I spent some time recently thinking about what it means to love myself. How to appreciate my body, how to take care of and speak nicely to myself. Also how to be comfortable with myself, learning that I can be okay being alone. However, the relationships with my partners made me come to the self love journey I am on today. My first “relationship” started when I decided the boy with the bowlcut haircut was cute. I was about 7 years old then. But as you get older, obviously relationships (and friendships even), don’t come about so easily. Now I just turned 18 years old, but I have been through some relationships, all of which shaped my understanding of love all together. So for today’s cup of tea or coffee, as I now prefer, is all about how I would define love!
My first “real” relationship began at the end of my freshman year of highschool. Now when I say “real” I mean we hung out, and he met my parents. I broke it off towards the beginning of my sophomore year, solely because he was a good friend of mine and he treated me that way. Looking back I remember thinking I love him so much that I’m willing to let him go. But in reality I loved him as a friend, I enjoyed spending time with him and that’s about it. I had a few “boyfriends” in between, but we were in the “talking phase” as in you share each other’s company without the work it takes to actually love someone. However the next guy was what I would consider my first real relationship. After dating for a little over seven months, collecting myself and taking time to analyze;I began my first building block of what I found love to mean. I will not go into too much detail about the way he treated me or anything (for the sake of him possibly reading this *insert embarrassed emoji), but I will say I deserved better. However, that being said I dated someone who “loved” me in the only way he knew how at the time. And if it wasn’t for our relationship, I would have been stuck in what I believed love looked like.
This goes into my first lesson, don’t date someone who says “I need you”, be with someone who wants to be with you. The keyword need for me implied that the partner must be with me, can’t function without me, and was deserving of some time to work on themselves. A partner who wants to be with you is one who accepts that you have faults, not all the right answers, and chooses to make things work. A needy partner will project their own faults, insecurities, and so forth on you to fix. Take the advice and skip what I had to go through, don’t try to fix someone, not only is it not your job but the answers are within them not you (no offense lol).
My second lesson hit me quite hard. You can love someone who isn’t actually good for you. I wanted something to work so badly with a partner who didn’t want the same in the end. He was not good for me, and would not be for anyone who wanted to be with someone who is honest with themselves. I loved someone who was inconsistent in their love for me, and emotionally immature. That being said though, I’m glad I took my chances. Because as much as I could act as though he was awful, he really wasn’t. He did make some awful decisions, but he himself was not awful.
This leads me to my third lesson, and the place I am at currently. I read a quote that popped up on my instagram feed (sometimes I think the algorithm knows when I really need to see something). The quote read, “You attract what you are ready for”. I realized for most of my existence I had been searching, finding the right person who will somehow make everything better for me. The truth is the only person who I should have been trying to find, trying to love and better is myself. The reason I was attracting the same type of partners almost like a cycle, was because I had not taken the time to love me first. Now you may be thinking what a cliche, because I thought the same thing whenever I read a silly post about self love. However the circumstance I was in, drove me to read those silly posts and to begin focusing on myself.
I have been doing just that. Trust me it has been bumpy, as new and uncomfortable things tend to be. This is where my journaling has been such a useful tool for me. I have discovered lots of connections as to why I acted the way I did, and why I attracted the people I did. And there are times where it gets lonely. I have grown too much to let a desire for affection continue a cycle I know is not good for me. Besides, I have my cat to keep me company!
To my future partner, hopefully a better one and not another lesson, we will meet when I’m ready! As for right now though, I will remain focused on me.
