Hello!
My name is Erik Lönnroth, and I am looking to meet the love of my life. I’ve written this doc to help you decide whether I'm someone worth getting to know. I’ve tried to be as honest about my shortcomings as I am about my strengths.
💁♂️ About me
I’m 39 years old, 175cm (5'9) and fortunate to be in excellent health. I’m from Sweden but live in Cape Town and currently work remotely for a strategy consulting firm based in London. I triangulate between these three locations in order to maintain my career, friendships, and family ties. I’m fluent in Swedish, English and French, and can get by in a handful of other human and computer languages.
As much as I love Cape Town for its stunning nature and colourful characters, I would consider relocating for the right person.
I don’t have any kids, but hope to one day get married and start a family. If you have kids, that’s perfectly fine, as long as you’re open to having a few more.
🔎 How I view things
If I have a superpower, it’s my ability to observe a situation from multiple perspectives. I look for the grain of truth in each point of view, rather than rejecting any as wholly wrong or bad. I then seek to find a way forward by integrating the nuggets of wisdom from each perspective into a coherent whole. Sometimes this process can make me slow at decision making. But once I’ve decided, I don’t tend to look back. To balance out my analytical tendencies, I appreciate having a partner with a well honed intuition. Someone who can say “this feels right” and trust her gut. Importantly though, she needs to be good at reasoning from first principles so we can resolve disagreements respectfully.
🛶 Marriage is a vessel
Although I wouldn’t describe myself as conventionally religious, spirituality is the foundation of my life. I maintain a daily meditation practice that has taken years to cultivate, but I’ve finally found the key to consistency. Once or twice a year I attend Zen retreats in Europe or the US. These periods of intense practice have frequently sparked profound awakenings for me, leading to greater clarity, connectedness, and wisdom.
I would like my partner to walk the spiritual path with me, not as my student or teacher, but as my equal. Your practice doesn’t necessarily have to be sitting meditation; it could be yoga, breathwork, prayer, embodiment practices, or anything else that opens your heart and mind. What matters is that you approach it with utmost dedication and deep curiosity. Ultimately, I view marriage as a vessel for two individuals to experience the Divine through Love, and I want my wife to share this vision for our relationship. That doesn’t mean that everything we talk about has to be imbued with the language of sacredness — 99% of the time it won’t — only that we have a shared understanding of our deepest purpose on this planet: to help each other awaken. Whether you believe in God or not matters less to me than your capacity to take on each day recognising the precious gift that it is to simply be alive! My greatest fear is finding myself on my deathbed facing the bitter realisation that I held back out of fear, never daring to love fully.
🤓 Live to learn
I’ve dedicated my career to building innovative approaches to learning, mostly in Africa, where educational institutions are currently failing half a billion children. Over the years I’ve launched literacy interventions in Kenya, developed tablet-based teaching solutions in Zambia, and run an online mathematics tutoring startup in South Africa. At times a Quixotic mission, it has nevertheless been immensely fascinating and fulfilling.
I have an insatiable curiosity about people and things. I subscribe to a wide array of newspapers, blogs, and podcasts on everything from finance and technology to psychology and history. Admittedly, this sometimes feels like drinking out of a firehose, and I’m increasingly wondering whether I might in fact be better off on a minimal information diet. If we end up dating, one of the ways you can help me stay present is to keep reminding me to put my phone/laptop away. Preferably in another room.
🌍 Pole to pole
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that as someone who constantly seeks to integrate different perspectives, I divide my time between northern Europe and southern Africa. Africa is vivid, colourful, crazy, and often dysfunctional — it unlocks my adventurous spirit while allowing me to appreciate the things we take for granted in the developed world. Europe, on the other hand, offers me career opportunities, family ties, and cultural belonging. As much as I would love to continue having one foot in each continent, I’m also prepared to give that up and commit to one location for the sake of marriage, if my partner is unable to follow my migratory patterns.
🐺 Into the wild
I love being active and staying in shape. I’m training for an ultra trail race later this year, which requires a lot of running and functional fitness. I’m generally a fan of anything to do with mountains and the sea, such as hiking, climbing, skiing, sailing, and surfing.
At least once a year I like to go on a proper adventure, camping out in some remote wilderness far from civilisation, swallowed up by the silence of mountains and the twinkling of stars. Though I occasionally crave the restorative benefits of escaping off-grid all on my own, most of the time I want to bring my woman along to experience the majesty. Hopefully you’re the kind of lady who loves the outdoors and doesn’t mind a little dirt under her finger nails.
🫃Let’s make a food baby!
When it comes to sustenance, I’m a discerning omnivore. I enjoy cooking and I love trying out new restaurants. On a Sunday morning, I’ll walk the extra mile for specialist coffee or an artisanal bakery. However, as much as I love the finer things in life, I’m also happy to have a relaxing evening and order takeaway (but please read the most recent reviews, just to be sure!).
I drink alcohol in moderation, and often go dry for weeks at a time. I don’t smoke or take drugs. I’d like to keep my mental and physical faculties sharp for many decades to come, and if we’re to grow old together, it’s important to me that you also look after your body and mind.
🪘Music fuels the soul
My friends and I often get together and host impromptu musical jam sessions. We play, sing, dance, chat, and party like this most weekends. It’s a blast and one of the most amazing ways of kicking off steam. Sometimes our jams attract more than 30 people — all levels welcome! The friendships forged over the years at these gatherings have led me to various spinoff hobbies and pursuits, including freediving, motorcycle trips, and launching a business.
☯️ The best and worst of me
Integrity, intellect, calm, discipline, kindness, generosity, adventure. These are the qualities I have to offer. But you’re likely to also encounter judgment, doubt, and withdrawal. That is how I'll react when you let me down. I experience disappointment viscerally, and my instinct is to pull away, creating distance. Softening into faith and forgiveness instead of descending into doubt — that’s The Work for me. But the silver lining is this: as much as I can dish out the tough love, I’m also good at receiving it without defensiveness or deflection. You can be radically honest with me, and I will listen attentively, seek to understand your perspective, and appreciate you for having the courage to speak your mind.
🧲 What attracts me
I'm turned on by women who are fully, unapologetically themselves. Those who have the courage to drop carefully maintained facades in favour of a disarming realness. Those who, while working to be more loving and compassionate, also honour and acknowledge their Shadow. I want to know both the saint and the sinner within. A woman who shows up fully is willing to challenge taboos, confess her deepest desires to her partner, and expand emotional and intimate boundaries. By maintaining a non-judgmental space where no topic or question is off limits we allow our lover to open the kimono all the way - physically, psychologically and spiritually.
A marriage will lose its spark unless we find ways of continuously surprising each other and ourselves. The juicy bits are hiding in the shadows, and it is our sacred practice to bring those aspects into the light and own them.
💚 Green flags
I don’t expect you to tick all of these, but they’ll give you an idea of the qualities that would make me jump in with both feet.
- Speaks from the heart
- Keeps promises, big and small
- Not too concerned with what others think
- Cultured and deeply curious about the world
- Eloquent writer and/or speaker — it correlates with being a good thinker
- Has the courage and determination to do hard things, like completing a PhD, growing a business, publishing a novel, or being a competitive athlete
- Acknowledges her trauma without making it into an identity
- Maintains fun-loving, kind, ambitious friends
- Has her financial life in order, though I recognise that sometimes life deals us lemons
- Decent dancer (I love to shake ma booty!)
Over to you
If you found your way to this page through some algorithm and don’t have my contact details, you can send me an email. I will respond to every message. If I’m not your cup of tea, but you have a cute friend you think might be into me, feel free to share this page with her.
Thank you for reading!
