I Had Seven Weeks To Attract The Love of My Life…Here’s What Happened

With seven weeks to find the one, my friend and I embarked on a journey that would change our love lives.

“Until you are able to see yourself living the life that you truly want, it will be difficult for you to create it.” ― Katherine Woodward Thomas

At the start of 2023, I reflected on my New Year’s Resolutions and one seemed so evidently clear. I wanted to get married. Well, not immediately. I wasn’t mentally ready for marriage, heck I wasn’t even 25 yet. But I knew that I wanted the love, the love I read about in my romance books over and over again. The love that swoops you off your…well you get it. You know it. I wanted that kind of love.

And I don’t know exactly how it showed up on my Amazon page, but one week into 2023, I decided to buy Katherine Woodward Thomas’s Calling in “The One”: 7 Weeks to Attract the Love of Your Life book. The book promises to show women how, after 49 days of exercises, you can be ready to find the love of your life. A little bit of a skeptic, I read some of the reviews with many reviewers saying it was life-changing. One woman even said it cured her OCD and trust issues! Many women said they found what every reader was looking for…the most amazing man.

The book arrived at my house and I stared at it…and then immediately shelved it away. What if it worked? What if at the end of the 49 days…or sometime during it, I found the one? Was I actually ready? “I’ll do it some other time,” I thought. I would stare at the book over the coming months, nervous to start reading it, something telling me it was going to change my life.

But then sometime in the fall season, I realized it was time to start reading this book. If I was ever serious about finding the one, I needed to open it. I wasn’t going into 2024, and never doing the book I was adamant about at the start of the year.

And in the first intro chapter of the book, it said I should do the book with others to increase accountability. So I reached out to a good friend of mine who was also looking for love. And she and I embarked on the journey to find love. Here are the three lessons I learned from this journey:

One: If you want love, you need to work for it

I don’t know why this lesson is hard for love, but it’s true…and it’s one of the biggest things my friend and I struggled with.

Humans spend hours studying for tests, we spend hours at the office to finish a presentation, we spend years trying to get pregnant, and we invest in our retirement over decades. Love…healthy, fulfilling love isn’t any different. Especially if you might be ~50% of the population with an insecure attachment style, or have something from your past that might be blocking you from love.

Finding good, healthy romantic love is not some guarantee. It’s a privilege, a blessing, something to be grateful for everyday if you get it. We aren’t owed sh!t. And for that reason alone, romantic love is something to work towards, but not feel like you are owed it for any reason alone. Yes…I think we are all deserving of love as human beings. We need love to be happy. But love comes in many forms…our passions, our family, our friends, etc.

And technically if you want to be in just any romantic relationship, you can meet some random person on an app with lower self-esteem who has a fear of being alone and the two of you can be in a relationship next week that’s built more on fear than love. If you have a healthy, fulfilling relationship, you need to cultivate it.

And it started with this book. Every day for 49 days, I had to spend 20–60 minutes each morning doing different exercises like visualizations, journaling, meditation, etc. That was a lot of work…and a lot of time. But if I wanted to get into a relationship, that would also take up time in my day. If I couldn’t dedicate the time to the book, why did I think I could dedicate the time to a relationship?

And it’s not just making time, it’s also making changes that take out things that no longer serve you. A couple of weeks into doing the book, my friend and I did a burning ritual. She has a toxic ex she’s loved for years, but finally realized she had to let him go. The two of us doing this book together helped her finally do that. We got this box she had where she kept all the stuff her ex gave her, like love letters, pictures, etc. And we went to a beach, and we burned the entire box and the items. She told me each story and we burned the item after. Letting it go. She had to make space for her future partner, by letting go of her ex’s stuff.

On my end, I remembered an old friend and I made a marriage pact years ago. If we were both single at 30, we promised to get married. And we recorded me saying the pact. I realized that memory was also in my mind and still affecting my sloth-like ability to want to date. So I called him to end that marriage pact. I knew it was holding me back from actually finding the one. No more backup plans. It was time to fall first and authentically for someone I knew was going to be the one for me.

I had to do the work. Making space for what I wanted and letting go of who and anything that no longer served me to get it.

Two: You can’t have something if you don’t think you deserve it

Nothing like self-sabotage to really ruin your plans (LOL). No, but really, I think that’s why it took me so long for me to want to start the book. I had so many limiting beliefs about what if it went wrong. What if I get hurt? What if? What if? What if?

Part of the book had us look at our limiting “false love” beliefs from our past negative experiences with love. The reality is you can claim you want love all you want, but if you don’t think you deserve it, you will self-sabotage. You will do the book, but never go out on dates. You will ask someone out, and then never ask someone else out again if you get one rejection. You will text people, but never show up for the date.

But we can’t let our past stop us from something our heart desires. The beauty is that now, especially as adults, we have control over our thoughts and actions. We can stand up for ourselves and choose to believe in better thoughts about our ability to deserve good love. We have to believe in our power to create love for ourselves.

Part of that came from this book…and this book also showed me to re-invest in a therapist to process some of my past experiences with love that have previously hindered my ability to attract a safe and healthy partner. Part of that also came from some good inspirational videos like this one.

I have to believe that I deserve love and look for evidence to support that theory so I don’t self-sabotage.

Three: You get tests, so pass them. Or take the test again

Have you ever noticed there is a pattern across all your exes? Or patterns in your love life? Do you always like emotionally unavailable guys? Are you single for long periods of time? Do you always date partners who feel “needy”? Whatever your pattern is, you will keep on experiencing it, until you “pass” the test.

To move forward and experience the miracle of a fulfilling love, you need to show the “universe” or even just your subconscious mind, that you really are ready for something different. So you will get presented with the same kind of person you’ve always liked, or the same situation, and you have to decide if you want to go back or move forward.

Strangely enough, while doing this book, both my friend and I’s first loves reached out to us. I haven’t spoken to my first love since maybe my birthday earlier this year? My friend hasn’t spoken to her first love in years. But both of them, within a week, reached out to us. It’s like they could feel us moving on…(kidding…or not?). Out of nowhere, while we were doing this book, they contacted us. And we were given the opportunity to go back, and see that as a “sign” to be with them, or to see it as what it was and move on. For us, they represented the past, people who were either emotionally unavailable or toxic to us.

To move forward and get something better, you need to make different decisions. Have you ever heard about the quote that tells you what the definition of insanity is? Don’t be insane. Don’t do the same exact thing, go back to the same exact kinds of people, attract different versions of the same exact personality, and expect different results.

We have to do something new to experience something new. And I think the universe rewards us for that bravery.

So I’ll leave it up to you to wonder if I ended up with the guy who I think is the love of my life or not. ;) Because I think one thing I realized is the extreme need and expectation to find someone can be really draining. Instead, I saw the beauty of focusing on all the love already there in your life. For one, this book brought me so much closer to my friend. And not just my friend, but random strangers on the street were nicer, smiling, complimenting me (I am serious!). And part of that is because I was noticing and believing in the possibility of love all around me. Love has always been around me, in me, and a part of my life. My life felt like a movie during the seven weeks I did this book. And that magic of seeing love everywhere is so beautiful.

And okay, actually, I will tell you that at the end of the seven weeks, I wasn’t in a relationship with the love of my life. And yes, it kind of sucked…I had hopes! I spent days, weeks actually, doing this book. Where is Mr. Right?! But I sat down with myself and realized some final things too…much of this is based on blind faith.

I realized the number one person I gotta make sure knows I love them is me. I choose to love my life. My messy but beautiful family, my friends, and the beauty around me. My flaws, my good traits, my ugly days, and my good ones. I love me. It’s the happiness I feel when I realize this is what I realize I want from my partner when he comes. I want love, and I get it by realizing I always already had it. It’s a beautiful trite, and it’s also a beautiful truth.

If you remember anything from this article, know that you are surrounded by love if you look, and that was one of my favorite realizations from the book. Don’t go searching for something that’s already in you. You are love. Feel like love is around you and notice the love that’s always been in and near you. That’s part of what the book ultimately taught me. Really, you’re just calling in a reflection of yourself. So that’s what I do. I try to love my messy and beautiful human self every day. And it made me excited and appreciative for this love journey of life I’m taking.

Sending you love and a happy new year!

❤

Those that go searching for love only make manifest their own lovelessness, and the loveless never find love, only the loving find love, and they never have to seek it. — D.H. Lawrence