The most perfect love affair. The one with yourself.
“No one is going to love you exactly like you imagine.
Stephanie Bennett-Henry
No one is ever going to read your mind and take every star from the sky at the perfect time and hand it to you.
No one is going to show up at your door on a horse, with a shoe you lost.
Do you understand?
That’s why you have to love yourself enough, so that any other love just adds more candles to the cake you’ve already iced.”
Can we be honest with ourselves? In life we will encounter many failed relationships. You know the ones I mean? The ones that never quite hit the spot, yet you stayed a little longer than you intended. Hoping that one day it would change and magically transform into everything you had ever wanted, only it never did. At the time you couldn’t understand why it didn’t work but there’s a very simple reason.
The harsh reality is eventually everyone lets you down in some way. Sometimes it may have been unintentional, maybe your expectations were too high, or you simply wanted too much. At other times it was much more deliberate, it was the other person’s way of letting you know they didn’t feel the same way about you as you did them. They were either too coward to tell you or they didn’t want to hurt your feelings by vocalising it. Instead bit by bit they let you down until they left you no choice but to walk away.
The sad but simple truth is the only person in your life that will never let you down is yourself – you’re simply not built that way. Once we come to terms with this and truly understand how to make ourselves happy, all our relationships will feel different whether that be with a lover, a sibling, a friend or a partner.
It can be unsettling to turn your attention inward. Because when you do this, you have to pick up a magnifying glass and really take a long hard look at the person you’re most critical of… you. All the while asking yourself some harsh but honest questions, for example…
Why do I need someone else to fill the emptiness?
Why am I intent on pleasing someone else, even if it doesn’t, please me?
Why do I need to feel needed?
Why can one wrong sentence from someone I care about change my mood so drastically?
And most importantly why do I always feel let down?
If you can be honest with yourself and start to appreciate things in your life and your happiness, you start to realise that you are the only one truly responsible for your own happiness. You develop connections like no other and no longer spend time feeling sorry for yourself and the relationships you endured. Instead, you learn to love and accept yourself and all the beauty you hold within.
You stop setting expectations, because now those expectations have turned into requirements. Requirements that stop you wasting all your time and energy with the wrong person. You no longer seek or need someone else’s approval or love; You are more likely to believe you will find someone who you truly love and who will love you in return. The best part? Bad dates no longer feel like rejection, instead they’ll feel more like a detour on the way to something so much more rewarding, something that is mutually beneficial. In the spirit of ditching expectations here are my requirements, by invitation only.
RESPECT MY TIME.
Understand we both have a set of priorities in life, yours are not more important than mine. I’m prepared to make you a priority, I want you understand that I may not verbalise this to you, but I will demonstrate it in every action. So don’t cancel at the last minute or turn up late. Once is forgivable, twice is passable but after that, you are taking the piss and have just shown me you have zero respect for my time. And someone who has no respect for others is actually demonstrating they have zero respect for themselves.
MATCH MY EFFORTS.
If I make time for you, it’s because I see something in you that makes me want to spend the time with you. You may not be my idea of perfect but I think you’re worth the investment. If you don’t bother making the time for me, you are showing me you don’t think I’m worth your time. No one is that busy that they can’t make the time to spend it with someone they want to. Same goes for messaging and calls. No one is keeping score but if I’m always the one to text or call, you’re basically telling me that you’re really not feeling it, in which case… Asta la vista baby.
KEEP YOUR WORD.
You’d think it would be so easy, wouldn’t you? Yet here we are, and it always seems difficult. You arrange to meet someone on a certain date at a certain time and then the day comes… radio silence. When you check in, you don’t mention it and then they try and rearrange. LOL, I don’t think so. If you tell me you are going to do something, do it. You tell me we’re going to meet, show up. I’m not interested in your excuses, because that’s all they are to me and I’m no longer letting anything slide. Your words are meaningless if your actions don’t support them.
ALWAYS BE HONEST.
For me honesty is at the very heart of any relationship. You tell one lie, you have to spin another 5 to cover that one up. Why? What does it achieve? Nothing, that’s what. So, to the men looking to engage with an older woman, know this. I’m not interested in a toy boy and if you lie to me about your age, I will find out. Same goes for the serial cheater or the man who says he wants a relationship but demonstrates very clearly he wants nothing but a quick leg over. No matter how cute you are, I will dump your sorry ass, quicker than you can count to 10.
BE CONSISTENT.
Now this one is an interesting one. Everyone makes so much effort in the beginning. The texting is relentless, as is the calling. You make an effort to plan dates and care about what you look like, but slowly but surely it peters off. It’s simply not sustainable. Instead, why not start as you mean to go on. If you’re not a texter say so, if you prefer to talk, talk and if you are someone who prefers to sit on the sofa instead of going out, say it. At least this way you give the other person a chance to make up their own mind before the disappointment of being with one person takes over once you turn into someone unrecognisable.
As women we aren’t trained to want, we’re trained to be wanted, but once we shift our mindset to vocalise or wants and needs life becomes unbelievably beautiful and uncomplicated.
And to the men that have graced my life, I want to thank you:
Thank you for not loving me the way I deserved.
Thank you for not choosing me.
Thank you for not being the person I hoped you’d be.
Thank you for giving me the gift of a wakeup call.
Thank you for allowing me to see exactly who I was meant to be and finally…
Thank you for pushing me to find my true happiness. A happiness from within that no-one can disturb.
[…] She really doesn’t care what you think of her, she’s happy in her skin and she understands that the most important relationship she’ll ever have, is the one with herself. She’s not looking to be completed. She is […]