06 Apr Revised Introduction to Tantric Dating
It was a major birthday – one of those years when you take stock of if you’re where you want to be. In most areas of life, I had to admit I was doing great: successful in my chosen career, great health, lovely friends, a cute apartment, financially stable — most of the things that everyone wants — except for the only thing that had ever really mattered — being in a soulmate relationship with my Perfect Beloved.
Not that I hadn’t tried. Ever since I first discovered boys (outside my brother) in kindergarten, I’d been trying. After countless blind dates, bad dates and bad boys, relationship advice books and columns, online and in-person dating, an early foray (a bit unwillingly) into “free love” culture, endless hours of therapy, many, many relationships and two failed marriages, I had to admit: I was a Dating Disaster.
I recounted all this to a long-time friend in the Bay Area who asked how she could support me. Since she was actively involved in online dating, I suggested we cheerlead each other a couple times a week. We began chatting frequently late at night, reviewing dates and deciphering texts. Then she promptly met someone and with that, I was alone again.
I made the decision to go for it. Really go for it this time, no matter what. I was going to get to the bottom of this and become a Master of Dating and Relationships. I decided to hack dating once and for all, whatever it took. And for me, it took a lot.
Sitting on my couch on Saturday nights, watching Netflix while sipping a glass of wine wasn’t working. I needed to get into action. I joined five online dating sites and over twenty Meetups (which is great because you are always getting invitations in your inbox). I downloaded an app which had a calendar of all the art openings in town and ventured out to art gallery openings (free wine and intriguing hipsters). I went back to therapy to complete some still-unfinished business from childhood (I had been in therapy a lot, but still … sometimes when you come from a difficult childhood it takes a while), and hired a coach. An unusual dating coach — I hired a Pickup Artist.
I had read The Game back in the 00s and realized those guys know a lot that is not taught in “girl game” (dating) books which overall are pretty lame. I’d always been a bit shy and afraid to go up and speak to a man I found attractive, and pickup coaching got me over all that.
With the help of my coach I began going out “in the field,” meaning into real life where men might be hanging out. I went to anything I could think of to meet men, mostly dead ends. Little by little my dating skills improved, and the men I was attracting grew closer and closer to my heart’s longing. Dating actually became fun, and I played in the field enjoying my new freedom.
I went on over 150 online first dates, followed by second and third dates, and sometimes it seemed to be working out. I met 2-3 men a week, sometimes 2-3 in a day. I made myself go out: Meetups, gallery openings, singles events, networking events, Green Drinks, poetry readings, museum outings, and basically every time I went to Trader Joe’s. I traveled with wing-girls and without and challenged myself to approach men I found interesting. I created little games for when I was discouraged (which was often), such as before I went to sleep, I needed to contact 10 guys online. Usually 2 would get back. I made progress in therapy, and worked hard with my coach.
One question always nagged me though, how did all of this coexist with my spiritual life?
You see, I’d lived at the Osho ashram in India for a year, a full-time immersion in tantra and meditation. The way potential lovers met there was very different than in the conventional world. People there were friends first, and after that would see if a sexual friendship was possible. In our contemporary dating scene in the West, “the friend zone” is considered death. At the ashram, and in tantra, the Friend Zone is exactly where you want to be. Only if you and your lover are friends will you establish the trust and intimacy necessary for good sex and a good relationship to happen.
In exercises in the tantra groups, we got close to and “fell in love” with people we would never have chosen if we had let our eyes be the primary criteria the way we do in the West. We learned to feel another person’s frequency, to assess our level of comfort and safety. We practiced telling the radical truth to each other, a practice frowned on by conventional dating. We enjoyed the process of meeting one another rather than considering it a huge, irritating chore. And we experienced loving who was present in this moment, rather than waiting for one who may never come.
For years, I couldn’t reconcile what I’d learned at the ashram with the conventional dating world I was now attempting to navigate. But little by little, I began to put together how dating could be part of the spiritual path. I watched my judgments, my prejudices – did I really believe that only conventionally good-looking people were worthy of love? I observed how I searched for the wrong things instead of the only quality that’s really important – kindness.
I came to realize that the reason I had attracted men who were half-loving was because I was half-loving. I painfully accepted that the common denominator in my relationship problems was me. And if I wanted to meet a man who was truly loving, I would have to evolve beyond being unloving toward the men I was meeting or even viewing online.
I had to confront the romantic Disney-esque fantasies that had been fed to me in movies, books, and songs that love would come to me by magic. I had to stand up to the ageism of the culture and inside myself that women (people) of a certain age are too old to find love, or that men only like younger women. This is emphatically not true. After I had made progress in my dating work, I dated men from ages 28 to 68 and everywhere in between. (The 28-year old, a true looker from Turkey, begged me to take him as my boyfriend. I said no.) I had to work hard to overcome all these cultural myths. Because they are myths and because they’re commonly held to be true, they are insidious.
Eventually I became more loving through my process of “Tantric Dating,” loving enough to attract a loving man. After 3 ½ years of hard effort, I met my Perfect Beloved. I didn’t recognize him at first. It’s true he pursued me, but if I hadn’t learned what I did through decades of work on myself, we would not met nor have the Perfect Soulmate relationship we have today. We got married after two years of being together, and together have created a relationship where both of us are always saying, “I didn’t know a relationship could be this good.”
And so, I want to teach you my method of Tantric Dating that attracted and created the relationship I dreamed of since kindergarten. Some people have reported profound shifts in their attitudes after reading this book. Others have criticized it for being a little slim, which it is. I still stand by its content because if you really digest it, it’s all you’ll need. Please bring the willingness to examine the brainwashing of the conventional world and decide for yourself. Choose to become the loving person that your heart knows you are. Share it with the world, and Love cannot deny you.
© 2020 Catherine Auman
This is an excerpt from Catherine Auman’s book Tantric Dating: Bringing Love and Awareness to the Dating Process
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