Shortly after relocating from New Mexico to the East Coast, I started seeing a woman from Syria. Despite the cultural differences, at the time it felt like we had a strong resonance with each other, and for a brief moment it looked like things were moving toward marriage. We even had the marriage license. Then she took me to a mosque in uptown Manhattan. After a short conversation with the imam, they ran me through a brief conversion ritual. As we stepped out onto the street, Lina wrapped her arm around mine and asked, “So how do you feel now that you’re a Muslim?”

Being the nihilist I am when it comes to religion, I responded, “It all feels pretty weird to me. Either you know, you think you know, or you don’t know. To believe is to be part of the lie — be-LIE-ve.”

Needless to say, things quickly spiraled downward from there.

In the months that followed, I grieved the dissolution of the relationship. But underneath the sadness was something far more important — clarity. I realized I genuinely wanted someone in my life. Not a fantasy, not a placeholder, not a projection of my unmet needs… but a real partner, someone I could grow with and co-create a meaningful life with.

So I made a decision.

I told myself I would approach and engage with at least two women a day until I found a companion.

It wasn’t smooth at first. I was at times painfully shy, awkward, often stumbling over my words. There were moments when I felt intimidated, and a few occasions when women reacted harshly to me. It really hurt at times, but I kept going.

As the weeks turned into months, I felt a lot more comfortable. It became much easier for me to engage with women and I found myself enjoying the process — starting conversations in the subway, on the street, in supermarkets, classes, museums, anywhere life placed me. I wasn’t hunting. I was simply opening, engaging, connecting.

And what surprised me as I continued approaching women — thousands over the years — is that I realized I liked and related to women far more than I ever did to men. I genuinely enjoyed their presence, their warmth, their perspectives.

It was often the case that I wasn’t physically attracted to the women I engaged with. Sometimes it was the book they were reading, or it had more to do with some quality about who they were.

Whenever I connected with women, I made a point not to see every woman as a potential romantic partner. I would go in with openness, asking myself, “What does this connection naturally want to be?” I definitely wanted a partner, yet I was also perfectly content if the connection developed into a platonic friendship. Part of me also preferred to take time to get to know a woman before anything progressed — there had been times when I jumped in too quickly and later regretted it.

At the time, I was primarily living and working in New York City, and traveling to Boston for work every other week. There are lots of amazing, creative, accomplished, and highly intelligent people in both cities. But New York — as so many of us who have lived in the city know — is not an easy place to form meaningful connections. The energy moves fast. People are constantly in motion, their attention pulled in multiple directions. Interactions tend to have a transitory quality, and even when you meet someone you resonate with, the connection rarely has the space or stillness needed to take root.

Having lived in the Midwest and Southwest, I was used to people being more open and trusting. I had many women friends I spent time with over the years, and connections tended to unfold more naturally. But in New York City and Boston, women tended to be more guarded and mistrustful when it came to men. And to be fair, many develop that protective armor for good reason. The pace of life is intense, people are stretched thin, and the dating culture can be especially harsh. On top of that, women in these cities often have to navigate harassment and other grossly inappropriate behavior from men, which makes their caution completely understandable.

Even when a woman was initially guarded, I could often get her to open up and engage with me. And in many cases, we’d end up in these long, animated conversations that felt as if we’d known each other for years.

In many of these interactions, here was an obvious mutual enjoyment and a genuine liking for one another. A few even hugged me before parting, and in one instance kissed on the cheek. Before saying goodbye, I’d often ask, “What steps can we take to continue this conversation?” In many instance, we exchanged contact information, and I would follow up.

What usually happened afterwards is that we’d exchange a few texts or emails, maybe talk on the phone, and then nothing. Many didn’t respond at all. It was incredibly disheartening. After a few years of putting myself out there, I began to assume that I wasn’t the kind of man women wanted.

Part of me felt like giving up, yet on some level I believed that if I kept trying, eventually I would find someone where the connection actually stuck. I also kept putting myself out there because I saw it as an opportunity to work through my shyness, show up more fully, and develop greater social fluency. Still, I was feeling really depressed — not seeing much return on my investment. Despite my efforts, I spent a great deal of time alone in the city. Most of the women I formed any kind of ongoing connection with were from other countries. They, too, were lonely, found it difficult to make friends, and often expressed their own frustrations about how hard it was to connect.

Had I not started training with Shifu Li Tai Liang in Xin Yi Quan, Baguazhang, Tai Chi, and Chi Gong — internal martial arts rooted in Taoism — I probably would have bailed out of New York City long ago. I stayed because I knew it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but I paid a high price for staying.

Fortunately, as I began traveling more for work and continuing education, I found it much easier to connect in other cities around the country, and even more so when I traveled abroad. There was more continuity to those relationships. Connections didn’t evaporate overnight.

When I went to Ohio for a months-long internship, I was seeing someone within a week of my arrival. Later, during a ten-day workshop in the Bahamas, I connected with a Japanese woman. I also connected with a woman I met in China while training with Chinese Master Shifu Yang Fan Sheng in Xin Yi. But in that instance, I got cold feet. Deep inside, I had this horribly unsettling fear that if things progressed, I might never again return to India and Sri Lanka, where I feel most at home.

In 2002, I had a strong intuitive sense that I needed to go to Sri Lanka. I didn’t know a single person living there at the time, yet I booked a ticket using the frequent-flyer miles I had accrued on United Airlines. I wasn’t prepared for what I encountered when I arrived. Sri Lanka was in the midst of a brutal war that had set the country back for decades. Much of the island was impoverished, and there was a certain lawlessness — lots of dangerous people who should have been locked away were roaming freely.

Women in Sri Lanka could be guarded, and understandably so, because they often faced very real dangers. What surprised me, though, was the number of women who would make eye contact, smile, and engage me in conversation. Connections just happened. I “went native,” staying out in the villages with friends. After a while, I met someone. And once I found a companion, I was content. I remained open and friendly, but I no longer felt the need to engage with other women the way I had before.

The Lessons Revealed By All Those Encounters

Meeting and engaging with so many women taught me a number of valuable lessons. Carrying the traumas of my childhood and adolescence, my relationships for some time had been a painful series of reenactments. I found myself involved with women who were deeply wounded, a few who were quite abusive, and others who — while they had a lot going for them — were simply not a good match for me. When things didn’t work out, and even more so when a woman was disinterested or hurtful, I took it personally.

As I progressed in my own healing and continued meeting more women, I became much more cognizant of the vast differences. I began to sense the deep emotional wounds, the substance abuse and other mental health issues, the narcissistic or borderline tendencies, the dishonesty, the shallowness, and other qualities that made a connection unworkable. At other times, I could feel the lack of resonance even when a woman had a lot to offer but simply wasn’t aligned with me.

I also became much more attuned to the qualities I found desirable — intelligence, strength, determination, kindness, tenderness, warmth, sincerity, and intuition — someone who meets me with the same depth I bring to the connection. I could feel it immediately when there was a strong resonance. And over time, it became far easier to distinguish when a connection was purely platonic or had romantic potential.

Meeting and engaging with so many women helped me understand women far more deeply than I ever had before. It helped me understand myself too. It taught me how to communicate, how to listen, how to be a friend. It taught me what mattered and what didn’t. It taught me how not to repeat the same stupid ass mistakes men make that wound women and destroy the possibility of connection.

How Real-Life Encounters Help Us Heal, Grow, and Open the Door to Lasting Love

It saddens me to see how many people today rely almost entirely on Tinder, Hinge, and other dating apps to meet potential partners. I understand why they turn to them — life is hectic, people are lonely, and the idea of connection at your fingertips is appealing. But something essential is being lost. When we outsource our social lives to apps, we stunt our development on so many levels. We don’t cultivate the crucial interpersonal skills that only grow through real human interaction — presence, confidence, intuition, emotional attunement, reading subtle cues, initiating conversation, feeling into resonance or lack of resonance. We become spectators to our own lives rather than participants in them. And over time, the very capacities that allow us to form meaningful relationships begin to atrophy.

Meeting so many women in real life was not always easy for me. In the beginning, it often brought me face-to-face with parts of myself that were deeply wounded. The pain that surfaced in those moments could be excruciating — though it became less so as I progressed in my healing. But those encounters gave me the opportunity to work directly with the wounded parts of myself. They deepened my understanding of who I was, of women and people in general, and of the complexities of relationships. Over time, these experiences helped me become more empathetic, more present, and ultimately a better friend and companion.

The barriers between men and women today — the mistrust, the guardedness, the huge disconnect — are in many ways a reflection of the numbing and disconnect within ourselves. When we numb out to our emotions, we disconnect from our own inner world, that internal distance shows up everywhere in our lives. It shapes how we relate to others, how we form — or fail to form — meaningful connections, and it’s reflected in the profound isolation so many people feel.

Some parts of healing we do need to undertake on our own. We have to sit with ourselves, face our pain, and do the inner work. But we cannot completely heal in isolation. Much of our deepest healing takes place in relationship — in the connections we form, the presence we offer one another, and the ways our interactions bring to the surface what we could never access alone.

So many people complain about being alone — that they don’t have love in their life, that they’re not meeting anyone, that nothing is happening for them. But very few pause long enough to self-reflect. Much of it has to do with the defenses so many people carry, and the accumulation of unprocessed stress and emotion that causes them to close their hearts and grow deaf, numb, and blind to their intuition. And on top of that, so many of us are simply afraid to engage with one another. Yet the person standing right in front of you waiting to check out — or picking out produce in the supermarket, sitting beside you on a flight, or walking past you on the street — could be the best match you ever meet in your entire life… or someone who becomes a deeply valuable friend. You never know unless you engage.

So many people aren’t connecting, aren’t engaging, aren’t forming bonds, or getting to the point of intimacy. And then they wonder why they’re alone. So stop hiding, stop avoiding, and get your ass out there. Engage with people.

If you’re heterosexual, that means finding ways to connect with members of the opposite sex you feel drawn to. If you’re gay or lesbian, then it’s the individuals of your own gender you resonate with. And not every connection has to be based on physical attraction. You don’t have to be drawn to someone in a romantic sense for the interaction to matter.

A lot of connections never form simply because people fail to reach out or respond to one another. Someone invites them to meet, and they ignore it. Someone expresses interest, and they disappear. Or they’re too afraid, too self-protective, or too numbed-out to take the next small step. But connection requires participation. If someone approaches you, or if you find yourself in an unexpected interaction, tune into your intuition. Do you get a good feeling about them? Are you enjoying the exchange?

Give the connection a chance to unfold by taking the next small step. When it’s time to part, offer to continue the conversation. And if they’re receptive, exchange contact information. If they message or call, respond — or reach out yourself. Meet again in a safe, neutral setting. This is how connections form. This is how meaningful and fulfilling relationships begin.

We need these connections — whether platonic, romantic, or something in between. They give us the opportunity to learn about ourselves, to see where we’re strong and where we’re wounded. They help us heal and grow. And each person we meet reflects something different back to us. Some show us our unresolved pain. Some show us our strengths. Some show us what real emotional resonance feels like. All of them shape our development in ways no amount of isolation ever could.

If anything in what you’ve just read resonates with you — if you’re struggling with heartbreak, loneliness, patterns that keep repeating, or you simply want to show up more fully in your life and relationships — feel free to reach out. I offer individual sessions over the phone or internet, and in the near future I’ll be opening enrollment for my new program, Heal My Heartache.

To learn more or schedule a session, call or message (332) 333-5155 or visit teachmetomeditate.com • benoofana.com.

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