Love is one of the languages no one teaches yet everybody understands it. From infancy, a child naturally gravitates toward love and feels when love is absent. You can say when it comes to love, humans are creatures of habit looking for where to lavish their pent-up love and receive love in return. Somehow, we know the love we have is to be given to others for it to have significant value and in return, we crave the love from others sometimes way too much to help us feel good about ourselves.
It’s why we spend our whole lives in search of who is worthy to receive our love and whose love we are worthy to receive. On this journey of love discovery, you experience different versions of love and give the same. If you happen to be amongst the few that experience true love at some point in your life, then you’re one of the lucky ones.
Most people arrive at true love after so many love detours. For instance, there is the first puppy love when you’re still a kid and trying to understand how to get attention and give it back to someone. The feeling is overwhelming and you are convinced you two are the only ones that have ever experienced it. Some people’s first love evolves into true love as both parties grow and learn together. For others, their first love and true love are different forms of love in between.
Many times, it’s so subtle how much we yarn to love and be loved that we constantly move in a circle looking for the right outlet to channel our feelings. That is where preparing ourselves to love and be loved becomes imperative. Else we keep entering the wrong relationship hoping it will lead to true love. Preparation shortens your journey to true love land so you must take preparing yourself seriously and you will know when the right partner comes your way.
We list below 14 ways to find true love:
1. Prioritize self-development
Self-development is identifying your toxic traits, communicating hurts and expectations, managing conflict, asserting yourself to learn, believing in yourself, being teachable, and freely teaching what you know without contempt for the learner. Self-development is not an exhaustive list and can mean different things at different stages of your life.
So, you must be in constant learning and work on setting habits to achieve your goals. With self-development as your focus, you will see that when the time comes to decide on who to give your heart to you will choose someone with a similar approach to life. You will easily spot unserious people no matter how hard they musk it. True love becomes relatively easy when both partners are big on self-development.
2. Be specific about what you want in a partner
It’s easy to find something when you know what you’re looking for. Just like you cannot start a journey without a destination. Uncertainty leads to second-guessing your decision because you’re not sure if what you’re experiencing is what you want or if there is better out there. However, when you have an idea of what you want, the idea of better doesn’t scare you because you have what you want.
You should know that it is okay for your priorities and specification to change as you grow older and get exposed to different concepts of life. The essential thing is that at every given time you know what you want for that season of your life. There are times you are clueless as to what you want and it’s totally fine. But it is expected that as you grow and learn, your priorities become clearer. After many twists and turns, one of the safest destinations to true love is knowing what to look out for in a partner.
3. Look beyond physical attraction
It is true that beyond the eyes sending signals to our brain, it also sends signals to the heart and determines whether we are receptive to people or not. Once the “Open, Sesame me” password of physical appearance has been confirmed, we’re now ready to hear what people are about and what makes them tick. It’s why slogans like “first impression matter” play a subconscious role in decision-making.
Yet judging people based on looks can be counterintuitive because you may overvalue someone who has less to offer and undervalue someone with more to give. In both scenarios, you miss out on who people truly are. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong in noticing people based on their appearance but don’t dismiss the ones you think are not your spec. they might have more to offer or everything you need to be in your happy place.
4. Look out for personalities that complement
To maintain sync and true love, look out for personalities that make it easy to be yourself. For instance, a creative with innovations and ideas should have someone who believes they can achieve anything they set their heart on even if they are failing. The person should also be disciplined and have the willpower to encourage their partner. A person who enjoys public speaking will benefit from a listener who also challenges their thought process to ensure their partner has convictions on what they are saying. There are so many ways partners can complement each other and limit personality clashes which can lead to irreconcilable differences.
5. Maintain mutual respect
The thing about getting respect is that you must first give it to yourself before you can demand it from others. The way to respect yourself is to value your time, make sure your words have integrity, hold yourself to a higher standard and speak to yourself with love and respect. By doing this, you’ll be teaching people how to treat you and making it uncomfortable for people who cannot respect you to hang around you.
If you already treat yourself with respect and attract people who treat you with respect, reciprocating respect will come naturally and you will respect your significant other first because they are human and deserve it. Secondly, because they are your love interest.
6. Do not base your decision solely on emotions
If you’ve come out of more than one relationship, you’ll find out that part of the problem was that you two didn’t talk about the things that mattered like ambition, goals, finances, expectations, value systems and family. Once you are focused on how they make you feel, the gifts they buy you and the butterflies in your belly, whatever love you are feeling cannot grow into true love.
7. Understand their family and friends
We do not choose our family and yet they play a huge role in how we turn out in life. Everyone brings a piece of their family with them where ever they go and in their perspective on life. We are either trying to re-enforce family values or revolt against them because they no longer serve us.
If you can understand the family dynamics propelling or holding back the person you love, it’ll be easier to understand, be kind or stay away from them. how they treat family gives you an idea of how they’ll treat you and that helps your bond. Friends help you understand the things that make your partner tick and their extremities. If you and your partner cannot be held accountable by your family and friends, that’s a big red flag.
8. Have shared values
It is natural to have different hobbies and interests however, some values have to be in unison for true love to be possible. How you intend to raise your family, manage money, continuous development and learn, etc. will be a constant tug of war trying to convince your partner any time the conversation comes up and that can put a strain on any relationship. You must watch out for shared values if you want to experience true love and when the values are shifting, you two need to experience the shift together.
9. Step out of idealism
Relationship idealism is basing your relationship on ideas formed around movies and books. It is unrealistic and stressful because oftentimes you cannot communicate these unrealistic expectations to the other partner yet you expect them to know and do something about it. You find yourself spending time in your head and assuming your partner can read your mind just like the books and movies. In fairy tale situations, parties kind of know the emotion each person is going through just by looking at them and knowing exactly what to say. Be present in the reality of your relationship and step out of idealism.
10. Enlarge your network of friends
A lot of times, your true love is someone you know or within the network of people, you know. You just have to keep expanding the network of people you know in different circles of your life. Attend different meetings, participate in different activities, attend parties, organize the same, and you will increase your chances of not only meeting people who fancy you but also enjoying similar things that you like to participate in.
11. Look Attractive
It’s no news that people get attracted to what their eyes see and everyone wants to be associated with a good-looking, confident person. So, learn how to carry your body well, dress well, look neat and smell good all the time. You will help your skin glow and your body function properly if you keep fit and eat healthily so incorporate healthy living into your beauty regimen.
12. Prayers and positive affirmation for future partner
Whether you believe in prayer, visualization, affirmation, or all, it is important to release positive energy and manifest love, good character, understanding and growth in your relationship. That way, the universe and superhumans get to work on your request and channel your desires to you.
13. Environment matters
For you to find someone equally searching for true love both of you must have access to and proximity to each other. There are places where people meet and hang out but are not expecting anything serious from the meet-up. There are other places where people meet and just want to continue with the conversation beyond there because of how stimulating and interesting they find each other. Be in the right environment for the latter.
14. Seek wise counsel
You are not an island and you’re not meant to live in isolation. Therefore, seek wise counsel before entering a relationship. I say the word wise with the highest sense of strictness because some advice may look wise at face value and be given with the purest of intentions but turn out to have dire consequences. However, submitting yourself to the counsel of people you can trust like family members is a good way to have extra eyes and ears to pick out any details you may be missing out on about your relationship.
