Present Value of Your Future Self

what math taught me about love

The best dating advice I’ve ever gotten is a math equation. 

“I have a theory,” my friend said. “That your future relationship depends on what you do today alone.” 

“I don’t get it,” I said. “Don’t you have to date other people to figure out what you want?”  

She begins to explain. 

Basically, I have a general sense of how I want to feel years from now with my future partner. I can picture them vividly. If I let myself think creatively and dream a little, I can imagine what they value, how they treat people, and what our lives might look like together. 

Then, I imagine the type of person that this person might be attracted to. Where might we have met? Would it be through friends or volunteering or work? What might we have in common?

I imagine how I might be years from now, this person who would be ready to be in the type of partnership I want to be in.  

She continues.

Then, I take that future version of myself and I trace the trajectory back to today. To the person I am right now in this very instant.

I ask myself: Am I on the path to becoming that future person? Am I becoming the person I want to be? 

At this point, I’m shifting uncomfortably in my seat. 

My phone is burning in my pocket, my work email vibrating with emails. I think of the guy I’m currently in a situationship with and how I’ve been waiting for him to text me back for three days. I haven’t seen my family recently and I haven’t written in months.

If I projected this trajectory forward, who would I be?

Who would I attract?

She coughs, breaking me out of my nightmare. The spell is broken and we move on to another topic. But this idea never leaves me. 

Over the next weeks, I think about the type of relationship I want.

As I brainstorm, I keep coming back to my parents. Their relationship has always been my main reference point.

They’ve been married for thirty-four years and they are each other's best friend. They go on 80-mile bike rides and 12-hour road trips. I’ve seen how they rely on each other and support each other. 

So when I thought of my future relationship, I knew I wanted it to be like theirs. Not a carbon copy, of course, but rooted in the same respect, kindness, and generosity.

My partner would be many things, but most of all they would be kind. 

Family is super important to me. I dreamed that my future partner would love my parents and siblings and I’d love theirs. I could picture us all standing around the kitchen island chatting.

I hoped that my future partner would encourage my writing. I dreamed of them in the audience at my future book signing one day, beaming with pride. 

We’d both have big ambitions and we’d do them together, on the same team always. Together, we’d take turns being both an anchor and the wind in each others’ sails.

Before that moment, I hadn’t realized that I knew so specifically what I wanted. But when I let myself imagine it, the picture was crystal clear.

I wanted a sweet, stable, patient relationship. 

This idea of imagining our future selves and tracing them back to the present day versions reminded me of a concept I had learned in school.

In finance, there is the idea of future value and present value.

To calculate the future value of something, you take the present value and add how much interest you'll gain each year for however many years the time period is. 

The equation look like this:

If you know the present value, how much interest it’s set to gain each year, and for how many years, you can calculate the future value. 

In a similar way, if you know the future value, how many years, and the interest rate, you can back into what the present value is.

This was exactly what my friend had described about dating, using different terms.

If you know who you want to be in the future, you can trace this back to who you need to be today. 

But I hadn’t ever explicitly imagined who I wanted to be in the future. So I began to dream. 

Me in the future would be writing, I knew that for certain.

Her energy would be bright and vivid, energized by her life. She’d live by the ocean and move her body regularly. She’d host her friends for dinner parties, a magical mix of languages and foods from around the world. She’d wear bright colors and see her family regularly and have a family of her own too. 

The image of this person I hoped to become was clear. But how I would get there was not. 

I looked at my life at that moment and knew that the trajectory I was on would not get me there. I needed to make big changes, fast. I didn’t want to work on Wall Street. I didn’t want to live in a tiny apartment and spend every dollar I made supporting a lifestyle that was draining my life. 

I started with small changes. Tiny habits. Drinking lemon water every day. Sleeping more. Saying no.

The micro changes caught momentum and my courage grew. Over the course of a year, I found a new job, stopped drinking, and booked a one-way flight to Spain.

In my new life in Barcelona, my life grew to fill the empty canvas I gave it. I wrote more than I ever have. I started dancing, took interior design classes, and began hosting dinner parties for my new friends.

In six months, I had my first two essays published in major outlets. In nine months, I spoke on NPR, ABC, and Pinterest. 

I was so focused on building the life I wanted and setting up to grow into the person I hoped to become that I wasn’t searching for a future partner. 

Though I wasn’t looking for him, thankfully, I recognized him. 

When he walked into my life, I knew exactly who he was because I had dreamed of knowing and being known by a person like him. 

Over the months, this magical relationship has been both shocking and not surprising at the same time. Every day feels like both a miracle and a memory. He is everything I dreamed he might be. 

The best thing I ever did for finding love had nothing to do with looking for another person. It had everything to do with looking within myself. 

Because I had spent the time alone understanding how I wanted to feel in a partnership, when I came across it, I knew it.

My body said a wholehearted yes. This is it.   

Instead of looking for love, all I had to do was recognize it.

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thankful for my wise friend Troone for this concept and for Danielle, Alexis, and Maren for this conversation that changed my life.