Episode 23: Will I ever find love?
To create space for Jackie to write her upcoming book, To You Who Wonders – an advice column meets memoir – she will be reading from her past column, Ask JKE, for Virtuvi's Natural Habitat Magazine.
This week, she is answering the question "I’m looking for advice on how to date, during a pandemic, while running a small business. I am a fellow baker and as you know, work long, strenuous hours, often while the rest of the world sleeps. Will I ever find love? Is it possible to find a balance while growing my business?" She reflects on the answer she wrote so many years ago and shares her reflections, what has evolved since, what she would have written differently or what she was experiencing at the time she wrote it.
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We hope that you get something helpful out of this conversation. If anything, know that you’re not alone. You see, we all struggle, mourn, yearn, question, laugh and cry. No matter our age, background, or titles, at our core, we are all not so different, You & I.
Make sure to listen until the end to hear the question we will be diving into on the next episode. And if you feel inspired to respond to this asker and are interested in being a guest of this episode, or if you have a short word of wisdom for them, write to us on the contact page on youandipodcast.com or DM us on Instagram at @youandi.podcast.
Episode Resources:
Jackie Kai Ellis: Website / Instagram
Vitruvi's Natural Habitat Magazine: Website / Instagram
You & I Podcast: Website / Instagram
Resources on finding trusted professional help can be found here.
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The following transcript was automatically generated. Please be aware that it may contain errors. Thank you for your understanding.
Welcome to You and I.
I am Jackie Kai Ellis and it’s my genuine hope that through sharing our most vulnerable stories, we know, in the moments where it matters so much, that we are not alone.
It needs to be said, I am not a professional, just someone with some personal experience to share. I do hope this is helpful, but as always, take the advice that resonates and ignore what doesn't. And don’t hesitate to seek out professional help through a trusted source. We’ve provided links on our website in case you need them.
For the next couple of months I’ll be focused on writing my upcoming book, To You Who Wonders, an advice column meets memoir. So to make space for that, I’m sharing words from my past advice column, Ask JKE, one I wrote for Vitruvi’s magazine, Natural Habitat.
It’s been a few years since I wrote them, some advice is timeless, and yet I’ve changed so much too. I’m curious how my advice will be different now that my perspective is different. So in these episodes, I’ll read out the column and also share my reflections, what has evolved, what I would write differently or what I was experiencing at the time I wrote it.
I hope you enjoy the Ask JKE series.
Today, I’ll be reading the column I wrote in answer to the question, “Will I ever find love?”
They write:
Dear JKE,
I’m looking for advice on how to date, during a pandemic, while running a small business. I am a fellow baker and as you know, work long, strenuous hours, often while the rest of the world sleeps. Will I ever find love? Is it possible to find a balance while growing my business?
-Lonely Night Baker
Dear Lonely Night Baker,
Just before Beaucoup Bakery opened its doors, I had begun to date someone. He was cute, quiet, and funny. I was fresh out of a long marriage, and I liked him the way I like sipping icy-cold lemonade while laying on a picnic blanket.
A few weeks later, as we became closer and the bakery launch was nearing, he said to me, while helping me clean the floors of drywall dust: “You don’t want the business to suffer because you were distracted by a guy.” There was no discussion. I didn’t argue; it was true. The bakery was my dream, my only hope, and at that point nothing was more important. He was wise to see it, and kind to say it aloud. From that day forward, we stopped talking.
In the months that followed, there was no room for loves or lovers—only power naps on concrete floors and eating whatever was in arm’s reach. My 72-hour work stretches were fueled by passionate mania, determination, and an obsessive desire to see my dream come to life. Every design detail, every croissant, every double americano, every song on the playlist, and every email piled up until one day, depleted, I asked a couple of seasoned bakery owners: “When does this end?” They answered simply: “When you choose to delegate.”
So as I could, I did. I let go of controlling every detail, leaned on my team, and redefined “important.” And each time I did, I made space for me. I was sleeping every night again, I was eating vegetables again, I was seeing friends again, and, eventually, I even had room to think about dating again.
In wanting even more life balance, I decided to sell Beaucoup about five years later. I began to fantasize about a time when my business was not on my mind, when I wasn’t worried about its last stumbles or its next steps. And in this vast expanse of free space, I decided to focus on finding love. At the time, I didn’t feel particularly good at it; I was on the heels of another failed relationship. And so, I set out to learn. It was a new project for me to take on.
I had never really dated—I always went straight into relationships instead—so I made a point of going on as many dates as possible. Proper research.
After each date, I would note which personalities and quirks did or didn’t work for me, which lifestyles and life choices meshed or clashed with mine. I kept my mind open as I discovered all the different characters that existed in the world. This experimentation and process of elimination went on for many months, resulting in some lively dinners, a few blocked numbers, a handful of solid guy friends, and a back pocket full of entertaining stories to tell at cocktail parties. What doesn’t kill you makes you funnier.
In a profound way, I was also challenged to see myself. Each person reflected back to me my assumptions on gender roles; the purpose of relationships; my personal desires versus what society deemed desirable; and my insecurities, fears, and needs.
Date after date, years passed. And, after a few more exhausting experiments, I stopped—walking away satisfied with having learned a little more about how to love and how to be loved. I had finally realized that so much about finding love is actually out of my hands.
On finding (and relinquishing) control
I did, in the end, find love, but that’s another story for another day. The one here is really about the control we have and the control we don’t. Sometimes we aptly put leashes on dogs, or reins on champion horses. At other times, we pull leashes tied to heavy rocks for much too long, or make futile attempts to put reins on water.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been an exercise in hanging on and letting go in many ways—but so is running a small business, and so is finding love. In all these things, we cement our desires, figure out what we have control over, practice loosening our grip, try letting go; we learn when to use a leash, how to use a rein, and when to just chill out on a picnic blanket and sip some icy-cold lemonade.
As I’m reading this again after 3 years. 3 years after which I had moved back to Vancouver from Paris, got back together with my ex-fiancé, got re-engaged, got married, had a child…the last of which has irreversibly changed my view on relationships, past and present.
Yes, it’s true, I believe that there can be no rhyme or reason to love. That so much of it is out of our control, and trying to control it only makes the experience of love and dating more frustrating. And I do think that no matter how ready we are for a relationship, how healthy our communication habits are, how much we have come to embody our self worth, no matter how much we “become the person we want to date,” at the end of the day, meeting someone we want to create a life with is so statistically impossible, that some portion of it must just be luck, or fate, or whatever you prefer to call it.
Though what I didn’t share in this column, was just how devastated and defeated I felt after those years of dating. Date after date, hopeful start after hopeful start, failed encounter after failed encounter, what began as a fun experiment, ended in insecurity and delirious self-doubt.
One night, after digesting another breakup, I remember texting a friend:
“I guess I just feel like I’ve been at this dating thing for so long. I’ve tried everything. And it’s funny but I just feel like a failure. I think, maybe, I’m just not worthy of being loved or of having a relationship that’s healthy and that works.
And I know the faulty logic behind that, even I judge myself for thinking like this. But I do. I would have hoped that something would have changed by now, after all this time and energy spent on something so stupid. But in the end, I’m the one that looks like a fool, and it makes me question what’s wrong with me.
And I know all the reasonable things to say to myself: That I’m loveable, that it’s just timing, that I have worth apart from a relationship. And I know all this, or I would have stayed in those relationships, but I just feel so defeated right now.”
But what I didn’t even realize until I had a child was how burnt out I had been by the societal expectations of women, especially around love, relationships, children. And in the dating experience, I was burnt out by the expectation to carry the emotional load on behalf of the men I met. From being self-sufficient, independent and projecting this desirable “low-maintenance” character, but not so much that I threatened a man’s sense of security, to having to say no to sex in a way that didn’t bruise his ego, cause him to beg, or worse, become threatening to my sense of physical safety. I was exhausted by assuring my date that I already knew who Albert Camus was and that I had quoted him in the book I had written, only to have him continue to explain to me who Albert Camus was for thirty more minutes. I was worn out by balancing my healthy expectations of reciprocity and trying to not be labeled “needy” by men, a label that made me question, for too long, the validity of my needs and, after time, left me expecting so little of those men that I wondered what it was that I was left with other than an embarrassing desire to be loved and a feeling that it was my fault that I wasn’t loveable.
Looking back, I would have wanted to say to myself, there is nothing wrong with you, but it’s only that you are living in a world that wasn’t created for you, and dating in a world that wasn’t created for women.
And I have a special announcement to make. We are currently planning our 1 year anniversary LIVE episode on Youtube and Instagram. I will be inviting my very first guest from episode one, Sandra Birkenhead, counselor based in Victoria, BC and Caroline Boquist, who is the co-owner of Walrus in Vancouver. They are two of my very closest friends and people I go to regularly for advice. We will be going through all the questions we’ve received and have not yet answered as well as taking audience questions LIVE, too.
And, I have to say, this anniversary episode will be my last episode for a while. In order to create the space needed to write my book, To You Who Wonders, I have made the decision to place You & I on hiatus.
I’ve learned a lot about myself through creating this podcast, through exploring your questions. And one of the biggest lessons I’ve learnt from a recent episode is about being kind to yourself, giving to all areas of my life equally and sustainably, and changing the narrative around “giving your all” and the need to burn out.
So do tune in to the anniversary episode on May 12th at 3;30pm pst, you can find details on the website at youandipodcast.com and on instagram @youandi(dot)podcast. And if you have a question you’d like me to explore, join us and ask LIVE on that day!
If you enjoyed this episode, like and subscribe to our channel, which helps others who might be interested, find us. And feel free to share this episode with someone who may find it helpful as well. Thank you for joining us today. I’m Jackie Kai Ellis, this is you and I.