Nancy Slotnick: When You Least Expect It

It happens when you least expect it.  That’s what they say anyway.  But I was always expecting it.  And it still happened for me.  It didn’t happen how I expected it.  I met my husband on the street.  When I was single, I had opened a dating Café with the idea in mind that necessity is the mother of invention.  I had imagined that the right guy would just walk through the doors one day. But it wasn’t happening.  So I set out to look outside my Café and take matters into my own hands.  I met my husband within 2 weeks of that.  (you can read the whole story here)

But my story is not typical, I know.  Many people swear by the “least expect it” story.  Here’s one example from this week’s post on the Matchmaker Café fan page:

@Britta Alexander: It was for me! I finally gave up on finding the one, moved into a loft in Brooklyn, practiced my violin day and night, and my future husband was listening to me through the walls. Turns out he was the roommate on the other half of the shared loft. So there’s a strategy: just move around and live with complete strangers!

So I tried to analyze the common denominator of these seemingly contradictory philosophies and here’s what I conclude.  It depends how you expect it.  If you have too much negative attention on it (i.e. why isn’t happening?!?  I have such bad luck with dating!! L) then it can’t happen.  If you feel entitled to meeting someone but are not doing the work on yourself, it can’t happen.  If you are so busy working that your Cablight is not on, (like I was) then it can’t happen.

On the other hand, if you are open and willing to make yourself vulnerable without putting expectations on how or when, then the universe will work hard to send it to you.  If you become grounded in who you are and move towards the life that you want to have with a partner, it will happen faster.  If you are really ready, you will just walk out your door and the One will be there.  If you read Britta’s story carefully, you can see that she was willing to move somewhere new and live with complete strangers!  That takes courage and confidence.  And by practicing violin she was developing her core sense of herself.  She was not shy about the world hearing her.  And that is very powerful.

So in a way it doesn’t matter if you expect it or not.  I always say: hopes high, expectations low.  Expecting implies entitlement.  Like it’s a given and you are mad if it doesn’t happen.  Hopes high just means you have a vision.  You know what you want and you are confident that you have a lot to give in order to get it.  You would date you.  (if you weren’t you.)  You would hear that violin and say- that’s someone who’s striving- I want to know the person through that wall.

When you feel that way on the inside (and believe me, that can take years of work- I help people with it in my coaching and I’ve had to do that work on myself), then everything falls into place.  If you truly believe love is out there for you, it will come whether you expect it or not in that moment.

And sometimes fate has a twisted sense of humor.  For example, my husband did walk through the doors of my café.  And I didn’t meet him.  I was probably too busy working in my cave of a basement making sure other people found love and wondering when it would happen for me.  But the funniest part is, that was the day before we met.