Personal Opinion Column by Victoria Falcon
I recently saw a TedTalk a few weeks back called “The person you really need to marry”. Upon seeing the title I was like “Whoa! Is this a fortune teller? Nice!”
Instead, I watched a woman explain how she had been divorced three times. THREE TIMES. She goes on to explain the reason why she feels her marriages failed was because she really needed to marry herself. She needed to accept, and love herself where she was at and begin to grow. I don’t want to give away the whole video in case you want to watch it so here it is:
After watching it, all I could think about was how much I wished everyone knew this.
So, now we are here.
I completely agree with her ideals, because you really can’t have a relationship with anybody else until you have a healthy relationship with yourself.
In my age group I see a spectrum on social media that goes a little something like this: one end claims “I don’t need anyone but me” or “love sucks and everyone is just going to hurt me,” a pretty dark, cynical view.
On the other end, it’s a desperate yearning to be loved and taken care of, which can also lead to a very dark place. I don’t believe you should be on either side of this spectrum, but am also understanding why these are realities for some. I for one know what is like to be on both sides of this spectrum and am working towards what I know to be a healthy starting point.
The first one is bad because love and emotion is what makes us human. When you don’t grant yourself these options, you deprive yourself from learning, and growing.
On the other hand, when you desperately need someone to fulfill your happiness, you a clearly developing an unhealthy dependency.
We need to find the balance, and perhaps most of our “high school” relationships are too naive to see the error in the extremes, but my fear is seeing my friends carry these unhealthy views with them into adulthood.
A balance exists where you do enough self-discovery and spend enough time with yourself to be fully functioning, alone. Then you can go on loving someone because you’re secure in yourself enough to not feel alone when they aren’t around or if they don’t do everything exactly how you want them to do it. You have to be independent, but still learn to depend on others when the load is too big for one, and this is good for all relationships with people. It is confusing and contradicting, but when you have it, you understand the peace of this quality.
We can’t push people away or deprive ourselves of love, but we also can’t rely out inner joy completely on another person. The social media trend of #relationshipgoals isn’t helping. At least the ones I’ve seen. I watch people use other’s relationships to be a model for what they want, and it always ends up being materialistic: flowers, gifts, food, etc. Things that are bought. Other than tangible objects it is people using other couple’s exchanges of messages to be an ideal version of what they want in a person. Sorry to break it to you, but people won’t always say what you want them to, and that’s okay. It has to be okay. You’ll learn to be okay with this when you love yourself enough to say those things to your own self.
Which brings me to my next point: you need to know yourself. A lot of people tend to think they love or know themselves but seldom take time to explore who they are, because too often we’re more concerned with how others, like a potential partner see us, instead of focusing on how we see ourselves first. That won’t work.
So, how do you start to get to know yourself? You might find a job or hobby you love, and let it be something that builds up your confidence in who you are, and what you want to be in the world.
More often than I would like I hear people in high school say, “I can’t wait until I’m married with kids.” But seriously, IT CAN WAIT. You have to learn how to function by yourself first. When you discover who you are, you find what you want in a counterpart, and usually it’s less about some goal with the way they hold your hand, and more about their character when things are tough. Or perhaps someone who has a personality that gives you life and inspires you.
For me, all I need is someone who is generous, and is willing to be nice to everyone… with a nice car. And who is rich. (I said I was working on it guys.)
The point is, I know what I need to do with myself in order to have any healthy relationships. I really don’t care if I receive gifts. All of the value of material items eventually goes away, because you value aspects that are much more profound about who the person is.
So stop posting about #relationshipgoals, and spend a little more time reflecting and posting about your own inner-goals in order to be the person you need to become in order to have that healthy relationship at the right time. Control what you can; yourself. When you feel good about who you are, you assign your own worth and value, and nobody can add to or take away from that.
Healthy relationships are about companionship with a separate, whole, complete individual, and not about living your life through each other. When you do that, you let others determine your happiness.
If you want to start forming a better relationship with yourself, the first step is to really spend time with yourself. That doesn’t mean being a recluse, but maybe just indulging in things you like to do, and constantly discovering the things you value, and find joy in doing on your own.
Good self-talk is a huge part of the process as well, making sure not to wait for the approval or affirmation of others, and instead being comfortable with telling yourself “good job.” The journey to self-love and self-discovery is different for everyone, and there is not a pre-determined number of steps or exact blueprint for it. I can’t even tell you the point of where it begins, if I’m being honest, but I know you need to take that long look in the mirror, and just try to make conscious decisions to be better on your own, before you can be better for someone else. And when you look yourself in the mirror and like what you see on your own, you’ll be ready to forge that healthy relationship. And once you’ve done that self-work, you can, like a proud mentor, tell yourself, “you’re ready child.”