This essay is slop rn… just fix it later lol
Love is a bit fucked up right now.
I’m sitting there in my apartment scrolling through perfectly curated dating profiles.. Why did she put that picture on there? What do I even say to this prompt like does she want a compliment? Oh that’s the one real pic of the profile… you know what I’m talking about
But my person is out there, right? This year I’ve dated idk 10 people only to find 1 or 2 things missing. But when do I give up and just say this is good enough? Are my standards too high? Am I being unrealistic?
New York City has 8 million people and I haven’t managed to find 1 I really fuck with… sounds like a skill issue to me
Here are some random thoughts on my dating career, especially in nyc:
Love is a Craft
It’s just as much a process as getting in shape or developing a skill is. To find the one, you must 1) become someone who is worthy/compatible with The One, and 2) put yourself in situations to meet and genuinely connect with this person
I think we’d all be better off if we just banned dating apps for 6 months. Go out there and get used to meeting people. What the fuck happened to chatting up a girl at the bar or meeting a guy in pottery class? This is real life… and why am I so scared of living in it? Why am I so scared of people??
For The One to like you, you must be someone who they will get along with. Some traits I’m trying to cultivate are kindness, ambition, discipline, being warm, being interesting, filling my life with adventure and richness, etc. Do it for yourself because a life well lived is all of these things. A life well lived is sexy.
For The One to find you, you just gotta put yourself out there, honestly.
But here’s what I’ve learned about finding love: it’s both a craft and an adventure, and you have to embrace both sides of that equation.
The craft part? That’s about becoming someone worthy of the love you’re seeking. It’s about building a life that’s rich and full enough that when the right person shows up, you have something real to invite them into. Not just your Netflix queue and your work complaints, but actual lived experiences, passions, stories.
The adventure part? That’s where shit gets interesting.
See, I think finding love is a function of luck surface area. The more you expand your life, the more chances you create for something magical to happen. But this isn’t about mindlessly swiping right or speed dating your way through the city. It’s about putting yourself in situations where you might meet someone who gets your weird.
Here’s how it works:
Passively: Live your life in a way that feels authentic to you. Work from that cool cafe instead of your bedroom. Join that pottery class you’ve been curious about. Hit the climbing gym instead of doing bicep curls in your basement. Your future person is probably out there living a life that rhymes with yours.
Actively: Talk to people. Yes, it’s going to be awkward. Yes, you’re going to fuck it up the first hundred times. But guess what? You have to suck at something before you can be good at it. Might as well get those reps in now.
When it works — when you actually find that person — it feels like the universe just stopped to take a breath. Time dissolves. The world falls away until it’s just you and them, existing in this perfect bubble where nothing else matters. Every cosmic coincidence, every life choice, every random decision led to this exact moment.
But until that happens? You’re going to meet a lot of 75% people. People who are almost right but not quite. And that’s okay. That’s part of the process. Each almost-right person teaches you something about what you’re actually looking for.
The hopelessness comes when you feel like you have no agency in this whole thing. Like love is something that happens TO you rather than THROUGH you. But that’s bullshit. If your town doesn’t have the kind of people you want to meet, move. If your daily routine isn’t putting you in front of potential partners, change it.
Because here’s the truth: love isn’t found by playing it safe. It’s not found by optimizing your dating profile or following some fucking algorithm. It’s found in the messy, beautiful chaos of actually living your life. It’s in the small moments of connection — the shared laugh at a book reading, the quick conversation between sets at the gym, the knowing look when you both reach for the same coffee order.
Is it terrifying? Absolutely. Will you feel like an idiot sometimes? For sure. But that’s just the price of admission. You have to decide one day or another if you are going to be the person that gets what they want out of life and commit to the temporary sacrifices. They’re all just reps at the end of the day.
So stop treating love like a problem to be solved. Create a life rich enough that love has multiple ways to find you. Be patient with the process — the awkwardness, the heartbreak, the almost-but-not-quite connections. They’re all part of your story.
And when you finally find that person who makes time stop and your heart skip? You’ll realize that every weird date and awkward conversation was just leading you exactly where you needed to be.
Until then? Keep your heart open and your AirPods out. Your person is out there, probably looking for you too.