13.5 Years Solo.

In February of 2013, my fiancée left. Huh, I’d say he ran like he was on fire. After one disagreement on a seemingly random Monday, he moved out that same day.

I first thought it was performative behavior, and it took me long weeks to realize that it was not. He was gone for real.

Since then, a lot of time has passed. I worked hard, played hard. I spent the next few years in academia full-time, and then moved on to starting my own business. Either way, I was sociable. I attended conferences, I traveled, I put plenty of energy into building and maintaining friendships.

I don’t have any of the common problems that would prevent me from starting a life together with someone — I am not boring, I am not toxic, and I am not ill.

On paper, there are no logical reasons I could run under the radar for so long without finding another partner.

I tried it all. I tried looking for someone systematically (as some people say, it’s all about commitment to the mission of finding a life partner).

I tried not looking at all (as some people say, you need to let go of your dreams, and only then will the Universe ship you what you want).

Sometimes I waited for the other party to contact me after a nice chat at a party.

Sometimes I wasn’t waiting; I was the first to write.

I met some interesting people at work. I met others while traveling, at festivals, at dance parties. I kept open-minded and didn’t make too many assumptions about when and how I should meet “the right person.”

In the process, I conceptualized what I believe is my standard. According to my friends, it’s a perfectly rational text.

And it might sound arrogant what I will say, but I know I have (enough) magnetic personality. Like every magnet, I polarize people — I repel some, but also attract some. I never stand in the corner bored; people actively approach me and seek my company.

I don’t leave people bored; that’s why I have lots of friends in the first place.

So, what happened? Why, after over 13.5 years have elapsed since the breakup, am I still going through life by myself?

Let Me Speak Like a Mathematician For a Moment.

Let’s assume something just doesn’t add up in your equation.

Let’s assume you add 2 + 2 and get 1.

What do you do?

Do you count again?

Let’s assume that you do count again.

You count once. You count twice. You count ten times. Still, you get just 1 as an outcome.

You ask yourself: “HOW the hell?”

Och well. You would expect adding 2 + 2 and getting 4.

Bad luck:

You are not in Euclidean space; you’re in a so-called group Z3, a cyclic group under addition modulo 3.

And in this group, when you add 2 + 2, you get 2 + 2 (modulo 3) = 1.

It’s a perfectly normal and expected outcome.

You just didn’t look into the details closely enough, or otherwise you would know you have wrong assumptions.

Life Is All About Answering One Big Question.

Similarly here: what if my assumptions about myself are wrong? Perhaps I’m a different person than I might see on the surface. Perhaps I didn’t dig deep enough.

I used to think we all have a mission to uncover in our lives.

But according to many, the whole point of life is to discover our true nature.

We just run through life, digging deeper and deeper, challenging ourselves and learning what’s beneath society’s expectations, what’s hidden beyond our traumas, and what’s there despite our self-image might be different.