Welcome to Built For Love, a podcast about dating with intention, loving with purpose, and navigating relationships with death. I'm your host, Javier Ortega, a life and love architect, and this isn't just a podcast. This is my journey. This is our journey. You see, built for Love isn't just a concept. It's me. It's my life. Love has been one of the most significant, if not the most significant parts of my journey. Like many, I love, love, it's what we seek, what we long for. What we are inherently made of, and something I've discovered is that I wasn't always able to articulate what I needed in love because I didn't fully understand where I was. I was aware and I knew the type of love that I desired and that I, the, the type of love that I felt I deserved. But if I didn't know where I was at within myself, how could I possibly navigate my way there? I'll put it this way, it's like putting in a destination into maps. I can know where I wanna go, but if I don't know my starting point or if the system doesn't recognize my current location, there's no way it can get me. Directions to my destination. It's a good one, right? So for me, the work that I've been doing is diving deep into understanding where I am now, so that I can clearly articulate what it is that I truly need and desire and love. Everyone has their own formula, their own personal makeup, and the more that we can understand ourselves. The more we can show up in relationships with clarity and intention. Love isn't just about finding someone. It's about knowing yourself well enough to know how you need to be loved, how you show love, and how to communicate that with depth and authenticity. For me, after departing an 11 year relationship a few months later, I eventually entered a deeply transformative connection. I now recognize was my twin flame experience For me, that love was so healing and it opened me up in so many ways, but it also surfaced and exposed the parts of me. I hadn't fully faced and healed the parts that were me getting in my own way. I had asked the universe or God for something profound, and when it arrived, I realized I wasn't quite ready for it. So when that relationship ended, I stood still and I turned inward. I spent, I spent months with myself in celibacy, meaning I, I didn't seek partnership, dating, or sex, not outta fear, but because I had no appetite for anything outside of my own healing. And for the first time. I had to deeply face the ways in which I had been loving from a place of seeking validation and seeking to be seen and heard. I had to sit with the truth that I had spent much of my life pouring into others the way I wish I had been poured into. But love when it's not rooted in authenticity, can become performance, and I no longer wanna perform love. I wanna live it. That's the thing about love. It's not something we chase. It's something that we are, this podcast isn't just about dating with intention. It's about showing up and loving with intention. It's about relationships in all their complexity, the beauty, the challenges, and the growth that comes with them. So we'll be diving into it all. Being single, dating, long-term relationships, marriages, separations, breakups, and all that healing that follows. We're gonna talk about dating after divorce, being a single parent, conversations about LGBTQ plus dating, heterosexual dating, and the modern or, and the realities of modern love that aren't black and white. Love isn't one size fits all. Relationships aren't linear, and this space is about embracing that truth. Love isn't just, isn't just physical or emotional, it's also spiritual. So I'm excited. I'll be bringing in some astrologers, healers, guides, and spiritual experts to explore deeper connections. How do the stars align in love? How does our energetic blueprint shape how we connect? Um, also, before we go any further, I do want to take a moment to acknowledge something very important. Keep in mind this podcast is a labor of love and a journey of learning. It's my first podcast and as I navigate this new medium, I'm learning as I go. The quality might not always be perfect, whether you're watching it or hearing it listening or both. Um, but know that I poured my heart into every episode. I didn't take any courses or classes for this. I probably should have, but I did follow my intuition and passion, so I have to get some points for that. Um, I also wanna give a special shout out to Ryley Scott, the host of How Ya Healing for his guidance and support in starting up and creating this podcast. And to my incredible best friend, Eddie Val Dinos, my sounding board, my unofficial manager, my writer die. Thank you for always, always showing up for me over and over and over and over and over again, um, and for being the second set of eyes and Ears for this project and to everyone who offered encouragement or helped me. Shape this behind the scenes. I can't thank you enough. I truly, truly can't. I really hope this podcast expands the way you love. Whether you're married in a relationship, single dating, or simply in a season of self-discovery, love touches us all and as a wise man once said, if this resonates with you, please take it. If it doesn't simply leave it, because I promise that one of these episodes will reach out to you at the time that it's supposed to. You know, for me as a life and love architect, my work is about deconstructing what no longer serves us so that we can build something real. That's what I had to do in my own life. I dismantled old stories, survival habits and beliefs that told me I had to earn love instead of simply being love. Part of my personal story is I grew up feeling unseen and that shaped how I showed up trying to be everything for everyone. The fixer, the one who could make it all better. Deep down, I was trying to give the the love that I never received, and many of us do this some in different ways, some more intensely than others, but the root is often the same. We want to love and be loved in return. That's why this podcast exists. Built for Love is about stripping back the layers, having real conversations, and doing the work to return to the truth. We were born built for love. And life may try to make us forget that, but love is who we are. Like for me, I may be single right now, but I've never felt more full. I am love and I am so loved, and I'm so grateful, and I know that in divine order, the right person will show up. Someone who expands my peace, connects with me on all levels, protects my energy and loves me as deeply as I love me because I can offer that. That's why we're here, because I want that for you too. So just a reminder of what's to come. Throughout this podcast, we're gonna talk about dating with clarity, breaking patterns, learning self-awareness, and having the kinds of conversations that shift everything. I'll be joined by mentors, friends and experts, people who've inspired me to see love differently and more truthfully. Because when we stop seeking love as something outside of us and start recognizing it as something we already are, hmm. I promise you everything changes. So once again, I'm Javier. I'm not only your life architect. I'm your life and love architect. Welcome to Built For Love. Welcome to the Journey Back Home to Love. To self to truth. Let's begin.