I'm hunting down Cupid's big baby butt. And I know exactly where to find him. You in?

There are 7 desires we lust after when it comes to love. And I've got a list of places no one ever talks about where we can fulfill each of them.

I once pulled a cruel prank that broke a heart, killed a guy, and almost left me forever lonely.

Backstory

My love life went downhill the day I met Cupid.

It's not something I talk about much, but it's no coincidence that my name is Lamar Elimbo.

It's an homage to my past life of ruling over Purgatory. In Italian, my name pretty much translates to Lamar is Limbo.

Anyway, one day I bumped into Cupid as he was escorting a couple who had just drowned in a bubble bath together.

I invited him over for tea and we got to talking about all things love and death. I joked about what a pitiful way it was for that couple to die. He disagreed and shared how beautiful he thought it was to die for love.

His response piqued my cynical nature, so I decided to put his romantic idealism to the test… by pulling a bit of an extremely sadistic prank 😅

I switched out a few of his love arrows with real ones.

He was understandably distraught when his first target’s heart ended up bleeding out on a nearby wall. And ever since that day, he’s been avoiding me at all costs.

I didn’t mind the lack of love when I was luxuriating in power in the afterlife. But now that I’m here schlepping it in the mortal plane, I’m single and ready to mingle. I’ve tried over the years to invite love into my life, but it turns out that Cupid is always as busy as he is because finding love without his help is no easy feat.

I was officially tired of being ignored. So I decided that instead of wasting anymore time hunting for love, I would go on a hunt for Cupid. That little wanker had evaded me and left me loveless for decades. But no more! I was committed to tracking his baby butt down, stealing his arrows, and using his love luck on myself.

I had to be smart about my search. Cupid is a sneaky kid who loves to play hide and seek. But there are a few consistent corner’s of the world where love is often found, so I had a good feeling I’d find him in one of those.

The hunt for Cupid’s corners of the world began!

Defining Cupid’s Corners

Cupid’s corners are the places where people tend to have the most luck with fulfilling their heart’s desires. And I’m no expert, but I can think of 7 desires people lust after when it comes to love. People want to:

1. find love,

2. spark love,

3. sustain love,

4. endure love,

5. end love,

6. cope with love loss, and

7. cope with being love-less.

I knew if I played my cards right, I’d find Cupid doling out love in spaces he’d specifically designed to satisfy those desires.

Spaces Designed to Find Love

My first stop: The Third Places.

A term coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg in the 1980s that refers to places outside of work or home. Where there’s little to no financial barrier to entry. And where conversation is the primary activity.

They’re spaces where Serendipity takes to the stage and where Cupid goes to see her shows.

In my opinion, the most effective third places for finding love are the ones which also have a third thing.

The Third Thing is a poem by Donald Hall that describes a site of joint rapture, where gazes come together in double attention.

Finding third places with third things makes sparking conversations easier. Commenting on the thing that’s already captured their shared attention eases the opening lines of a conversation between future lovers.

So, I went to as many public lectures, art galleries, community clubs, and meetups as I could. But I guess Cupid was smart enough not to be found hiding in the first place I’d look.

Spaces Designed to Spark Love

My second stop: amusement parks.

My general strategy for picking out good date ideas is to figure out whether I want to optimize for talk, touch, or task.

Talk optimized dates, like going ice skating or out to eat, are for when we want to brain bond. Touch optimized dates, like home movies and couple’s yoga, are for when we want to body bond. And task optimized dates, like concerts and game cafes, are for when we want to bio bond (build a bond over shared biographical memories).

Most date ideas are some combination of talk, touch, and task. But Cupid appreciates grandiosity. So I knew he would most likely be found in a date spot that optimized for all three.

There’s something scientifically unique about amusement parks that can benefit hopeful couples. And that’s the misattribution of arousal.

You know how if you're nervous for a presentation you'll have someone suggest that you try to convince yourself that your not nervous, but excited. That's misattribution of arousal. It describes how people can easily mistake the true cause of their arousal because the physiological symptoms between fear, ecstasy, and excitement are so similar. Increased blood pressure, shortness of breath, heart pounding, butterflies in stomach…

I scoured every amusement park out there and I endeavoured the scariest rollercoasters on repeat. But all to no avail. Cupid was nowhere to be found.

Spaces Designed to Sustain Love

Spot number 3: escape rooms.

Building strength into a relationship is a process that requires vulnerability and trust. Trust that our relationship is not just resilient to internal conflict, but anti-fragile to it.

Relationships can fall into one of three categories: fragile, resilient, or anti-fragile. Fragile relationships crumble under stress. Resilient relationships can cope with and bounce back from obstacles. And anti-fragile relationships not only can cope with stress, but they grow and get stronger in the face of adversity.

Anti-fragile couples share a growth mindset. They are the ones who test the strength of their bond outside of their honeymoon phase.

In order to track down Cupid, I needed to find a place where couples could go to build a sustainable bond in spite of obstacles.

Ever since I tried my first escape room, I’ve believed that it would make for a great field experiment for assessing how well suited people are for working together under pressure.

Dr. John Gottam, a clinical relationship psychologist, observed that there were four precursors to a doomed relationship. He deemed them the four horsemen of a relationship apocalypse. They are contempt, stonewalling, criticism, and defensiveness.

Throw a couple in an escape room for an hour and no doubt their true colours will eventually show.

I went. I solved as many clues as I could bear. I looked under every stone and unlocked every door. Yet still Cupid was totally MIA.

Spaces Designed to Endure Love

My fourth destination: The Grand Canyon.

On the other end of wanting to sustain and strengthen a relationship, some couples desire to bounce back from an already existing problem.

I felt pretty confident that I would find Cupid this time. He’s such a sucker for watching love succeed, he’d no doubt be trying to throw a lifeline to a drowning duo. But where would I find an un-obvious place where a couple would go to kintsugi a cracked connection? The Grand Canyon!

The Grand Canyon may seem like a random make up spot, but hear me out.

On one hand, if a couple has truly had enough of each other, then what better place for your partner to totally accidentally slip to their demise into a deadly ditch. But even more notable to Cupid, would be its awe-inspiring nature.

Awe has been shown to have self-minimizing effects, guiding us to shift our perspective away from ourselves and onto the grandiosity of the world. It’s even been shown to motivate prosocial behaviour. When we’re immersed within wonder, it becomes clearer to us how small our problems actually are.

So I trekked over to the rocky monument, singing “baby, there ain't no mountain high enough, ain't no valley low enough, ain't no river wide enough to keep me from getting to you”. But I still couldn’t find him anywhere.

Spaces Designed to End Love

My fifth destination: malls.

When couples desire their relationship to end, and they don’t want to take the Canyon killing route, they look to find a better venue to break the news of their breakup.

Nothing pains Cupid more than witnessing the end of a relationship. So I didn’t hold my breath for finding him hanging out in breakup spots, but I figured it was worth a try.

Research into memory suggests that we remember things that are novel. In Cupid’s best case scenario, a breakup would be swift, painless, and forgettable. The generally minimalist design of malls lacks novel anchors for our memory to latch onto.

So I visited every mall in existence and, no surprise, I still couldn’t find him.

Spaces Designed to Cope with Love Loss

Location number 6: planes, trains, and automobiles.

Something I know all too well from my time ruling over Limbo is the profound sadness that couples experience following the loss of love.

The desire to end that pain runs deep. But something I noticed from escorting the souls of the recently departed to their final destination was the healing ability of that little bit of travel.

You know how people say things like: “I feel like I’m still in my 20s” and “I can remember high school like it was just yesterday.” The most accepted theory on why some people feel this way is because they create less unique memories in adulthood compared to their childhood.

So when it comes to using our surroundings as a tool to distance ourselves from the past, it makes sense that we should immerse ourselves in as many new memories as possible.

Travelling to new places has been suggested as a solid way to process grief. Each new experience on a trip causes our minds to perceive that more time has elapsed since the cause of our sadness.

Yet, even on every train, plane, and automobile Cupid was nowhere in sight.

Spaces Designed to Cope with Being Love Less

With only one love desire left, my search was getting desperate. If I didn’t find Cupid in a place where people go to cope with being love-less, then I’d be at a total loss.

My final stop: rainy windows.

You’ve seen the trope. A person lost in thought. Staring out of a window on a rainy day. There’s actually a neurological reason why this scenario is so popular.

There’s a part of our brain that activates when we’re looking at beautiful things. The default mode network. These are the regions of the brain that work together when we are in a resting state of self-reflection, remembering, and daydreaming.

And daydreaming about a hopeful future filled with love is one of the best strategies to maintain motivation on the search for it.

So I tuned into all of the weather networks and tracked down every lonely person in every rainy city. This was my last chance to find him. And luck was finally on my side!

He was whispering affirmations in the ear of a reclusive radiologist. I took my chance while his back was turned. I crept as quietly as I could toward his collection of arrows. But my stealth skills have degraded since I was king of the ghosts. And he sensed my presence.

Before I knew it, he was bolting.

Conclusion

I tried to catch up with him, but his wings were giving him a healthy boost. I couldn’t let him get away, so I shouted “I’m sorry”. He stopped for a moment to look at me.

I told him I was sorry for making him kill that guy. He called me a liar. But, before he could turn to flee again I professed “I found him a match”. He paused full stop.

I explained how I felt badly for my prank. So I searched high and low through purgatory for a suitable playmate for the man who was shot. I noted how they’d been together for nearly a century and how happy they were together.

I asked Cupid if he could forgive me. He admitted that he was impressed at my attempt at compassion and said that love is nothing without forgiveness.

I asked him if he could shoot me with one of his arrows. He instead proposed a game of Russian Roulette. He offered to mix a single love arrow among 4 regular ones and then take his shot with whichever one he’d first pick at random. I politely declined.

He did say that he’d see me again soon, so I’m holding out hope.

I hope you’re holding onto hope in your life too.

Sending love your way,

Lamar Elimbo ✌️😁