My Decision To Big Chop Changed The Game For My Love Life

Tall, like at least six feet. Attractive. Doesn't have to be college educated but he's got to be ambitious...and intelligent. Not too clingy, but present. Meh, I don't do locs. No locs. In fact, no hair. Just a clean fade.

That is just a glimpse of the checklist I keep in my mind when keeping my eyes peeled for potential. I'm willing to admit that I'm shallow, but I have also made it a point to remind myself that I wouldn't put a pin in that very potential I had been on the lookout for if someone came along and he wasn't a concoction of my imagination and past baggage. Basically, I've always said I'm not shallow enough to ignore and resist chemistry simply because I'm not immediately attracted to a person's outward appearance.

However, it's only recently that I've been forced to be a woman of my word and date outside the comfort zone of my list. I believe it has everything to do with me taking on round two of the big chop with all of the confidence I didn't know the first time I big chopped. To break down the equation, it seems to be two parts confidence, one part big chop, and I'm convinced that it will have a significant impact on the way I view dating, men, and the laws of attraction.

In cutting off my hair, I observed how my TWA would stop attracting one type of man and draw in another.

It stopped attracting my type and I started attracting a greater level of authenticity. After chopping my hair, while I was more confident and more fashionable (something I now felt I had to be so that I was not to be mistaken for a prepubescent boy) than I ever imagined, I would be back in my "Apple Bottom" phase and I was also forced to have a slice of humble pie. Who was I to write someone off for their hair? At the very least I knew I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't tighten up with all of these physical characteristics I deemed "my type".

My big chop has forced me to hone in on the agape love that I was putting out into the rest of the world.

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Agape love, a Greco-Christian term and something that I only recently learned about, is a selfless sacrificial type of love. It's one of four types of love in the Bible that we observe in the world; the others include Eros, Philia, and Storge (in no particular order). Most people, myself included, act out of eros or erotic love upon first meeting someone. Eros love is the superficial stuff, eros demands a physical attraction. Acting on eros love first is a desire to want the full package before penetrating the surface. However, it's agape love that will help you look past the superficial qualities a person has to offer and see their truth alongside your truth.

This is what I've come to understand about myself! There's levels to this and this whole time I've been trying to level up without doing the work in between, and doing it backward at that. Sexually driven, I've always wanted to be attracted to you outwardly before I acted on anything else, and if the sex was good then for me, that led to romance but it almost always led me to lackluster, half-ass romance.

There's an exception to all of this, of course, but we can't all be that. We can't all be the couple who married after 30 days and stayed together for a lifetime. We can't all be the couple who started out just f*cking and then ended up in love. We can't all be the love that the media portrays, and that's what we want when we seek out these superficial qualities.

The reality is that leading with eros will almost always fail you when you're hoping to build something authentic.

Ultimately, you attract what you are and sometimes you attract what you lack. You attract what you put into the world, you attract what you're ready for, and if you can't embrace a new face in the most wholesome way of love, then the truth is you (and I'm speaking to myself here) have more room for growth.

Well, the TWA is making me grow. The hair has made me love myself in an agape way that I don't think was present before. I loved myself with the condition, I loved myself in an eros way that I knew made me appealing and attractive to a majority but I don't want the majority filling my cup.

As I break down the walls of my love and its superficial standards, I can't lose because I will have evolved and so I will have attracted someone who meets me right there where I'm at. Evolved. And when that's not what it is, I'll know and I won't settle because I'll know there are more many more fish in the sea when you dive deeper than the superficial waters I've been living in.

Featured image by Getty Images.

Originally published on March 14, 2019