You’ll Find Love When You Stop Searching For It

photo by John Schnobrich

By Marisa Donnelly: I think it’s safe to say we all want connection. Maybe not in this exact moment. Maybe not as the most important, crucial aspect of our lives. Maybe not before we find ourselves or what we’re truly passionate about. But at some point on our journey, we long to intertwine our soul with someone else, to trust, to let them in, to have a person to laugh with, share dreams with, choose and grow with. We all want to find someone to believe in this crazy thing called love with.

But we mess up when we look so desperately for it. When we put our relationship status as the center of our lives. When we spend all our time obsessing over the couples around us, who we’re loving or loved by, where we fit.

We mess up when we make the search for a person take priority over the search for ourselves.

The thing about love, is that it’s a blessing—not a necessary component. We don’t need love to be who we are, and yet, it’s one of the most beautiful things about being human. Where we go wrong, though, is when we think romantic love is everything, when truly, love is all around us.

The problem, then, is not that we’re incapable of finding and keeping love, but that we’re searching for it in the wrong places and making it become our definition, instead of a piece of who we are.

When it comes to romantic love, the heartwarming truth is that this type of love comes to us when we release, relax, and let it happen.

When we stop searching for love, we find it. When we stop analyzing ourselves, changing every little thing, worrying over when we’ll find ‘the one’ or if we’ve fallen apart from them, we discover that love is natural—not forced.

When we quit thinking that we’re running out of time, we find joy in every moment. And the person we’re meant to be with finds us and compliments that joy with his or her own.

We’re not going to find love if we’re continually stressing over it. If we’re discrediting our own hearts because of past relationships. If we’re thinking we’re somehow less, simply because we haven’t discovered ‘forever’ as quick as the person next to us.

Love isn’t something that bends to our rules. We can’t simply wish it to happen. We can’t expect it. We can’t prod, or poke, or push, or make it become exactly what we want it to be. And why would we, anyways?

Love is beautiful as it happens, when it happens. And it will happen. We just have to trust.

We have to trust fate, trust timing, trust God, trust the universe, trust the law of attraction and how it will bring good things to us if we choose to believe.

But stressing yourself out about love? Constantly worrying over who your person will be? Speaking words of unworthiness to your heart, simply because you haven’t found a significant other by a certain time? This is self-sabotage. And will do nothing to help you find the relationship you deserve.

One day love will find you. But you have to be patient. You have to be strong. You have to focus on all that you are, all that life has to offer beyond a partner, so that when you stumble into each other, you’ll both be the best versions of yourselves.

You have to stop searching so desperately for it.
And let it come.