I have an important question for you. Are you looking for someone to love or are you looking for someone to love you? Of course we all want someone to love us and accept us for who we are but going about dating and relationships with this point of view is the very reason a lot of us settle for relationships we don’t really want. We find someone we feel loves us and we lock our hearts up for this one person thinking that we’ve found “the one”. But this isn’t the right point of view. You need to find someone to love. Someone that you love and want. This point of view will set you free and bring you the most joy in love. Let me explain why starting with a perfect example.
A few years ago I was still learning to not only accept myself but to love who I had become and to love my life. I still had doubts about myself and with these doubts still lingering, I felt I had to find someone who would accept me and my situation as a single mother. I felt I had to find someone who would love me and that their love for me would be enough for me to love them back. Like so many I didn’t believe I could find a man with all the qualities that I wanted. What’s the saying? “All the good men are gone?” Well if you believe that all the good men are gone and you’ll be lucky just to find someone who loves you and that the other way around won’t matter, then you may as well just stick to being single for the rest of your life.
Anyway, I found someone, a really wonderful guy actually, who accepted me and loved me. He was very attractive, successful, smart, and diverse and he wanted me. The feeling of being wanted was something I hadn’t felt in a while and I was so blinded by how good it felt that I mistook this feeling for being happy. It’s great to feel wanted by someone but you can’t let someone else’s wanting of you to replace how much you want yourself…how much you value your own happiness. For me, his wanting me temporarily filled a void. This void was me not wanting myself. I felt that being a single mother and being older decreased my value when it came to finding love. I had yet to learn that my value is determined by me and only me. Well as my journey in finding myself went on and I started to value myself and accept myself more and more, I started to realize that I no longer needed for him to want me. I wanted myself and in awakening I realized that I really wasn’t happy with this man and that my unhappiness had been masked by the void he filled. Without needing him to want me, he really had nothing that I wanted (besides his physical attraction) and so I left the relationship. Now I had tried before to leave this same relationship and I was a disaster but that was before I had learned to love myself. This last time…well let’s just say I have yet to shed a single tear over it. Not because he was bad to me or anything (he was actually wonderful to me) but because I had grown and I was excited to apply my new wisdom. I was ready to find someone to love because my happiness is now more important than anyone’s acceptance of me. In believing that I can find someone to love, someone who possesses everything I want in a partner is further proof of how much I value the love I have for myself. I no longer need anyone to accept me because I accept myself.
Looking for someone to love you. We all talk about wanting to find someone who will love us and of course finding someone to love us is important but guess what? Love is a one way street. It really is! When you care about how you feel and your happiness, you set out to find someone that you will love and one of the reasons that you love this person is because they love you. When you put yourself first, you can’t love someone unless they love you. Telling yourself that you need to find someone who will love you is like saying you’re not good enough to put your happiness first. It feels insecure and comes from a place of insecurity. You are a wonderful woman, a queen and who gives a damn if there’s a single person in this world who can’t love you for whatever reason? All that matters is that you love yourself enough to realize that what is more important is finding someone that you love. That person is or will be a very lucky person to have your love.
Finding someone to love. When you look for someone to love, you’re telling yourself that you value your happiness first before anyone else’s and that you are fulfilled. You are saying to yourself that you don’t need anyone’s approval to be happy and to feel loved. I swear when I turned my thinking around from looking for someone to love me to looking for someone I love, my life became so much more exciting. I realized that I was so happy all by myself and that finding someone amazing enough to match my level of happiness and fulfillment meant going beyond fulfillment and happiness! Imagine reaching that level. That is true and unconditional love. And another thing? Realizing that I want to find someone I can love means that I’ll never be heartbroken again. Why? Because I’m no longer looking for someone to validate me, someone to approve of me. At the very base of who I am, I approve of myself and I’ve already validated myself and when you no longer feel the need for others to approve of and love you, you realize that you are the one who holds the key to your happiness. No one but you can make you unhappy. And without the power to make me unhappy, no one can break my heart.
Look for someone to love and don’t worry if this person will love you because if you put yourself first and you truly love this person, they will love you too. Because how can you love someone who doesn’t love you when you put yourself first? It’s not possible. Be picky and believe that there are plenty of good men out there but the only one good enough to be chosen by you is the one that you can love.
So, how can you start looking for someone you love? By starting with an easy exercise that I use quite often. This exercise is all about feeling. Feeling that you deserve to put your happiness first and feeling how you will feel when you find that one man who makes you fall in love.
First, I want you to remind yourself of why you love yourself. What is it that you love about you? Choose one word that you want to describe yourself that makes you feel love for yourself. My word is grace. I love when I feel graceful. My ability to give and feel grace is one reason I love myself. When you have your word, write it down, save it in your phone or even write it on your forehead with some red lipstick! But remember this word.
Now, stand in front of the mirror and smile. Even if it’s a forced smile, just curve those beautiful lips up! As you stand in front of your mirror smiling at yourself, think of your word. Think of how you feel when you do the things that make you feel this word. Think of how this word describes you and how it makes you feel. Think of why you love feeling this word. This way. This will remind you of why you love yourself. Of just one of the many reasons you love yourself. Even if your smile is fake, pretty soon it won’t be. I want you to do this every morning or any time you are feeling down. When you actively put emphasis on why you love yourself, you value this love.
What does love feel like to you. Now, just as above, I want you to think of 5 words that describe how you will feel when you find someone you love. How does this love feel to you? For me, it’s fun, easy, passionate, elegant and exciting. When you have your list written down, take 10 minutes or so and think about how this love will feel using these words. Really feel it as though you have already found this love but do not assign these feelings to any specific person or condition. Just feel them and how they make you feel. For example when I think of the fun I will feel when I’m in love, I think about being with him on an exotic beach and having fun in the crystal clear blue water. Just thinking about this makes my heart beat speed up. When you feel this more and more, you start to believe in it and soon you can’t accept any less than someone who can match these feelings. After all, you deserve it!
I want all of you to realize how truly amazing and special you are. Every woman deserves to feel loved and fulfilled on her own so that she can open her heart to a man who can take her beyond fulfillment. So stop looking for someone to love you because you love you and start looking for a man so amazing that you can’t help but love him.
Leave a Reply