Are You Still Looking For The One?

Don’t listen to TV, no one’s coming on a horse to save you.

Are you the one? I wondered relentlessly. Are you the one that will come and save me? White horse, glass slipper, and castle? Will you be there for me?

Why is that a common expectation? Why are we looking for “the one”? Why would life be so much better with someone by our side? Life can be good with someone by our side, but it doesn’t mean it can’t be good on our own.

I used to believe in that one true love. Yet, 20 years later, here is the thing: I don’t think I need to be saved. I’m happy with my failures, comfortable in my hurts, fulfilled in my doubts, sane in my fear. I’m good, thanks. I’m still here, managing my day-by-day happiness. I’m paying by the hour.

So why do I still wonder if someone is the one?

It started young

I grew up showered by rom-coms, teenage drama shows, coming-of-age novels, and love songs. I would have given up everything to have that one person that completes me by my side. You know, the one that would sweep me off my feet and take me away. I craved for the love they talked about, crying when I thought I was losing my only chance at happiness.

Part of me may have been addicted to the idea of losing the one and the drama that comes with it. Sure, I wanted to be happy, but I wanted a taste of the lost-love-broken-heart pain too.

It could be such good material for a writer.

It wasn’t as much fun anymore when I did get heartbroken. I still stand by my good material comment though. Nothing inspires me more than my own pain.

Me versus fate

Ancient Greece has a legend about how people were created by pairs — two bodies attached to form one, and a unique soul. It sounded so romantic: someone made to be one with you. The missing part of you.

Another great tale is the Chinese legend of the red thread of fate. It’s a story about an invisible red thread tied around one of our fingers. The other extremity is tied to the finger of the person we are destined to be with. If destiny is a part of it, then who am I to fight it?

I believed very hard that if I felt something for someone, it had to be important. That person must have been created for me to love. Of course, it wasn’t true. It led me to be the victim of unrequited love and high expectations. I hurt myself while waiting for that one person to fix me.

I have a history with love

The first time I thought I was falling in love, I was wrong. Youth mistaking hormones for love. He liked my best friend better anyway. High school was complicated. I was accidentally in the middle of a love triangle — as you can bet, it ended up badly.

It led me to my first real love. The one that counted. That one face I can’t help but smile at. It’s been years, but I bet he can still read me like a book. I guess he is the one that got away. There’s always something about the first love.

After a year with him, I thought “is he the one?”. How to know, when you’re 18 and you’re starting to discover what love, and lust, are. You want to believe that the first love will stick. You want to be the exception, be married for 70 years, and tell people that you spent your life together. That’s the dream, isn’t it? At least, that’s what a lot of movies like to pretend.

It didn’t last. I met someone new. I knew it wasn’t love. Thank God it wasn’t. We were as different as people can be, arguing about everything, staying together to prove the world wrong, including each other.

I moved on, and to another country. Within a couple of weeks, I met someone new. I know, it’s starting to sound like a lot a people, but bear in mind that by that time I was 22 and only had two real relationships. Real, because the rest was mostly in my head. Well, this one too was kind of in my head, but also my first smart choice.

We were always in between — more than friends, but not a couple. Not even hookups. It was ambiguous, which I reveled in. He hadn’t said no, even encouraged me. It was unhealthy to the point that even I couldn’t take it anymore.

It gets better

For the first time, I had learned to get out of a toxic relationship. I had learned to let go. It was a new kind of love and happiness I had created for myself: I was in control. I didn’t need to be loved anymore, not whatever the cost. I had found peace in my solitude.

Three weeks later I was meeting my future husband.

Damn it.

I mean, that’s great. He is a good guy. So, obviously, after a while with him, I thought “is he the one?”

The answer was easier to find than I thought.

No.

No one is the one

He is not the one. No one is. It took me 25 years to accept that no love would ever be enough for what I needed. Only myself could ever be enough. I also understood that I was never incomplete, nor lost. No one was made for me.

There isn’t one true love to conquer all. You only conquer what you let yourself conquer.

That is why, for me, love and marriage are choices. Sure, there’s more to it, there are nuances. Some relationships are problematic, some dangerous and toxic. You can’t always get out of it as easily as you should, but that’s another matter.

The mundane ones look alike — like Tolstoï and families. You choose to work for it, to compromise, to try, to be patient, to be faithful. You choose that one person, every day, over and over. Fate is not following you with a knife on your throat, making you stay because it was decided an eternity ago.

I realized meeting some people that if soul mates do exist, they do not define who we love. I met someone who was my perfect opposite. In a sense, he completed me. Fire and rain. Light and darkness (that’s him, obviously). He embodied, like many of those I loved before, that feeling of meeting someone again, but for the first time.

Too often, I’ve mistaken that feeling for love.

There will always be someone whose brokenness fits mine. There are dozens of “ones’’ out there for everyone. Maybe even you who are reading this text right now can be a “one” for me.

On marriage

It makes marriage that much scarier. It’s so good when we can blame fate, or God, or whatever thing we don’t have control over. It wasn’t meant to be. That’s life. In my case, getting married, I know I don’t have to. I know there is no universal force compelling us to be together or to be doomed to eternal loneliness. He is not the only one that could make me happy.

What to believe in?

We all want to believe in something. I believed that Peter Pan would knock on my window. Then, I wanted to believe I was going to Hogwarts. Later, I believed I would meet someone and be happy forever after. When that belief disappeared too, I turned to the universal one. Quite the journey too.

When you’re waiting for something, whether an obvious love, God, or even Godot, you spend a lot of time with yourself. You think. You ponder. You explore. One would say you meditate, but I am not qualified to say that.

If you’re anything like me, you lay awake at night, replaying in your head the mistakes you made, the conversations you had, the defining moments, and the strength inside you never knew you had. You look back at childhood, or even a couple of months ago when you didn’t know what you know now.

If you take a step back, you can look at the big picture. You see people struggling around you. Maybe you’re as lost as everybody else. Or maybe you have your life more figured out than you thought.

That’s when it should strike you. You don’t need anyone. You are enough.

You are the one.

You are your one.