Unlucky in Love? Find Passion in Life

After my divorce, I considered myself unlucky in love. I’d meet someone new, we’d date, and invariably I’d end up rejected and devastated. Friends would tell me it wasn’t my fault. There just aren’t many good men out there. And I believed them.

This was a numbers game, I realized. I became more determined to find the right guy. I joined Match.com, went on blind dates arranged by friends, flirted by the zucchini. And I dated…a lot. Sometimes I’d even have two dates on the same day. My dating merry-go-round continued; I was going in circles and getting nowhere.

After breakup number six in as many years I had a light-bulb moment. Maybe the problem wasn’t the men I dated. Maybe the problem was that I was picking the men I dated.

So like Elizabeth Gilbert in her book Eat, Pray, Love,I took a sabbatical from dating. My experience wasn’t so exotic as to travel to Italy, India and Indonesia. Instead, I started to pursue my passions right in my own life. I bought a bike and began to ride.

My sabbatical only lasted a few months. I met a man who also liked to cycle and we began to date. Things were promising, and then the inevitable happened: he dumped me. But this time, I didn’t jump back onto the dating merry-go-round but stayed on my bike seat.

I met someone new–a very handsome cyclist, “Dante,” whom I was crazy about. Things didn’t work out with him either, but I kept on cycling.

Then I started thinking of other things I always wanted to do. I wanted to go to France, and so I went with my bicycle. I wanted to write a book, and so I wrote one about dating, cycling and France. I started taking photos again, traveled new places, contemplated what I wanted in my life.

And as I began to follow the breadcrumbs of my innermost passions, something amazing happened. I stopped caring if I ever met Mr. Right. It was more important to create my right life.

Through fourteen years of post-divorce dating, I’ve finally discovered how to being lucky in love. Stop worrying about finding love outside and start creating a more satisfying relationship with self.

If you’re interested in a free preview of my book on this subject, go to my home page at http://nancybrook.com.