Do you know who you are?
Not your occupation, your familial relationships, your marital status, or your sexual orientation.
Who you are.
Anyone can venture a guess as to all the boxes one might fit into, but none of those things get to the bottom of who we are as people.
It’s okay if you don’t have a clear-cut answer to this question. Most of us don’t.
You are growing and changing. You can’t know who exactly you are yet because you are still becoming that person.
Especially when we’re young, there are so many things we are trying to figure out about ourselves and the world around us that it can feel impossible to truly know where we’re headed.
If you don’t know exactly who you are, how much do you expect others to know you?
How much do we really know anyone?
At times, parents, friends, and partners can know a person better than they know themselves — but not always.
Think about people in your life. How many of them have the slightest clue about what goes through your head on a daily basis?
If you’re like me, you probably have thousands of thoughts every day, most of which you don’t share with anyone.
We don’t fully know ourselves, and others can’t be expected to fully know us.
. . .
I once came across a quote that stuck with me:
“You can only love someone as much as you know them.”
We can love the person in front of us for who we understand them to be. We can love the thoughts they share, the personality traits they display, the interests they show, and the feelings they express.
But does our perception of a person give us the entire picture?
When you say that you love someone, do you truly love them, or do you love the person you’ve understood them to be?
This is why so many relationships end.
Our understanding of ourselves and others is flawed.
We often don’t know ourselves well enough to know what we need.
And our partners don’t always know what they need, either.
It’s all one big guessing game. For the majority of us, we are going to guess wrong a lot of the time.
In an ideal world, we would find our person as early on as possible and live the rest of our lives happily in love.
But when we think we’ve found that person, especially at a young age, one of two things will happen: you will grow together, or you will grow apart.
What we hope for is that we will grow together, learn more about ourselves, and mature on the same trajectory as the person that we’re with.
The same trajectory…the same time…the same way.
But realistically, how many people actually grow at the same pace?
What is more likely to actually happen is that we grow at different paces. We find that we are each on our own timeline, and sometimes they conflict. Incompatibilities arise. Things change.
People outgrow relationships.
Maybe you mature in a certain area, and your partner doesn’t.
You realize that you want more out of life, while your partner is comfortable with where they are. You are eager to make a change, while they remain complacent.
Maybe, as you learn who they are in light of who you are becoming, the initial attraction is no longer there.
It is possible that the person you thought you loved was a person you never fully knew — or that the person you knew and loved is no longer that person anymore.
This is why, in long-term relationships, knowing your values is so important.
Having shared values is one way to maintain that sense of connectivity as you grow — because you are both likely striving towards the same goal.
If your values differ, or (more often) remain vague and undefined, it is likely that this will come back to bite you later.
If you can only love someone as much as you know them — but you don’t know them because they don’t even know themselves — how much can you truly love them?
. . .
Final thoughts
If you take something out of this, remember:
You can only love someone as much as you know them.
Focus first on getting to know yourself first. Learn your values. Know who you are and what you stand for. Figure out what you’re living for and who you want to be. Determine not only what you want out of life, but what you aim to bring to it.
And, when you look for a potential partner, find someone who is on that same journey.
When you are on the same path in life, change, growth, and maturity will only bring you closer together.
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This post was previously published on Hello, Love.
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You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
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 The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer |
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