Introduction: You’re about to listen to to Spouse Hunting, the podcast that dares to ask the question, “Can I use the rules of real estate to find the love of my life?”

And then has the audacity that answer “Yes. Yes, you can.”

I’m your host, Brian Belefant, licensed Oregon Real Estate Broker.

This is episode four.

Brian Belefant: I met Alicia, believe it or not, OKCupid, something like three years ago. We went on a date and it was amazingly fun. Then we went on another, which was also amazingly fun. It turns out there’s a reason our dates were so much fun. This is what she does, she crafts dates for other people, but also for herself.

So we ended up not dating, but she’s become a close friend and a fantastic resource.

Do you own a home?

Alicia Nomdeplume: I do.

Brian Belefant: Tell me about it.

Alicia Nomdeplume: I have been in this house for over 20 years.

When we first bought it, I figured I’d be here for five years. And every five years after that five, I was planning on selling it and continued planning to sell it, and now realize after investing this much time and creating such a nest for myself during the time of COVID, I could not be happier than to have stayed in this spot, so that I have a true nest that’s a reflection of me and my family. And we have a really, really comfortable place to be, so I’m very thankful that I’ve… I don’t know… that I’ve evolved along with it.

Brian Belefant: I like that. Do you have a partner?

Alicia Nomdeplume: That’s an even more complicated question, I feel like I have many partners in my life that each bring something to my life.

I wouldn’t say that I had a single partner. I have many… I have many partnerships, a lot of really important people in my world that I’m very, very grateful for.

Brian Belefant: I like that.

Alicia Nomdeplume: Me too.

Brian Belefant: So, Alicia, where are you finding you today?

Alicia Nomdeplume: We’re finding me in the Pub Pandemic in my backyard. It’s my garage that once COVID hit I transformed into a place that my daughter’s dad and I could each come to at the end of the day after we spent the entire day in the house working at our jobs and caring for our kid and have a separate space other than the space that we’ve been in all day to have a drink with friends, and we used to go out to pubs and movies and restaurants, and now we have Pub Pandemic that we can escape to after a hard day. So I’m in the garage basically.

Brian Belefant: I like Pub Pandemic better.

So in your lifestyle, it’s important to have a place that’s separate from your home, that you get away to. 

Alicia Nomdeplume: Yeah, it’s important to have multiple places that I get away from… I created a garden. I’ve been growing a garden for the last 20 years, and I’ve got 32 places that people can sit in this garden or that I could sit in this garden. For many years, I looked at all of those different places and I’m like, “Okay, I could envision myself sitting there,” but I was too busy on the garden and digging and making things happen to actually sit down. So it was just more of a mental break than a physical break. And then over the last few years, I’ve sort of calmed with the garden as it has grown around me, and I’m now taking it on as “I’m going to sit in all of those 32 places and have a conversation with friends over the course of the summer. So it’s been a fun process.

And I forgot the question that you asked me. I got off on my garden. 

Brian Belefant: No, you answered the question, and so I’m going to ask a follow-up question, you have 32 places that you can sit. Do you have a favorite?

Alicia Nomdeplume: I have a go-to. I have a couple of go-tos. One of them puts me so that I sit above the garden and look over it and to see it from that perspective. And I’ve got another one that I’m clear back in the garden. That’s a bench that sort of everything has grown up around. So I’m now a part of it.

So I, I think those are my two… My two personally favorite spots, and then I’ve got places that I like to sit with other people too, so there’s sort of the alone spots and the partnered or with friends spots.

Brian Belefant: It’s fantastic.

Alicia Nomdeplume: It’s nice to have variety.

Brian Belefant: Yes, it is. I think that’s great.

So tell me how did you get started doing this –– making experiences for people that are more fun than what they would come up with for themselves? Or maybe fun’s not the right word. Maybe there’s more to it than fun.

Alicia Nomdeplume: I think it came from my early professional education and experience, which was in interior design, and I always saw myself as a designer that was able to find out from people what their dreams and hopes and vision was, and then help manifest it. So it’s not me superimposing my style or my ideas or my education on top of –– foisting it onto them. It’s really pulling out what’s inside and then turning it around and showing a back to them. And it’s such a delightful experience to watch people light up once they recognize their own… their own brilliance that they just haven’t tapped into yet. So it’s the same thing, creating a garden, creating an interior space, creating an experience. It’s just mining what the gifts are inside the person and allowing them access to it.

Brian Belefant: So how do you mine that? Do you do have a process or is it just intuitive.

Alicia Nomdeplume: Well, people who put up their profiles, people are meeting online most of the time, so reading what they have presented of themselves, what have you put forward of yourself? And what is you the person that you are going to date put forward of themselves? So taking a look at both of the folks that are there, there’s ways to look up about what people do and where they come from, and a little bit of history. Conversations tell a lot. Just listening, letting people talk and giving them space to tell about themselves and tell their stories and allowing some space for that. Then floating out a few ideas and just seeing how they land. People want to tell you about themselves and we want to be able to talk about ourselves, and it’s nice when somebody will listen, so I just kind of give that listening space and then like I said, turn it back to them and say, “Here’s your brilliance. Where do we go with this?”

Brian Belefant: That makes perfect sense to me. That’s wonderful. So when it comes to actually people… you know most people just come up with their own ideas for dates and without talking to somebody like you or without having a instinct for doing something that isn’t conventional, is there one thing that most people get wrong?

Alicia Nomdeplume: I think people get worried about what the other person is going to think about their idea. They’re worried about that rejection, about the failure of it. But if we don’t bring ourselves to the relationship early and fully, you’re going to spend the rest of the relationship kind of boxing yourself in tighter and tighter. So this is the ultimate opportunity to just like, “Here I am. Is it gonna work or is it not?”

And that freedom of if it doesn’t, “Thank you. We had a wonderful time together. I may have made a new friend, but I’m not gonna waste time down the road trying to please that person.” So I think the mistake is not bringing all of yourself… And just being who you are from the very beginning.

Brian Belefant: That’s a fucking beautiful answer.

You’ve already answered this, but I’m going to ask the same question in a different way, which is, is there something simple that people can do that will improve their chances of having success?

Alicia Nomdeplume: I guess it depends on what your definition of success is.

Isn’t a botched date just as successful as the best date of your life? Because you know something now, right? That it’s not going to work. Or you learn something about yourself –– of what you prefer and what you don’t prefer. What your hard stops are or what you’re interested in. So success is just doing it. I think that’s the greatest thing that you can learn is like every experience you have is a successful experience, even if you don’t want to go do that thing again.

Brian Belefant: If I can read between the lines here or add to it… It sounds to me like what you’re saying is, it’s important to pay attention , too. 

Alicia Nomdeplume: Yeah, it’s really important to pay attention. Yeah, you’ve gotta be present and put yourself out there, be who you are, listen to the other person to find out who they are and enjoy the process. This is the one chance we get to live this life, so… meet the people, meet yourself, get to know yourself, and just have a good time.

It’s kind of simple. Really?

Brian Belefant: Simple isn’t easy, though, is it?

Alicia Nomdeplume: Well, it takes… You have to be willing to take a little bit of risk. Be who you are. And we all fear being rejected. We expose ourselves for really who we are, and then the other person doesn’t immediately respond, there’s a lot of fish in the sea. There’s a lot of experience to be had. And there’s a lot of people that will resonate with a part of you. I think that’s why I am not necessarily primarily partnered in one relationship is there are so many people that bring something joyous and wonderful to my life and then I can bring to theirs, and that’s what we do when we’re dating and as we’re looking for our spouse or looking for our partner, or looking for our people. That’s what we’re doing is we’re finding these people that click in with parts of our life and being joyful in that process and… Just give it a go.

Brian Belefant: Fantastic. Okay, I have two more serious question to ask you. Which one to ask you first?

I hope that’s vodka because you’re gonna need it for this one… 

Do you have a definition of love? And if so, what is it?

Alicia Nomdeplume: Everything, it’s just everything. There’s really nothing that love isn’t… It’s like sex. Sex is everything. Sex is cleaning the toilet. Sex is dancing. Sex is going for a walk and smelling a flower. It’s holding a friend while they cry. It’s the same as love. It’s everywhere. It’s all the time. And there’s nothing we can do to stop it. So I think it’s just… the definition of it is, yes. It’s everything.

Brian Belefant: That’s beautiful. Okay, a question popped into my mind earlier today, and I thought I’d ask you. Assuming that you’d want to have a headstone, what would it say? Is there an epitaph?

Alicia Nomdeplume: What do you want on your tombstone? 

Brian Belefant: Pepperoni and cheese.

Alicia Nomdeplume: Pepperoni and cheese.

Uh… She did. She was. I… yeah, what I want on my headstone…

Stop staring.

At this time of the world, if you can read this, you’re to damh close.

Yeah, um… It’s all yours. Go do it.

I don’t need it to say anything about me, it’s more the message of, this is a blip. This is super brief, what we’ve got here. There’s urgency to living life because it can go at any fucking second, and if you’re not engaging in a way that’s making you happy or bringing something to your life, it’s passing by. And we don’t get to do it again like this… So there’s some urgency to find that strength in yourself, that presence in yourself and the willingness to take the risks to expand your life, to have it be what you want to be.

Brian Belefant: That’s really beautiful.

Alicia Nomdeplume: Thanks. 

Brian Belefant: I’m out of questions, Is there anything that you’d like to add?

Alicia Nomdeplume: Well, I love that you’re doing this. I hope that it’s expanded. I don’t see it as always spouse hunting. It can be friendship hunting, it can be experience hunting, it can be partnership, it can be play hunting, it’s comfort hunting, its all of those things.

Again, we’ve got so many people in our lives that we are different parts of ourselves with and then we become this whole in that kind of collection.

So it’s… I think we’re finding during this time of social distancing how important it is to have people that even if they aren’t right here, skin to skin or within 6 feet, we can still feel them, so those relationships, that community, that support system, that loose web, is important to us in times of celebration and a time of angst. We’re tribal creatures. We need each other.

And don’t be afraid to reach out.

I think that’s what I hope to be able to help people do is build that a wealth of support and friendships and enjoyment and pleasure and fun. I mean, your spouse hunting has… it really has been clicking around in my head of “What is it for myself that I am wanting in my life?” Because I’ve got this beautiful relationship that we’ve known each other for 30 years, and it’s like the relationship with this house of where I wanted to get rid of it so many times, over and over again. It’s like I’m done with it. I’ve gotten as far as I can, and then I’m here for another couple of years and I sort of rework it into something else, and then I’m like, “Okay, I’ve done everything I can, I need a new project.” And then I re-work it again, it becomes something else. And our relationship over the 30 years that we’ve known each other has evolved and evolved and evolved, and I wanted to get rid of it, and then I re-work it and here it… And I know that there are parts of it that both of us are missing in our lives that we are supplementing in, but there’s a strength in continuing to come back to or nurture something that was important in the first place. 

But so I come with a spouse, but I’m still looking for a spouse. But I’m also not looking for the typical… “Let’s all settle in together under one roof and see each other every day.” And there’s something about age, too, that that starts to shift things, so… I don’t know. I think we’re starting to redefine what relationship is and be really honest with ourselves about what we want versus what societal patterns or predefined options are. So I mean, we’re gender fluid, sexuality fluid, experiencing animals at this stage and I hope that we all have an opportunity to fulfill, like I said, this one life. But it’s not always easy to not fall within the exact parameters that are pre-determined. There’s a lot of questioning and uncomfortable-ness and vulnerability that comes with that kind of non-compliance, maybe. You have to think a lot. You have to talk a lot

Brian Belefant: I know you know this, but I’m gonna say it out loud. It’s interesting that everything you just said about your relationship, which is a very fundamental thing, is analogous to what you do with just experiences. I mean, you have to think a lot, you can come at it with your own perspective, and you have to have this understanding that person you’re doing it with is doing it with you as well. And you find your own way. There is a prescribed thing, it’s like, “Yeah, let’s go get coffee.” But not all of us that that prescribed way of doing things, whether it’s just let’s get coffee or how is our relationship structured?

Alicia Nomdeplume: Right.

Brian Belefant: And I love that what you’re saying is, don’t just fall into something. Do what’s right for you.

Alicia Nomdeplume: Right. Be thoughtful about it, and the things that you ask your people to do, that becomes a reflection of how you want to live your life, like you said, we could… I mean, there’s nothing wrong with doing the easy thing and going to get coffee, but maybe we wanna dig a hole together and plant trees. Maybe we want to do a mud run together. Maybe we want to go have high tea. 

What’s the thing that makes you the most uncomfortable? Will you come do that with me? Maybe we wanna get together and sing on a street corner or stomp in puddles because it’s been raining. Do you have rubber boots? I have rubber boots.

Let’s get to know each other out of that zone of comfort and a little bit of play. See what happens.

Brian Belefant: I think that’s super wise. If you’re looking for a relationship, ultimately you’re going to have uncomfortable times. You want to do it with somebody who’s gonna be a good partner.

Alicia Nomdeplume: It’s true. We learn very quickly from each other in times of stress, and life always gives us times of stress. There is no “Well, when things get better” or “When things get easier” or “When things calm down” or “When I lose 10 pounds” or “When my roots aren’t showing because I haven’t seen hair dresser for three and a half months.” There’s always a “If I just wait until I have enough money or I have a car…”

There is no… There’s no tomorrow. There’s no waiting. It’s never going to be perfect. And if it is, then it’s done.

Who wants somebody perfect? That’s too much pressure.

Yeah, come at me with your lumps and bumps in your fears and your dreams and… Let’s see what we can do with that.

Brian Belefant: That’s fantastic.

Alicia Nomdeplume: It is interesting what the perception of success and wealth and abundance and what is enough. I mean it’s important to have enough, to have that strong home. That’s what you help people do is find home and as you’re helping people find their nest, now you’re helping people also find the next piece of human connection. So now you have a place to be and you have the human connection… You’ve got that foundation that you can continue to grow and expand from the whole Maslow’s Hierarchy of Need. 

You are on the bottom. You and I are both in the work that we do, are on that bottom tier of how do you form that sand in the bottom of the bozo, so that when life knocks you over, you come back up? 

Brian Belefant: That’s fucking genius!

Alicia Nomdeplume: We’re the heavy bottom people.

Brian Belefant: Yeah, we’re the sand in the bottom of the bozo people.

Alicia Nomdeplume: We’re the sand in the bottom of the bozo. That’s what we’re helping people find, is just give themselves that solid base because life’s going to be knocking you over all the fucking time, so… Whatever you need to fill that up with, so that you’ve got that solidity, and even if it lays you down for a while, you’re going to… Work your way back up again.

Brian Belefant: Yeah. Thank you so much for doing this!

Alicia Nomdeplume: You’re welcome. It’s just nice to see your face.

Brian Belefant: I know! I haven’t seen your face in so long! it looks the same… It’s a great face.

Alicia Nomdeplume: Is it?

Brian Belefant: Yeah, you should keep it.

Alicia Nomdeplume: Yeah, I’m afraid I have to… 

Brian Belefant: If people want to get hold of you how do they do that?

Alicia Nomdeplume: They can click through your website. There’s tons of great resources there so I’d start with that. And then I’m available at sandwichgirl1000@gmail.com.

So cool! Well thank you for enjoying me! 

Brian Belefant: I always enjoy you! You are such a pleasure! Thank you so for doing this. I so appreciate it.