Searching for love to escape ourselves | Hayley Quinn | TEDxUniversityofNevada

Love, sex and dating are often venerated as "the ultimate goal of life". However, how much of our quest for love is about avoiding being with ourselves? About facing reality? About creating our own direction? And, in running away from ourselves in love, do we ultimately avoid the work needed to return to selfhood that will actually bring us happiness?

Hayley Quinn is the UK's leading Dating Expert and has helped 100,000's of men and women re-think their love lives.

A graduate in English and Psychoanalysis from UCL, Hayley set up her own company as a reaction to encountering the pickup artist culture and working as a ghost writer for characters from the New York Times bestseller "The Game".

An advocate of real life dating skills she’s used her websites and her online members' clubs to show people that there's more to life than meeting someone than Tinder.

She's been a featured expert for numerous international TV shows and has had a Channel 4 Cutting Edge documentary "BiCurious Me" based around her explorations into sexuality and relationships. She has also written for "Cosmopolitan", "The Independent" and "The Telegraph", and regularly provides social experiment vlogs to news sites.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

So let me tell you a love story.

Once upon a time, not so long ago,

in a land I Googled
to be 5,172 miles away,

I met a guy, and he was perfect.

So I'll tell you the meeting story.

I'd just taped this really cool TV show
about experimenting with your sexuality,

and I met him at the after-party

through one of our famous
friends who was a DJ.

He was tall, dark, handsome,

kind of a rock star,

and a little bit emotionally unavailable.

Very soon, we were spending
all of our time together.

We threw these really cool parties
for all of our cool friends,

we went backstage at every festival,

and, when my hands were cold,

he would take them under his arms
to warm them up.

He was my best friend,

and I thought we would be
together forever.

And so strong was that belief

that when the warning signs came,
I just ignored them.

Until the day that I couldn't
ignore them anymore.

I'd become quite unwell,

I wasn't so pretty anymore,

and I definitely couldn't go out
to any of the parties.

In fact, I was, for the first time
in my life, actually vulnerable

because I was miscarrying our baby.

And at that point,
when I was at my weakest,

he left.

It's not a joke.

Ah ha, um -

Coming downstairs - and you you know what,

but I would have followed him
out of the door to the ends of Earth.

But I couldn't get out of my bed.

When I did get up, I found
that our house had been stripped bare.

The paintings were gone from the walls,

and the rooms that we used
to dance in together were empty.

I walked around those rooms
like an animal, howling.

Picking myself up
off the literal floor that day,

I had to recognize

that after all of this excitement
and this joy and this fantasy,

at the end of all that love,

I had nothing.

And you know what,

that wasn't even the first time
something like that had happened to me.

I was a magnet for chaos.

I liked chaos,

because when I was in chaos,

I didn't have to confront
anything about who I was.

Truthfully, I hadn't known
who I was for years.

Because on the floor that day,

I did have someone, I had myself.

But for a long time,

that had come to feel like,
it, well, meant nothing,

and it was invaluable.

So I know it seems a bit self-indulgent

to come out here today

and talk to you guys
about, like, effectively a break-up story,

but it was one of a chain
of many incidences

that made me think, "Maybe there's
other people like me,

maybe there's other people that aren't
approaching love in the right way."

Because I think
we've all had experiences, right?

They look like love, they feel like love,

but when you open them up,
there's nothing loving about them.

But we continued to chase love,

because I think love is sold to us

as almost like the ultimate
solution to ourselves:

the things that makes our past okay,

that gives us the direction
for the future,

and imbues our everyday
reality with meaning.

I think love can be beautiful,

I think it can be exciting;

but I think sometimes
it can also be an act of escapism.

And I've had a long time
to think about this,

as the introduction said,

I am the artist formerly known
as the UK's leading dating expert.

And before that I was a ghost writer
in the pickup industry,

and I vlog about the reality
of love on my YouTube.

And now I have a completely
different approach,

a very minimalist strategy
when it comes to dating.

And that's really because I'm concerned

that in our quest for love

sometimes it can be
the ultimate distraction

to fixing ourselves

and doing the real work
that will actually make us happy.

Because, don't get me wrong,

I think that the desire for attachment,
for intimacy, for security, for love,

those goals are natural,
they're human, and they're good.

But I think sometimes the way
we go about them is a bit weird,

whether that's crazy, ridiculous,
on-off, destructive relationships,

or needing to go out on a date
every single night of the week

with a different person.

You know, like the hip form of dating,

where you have someone on the back burner,

someone on the front burner,

someone under the grill,

and then someone else
over there in the freezer

(Laughter)

just in case, God forbid,
you spend a night by yourself.

In this, it feels really like
loneliness is the driver,

or escapism is the driver,

not love.

So, I'm kind of starting
to preach the opposite belief now,

that, of course, the answer
lies not in another person,

but within yourself.

Because I think, sometimes,
the melodrama of love

takes us further away,
rather than closer,

to who we actually are.

So I find that my dating advice

is gradually shrinking down
to be essentially:

go meditate,
get some therapy,

read a book.

Ha, ha.
(Laughter)

It's not what you would call

a sexy strategy
for the millennial generation.

A generation that is used to
4G download speeds,

skyping a friend abroad,

and Netflix and chill with someone
you just met from Tinder.

(Laughter)

Um -

So I think when we're used to expecting
everything we want right here, right now,

when we can't just vend
an automatic level of human connection,

we not only feel
like we're getting it wrong,

but like we're not getting
what we're entitled to.

And then you just take
one look at Instagram:

everybody else has it sorted out.

And we sort of live in the culture
that surrounds us,

telling us that we should
have fallen in love or be falling in love,

or at least have had great sex, right?

Like yesterday!?

You know, let's face it,

who actually enters into the arena of love

looking to, maybe, become a better person,

to be kinder, to have more integrity,

to get more grounded?

No one does that.

It's because our eyes are off ourselves,

we're looking for that next adventure,

that greener grass,

that new person,

so we don't have to deal with
any of that stuff.

And I understand
how easily it happens, right?

You just kind of meet someone sexy,

I don't know where,

maybe it was at a party, on the train,
or the Tube, as we would say in London.

Or maybe you just met them,
you both joined Tinder that day,

how magical!

(Laughter)

And before too long, you realize
that you have some stuff in common,

like wow, you both like
almond butter, Star Wars,

you can name all four
Teenage Mutant Ninja Hero Turtles.

And then, like, suddenly,
you're retelling how you met,

like, this serendipitous coincidence
of cosmic proportions -

it's like move over Romeo and Juliet.

Not that that ended every well,

let's all remember that.

So, when you're thinking about you're not
exactly being Romeo and Juliet,

and we're actually living
in the real world,

I think the thing is, the main sell,
when you kind of fall for someone,

is it 's like: Yippee, I'm not
alone anymore.

Hooray! Nailed it! Uh ha.

Coz you get to - guess what you do?

You get to go home every night,

and you get to put
your head on the pillow,

and you don't have to think about,
you know, your needs,

your wants, your past,

and, actually, kind of all the stuff

that's really, probably,
stopping you from becoming happy,

because you're not fixing it.

Instead, you get to be entrapped
by somebody else,

you're intrigued by them,

your mind has someone new
to spiral into and focus on.

But I think sometimes when you're focusing
on that perfect romance,

you're not actually doing the real work

to fix the stuff that's stopping you
from becoming happy.

And because of that,

I think that most of us,
when it comes to love and dating,

kind of need an epic timeout and reset.

For myself, I did six months cold turkey.

No dating, no internet dating,

and I went to all of two parties.

Literally, you could have
written up my love life

on the back of a postage stamp,

it was that exciting.

And all this from the girl who used to -

honestly, I used to pride myself
on having a ridiculous love life.

The stories - if I was here
two years ago guys,

I'd have told you some amazing stories.

But you know what?

After all of that,
and after everything that happened,

I thought I would quite like
to know who I am again.

Because, and I think I'm not alone here,

if you're experiencing a Groundhog Day
when it comes to your dating life,

I think that the thing is

you think that it's
because you're meeting loads of players,

or nice guys finish last,
or you just haven't met the one yet,

or that dating is a numbers game,

but I think actually

these truisms that surround dating
aren't in fact true at all.

In fact, I think they lead us away
from what the real issue is.

Because the problem, and I know
this doesn't make for comfy listening,

the problem, it's with you, it's with me,

it's with our ridiculous ideas
around romance,

it's with our needs
that we haven't realized yet,

it's with our past
that we don't want to talk about,

it's with our desires,

it's with our inability
to get through one day

with[out] picking up our smartphones,

and it's with what we value.

So I decided after all of that -
I was like, you know what,

I'm done with Groundhog Day in love,

I actually want to discover
a bit more about myself.

Because the truth is,
I wasn't even born Hayley Quinn.

Right!? Right!?

I chose that name,
I thought it sounded cool.

I was actually born Hayley Whittle.

And when I was born -
I grew up in a poor family,

my parents were disabled,

I was really teased at school a lot
for being the weird girl,

I used to work as a dishwasher,

and because of that, there was
so much pain and shame in my past

I just didn't want to touch it.

And the way I ran away from it

is I ran away from it
with love and with fantasy.

But I decided after all that running,
I wasn't really getting anywhere,

I was just re-creating the same mistakes
time and time again.

So I thought I'd better stop.

I was like I want
to actually feel something.

And I can tell you,
when I stopped, I did feel.

I think I cried every single day
for the first month

on the phone to my Mum,

which was awkward

because I hadn't really spoken to her
for about a decade at that stage.

And then I'd come home,

and I'd come home
to this empty, dirty house,

with no guy and no baby
and no possessions left in it.

And then some days I'd wake up

and the pain would be so bad
that it felt like my heart was burning.

And to resist the temptation
at that stage to not reach out

and take that little plaster of dating
or love or some attention

to fix how I was feeling

was really hard.

But gradually, you know what?

A great thing happened,
is that I came back into the room,

I became aware again,
my mind started to work,

I reconnected with my family,

the friends that were left
were the good ones,

and I stopped being so obsessed
with going out every night of the week

or whether someone had read
my messages on WhatsApp.

And so that's why,

if you're listening to what I'm saying,

if you even see a shadow of yourself,

a little shadow of your story
in my ridiculous life,

I would advise just taking
a time to take that pause,

and I'm going to tell you why,
I'm actually going to sell it to you.

So here I go, first things first:

when you come home and your evening plans
are make chicken soup and read a book,

this no longer sounds bad,
this sounds awesome.

Although I'd like to point out

my chicken soup literally still has
the consistency of porridge,

it's so bad.

Work in progress! Work in progress!

Second thing,

when you stop waiting
for your prince or your princess

to come crashing through the door
and save you and solve your life,

you start kind of living
in the here and now more.

And when you live in the here and now,

you become more grounded,
you become more confident,

you become stronger.

You also become more self-aware.

And when you're aware,

you become more aware of
the people around you.

And you know what I saw, and what I see?

I see people running away all the time,
every single day of their lives.

And then you see those situations,

and you have the foresight
to step back for a change

rather than get involved.

I also learned that life
is pretty dramatic as it is,

and it throws you plenty of challenges,

so you don't really need
to create any more

and go out there on a mission

to have more drama,

you can just leave it.

I also finally realized,

you know, well, those people
say to you, they say,

you need to be alone, or be by yourself,
before you can meet someone else.

I used to think those people were boring;

now I think they're right,
they're definitely, probably right.

Because I think, sometimes, actually,
when we actually confront our aloneness,

and we start to deal
with our needs and the past

and all that horrible pain

that, you know, as people, we just collect
and carry with us throughout our lives,

when we deal with that,
and we're not running from it

in endless people or endless dates,

when we don't have anything
to prove anymore,

when you don't need a destructive,
ridiculous on-off relationship

in order to feel alive,
in order to feel like you exist,

when you can just be,

I kind of actually think that's real love.

Thanks very much.

(Applause)