There’s no disputing that intimate relationships can be challenging at times. But coming together with another human being can often breed immeasurable joy, through the embracing and understanding of each other’s uniqueness.
You don’t necessarily rely on the other person to bring you happiness, it just seems to come naturally – flowing through your days like a stream through a meadow.
Terri Guillemets once said that “Love is when you can be your true self with someone, and you only want to be your true self because of them.” What a simply beautiful sentiment.
But as I’ve discovered over the years, you cannot fully love someone else until you’re prepared to say that you love and accept yourself just as you are.
Relationships are about patterns really. Regardless of who you’re with at the time, those patterns typically follow you to every relationship you engage in.
Many times there’s nothing wrong with that. But if you’re someone still searching for a love to make you feel worthy and complete, you’re in for a bumpy road.
I abide by a very simple rule: if you want to be treated a certain way in any relationship, then you need to demand it.
So many times we put aside our own needs and desires emotionally. We fear asking another person to treat us with more respect, more support and more love – enabling and propagating a relationship model that we’re not satisfied with.
Why do we do that you might ask? Because we’re afraid of being alone.
But as country singer Reba McEntire once sang, “It all comes down to the lesser of two. Alone by myself or alone with you. And if I have to be lonely, I’d rather be lonely alone.”
Everyone is worthy of a real honest love without conditions or circumstances. But we need to be courageous enough to tell ourselves that we truly deserve it – and more importantly why we should demand it.
After all, “The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved – loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.” Victor Hugo
