We Are Often Married To The Wrong Person ;)

Hey yo !

I would like to share a Ted Talk that I love, love. It’s by Tracy McMillan.

I post a lot about taking care of oneself, because the lack of self-love and self-respect leads to so much suffering, be it in the love sphere or in the other relationships (family, friends, work colleagues, anywhere). It really is a matter of the relationship we have with ourselves.

When and how do we learn to love ourselves ?

In our early age and it has Something to do with the way the people who took care of us did it. That’s how we learn to trust the others (from 0 to one year), and to trust ourselves (between one and three). Depending on the way our mother or main care giver treated us, we learn that our needs are worthy or that we should shut them up. When a child is born, they are immature and need constant care, What we do in modern societies is that we expect the little new-born baby to be autonomous as fast as it can. We want them to sleep in their own bedroom, in their own bed and by themselves, with no one around. When the baby cries, the response it is given tells it that it can count on the care giver to respond in an adequate mode. The silence the babies are often given (for their good), is damaging for the development of the sens of self, the trust in the sourrounding environment. The sens of self-love starts developping at that early an age. And it goes on as we grow up, the comments we receive from people, the way we are brought up, little by little, we learn that we are « bad », « ackward », « shy », etc. we then identify ourselves with these labels put on us, and they are rarely nice.

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As we grow up, we become convinced that we need to change in order to please other people, that we Don’t deserve unconditional love and this happens when we look for a love Partner. We spend a lot of Energy to know if they like us, and we do What it takes to comply with their standards, we tend to forget ourselves.

Maybe many relationships fail because we are married to the wrong people. Let me explain.

We go into a Relationship with loads of expectations and the need to be made complete by our Partner. That’s how we know we are meant for each other, because we complement each other. We seek fusion with our Partner and we look for ourselves in their eyes. We want them to make us feel « whole ». At first we have the impression that this is it, and if the Partner is looking for the same thing to feel complete, we feel that we are a perfect match. That lasts until the moment reality catches us and brings us back to earth. We start feeling nervous and disappointed that our Partner isn’t fulfilling our needs of completion, they have changed. They haven’t, we just didn’t want to see it in the first place. If we Don’t pay attention, we keep on repeating this scenario Relationship after Relationship, until maybe we eventually conclude that love is not for us, we’d better give up.

What Tracy shares with us is that, the day she understood that she should start asking herself after three failed marriages, why things weren’t working out, everything changed for her. She started wondering whether SHE liked the person, how SHE felt in their company and not the other way around. Then she could be herself and really pay attention to the person in front of her and was able to really see them and decide if they were good for HER. The other thing she did was ask herself if she would marry the person she was. She came up with « no » as an answer and that was a shock ! Can you Believe that ?

If she couldn’t marry herself, how could she expect someone else to marry her and be happy in her company ?

That was possible because, as she puts it, she married herself first, before marrying anyone else. Marrying oneself means :

• Building a strong commitment with ourselves,
• Accepting ourself as a whole,
• Agreeing to stay with ourself for the rest of our life,
• Nursing, comforting, holding our own hand,
• Be there for ourself no matter the circumstances, love ourself as we wish the other person to love us.

I will leave you with the video which I really, really recommend, and you might also like my 7 advice for a lasting relationship.

 

Let’s take care of ourselves.

See you around !