Loving Yourself is a Non-Negotiable
When Z and I started dating, we were both on our own healing journey. He had been in chiropractic school and joined a club on campus that put him into a community that jump started his journey. I had been living on my own and beginning to heal my disordered eating which put me deeply into nutrition and learning how to properly nourish my body (which of course led to so so much more from there).
This gave us a ton to talk about on our first few dates. We were both newly diving into a holistic lifestyle and I loved having someone who got it. It absolutely bonded us from the very beginning.
However, I wish I could say that it was all butterflies and rainbows from the beginning. I will never sugar coat that healing can come with many challenging moments. Learning how to navigate the way you want your life to look while still living your current life isn’t simple. Trying to completely redesign your lifestyle in the chaos of life is not for the weak.
The reason I created an entire company around teaching people how to develop the lifestyle they desire while in their current fast pace of life is because I fell on my face, often, when trying to figure it out. I did not find my health and happiness with ease, but once it finally started clicking, I recognized how much easier I could have made it on myself. Now I want to support others in bringing more ease to their own journey.
While I was focused on my physical health with nutrition and dipping my toes in the other areas of my health, Z took a cannonball jump into his mental health and mindset (how else do you survive chiropractic school?!) With our focus in different places as well as our life situations in different places, we had our fair share of rough patches as we figured out our own lives while in the process of beginning to mesh our lives together.
I will be honest, during some of our disagreements, Z would say things like “We have to focus on our own selves if we’re going to show up for our relationship.” And it pissed me off. Yet, here I am willing to admit I was wrong in my thought process about this. I was scared to put working on our relationship on hold. I assumed if we were going to only focus on ourselves, then our relationship wouldn’t survive if we didn’t put focus there. I feared that we would focus on ourselves and he would outgrow me and not want to be in this relationship. I wanted our relationship to survive and be where we desired it to be. However, my fear of losing the relationship kept me stuck. I also discovered something else that was blocking me.
Thank goodness for the never ending patience of my now husband as I worked through all of this (because this was not a few months' time span, it truthfully took me a few years). Over time it slowly began to click for me. As I became more willing to dive into this concept I revealed the block. My self-love level was not anywhere where it needed to be.
I slowly started to see how I was reaching for external validation because my internal talk was garbage. As I had mentioned, I was in the middle of healing disordered eating. When I got to the root of what drove this, it was my self-worth.
I searched for approval externally through my relationships, my career, my size, my outward appearance. My life was chaotic because I was too scared to go within to calm the storm. However, I found that once I was brave enough to slowly chip away at what I needed internally, the clouds began to break apart.
Over the years, our relationship has continued to get stronger because we are both putting in our individual work, which then allows us to face our relationship needs with more ease. (And let me remind you, we have learned through failing. But being brave enough to try, fail, and learn is sometimes the route that is needed.)
Here is what I have personally learned:
When I was honest with myself, I could see that a lot of issues I saw in our relationship came from my own internal battles. When I came from a place of communicating my struggles or discomfort instead of putting blame on him, conversations had a better chance of going smoothly and a chance for things to be resolved.
I had to allow myself to be loved. When you don’t have your own self-love, you feel fearful about letting anyone else in. Self-sabotage was strong. I continued to put up a wall. It was on me to consciously bring those walls down and believe that I was safe enough to do so.
Love survives on communication AND consciously listening. Just as much as you want to communicate your needs, you need to also be willing to listen to the needs of your partner. Even though our needs might not make sense to the other person, we had to respect that and learn how to support them how they needed.
Patience for myself and Z. When you know the internal battles and what you are facing, you start to see why your partner may be acting the way they are. In understanding myself, I got better at giving Z grace (without resentment). We both were able to give each other that. We stopped taking things personally and recognized when the other one needed a little extra support.
I had to be willing to learn and grow. When you get into a relationship, you are likely strong in your ways. You have your way of living and sometimes change can be overwhelming and annoying. There are things I desire for my life but it’s not a straight path to get there. I had to unlearn and learn so much. I had to dig deep for the root cause of the way I was reacting or behaving. It felt so draining at times but at the end of the day, it was the only way to the other side. You can’t go over it, you can’t go around it, you have to go through it.
A true Conscious Love is 10000% available for you. If this is an area that feels stuck for you. Dig deep. Take time to reflect. Maybe even take time to journal.
-How would you rate your self-love?
-How could your level of self-love be affecting other areas of your life?
-What small things can you start doing to slowly enhance your own self-love?
Even if you don’t know where to start with this, awareness is key. Be brave enough to communicate your need of working on this to your partner. If you desire a relationship and see that your own self-love is blocking it, talk to a friend about it. A partner or friend can give you the encouragement and support you need in catching positive momentum toward finding your self-love.
Here are some books that supported my self-love journey:
