The Love Project: How My Quest to Understand Love Made Me a Better Leader
This is the 2nd article in a series in which I explore my core values and how they relate to the core values of the college I founded. If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or would like to share your own stories, I’d love to hear them! Please share below.
At one point in my life, I was going to become a hermit. I planned to live in my tiny house alone with my cat and dog and focus on my life’s work. I had just ended things with my partner of nearly two years and was feeling a mix of frustration and sadness. I kept asking myself how I could be thirty-five years old and still have not figured out relationships. Why was it that my previous relationships felt so repetitive and fruitless? I was stuck in a cycle: frustration with relationships gave way to sadness, which gave way to self-pity, which ultimately gave way to apathy. My solution to it all was to avoid the game of love altogether and enjoy watching from the sidelines.
I remember going out to brunch with my friend, Tammy, to announce the news of my departure from love and the start of my hermit lifestyle. We were drinking coffee in a noisy Portland cafe. As soon as the words came out of my mouth, her head cocked to one side and started slowly shaking back and forth. She frowned in disagreement. She said “I don’t think that’s such a good idea” in a tone of utter worry. She encouraged me to think a little deeper about what I actually wanted out of love and, if after, I still wanted to be a hermit, then so be it. She was right. I could either continue with my unconstructive and unnecessary self-deprecation or start making informed and intentional decisions about what role I wanted love to play in my life. That was the day The Love Project was born.
Initially, the goal of my project was a bit nebulous, I didn’t even call it a project at the time. I only knew I needed to figure out a few key things: Do I simplify my life like I did with my tiny home and remove love completely from the picture? Do I let love in but only if it’s with a purpose-driven partner like myself? Or was there someplace I could meet in the middle, totally outside the norms of stereotypical relationships that I hadn’t discovered yet? I made a pact with myself not to get into any other relationships, small or large, until I knew the answer.
As I had done with the topic of climate change years before and am currently doing with the topic of social justice and equity, I took a deep dive into the study of love. I started as any Ph.D. graduate would and bought up all the books I could find on the topic. In truth, the only book that really spoke to me was Elizabeth Gilbert’s Committed — which I highly recommend if you have any reservations about the institution of marriage. The rest were of no real help, most of them read as poor excuses for self-help books playing on institutional ideas of love and marriage.
I already knew I didn’t want to get married, and I was pretty sure I never wanted to have kids. Earlier that year, my sister had confided in me during one of our long phone conversations over some red wine that after she and her husband got married, everything changed. When they were just living together they felt free to do whatever they wanted, their relationship could be whatever they chose. After they got married, they became part of a strange club they hadn’t expected to join. Suddenly, there was social pressure on their relationship to be a certain way, milestones to hit, obligations to fulfill. It was through this conversation with my sister that I realized marriage could either be a lovely binding force or a corrosive acid on one’s relationship, and the decision isn’t entirely up to the parties involved. For me, love and marriage don’t seem to entirely have anything to do with one another. I solidified what I already knew, regardless of whether I had a partner or not, marriage was a ride I never wanted to get on.
Having given up on books, in an attempt to discover what my ideal relationship might look like, I thought it would be a good idea to talk to friends whose relationships I admired. The kinds of relationships where both parties seemed to adore one another but didn’t overindulge each other. They went on adventures together and supported each other’s individual passions. They let their relationships be a factor in their lives, but not the driving force. I got some good insight from my friends, but ultimately decided this wasn’t a good approach either. While it was somewhat helpful, their relationships were too specific and too nuanced. I needed a larger perspective to get the answers I was looking for.
That is when I turned to films. A good friend of mine who had been married twice — once for love and another for friendship — told me if I ever wanted to know anything about love, I needed to turn to the movies. He was a gold member at our local video store (Movie Madness ❤) and had watched over four hundred films already that year. He was a fanatic. He argued that in spite of the fact that movies obviously aren’t real, the people making, directing, writing, and acting in them are, so there must be a nugget of truth in there somewhere. One movie wouldn’t tell me much about love or my view of it, but two hundred sixty might just do the trick. He had a point. So I watched two movies a day for six months. I watched every love movie imaginable — Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, When Harry Met Sally, The Bodyguard, The Way, Moonstruck, Love Story — I was up to my ears in films about love. At first I wasn’t sure what I was getting out of them but I enjoyed myself nonetheless.
The hardest part of The Love Project was accepting that if I was ever going to get anywhere with love, I was going to have to start breaking down some emotional walls. In classic love story fashion, I’d gotten my heart obliterated one too many times and in response put up walls so high that even on my tippy toes I couldn’t see love waiting for me on the other side. I’d walked around for years creating no real emotional connections to anyone. I already had plenty of practice doing this with my family, so it was easy enough to adapt it to all parts of my life. The math was simple — no connection, no heart break. If I was being totally honest with myself, I was going to need more than self reflection and a copy of Moulin Rouge to make real progress in my journey.
A dear friend of mine suggested that I go see a therapist who specializes in relationships. On first impression, I thought the therapist he recommended was a bit kooky, but I liked her nonetheless. She was a no BS kind of person which I could appreciate. During our first session she prompted me to tell her all about my family. After about an hour, she leaned back in her seat, put the end of her pen to her lips, and said, “I can see why you have all your emotions shut down and understand why you are questioning if you want to be in romantic relationships at all. My diagnosis is you don’t believe in unconditional love.” It’s part of our parents’ job to show us unconditional love and establish the belief system that this kind of love exists in the world, so that when we ideally grow up as healthy adults we go into relationships knowing how to receive and give this kind of love. She argued that in order to have genuine and true loving relationships or friendships, I needed to believe in unconditional love, which I did not. This was a light bulb. If I was ever going to be in the relationships I wanted, then I was going to have to practice being vulnerable enough to love unconditionally. That sounded easy…
After a few months of seeing my therapist off and on, she started giving me homework. My first task was to take all the films I’d watched, put them in a spreadsheet, and mark the films that spoke to me the most. Some of the films I marked were Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, An Affair to Remember, Beginners, The Way We Were, and Take this Waltz. After a while, she said, “I want you to go back to the ones you put a mark next to and pull out the common themes — what you learned from them.” So I did. What I discovered was that a lot of romantic films portray love as this seamlessly easy thing: you meet, fall in love, the end. I don’t like those films. The films I find myself drawn to show that love is hard, communication is difficult, and you can’t get to the truly wonderful parts of love without getting through the tough stuff first. This is where unconditional love comes in. Most of the relationships I’d been in over the years ended because when things got tough I would split. I didn’t have the patience or the tolerance to see my relationships through. If I couldn’t get out physically because we were living together, I would bail emotionally. Being committed is more than physically being with someone, it’s dedication to the emotional bond that brought you together in the first place. Whoa, another light bulb!
Fortunately and unfortunately, I was making some real progress on The Love Project. Much to my dismay, my therapist thought I needed to put these new insights to the test. At this point, I had concluded I did not want to be a hermit, but I was still trying to narrow in on what types of relationships I wanted to be a part of. She thought the best way to do this was to start going on dates. I’d never really dated anyone before. My cycle usually went from casual hangouts to being in a committed relationship. I had to start making intentional choices about my relationships, and not just fall into them.
I didn’t want to go meet people in bars or anything, so she had me set up an online dating profile. I hated online dating for many of the same reasons I dislike traditional higher education. It was ridiculous to me that you could sort people into boxes based on superficial data and then expect any real results. After one date with an online stranger, I decided actively dating wasn’t the move for me, but I would be open to the opportunity if and when it arose, and embrace it with all my new insights.
In the meantime, I began focusing on my other relationships and building my skills of being more vulnerable and open. I became closer with my siblings by sharing with them the painful parts of my life that I had locked away for so long. I was now having deeper conversations with friends who I had once unconsciously held at arm’s length. As I opened up, they began trusting me more with their lives and stories. My new attitude toward vulnerability was strengthening my relationships in ways I never thought possible.
I wasn’t consciously thinking about how or when I would end The Love Project. It kinda just ended when it felt right. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the end began while I was planning an event for work and showed up for a meeting with a new planning team member at a cafe. As soon as I walked into the cafe and saw him sitting there waiting for me I was hit with a thunderbolt. It was one of those moments when you can’t explain it, but you know this random person is somehow going to have some sort of significance in your life. It took all my months of strength and insight to not jump to conclusions about what I wanted to happen next and remain open to the possibilities. I was determined not to repeat my love patterns like before. I was on a new path. For months, as we worked together he and I did a tremendous amount of flirting, but never initiated anything. Then came the Camino de Santiago.
We walked fifteen miles a day for fifteen days together on the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage across northern Spain. We had nothing but time to talk. Throughout the trip, friends kept coming up to me asking what was going on between him and I. The chemistry between us was palpable. The more people asked me about him, the more I realized there was something happening. This was my choice point. Should I choose to be vulnerable and tell him about what is going on with me or not? This was a terrifying time for me, but knew I had to do it. I had an entire day of walking to think about how I’d prepare and knew that no matter what happened I needed to be completely detached from the outcome. In the end, I told him how I felt because I needed to for my own sake. He responded with something like “thank you for sharing this with me. I’m honored. I’ve been thinking about this too, do you mind if I take a day to think about this?” The next day we spent an entire painful, exhilarating day walking together without mentioning our conversation from the night before.
Later that night after dinner he asked if we could talk. My heart was beating so fast I thought it was gonna leap out of my chest and break off into flight. He said “I really appreciate you telling me this, but I can’t get into anything now. I just got out of a relationship and I need to take some time.” I was, of course, disappointed, but I definitely understood the need to take a break. We agreed to just keep doing what we had been doing and remained friends. In my eyes it didn’t matter, I did what I intended to do by opening up and choosing vulnerability.
The following day while walking we came upon a pilgrim’s altar. You’re supposed to leave a memento at the base of the altar to mark your journey. I had brought with me a jade heart-shaped necklace that had been gifted to me years before by a dear friend. As I placed the necklace next to all the other rocks, mementos, and trinkets, I thought about The Love Project. I had implemented everything I learned over the past year, chosen to be open and vulnerable even though it was terrifying, accepted the outcome of my decisions, and was ready to move on. At that moment I knew The Love Project was over.
This past week at Wayfinding Academy has been difficult. We had an emotion-fueled situation occur which needed to be discussed openly and honestly amongst the crew. Initially, by default, I approached the situation as Michelle Jones, Founder and President of the college, and I wanted next steps and action plans. One of our most compassionate crew members, Lauren, asked me to pause for a moment, sit with my feelings, and respond not as a president, but as a whole human being. As I started to share with the group, my voice began to shake and my eyes started to water. The rest of the crew members became teary-eyed as well and we all had a moment of true human connection. Whenever I have these moments, I’m truly grateful for The Love Project. Learning to be open and vulnerable has not only made me a better partner, but a better friend, sibling, and leader. I will admit it’s not always easy and I still put up walls at times, but I remain committed to putting my whole- self forward and embracing the messiness of being human…unconditionally.
If you would like to learn more about Wayfinding Academy and the fight to revolutionize higher education please visit wayfindingacademy.org
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