Self Care and Relationships
Treasure Yourself!
No one else can complete you.
Your relationship isn’t going well. They don’t get you, no matter what you do to be seen and heard. Question: do you get you?
Newsflash, right from the jump: we all have blind spots in our self-image, and those can create a mass of confusion about why others don’t see us the way we want them to. We feel holes in our hearts because others aren’t filling them, which is one thing that leads to a cycle of relationship failure.
Those holes can only be filled by our own self-love.
If you don’t love yourself properly, no one else will know how to either. And you must love yourself in both the good and the bad.
April Eldemire, a licensed marriage and family therapist (LMFT), wrote in her article “Self Love Is the New #RelationshipGoals” that “…as complicated as it is to find happiness in you as a person, it’s a must end-goal for a healthy relationship.”
She explains that finding our authentic selves involves deep introspection of both the good and the bad experiences we’ve had. Let’s not kid ourselves about that process — it might be painful as you go through it. Hiding from who you truly are and what you’ve been through ultimately hurts worse.
Don’t give anyone permission to love you less by showing them that you love you less. Don’t rob yourself of someone’s authentic love by holding back the parts of yourself and your human experience that you don’t particularly care for.
You are who you are, and you’ve been through what you’ve been through. Sure, there are things about your life that you aren’t proud of — who doesn’t have those? Do they define you as a person, or do they help inform the person you’ve become by learning from them?
Learn from your past. Learn who you truly are. Learn to love that person, warts and all.
Jerry Maguire is wrong — no one else can complete you. And you can’t complete them. Until you realize that the whole of you — the good, the bad, the in-between — is enough for you, no one else ever will be.
Hit me up at frankvaughn@gmail.com sometime. I’d love to hear from you!
