Loving yourself may seem like a very selfish thing, but trust me when I tell you that it is the most selfless choice you can make.
Before I met the man who became my husband, I had some relationships with men that turned out to be absolutely nothing. And not because they had no value, they actually had a lot of merits, but because I still didn’t know how to value myself.
I used to jump from one relationship to another without thinking, without reasoning. I let myself be carried away by the situation, especially because I was terrified of the idea of being alone. Because I didn’t know how to do that.
In order not to face myself, I had been content with many things for a long time. I accepted conditions that instead of respecting me totally canceled me. I let my ex boyfriend humiliate me for gaining weight. I let my first boyfriend use me as he pleased by taking me and leaving me when he preferred, creating wounds in me that are still there. And I let it happen for many years, because I didn’t think there was a different way.
Instead there is a different way.
I learned this after the arrival of a child and many disappointments in love. But I learned it. It takes the time it takes. I’ve been trying to explain it to my sisters for years, but for them, as it was for me, they have to get there on their own, with their own means, and at their own pace. There are no shortcuts (although with my sisters I won’t give up).
I had gotten to the point where I was young, I was a mother, and I was terribly unhappy.
I thought the relationship I was in was the key to getting out of my unhappiness, but it was just the cause. But as happens to many people, getting out of a story that has lasted for years is difficult, it is scary and it seems safer and more comforting to get stuck in it just not to face the situation and get back in the game, to take our life and handle it.
You know what I’m talking about, right? How scary is it to get out of a safe road and plunge into the unknown?
It is terrifying. But jumping can be the craziest and happiest thing in our life.
It was for me. I have chosen happiness.
I was already in love with my husband. I had been for years. But I didn’t run to him. I ran to me first. I gave myself some time for myself, I learned to know myself, to spend time alone and above all to appreciate time alone.
And I have to tell you, little by little I discovered that I am very nice, brilliant and also quite pretty, and it happened. I fell in love with myself!
And it was at that point that I realized I was ready to love someone else.
So I wrote to my husband (yes, I started it) and now, four years later, we’re still here. With an extra child, a home together, a happy marriage. Ups and downs as for everyone, obv! But then we always find one another.
The important thing is to be aware that one does not complete the other, we are already complete on our own. But we make ourselves stronger together, like an extra arm or an extra hand.
We don’t need a partner to be entire.
But a partner is the best cure when we feel broken.
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This post was previously published on Hello, Love.
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