I’ve suffered my share of unrequited love, have despaired and considered suicide. Endless tears wept. And worse, after the tears stopped, the constant ache of deprivation. Feeling that the one person in the world who I found irresistibly appealing had been taken away. No one could replace him, his scent, his touch, his laugh, his walk, his aura, his presence, his energy, his unique way of being. I was alone. Existentially, permanently alone.

People would tell me, “You’re a beautiful, intelligent, funny woman. You’ll have no trouble finding another man.” How wrong they were. Finding a man wasn’t the problem. Feeling attracted to him was. He who had that subtle blend of qualities that strongly appealed to me was rare indeed.

Finally, I reached the point where, in order to make babies, I was willing to settle. Arranged marriages often work. I approached dating in a pragmatic way. I tried, I really did. But, no surprise, settling didn’t satisfy.

I was despondent. It wasn’t just that I didn’t want to be alone, or that I didn’t like being alone. I didn’t understand being alone. Every fiber of my romantic being said that I was supposed to be in a committed relationship with the love of my life. Of the many facets of my persona, the majority were willing to fall off my slender branch of the Tree of Life like an un-mated lovebird.

Within the Russian dolls of my psyche, a small part of me piped up, insisting that there must be a better way than death or lifelong despair. Along came a quote that penetrated my emotionally raw and wounded state,

“The one whom I have called God … has been seeing His life through my eyes, has been hearing through my ears … it is His breath that comes through my breathing…” ~Hazrat Inayat Khan

Up until then, God had been far, far away, sitting on a throne in the sky, and much too busy with vitally important matters to be bothered by a wretch like me. The idea that God could be seeing through my eyes shocked me … my tears subsided and what remained was a clear view of Great Possibility. What was God seeing through my eyes?

Something in me opened up. I was used to emotional pain, but as I removed “me” in order to find out what God was seeing through my eyes, suffering ceased. At first, it was an indescribable feeling. Next, I held my breath, fearing that suffering might return. Day after day went by and the coast was still clear. Then I realized that the positive equivalent of lack of suffering was an ongoing sense of well-being.

According to the Great Bard,

“Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs,” William Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet

But according to the Sufi master, Hazrat Inayat Khan,

“God is Love, Lover and Beloved.”

Romantic love is thought to be between people. Truth is, romantic love is a pining to bring to fruition latent qualities within yourself. What you love in another is what you yearn to experience within yourself.

For instance, I was attracted to calm, quiet men. It turned out that my irritated nervous system was soothed by that kind of grounding presence. When I became aware of that, I felt motivated to find ways to calm and ground. As I embodied this inner peace, I became less talkative. Less mind chatter, more Timeless Wisdom. That’s Self-Love. That’s the third way.

Find out for yourself. Are you attracted to people who are artistic? Structured? Reliable? Adventurous? These are probably qualities you long to recapture. They live within you. Don’t think you have to develop them. Allow yourself to claim what is yours deep down inside.

This is the third way. Nothing has to be invented or imagined. All you need to do is rediscover that you are lover, beloved and Love Itself.