True or false -
“ you need to love yourself first before you can have a healthy relationship”
“ self love is the key to then meeting your soulmate”
“ if you stop looking for love and focus on yourself, the right person will come along”
What do you think? To be honest they are pretty much saying the same thing, so this quiz is a very quick one…
The answer is that they are all VERY false and misleading.
Unfortunately, this is a narrative that we are constantly told by the self-development world and therefore filtered through society as a norm. It would be wonderful if it could be that simple.
WARNING Secret revealed; So girls and boys to meet the happy ever after all you need is a box with a torch, a hamster wheel, a gratitude list and a crystal. Then every night you need to pat your head three times, read the gratitude list whilst repeatedly going round and round and round on the hamster wheel.
My point is, there is no easy way to develop oneself, either in a single status or in a relationship status. The work does need to be done daily and you do need a box of resilience tools; but they will be bespoke to each and everyone of you. You will need a routine that will suit your life at any given time and part of that will be your learning.
AND The biggest learning tool of all is entering into a relationship with another person.
That is when we see our true reflection because we can see our oldest behaviours. This is when the childhood traumas, the shadow work and self-sabotaging cycles appear…as well as the love hormones kicking in spouting the fluffy stuff. It’s a crazy time-travel of familiarity, past, present and future with your intuition shouting wisdom you may want to ignore whilst pleasure seems to be jostling for front position.
The likelihood that you have chosen a partner that reflects your deep work in progress aspects of yourself, as well as your good bits, is extremely high. We tend to drawn to our dramas and family patterns through familiarity.
Your unique coding is almost impossible to confront when you are single, because you are not playing out these roles of old. You venture into more friendships….but Friendships are such a comfortable version of yourself that it’s so easy to just hang around in this coffee shop of delight! Talking from personal experience I’m at my most happiest in this world!
Relationships push you to discover who you want to be on steroids. The drug of new love can be so alluring.
Which is why so many of us get lost in them at such an early stage and just dive into the river of emotion and get carried along into dependencies without stopping for air.
Or we do have an opportunity to observe. To be curious. To watch how we fall in love. We have a choice to not jump into the river and to consider the important stuff such as compatibilities and commitment. This can be the most confrontational self-development journey and therefore the huge potential for growth. And from that growth can be a steadier, more secure relationship with oneself and healthy and committed relationship to another.
So I feel true love is the journey of you. It is intertwined with love for every partner you’ve ever loved, every mistake, and every success, every tear, and every laugh. True self-love is being brave enough to see and accept the entire rainbow of you, hand in hand with those that see and accept it too.
Happy Valentine’s to all of you 💞
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