Are Some of Us Meant to Be Alone?

If you want to change the world and want to find someone compatible who wants to work the same way you do, you might be destined to be alone, at least for many years. You might be destined to be an adopting single parent if raising children is an idea you hold close to your heart. You might be given a life of wondering if you’re going to find someone who will be able to live in harmony with your ambitions and goals. If you finally do find someone, you might be settling because you fear that you may never find someone who will totally compliment you. 

Entrepreneurs and ambitious optimists have quite a mountain to climb if we hope to find someone who will understand everything we value. They might not understand our passions or they won’t be able to talk to us about the plethora of ideas and new opinions running through our minds. They won’t be able to engage with us on the things that get us freaking out because they aren’t familiar with the kind of drive we have. They’ll be hurt when we want to spend much of our time working to change the world, and they’ll be devasted when we want to surround ourselves with the people who want to change it with us. Oftentimes the only option is to end relationships or compromise when we find someone we love, for the sake of security and avoiding heartbreak. 

If we’re content with our lover being a separate life from our passions, we might be alright. Those of us who want to share our passions with our lover are often doomed. For many, they can find someone they are attracted to and someone they love, but the ones who actually want to work in a field of amazingness with their partner are often out of luck. Those who want to sit side-by-side with their partner working directly on the same thing in a sacred bond of spectacular teamwork can’t get too excited. Those who want to find a romantic bond of the mutual drive to bring what they care about to the world might be totally screwed. If we hope to experience a moment where we write a blog post about education and and share it with our companion to be able to talk about it until three in the morning, we’ll probably be disappointed. If we ever happen to find one who might just meet our passions while still having the chemistry and connection we crave, we need to keep our excitement in check, because we never know what could happen around the corner.

We’ll likely have to settle for losing heart-warming smiles at the same seminars, glances at the same workshops, or loving eye contact during all-nighter projects if we hope to find a lifelong companion. We can find someone we’ll love, even someone we have a beautiful connection with. If we’re willing to settle for the two different lives and the disconnect between our lover and what makes us come alive, we might be alright.

It might be remotely possible for some of us to find one who we can experience that spectacular, spiritually romantic connection that challenges universes with, but since the communities we inhabit are so small, it’s unlikely. Finding someone we love is one thing, but finding someone who loves the life we want to live as much as we do? Paradise.