a new way not back to an old outdated version of love that perhaps never served our ancestors well either, but a beautiful new empowered way to love that serves all genders and delights in our differences while being based in the belief that we can support each other to grow as souls?
“Love isn’t something natural. Rather it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism.”
Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving 1956
Can we believe that there is much to be gained for oneself by being part of another’s path in life, that to commit to each other and to stand true and strong together is a fulfilling way to live? Can we accept that true soul love does not have to last a lifetime and can be just as beautiful whether it endures months, years, or decades? Can we find a way to build love that can take its time, that does not need to develop with speed over text and apps, but grows steadily, with patience, tolerance, and without endless rush or the need for instant validation?
After this year of looking in on love in the world around me, rather than despondent or despairing, I now find myself more determined than ever before to create love in my own life. I see its lack around me and plan to build it back into the foundations of every part of my life as it stands as an antidote to all that is lacking. My family, my friends, my work, my community and my home, I have these beautiful essences here before me and they need all this love that I have in my heart so I will share it more fiercely than ever before.
“When we love someone our love becomes demonstrable or real only through our exertion – through the fact that for that someone (or for ourself) we take an extra step or walk an extra mile. Love is not effortless. To the contrary, love is effortful.”
M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth
Can we collectively fight back in this battle of lovelessness in our world, can we shout out our unashamed search for love by loving more. Using bombs of pure love and hope, can we shoot arrows of our soul into every corner of our existence to prove that love is real and can be found and can we bombard our lives with a belief that true soul love and desire, passion and commitment to others is a worthwhile and fulfilling purpose to have.
Love Saira