Relationship Intentions

I receive more emails about relationship Intentions than almost any other topic.

So let’s clear something up:

You cannot target a specific person with your thought energy without creating chaos.

You can, however, Intend the experience of a relationship that matches your purpose, energy, and growth.

Who shows up?

That’s life’s department.

It may be the person you currently think you want.
It may be someone you haven’t even met.
It may be someone you would have swiped left on without hesitation.

It maybemore thn oe person

Let life fill in the details.

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Let's clear up a major first-world confusion:

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SamuelTaylor Coleridge is credited with the first known use of "soul-mate"in an 1822 letter to "a Young Lady," where he wrote, "To behappy in Married Life... you must have a Soul-mate as well as a House or aYoke-mate." He argued that true marital happiness requires a spiritual,rather than just social or economic, match. This was in a time when thelatter was how matches were made.

The letter, sometimes described as a"Letter to a Young Lady," highlights that in order to avoid beingmiserable, one must find someone whose character suits their own.

Coleridge coined the specific compound word"soul-mate.”

The concept of soulmate has no spiritual, sageor scientific foundation.

And also the word caught on and became thetheme of Victorian relationship culture… to find the one, true, perfectsoulmate.

It is fiction.

Ironically despite this, Coleridge's ownmarriage was famously unhappy, driven partly by social pressure

So today, there are websites advertising how to find your soulmate.Tarot readers convince you they can see “the one.” There was never any suchthing.

Many souls interact with many souls all the time.

The next dogma to crush is the concept of Monogamy

It likely originated as an evolutionary and survival strategy, ratherthan a romantic one, with evidence pointing toward two primary drivers: protecting offspring from infanticide by rival males and ensuring male paternity in settled, agricultural societies roughly 10,000–12,000 years ago.

In times of good harvest infant mortality was reduced so the nation’s leader issued a proclamation of monogamy. In times of poor harvest and increased winter child mortality the next spring was proclaimed to be a time of creating children and polygamy was encouraged and also often mandated.

Today, and largely because of religion we take these two things to be laws. They are not

No God or Gods invented marriage certificates. Religions did.

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The statistics alone proved that soulmate and monogamy are foolish ideals:

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Humans Are Not Great Matchmakers

Global divorce statistics are sobering.

Portugal: ~71%
USA: ~46%
UK: ~39%

I mention that not to depress you, but to illustrate a point:

We are not especially good at choosing long-term partners using logic, chemistry, checklists, or dating algorithms.

Our conscious selection process is… flawed. Our focus on THE ONE is illogical.

Intention bypasses that.

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“You’re a Lucky Man.”

Some say I’m lucky to have been unconditionally loved twice in one lifetime.

I’m not lucky.

I’m grateful.

And intentional.

The First Arrow

At twenty, I was frustrated.

All my friends were in serious relationships (most later divorced). I didn’t even have a casual one. I began to wonder if I had two heads.

So I set an Intention.

Not for “a girlfriend.”
Not for “someone pretty.”
Not for “someone who likes me.”

I imagined the kind of person who would match me if there were no impediments.

I felt it. Clearly.

One day I was wheeling my mother through a chemotherapy ward when she stepped in front of us.

“Nurse Lyn,” my mother said, “let me introduce you to my favorite nurse.”

All I could do was grunt.

Cupid’s arrow. Instant.

We had forty extraordinary years together. People say marriage is hard work. Ours felt like plane sailing. I sometimes felt guilty at how easy it was.

Then Lyn died.

The Silence After

I was shattered.

I told people I could never love again. The thought of holding hands seemed impossible. A kiss? Unthinkable.

Eighteen months passed — the first time in my life I had ever been alone.

And I realized something:

Adventure without someone to share it with felt hollow.

So I set another Intention.

Not for marriage.
Not even for love.

Simply:

Someone who inspires me to be better.
Someone who loves travel as much as I do.
Someone who finds me decent company.
A true companion.

I performed a commitment ritual.

The Second Arrow

Soon after, completely out of the blue, I felt compelled to email Jess — who was in the Guild at the time.

It wasn’t strategized.
It wasn’t analyzed.
It simply felt right.

Then a work opportunity appeared in her Canadian town — a place I had never visited and hadn’t traveled to since Lyn died.

I found myself on a plane.

That first night I wondered what madness I was committing.

Then I walked up behind Jess at a restaurant hostess stand.

Same arrow.

Same unmistakable impact.

Instant.

We were married exactly two years to the day — and time — that Lyn died. 11:40, December 2. It was the only available slot when we applied.

I’ve always suspected Lyn had a hand in that scheduling.

The Beautiful Irony

Lyn and I would never have met via a dating profile.

Jess and I are wildly different psyches — still are. We would likely never have selected each other online.

Yet here we are.

Because Intention does not work through filtering.

It works through alignment.

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And there is no such thing as a soulmate.

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The Key Principle

When setting a relationship Intention:

• Do not target a person.
• Do not micromanage appearance, job title, or postcode.
• Do not demand a timeline.

Instead, Intend:

• How you want to feel.
• Who you become inside the relationship.
• What shared energy looks like.
• The kind of growth it creates in you.

Then release it.

Let life rearrange the staircase.

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MAybe one or more likely many with show up.

Love Is Not Manufactured. It Is Matched.

When you set a clean Intention:

You don’t chase.
You don’t audition.
You don’t perform.

You recognize.

And when recognition happens, it feels unmistakable.

Twice in one life feels indulgent.

But it is also evidence.

Intentions work.

In business.
In creativity.
In health.
In love.

Let life choose the face.

You choose the frequency.

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What Makes a Great Partnership?

I get asked this a lot.

I’m always slightly uncomfortable answering because I’m not a psychologist. I don’t have framed credentials in relationship science. I’ve just lived a long time… and loved well.

And it’s debatable anyway:

Who makes the better relationship counselor —
the person who’s had one long, joyful partnership?
Or the one who’s had multiple marriages and learned through breakups?

I once knew a couple who went to marriage guidance. Later I discovered the counselor had been divorced three times, with children from each marriage.

Maybe that experience made them brilliant.
Maybe it didn’t.

I genuinely couldn’t decide.

So I won’t pretend to be an expert.

But I can tell you what I’ve observed.

Laughter Is Structural

People saw Lyn and me still having fun after forty years.

Now they see me behaving like a giddy schoolboy around Jess.

We’ve had life challenges. Real ones. Loss. Stress. Work. Health. Grief. Disagreements. None of us were saints.

But we laughed.

A lot.

We found humor in places where humor had no right to exist.

That matters.

Laughter isn’t decoration in a relationship. It’s reinforcement steel.

If you can laugh together in the dark, you build resilience automatically.

Stay Slightly in Pursuit

When people asked what our “secret” was, I used to say:

“I’m still trying to impress her.”

Lyn would respond,
“I’m still trying to train him.”

Jess says the same thing.

There’s something beautiful about never fully arriving.

When you stop trying to impress each other, complacency creeps in.

When you stop evolving, admiration fades.

The spark isn’t sustained by drama.
It’s sustained by curiosity.

Curiosity about your partner.
Curiosity about yourself.
Curiosity about who you are becoming together.

Shared Growth > Shared Comfort

In both of my great partnerships, there was one constant:

We expanded each other.

Not through pressure.
Not through control.
But through inspiration.

If a relationship makes you smaller, cautious, dimmer — something is misaligned.

If it makes you braver, more playful, more expressive — you’re onto something.

That’s why I always recommend setting a relationship Intention around how you want to grow, not who you want to trap.

Humor + Admiration + Growth

If I had to reduce it to three elements:

1. Humor in dark places
2. Ongoing admiration
3. Mutual expansion

And maybe a fourth:

4. Never stop choosing each other

Not because you have to.
But because you want to.

The Quiet Power of Intentions

When you set a clean Intention for partnership — not desperation, not checklist compatibility, not social approval — but a true energetic match for growth and joy…

You don’t force chemistry.

You recognize it.

And when it’s right, it feels oddly easy.

Not perfect.
Not frictionless.
But aligned.

That alignment creates lightness.

And lightness keeps people young.

I’m over sixty and feel younger than I did at forty.

That’s not luck.

That’s alignment.

And perhaps… a little well-aimed Cupid.

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What Lyn Taught Me About Love and Time

When Lyn was dying, she told me something I will never forget.

She said, very calmly, that I must not spend the rest of my life alone.

We spoke about late-bloomer relationships. About timing. About soulmates.

And she said this:

“Part of the issue is that people work on a short timescale. They think there is just the one life, so if they don’t find their soulmate soon it will be a wasted life. Life isn’t like that. What if this life is just chapter one in a hundred-chapter story? Maybe they bump into each other in chapter ten or chapter eighty. Does it matter?

The other thing I see often is people falling in love with the idea of getting married. The occasion becomes more important than the relationship. After the ceremony, nothing can match the thrill. Relationships are about being, not doing.”

That is wisdom earned at the edge of life.

Chapter Thinking Changes Everything

Most people live as if the clock is screaming at them.

“I’m 30.”
“I’m 40.”
“I’m running out of time.”
“I’ll die alone.”

But what if this century you inhabit is just a paragraph in a much longer narrative?

What if connection isn’t late — it’s simply scheduled later in the book?

When you stretch your perception of time, panic dissolves.

Desperation is a short-timescale emotion.

Peace belongs to long-timescale thinking.

Intend the Experience, Not the Person

It is perfectly acceptable — powerful, even — to set a relationship Intention.

But never target a specific individual.

When you target a person, you attempt to override their autonomy and the larger orchestration of life.

When you Intend the experience — companionship, expansion, joy, intellectual chemistry, shared adventure — you create a frequency.

Life handles casting.

Fear Is a Magnet Too

You must also respect the laws of thought-energy.

If your dominant feeling is:

“I’m terrified of being alone.”

You are broadcasting fear.

And fear organizes reality just as efficiently as hope.

I have a friend who cannot tolerate solitude. To my knowledge she is in her sixth serious relationship.

The pattern isn’t romance.

It’s avoidance.

When we fear aloneness, we don’t choose partners — we escape into them.

That rarely ends well.

Relationships Are About Being, Not Doing

Weddings are events.

Marriages are atmospheres.

The ceremony is a spike of dopamine.
The partnership is a daily state of presence.

If you fall in love with the performance of love, the quiet reality will disappoint you.

If you fall in love with the state of being together — cooking, walking, laughing, sitting in silence — then the ordinary becomes extraordinary.

Enjoy the Chapter You’re In

This life — whether it lasts 50 years or 100 — is a chapter.

Not the whole book.

So enjoy it.

If you are with someone, be fully there.
If you are alone, be fully there.

Aloneness is not a defect.

It is often a preparation.

And sometimes, unexpectedly, it is the most fertile chapter of all.

Stretch your timescale.

Release the fear.

Intend the experience.

And trust that whether in chapter ten or chapter eighty, the right character enters exactly on cue.

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