I’m inventing a ritual. And I hope that in reading about how I’m doing it, you’ll become more open to inventing a ritual of your own.

Wait Night Date Night

This ritual I’m inventing is called Wait Night Date Night which is a practice I’m taking on as part of my No Woman Vision Quest. Basically I put on nice clothing, buy a flower, and go sit in the parking lot of nice restaurant for an hour and practice waiting.

I got the idea for it after watching a video by my amazing friend Kendro Cunov.

In it, she talks about how women in her No Man Diet program started to notice that they didn’t even have space for an ideal partner to arrive even if they wanted them to.

So they started making room for what they were looking for. They slept on one side of the bed, they fixed a nice dinner and set an extra place setting, and they wrote letters to their future partners.

All as a ritual of creating space for what they wanted.

As I reflected on this practice I felt inspired and began to ask myself: What would the masculine form of this practice look like?

There’s nothing wrong with what these women did, but I wanted to create something of my own. I wanted something that embodied the masculine aspects of presence, patience, and of holding space.

That’s when I came up with the idea for my Wait Night Date Night.

In the past
In the past, I’ve rushed into relationships and I’ve pursued women with unquestioned vigor.

And while I don’t think there’s anything wrong with going after what you want, at times my impatience and unwillingness to wait has led me to make bad choices and ignore obvious signs of things that were unworkable in the long run.

So for me, learning to wait, learning to be in the empty space of possibility, learning to be patient with an open heart is incredibly important.

What is the practice?
For now my practice looks like this: once a week I get ready for a date with my beloved, drive to a restaurant and wait for her.

Not with the idea that she’ll arrive in an hour, or a month, or a year. Not to meditate and be with nothingness Not to reflect on my past relationships. Not to dream and journal about who she’ll be and our lives together.

The practice is to simply wait for her. Waiting is all that’s required.

What was it like?
Last week when I did this practice a lot of things came up for me.

First I was bored. I started to feel sleepy and I even nodded off a few times. But I kept waking myself up. Listening to the birds. Watching the trees move in the breeze.

Then I had memories of past dates with ex partners, I had memories of good times and things I missed. I didn’t push these memories away or invest a lot of time in trying to figure them out. I just let them come and go.

There were moments where I cried, missing and remembering the incredible moments of love and romance I have experienced.

There were moments I felt immense gratitude for these humans that have blessed me with their love and grace.

There were moments where I felt incredibly lonely and hopeless.

There were moments where I was just watching people on the street, moments where I thought about my work, moments where I worried that the people working in the restaurant would think II was a creepy stalker.

After an hour I drove home. I was super tired and also a bit raw.

The ritual was powerful for me.

There was so much about it I didn’t expect and so much I learned. I’m going on my second wait night date night tonight. And I have no idea what will happen, I guess sort of just like a regular date.

The romantic in me
The romantic in me wonders if the woman I create a relationship with next will think it’s magical that I spent several nights waiting for her. I mean it sounds pretty romantic.

But the practitioner in me knows that it’s not about that. What this ritual is about is standing for what I want to create and being willing to be in the space of that stand.

It’s about my willingness to be with my own desire, impatience, boredom, and longing.

If I chose to become a celibate monk for the rest of my life, I think this ritual would have some value, though not because sitting in a car has inherent value.

After all, you might think this is an incredibly dumb thing to do and maybe it is.

It’s powerful because I’m choosing to make it powerful.

This, just like all rituals, is only as powerful as we make them. Only as powerful as we put our whole selves into them and are willing to be curious about what we discover.

My hope is that by reading about my ritual, you’ll be inspired to create your own. Something that speaks to you and invokes what you want to invoke.

Tonight I’ll go and wait. I’ll discover something new. I will be the ritual. And for now, that’s all I need to know.