Date Yourself First
To my friend Keelee. Thank you for our much needed conversation.
I listened to a podcast the other day (who knows which one it was, at this point… I think I listen to about 6-8 hours of podcasts/week) that was discussing relationships. While my mind went in several different directions, I reflected on it and now can put into written words what I have been thinking for a while.
So, what on earth is wrong with our society?
From a young age, we are mentally engrained with the misleading image of two half broken hearts coming together as symbol for relationships. We’re told that when you find “the one”, the heart is complete. Life is complete. But let’s take a moment to pause and think about that… How many images have we seen throughout our lifetime that promote two people coming together as soulmates to complete each other, to give each other the happiness they had been searching for their entire lives? These messages and rom-coms have been particularly targeted at women, but we have all been trained to think that happiness will come when we finally find our soulmate.
But this is not the message that we should be receiving.
Don’t get me wrong, being with a partner is amazing. I was with a great partner for a great part of my life and have been in other relationships too. Despite the romance, having a partner is great because you get to the small things together: go to the grocery store, read books, talk about life, do yoga, discuss podcasts, travel, buy art, decorate a home, change the world for the better, etc. (did I just describe my dream relationship?). In fact, I would argue the “little” things are just as important as the romance. Partnership is nice. It’s comforting, it’s fun, and since we are beings that are wired for to be in a tribe, it’s necessary. We need connection with others to survive.
However, it’s absolute bullshit that we market relationships the way that we do. In all of the world, but particularly in the American south in a heavily religious culture, we are told that we cannot live with someone before we are legally bound to them. We push our children, yes, actual children, to make a decision on who their life partner should be, often before they can even legally have a glass of alcohol. We do the same thing with careers. Once 18, we send kids off to university and ask them, “What do you want to do with the rest of your life? Who do you want to spend the rest of your entire life with”.
No pressure.
Remember the phrase your parents told you about not to jumping off a bridge just because your friends were doing it (or more than likely they meant don’t do drugs or drink alcohol when your friends do)? We tell kids not to fall into peer pressure, but then we push them do what everyone else is doing when we turn the decade into our twenties.
Go college, get a “good” career (good being determined by society and money), find a partner, get married, settle down, have kids, be stable.
Again, no pressure.
At 28, I can say proudly say that I have stepped away from careers, friendships, and now a marriage that no longer served me. None of them were a mistake, but I did a lot of things because they were the next step; because I felt like I had to do them. Luckily, I was brave enough to take a step away from the norm, from what is praised, from what is “acceptable”, liked, and pushed by society. When I see others also defy cultural standards, I think, “wow, that person is a brave person”.
However, you can’t be brave unless you do one thing first: know yourself. Typically, it’s your intuition that knows first, but then you have to be brave enough to follow it with action.
Circling back to relationships, the key takeaway is this: You can never be happy in a relationship (or life) if you don’t know yourself. Before you can ever be with anyone (friendships, romantic partnerships, and even the relationship you have with your career), you must know yourself. You must. And you must be happy with that person and know your worth. Instead of going into relationships at 50%/50%, which just leads to co-dependency and other problems, you have to go in at 100%/100%, fully knowing yourself. From there, you can be 200% together, just multiplying each others already beautiful relationship with themselves.
Sadly, because of the way we promote relationships, most people never know themselves before they commit themselves to another person… often legally for the rest of their life. This is why the divorce rate is so high, why anxiety is so prevalent, and one of the reasons why addictions exist. We are often just looking to another person to fill the void of happiness that is inside of us. That void of happiness is there because we don’t know what actually makes us happy, because we don’t know ourselves.
Date yourself first, then date others, choose your career, and live the rest of your life.
Discover out what you like, what you don’t like, what lights you up, what drains your energy, and what routine works for you. Find your boundaries, find your preferences. Then, and only then, can you truly be happy with someone else. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a shit ton of work and takes so much time, but it’s the most fun journey you will ever go on.
Xx, B