What is LOVE for you? Taly Matiteyahu answers.
By night, Taly works to build Blink, a new virtual blind speed dating app inspired by a revelatory experience at a blackout restaurant eight years ago. Making connections with strangers based on conversation alone, free of looks-driven assumptions, sparked the thought: would people date a wider variety of people and find more satisfying relationships if they were able to make an emotional connection with someone before swiping left? In 2020, she finally began turning the vision into reality and hopes to change online dating’s looks-first paradigm and, one day, move the concept beyond the dating world.
By day, Taly works at an AI-powered legal tech company as a Product Manager, having previously worked as a lawyer at a NYC law firm and as a legal operations professional at Netflix and Datadog. Taly earned her Bachelor’s degree from New York University in 2011 and her Juris Doctorate from Columbia Law School in 2015.
While Taly has many passions and interests, being around animals makes her feel best. She has two dogs and often says that humans don’t deserve their furry companions, who love so openly, freely, and unconditionally.
🔵 _ _ _ _
Imagine that from this moment on, the verb “to love” does not exist anymore. How do you express yourself when you feel love? In words, actions?
Different people have different ideas of how to express and understand the feeling of love. There is a reason people have categorized and identify with different “love languages.”
Some believe words of affirmation, regardless of whether or not they’re a direct expression of love, indicates the feeling of love. They understand words of encouragement, support, and care, about them and the things they care about, as expressions of love. Others interpret acts of service, such as doing the laundry, cooking dinner, and running an errand, as an expression of love.
I personally understand love through action. Words mean little to me without action to prove intent. This is true even in a world where the verb “to love” exists — one can say “I love you” a million times, but if you won’t show me that you love me, I just won’t believe you.
🔵 LOVE
You have lived one month without using the word love. Then, it suddenly re-appears, but in the dictionaries it is without definition. You are the person to write it.
love (noun): the feeling of wanting to grab and squeeze something because you can’t handle all of the other feelings you’re experiencing about it
love (noun): the desire to take action for other people to show you care about them
love (noun): a strong feeling of connection to someone or something
🔵 Out of LOVE
In which situation (or inner state of being) did you feel most disconnected or excluded from love? Can you remember and share the thoughts that you were thinking in this state of being?
I come from a fairly traditional family with a patriarchal culture. We love each other deeply by virtue of being family, but also suffer from holding expectations about the roles people should play and have largely failed to build relationships with one another as adults.
Interfamily fights result in a lot of guilt and delegitimization of feelings, which makes me feel disconnected and excluded from love. Without empathy and someone making an effort to understand my perspective, it feels like we’re trapped in a cycle of expectations that will never align with reality.
🔵 Returning into LOVE
When you have been out of Love, how do you help yourself to re-enter?
I spent a few years working as a lawyer after graduating from law school. I was miserable, and the feeling quickly took over my life. After years being an overachiever who excelled in school and at work, I was completely unmotivated and uninterested. I started questioning my work ethic, my capabilities, and my self-worth. During all of this, after directing so much disappointment, anger, and frustration at myself, I fell out of love with me.
Eventually, I decided I was too young to spend the rest of my life miserable and that I could reclaim my time, passion, and self-love. Without knowing what I really wanted, I began exploring other opportunities. I worked on side projects, read books about transitioning careers, and focused on finding something that could motivate me. With time, I realized that the problem wasn’t me. My lack of desire to do that specific job didn’t mean I was a slacker — it just meant that I needed to apply my skills and passion elsewhere. My feeling of self-love returned when I started focusing on work that I was passionate about.
▷Ask me a question about LOVE
What is the hardest part about loving someone (and if I can sneak in a second question here, what’s the hardest part about letting someone love you)?
Mirjam:
For me it is: letting them fully be human. Which also means: permitting myself to fully be human and imperfect.
You may sneak a second question in :) the hardest part is to accept that I am fully lovable — as I am, right now.
🔵 Almost Lovers
Let me start by saying what an almost lover is for me. An almost lover is a person, with whom you feel SO yourself, SO creative, SO in love that you feel — this is my life partner. However, an almost lover does not want to be with you. Did you have an experience like this? And if so — did your almost love story lead to important inner and outer transformations in your life that you are now grateful for? Which are your favorite two ones?
I’ve had a few almost lovers, although I define them differently. To me, an almost lover is someone you love deeply and fully, someone who brings out a part of you that other lovers never have, but for whatever reason, isn’t a fit for you as a life partner.
My experience with almost lovers has been transformational. They made me see relationships and myself in a different way, made me examine what I want from a partner, and made me understand and accept that no one is a perfect, 100% match for another.
Couple’s therapist Esther Perel has said that most people will have at least two or three marriages or committed relationships in their lives — and some of them will have it with the same person. As we go through life, we meet people who bring out different parts of ourselves and we change. Sometimes those changes mean an existing relationship won’t serve us anymore and sometimes those changes result in our existing relationships adapting to new dynamics and needs.
While some people believe in soulmates and “the one”, I believe that there are many people in the world we could each have beautiful love stories with. An almost-love isn’t a failure — it’s just a not-right-now love or maybe a for-now-but-not-forever love… and that’s beautiful and special in and of itself.
🔵 On Leaving
What happens to (your) LOVE when a partner/ crush/ lover — someone you have been in love with — leaves you?
When a partner leaves you, one tends to go through stages of grief for the relationship, usually along the lines of denial, anger, sadness, jealousy, apathy, acceptance, and hope.
It’s easy to look back on past relationships and see them as “failures.” In reality, they’re just relationships that one party outgrew or matured beyond. While some people marry their high school sweethearts and don’t experience multiple relationships, most people will go through multiple relationships over the course of their lives. Wouldn’t it be beautiful if we started seeing the ashes of our past relationships as opportunities for a phoenix to rise rather than baggage that we weigh ourselves down with or use to diminish ourselves?
🔵 LOVE Quotes
There are many love-quotes out there. Which is your favorite one on true romantic love — and why?
Louisa May Alcott said “love is a great beautifier.”
So often we believe lust and attraction are step one to love. But as Amy Chan, author of “Breakup Bootcamp — The Science of Rewiring Your Heart,” has said, chemically speaking, love is created by three mating drives: lust (driven by testosterone), attraction (driven by dopamine), attachment and bonding (driven by oxytocin). We’re used to seeing love born from lust and attraction, but in reality, these mating drives are not necessarily chronological. As we develop connections with someone and build attachments to them, our attraction to them grows. Love beautifies someone — physically and beyond.
▷ Ask a question that you wished someone would have asked you
What do you love to do and is there a path you can follow that will allow you to live out that love everyday?
Thank you!
Follow BLINK on Instagram.
What is LOVE for you?
is a Love interview series by author Mirjam Grupp.
Share what love is for you. Get in contact at bymirjam.com.
