Reading Love

It's a dumpster fire. Only because we're clueless. No reader should should assume how you love is right or wrong.

Some years back, pre pandemic, a parent of a child my daughter went to school with asked me to lunch “to talk about work”. This parent was in the fashion world. Model/designer/agent. Not unusual for a downtown New York City public school. As the parent who was “chef then psychic” I had no idea what we would be talking about but we were friendly and I’m a push over for a lunch invitation.

He had a new part time position with a high end matchmaker. The matchmaker wrangled him in since he was in close proximity to models. As in “young pretty girls” for “rich men”. I gave him a dead pan stare. He continued.

“Would you be able to read a few of these men if I showed you their photos?”

“So these are all May-December cis-het matches? For status?”

He paused. “Yes…..but there is love! And often marriage?”

In hopes of somehow helping to save someone from some predatory arrangement I said I would give it a go. I looked at the first photo and turned it over. I decided the photos influenced me too much. I asked him to tell me two things about each man. Not the name but perhaps the age and one innocuous fact. Mix the guy I just saw into the rest of them and tell me later.

“First guy is 54. Never married.”

“Hyper perfectionist. Abusive. He has a thing for ballet dancers.”

“Wow. How do you do that? First thing he asked was for a dancer. Kept referring to Swan Lake.”

“And you didn’t think that was weird? Next one please.”

“35. He’s in tech.”

“It’s not really tech. It’s a hedge fund rooted in something with tech. This guy shouldn’t be looking for marriage yet but he’s harmless. The issue you’ll have is that the women you set him up with will say he’s boring.”

“Right again! And it’s already been happening!”

“He’s not interesting yet. Next?”

This went on until we got through all the candidates. I’ll say right now I know there are truly honest and grounded match makers out there. This just wasn’t one of those times. My lunch companion wanted to know how I got so good at reading love.

Thing is, I don’t read love. I read people and their relationship to affection, to being a team mate. I read how they deal with their pain and how the people coming into their life might trigger them and in turn how they might trigger their potential people. I also read what’s coming up. How will you and the other person handle difficulties or even great events that have you looking at your future differently. Good comes in many forms.

And the most important thing?

I never ever assume that any one person is SUPPOSED to be in a traditional relationship. I never assume that the concept of two people only meant for each other is the way we’re supposed to live. I believe that to truly read someone is to walk in without any expectations of what is correct. Outside of hurting themselves or others, of course.

Love is one of the most unexplainable things. And I must call it a “thing”. We feel it and we also know it’s there. It’s beyond being an emotion. It saves us and we require it in some form to live. So when I hear terms such as “twin flame” or “soul mate” from my clients I have to explain that to me those terms are only there to create more barriers between all of our possibilities and the control that others have over you when you are not in your truth.