Imagine you were hiking and got hungry but had no idea you had on a backpack full of food, water, and even a really friggin’ delicious chewy vegan chocolate chip cookie.

As you got hungrier and hungrier you became more and more desperate to GET food. You would even TAKE food from another if no one were watching. You would pretend you were someone you weren’t, JUST to get food. You would get angry at God and the Goddess for forsaking you. You would resent other people who happily munched on their cookies. After days and days of frantic, desperate searching, you would feel sad, then hopeless, then resigned that you may never find food. You would question if you were good enough for food. Things would get very dark inside. You would eventually give up. Some might even starve to death.

Hiking without knowing you have a backpack filled with food is like dating without knowing all you seek is inside your heart.

As an Intimacy Expert, I show my cherished clients they have a backpack filled with food that is with them at all times. They’re just miswired, looking in all the wrong places, becoming someone they’re not, getting farther and farther away from the Source of Their Aliveness and, instead, needlessly living in hopeless aloneness.

When you slow down, sit in the fire, and begin to engage in the journey of self-discovery- what I call having an Intimate Relationship with Your Self- you discover that all the love, approval, attention, agreement, compassion, care, and kindness is found INSIDE, rather than outside.

This is a real letdown for the ego that wants to control you by keeping you out of alignment with your true self, always questioning your worth, and continuing to desperately seek ‘the One’ so that you can finally be happy.

Yet, it is an exquisite wake-up call for the heart to find its way home, and, ironically, that is exactly what vibrationally attracts your ideal partner.

I guide my clients to understand that the reason they can’t find ‘the One’ (or think they have found the one only to be ghosted, cheated on, used, abused, or taken advantage of) is that they are seeking someone to complete them, not COMPLIMENT them.

They are seeking from hunger, not living from a satisfied tummy, glowing in enoughness. They are dating to feel wanted and needed, rather than Becoming the One to Find the One, rather than being whole and finding a whole mate. I like to call this kind of healthy, whole relationship a ‘HeartMate,’ a match of two ‘fed’ hearts that come together to deliciously ignite heart-centered aliveness in one another.

We are lonely because we haven’t fed ourselves love, care, kindness, compassion, and appreciation and celebrated ALL OUR PARTS- not just the look good on social media parts but the parts that we want no one to see, the parts that have us curled into a fetal position terrified to be hurt again. We need to love and accept those parts JUST AS MUCH as our impressive, accomplished, achieving parts.

We are hungry for our own self-love, self-care, and self-celebration.

When we spend time literally speaking compassionately to the Little Me’s inside of our heart instead of starving them, judging them, criticizing them, and blaming everyone on the outside for our sorry lives, we find a place of inner stillness, calm serenity, embodied forgiveness, allowance of all and judgment of nothing. We could call that being ‘Conscious’.

When we feed our souls with walks in nature, meditation, dance movement, healthy boundaries, courageous communication, journaling with profound life-giving questions, become part of a conscious community of growth-oriented people, practice tenacity, dignity, and humility, sit in the fire and lean into our emotions to integrate them into wisdom, we may be alone, but we won’t be lonely.

These behaviors, practices, and choices result in feeling confident for no reason, appearing like that “IT” person, oozing sex appeal, and alluring high-quality partners because you’ve come to peace with the fact that life IS uncertain, and you’re OK with that. You have your own back no matter what. Sure, you prefer not to get ditched or hurt again, but you’re bigger than any circumstance. You are inwardly nourished in the face of any hike’s terrain or unexpected weather. You’re whole and complete, and choosing a partner vs needing one to finally be enough is super sexy- magnetic, in fact, yet not to everyone (that would be exhausting anyway). You become sacredly alluring to your IDEAL partner.

What works is to find a group of people who know that lasting relationships require real, inner work. Learn to discover how the very worst can bring out the very best in you. Practice meaningful, deep, intimate, vulnerable conversations without the pressure of wondering ‘IS THIS THE ONE?’ Date people who know that couples who grow together stay together. Cultivate the capacity to know that while you may be alone in your home, you are HOME in your Heart, with Source, and with your bold dreams of epic love becoming your reality.

We were all born with symbolic backpacks of healthy food (and some naughty cookies for good measure).

We were all born with the capacity to shift from lonely to alone and from HOME inside to HOME with a partner. We all have the ability to rewire ourselves to stop seeking the One and instead do what works: Become the One to Find the One, which of course is what’s required to KEEP the One.

I am blessed beyond measure to have birthed an inclusive community where people become their own HeartMate first, then find their ideal HeartMate. And when HeartMates meet, it’s not a completion. It’s the beginning of a new reality where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. They give from the overflow to uplift humanity. And wouldn’t you agree that now more than ever the world needs heart-based nourishment? Choose a new path to lasting love leaving loneliness behind forever, find nourishing peace in your alone time, and keep putting one foot in front of the other, knowing the path IS the destination until you look into the eyes of your HeartMate, grateful you took the road less traveled.

Allana Pratt is an author, intimacy expert, relationship coach, and the host of the edgy podcast “Intimate Conversations”. Her new dating app and intimacy training course is HeartMates.

Image courtesy of vjapratama.