I want to fall in love.

What about you?

It’s been about 5-6 months since we’ve opened up our marriage and I started dating.

I’ve come super close to falling in love several times. But I have not arrived there yet in any of those instances.

At first, I was telling myself to be patient because love takes time. I still agree with this.

But I started thinking about what it would take for me to feel like falling in love didn’t feel so hard.

First, let me define what I mean by falling in love.

In her book All About Love, Bell Hooks cites the following definition of love by Erich Fromm: “the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth.”

And then she lists the seven components of what such love would contain: “care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication.”

To me, love is the ongoing will of both parties to partner with one another on what it looks like to practice each of the seven components with each other.

For example, one day, care might mean leaving me alone. Another day, care might mean asking me about my day or taking out the trash. Another day, it might mean all of the above.

The question for me when I decide on whether I am in love is this: Does it feel effortless to put in the effort to show up for one another?

This doesn’t mean that it’s not painful. It just means that we don’t give it a second thought to feel such an emotion if it means that we get to love.

This doesn’t mean we abandon ourselves for the sake of loving others. That kind of love would be incomplete because if we are not staying with ourselves and tending to our own wholeness, who is showing up to express that love? It would probably be a fraction of me showing such love, and I don’t find that kind of “love” to be sustainable.

Love that is true and sustainable is ongoing partnership on building together what it looks like to love and be loved. (Including partnership with ourselves.)

That involves being willing to experiment. Being willing to be completely wrong. Being willing to recognize our own assumptions and biases around what we think is right. Being willing to hold our emotions even if it means it may be dismissed or denied. Being willing to express our truth to find those who resonate with our truth.

And here’s the big, bold silver lining that reminds us how easy it can actually be: each of us know how to do all of this.

We already know how to love. We do this every day. We grapple with what it looks like to put in effort where it is hard because the experience means something to us.

That is why we are all looking for even more love.

We know how to love, and we want more of it. We know how hard it is, but our hearts keep searching for it because it is what keeps it beating.

Some of you may be looking for it in the marriage you already are in. Some of you may be looking for it in your relationship with your kids. Some of you may be looking for it at work where you find yourself constantly dissociating without any opportunity to connect with yourself.

I am looking for it in my dating life.

Each flavor and shade of love is so juicy and savory in its own way.

The ways I am doing it in my own dating life are the following:

• I look at all the ways I have crafted my own experience of love with myself, my spouse, my children, and the connections I have had so far. I look at what I like and don’t like about those experiences to inform how I relate to future connections.

• I sharpen my standards around the kind of values and decisions I am and am not available for. For example, I am available for delayed messages because I know what it’s like to have a wild calendar, and I have capacity for it. I am not available for those who cannot talk about politics with me because our politics is inherently personal, and I have no capacity to educate my connections on what I value and why it is important to me.

• I listen to what feels true for me right now, and I express that truth even if it means other people are disappointed or otherwise upset about it. I trust their ability to handle those emotions.

• I partner with those who are willing to partner with me on having difficult conversations around what is important to us, even if it means that we find out that we are not compatible. For example, I will partner with the person in front of me on what our future looks like if we are both invested in a sustainable relationship that lasts for the long term. If we find that we are not compatible in some ways, I am willing to have conversations about what we are willing to do about it.

These are ways I craft my experience of love with anyone.

At the heart of all this is my willingness to feel dumb and scared if it means I get to know them more and I get to be known more, too. This means I experiment on what works for us, ask questions about what they want, and express where I am, until one or more of us are no longer willing and available to experiment in those ways.

With every experimentation on love, there is always the possibility of heartbreak.

But as writer Andrea Gibson says, “Let your heart break so your spirit doesn’t.”

I invite you to ask: Where do I want to fall in love more deeply?

Even if it means that my heart might break?

What in my life feels so tragically important to my spirit that I am willing to be heartbroken for it?

Let the answers bubble up.

And if you want a committed space for you to answer these questions, I want to hold that space with you as your relationship coach - especially if you have been feeling so discombobulated and alone in search of these answers.

If crafting your own experience of love the way you want right now has felt so massive for you to tackle on your own, it probably means that the task is so big that it requires community care.

Let me be part of your community.

Let me hold the fear, the jitters, and even the stone cold loneliness with you.

Let’s search for love together so that it doesn’t feel so jarring and confusing on our own.

My clients rarely come to me for answers. They come to me for questions. Because that is the only way they can find answers that are true and sustainable for them.

Let’s experiment together and find answers that feel true and sustainable for you. Let’s become more skilled at experiencing heartbreak and more skilled at honoring our spirits.

And here’s the big bonus: when you decide to love more boldly, it gives more of us permission to do the same.

Kind of like the way you are here now, witnessing the way I decide to love and honor my truth by sharing it with you.

Let’s find more love and build more love in your life so that we can see more of it in the world.

Is there anything else more important?

Work with me.