True Love
Hello lovely, Your love story begins with you. Even if you have been in a million different relationships you will, one day, discover that the most important one you are in is with yourself. So often we seek relationship with the other. We look for our 'better half', the one who will complete us. We look everywhere but inward to find the reason, the answer, love. We are rarely taught to court or romance ourselves. We are not encouraged to learn about what we want, need, refuse to live without and then taught to provide those things for ourselves. Instead we are told how that we should do this or that to find the "right" partner. We are shown ways to lie about our actual selves in order to gain affections of another.
After some time we learn that getting another doesn't complete us, or we find someone needing complimentary healing and believe that we have found that other half. Still something happens, someone dies, we get ill, we have an awakening to self in some way. We realize that knowing ourselves, loving ourselves has been the answer all along. We learn that the ache we feel even when we are happily coupled, comes from being a shitty partner to our souls. We learn, through some form of miraculous events, that if we don't sit with ourselves and learn to get along with our selves we really are fucked. Or we get dumped and no one wants to date us and we are forced to figure it out. Either way, we learn.
The hard part is we don't know where to begin. We don't know how to 'date' ourselves… It seems cooky to ask your self out on a date. What if you say no??? What if YOU reject yourself??? Man, that would be rough. Alas, it won't happen. But the worry around it is real. The truth of the matter is it is simple to date yourself. Do what you would want someone else to do for you. You want flowers, buy them. You want to get taken out to a nice meal, TAKE YOURSELF OUT!!! Get over being afraid of being alone or make a nice dinner at home, with candles and music and the whole nine. Ask yourself the questions you would ask a potential lover. Go to a spa or take a bath. Get a massage or give yourself as much of one as you can. Focus on self-care like you are the most important person in your life, because you are. See what shakes out. See what emotions you uncover.
The next step, to falling in love with yourself is accepting all of you. Love yourself like you are the child you found sitting at your doorstep. The child that is eager to please, means well and is sometimes just misunderstood. Love that child, yourself, with every ounce of your being. Period. Name that child. Speak to her or him like you are helping her grow up, showing her how to love herself and grow with a stable, supportive platform underfoot. When you begin to see yourself as innocent, as love, love is all you will be able to have for her/him.
It will take work. It will take long, hard work. You will have great days and days where you want to break up with yourself. You will have days where you feel like you've been dumped by you and where you want to be with anyone else but you. You will miss drowning yourself in another and being ignorant to this necessary self-love process. Suck it up and get over it. You are always worth it.
xo
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