It felt like every romance movie my pre-pubescent brain had watched - love at first sight. I knew I was going to marry her, and spent the majority of the school year mapping out my plan to do so.

We still haven’t talked.

Guess all those romance movies never taught guys how to have the confidence to talk to women. Whoopsie.

Predictably, most of my teenage years were spent silently yearning, seemingly at random. My time was evenly split between wondering ‘am I even lovable?’ and imagining my life with strangers who flashed a friendly gaze.

But underneath that teenage naivety is the soul of love - it feels so reassuringly achievable, something to be eager for… it makes you feel a sense of purpose; whether you’re fantasizing about your first kiss or watching romcom’s in your 40’s. We all know what love feels like, to some capacity.

Given enough time and willingness, we can love almost anyone. We often don’t even need to be loved in return.

Here’s the danger, though: love is an overwhelming feeling, and we’re quick to assume that merely feeling strong emotions is sufficient enough to build a life on. Thus, we end up in relationships that feel just… ‘good enough’. We experience love to a degree, but never to the fullest capacity.

The flip side is using “having standards” as an excuse to shut down your capacity to love anyone who doesn’t meet your rigidly anal criteria. Love broadly and to the fullest extent you can, and trust yourself to discern whether it’s worth further cultivating. We can have love for a potential partner, a friend, the mailman… without necessarily needing to have them in our life (although I’d appreciate if the mailman keeps stopping by). The world is a beautiful place, and the answer is never to “feel less”.

But what, specifically, do we look for in a romantic partner?

I find it absurd that we submit to sixteen years of formal education without protest; yet spend almost no time asking what love means to us, or who we want to build a life with. I suppose the bare minimum I could do is try to write an article on it.

Love, to me, feels like it has a few crucial layers:

Life Alignment

What most people field for when seeking a partner. Do they share the same interests as me? What do they do for fun? Where do they work? Who are they friends with? Do they want kids? Do they speak respectfully to the waiter? Where do they stand politically? Does it make sense to build a life with them?

These are fundamental, necessary questions. We must have life alignment. The more unsettling question is, what if you have a relationship solely built on this?

Compatibility is the foundation, not the house. We make the mistake of moving in anyway. We’re left with something technically sound, but spiritually empty.

It’s (one of the many reasons) why dating apps suck. We reduce people to a checklist. I’ve probably swiped left on the love of my life because we didn’t like the same band, or because of the mirror selfie in her third photo; all while feeling nothing on dates with people who seemed “perfect” (on paper, at least).

Relational Maturity

The unglamorous one. How you handle conflict, whether things escalate or resolve; ability to repair. Seeing your partner’s intent instead of taking their words at face value and leaping to conclusions. Deep trust in your partner’s character. The capacity to stay sane when your partner has made you temporarily insane.

The cruel irony is this is usually only revealed after it’s too late. It’s the hardest layer to predict, but fortunately also the most learnable one.

Without it, you’ll go through the classic breakup + makeup cycle, live with a constant hum of anxiety, and perpetually find yourself in states of chaos.

When you stack excellent Life Alignment + Relational Maturity together, you’re either approaching soulmate territory, or something far more dangerous:

A relationship where everything seems perfect - aligned values, healthy communication, a mature partner. You genuinely love each other, yet have a persistent low-frequency hum telling you “something’s missing”; which you feel horrible for even thinking. You become convinced that you’re the problem - telling yourself it must be right… so why don’t I feel that way?

Assuming you’re relatively healthy and in touch with yourself, the pain of staying in a stable, but ultimately mediocre relationship, will eat at you till you’re forced to make a decision - keep numbing it out, or leave?

This is unfortunately common. Couples who once loved each other, staying together not out of yearning desire, but out of fear. Scared of giving up something ‘good enough’ - being alone again, potentially never finding anything better. This is one of the toughest spots to be in. You have just enough to justify staying, but not enough to feel deeply satisfied.

Your friends will say your relationship is healthy. A therapist wouldn’t be able to point to anything obvious. You genuinely love each other, but can’t help but wonder: “is this it?”

The dilemma is real:

What if I leave too early? What if they develop into my soulmate?

But each passing day makes it harder to leave, because your connection + love will inevitably deepen over time in a stable, healthy relationship (right alongside the pain eating at you).

Do you trust your intuition saying “I can’t be here anymore”, even though you don’t know why? Or play it safe with your ‘rational’ mind saying “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”?

All that to say, you’re missing something crucial:

Inner World

You know when you meet a person and just click? Time passes effortlessly and you feel like you’ve known each other for a lifetime? That’s the Inner World. Feeling deeply emotionally + spiritually seen & understood. Being on the same frequency (finishing each other’s sentences, feeling safety + freedom in their presence, instinctively knowing when something’s up without them saying a word). The “soulmate” feeling.

This is where you can meet someone you have nothing in common with, who might not even be super attractive to you, and yet fall madly in love - against all odds. In the moment, it’ll feel like nothing else matters. If only we could live in that fairy tale land forever…

If you have the Inner World without proper Life Alignment, you’ll find yourself sacrificing and compromising in fundamental ways - putting up with things you previously would’ve claimed were “non-negotiables”, and ultimately having to ‘sacrifice yourself’ in pursuit of a relationship.

If you have the Inner World without healthy Relational Maturity, you’ll have the “soulmate” feeling while dealing with intense blowups and instability. A deep connection is extremely addictive, but lack of structure makes the relationship toxic and fundamentally incompatible.

It’s also the kind of love that feels “worth fighting for”. Unfortunately, it’s the hardest to get over. You will be convinced you’re soulmates, and you truly might not experience a more intense love for a long time. Inner World alignment is the rarest of these three layers.

What happens when you combine all three layers - Life Alignment, Relational Maturity, and Inner World? I believe you get:

Pull

Pull is the feeling of being chosen, repeatedly, by someone who has seen all of you. This is what makes them your soulmate. The quiet but magnetic draw that grows *after* all three layers have been satisfied.

You might have a feeling like this when you first meet somebody, but that early electricity is usually chemistry + projection colliding. There’s an anxious edge, a need to know; a fear of losing it.

Real pull is experienced after you’ve been through something hard together and have seen their values. You know the saying “it’s not what they say when things are good, but how they show up when things aren’t”?

Pull is the gradual accumulation of those moments. It builds so slowly, you probably won’t notice it. But one day, the anxiety will be gone and you’ll be left deeply knowing ‘they’re here, and they aren’t leaving’. Knowing this won’t make you uneasy or tense, because you don’t want to escape.

Conversations will be effortlessly energizing, and you’ll feel perfectly at home. You’ve weathered every imaginable emotion together, said the stuff that should scare away any sensible person, and yet, they leaned in. You love the person you’re becoming with them. You still bitch at each other as any couple does, but tensions get resolved - they don’t linger.

You can logically enter a relationship that “makes sense” on paper. You can work on your conflict patterns. You can even open yourself up to being seen and understood. Pull can be developed, but not manufactured. The seeds of Pull are planted early, but the fruit of it only grows through the synergy of the three love layers working together over a long enough time.

——

In a world of infinite options, it’s easier than ever to disqualify somebody we’ve never met based on the book they’re reading or the job they have. Don’t be so quick to assume you have a type.

Bonding over hobbies makes you friends. Connecting over looks leads to hookups. Love is abundant, but a partner who we can speak to for several decades and still have generative conversation with is tremendously rare.

We have no idea what we actually need until it smacks us in the face and becomes painfully obvious.

I have no idea what my dream woman will look like. No clue what she’ll enjoy, or hate. Frankly, it doesn’t matter. I have a rough idea of what feels good to me, and I know what I enjoy doing in my own life. I’m putting that energy out there as raw and authentically as I can, and trust that I will attract the right person over time.

But there is still so much to learn about how to find this person in practice. To be continued :)