Ok — Let’s be real. Nobody actually wants to be single, at least not forever.
No matter how independent you are, or how cool you think it is to be a bachelor, we’re all born with one basic necessity…the need for connection.
I’m talking about REAL connection. Not that Tinder connection. Swipe left, swipe right. Not those late night booty calls either.
Humans are naturally driven toward establishing and sustaining true belongingness.
It’s actually so deep that the lack of belongingness can cause a decrease in health, happiness, and even life expectancy.
So, if connection is in your DNA, why is it that you feel so lonely? Why do you think you can’t find love? And why do your relationships all seem to fail?
The answer is…nobody can truly love you because you don’t truly love yourself.
You have to understand that you can only ever attract what you are and what you think of yourself. The energy you give off will always be matched because ‘like’ energy attracts ‘like’ energy.
You might not even be aware that you don’t fully love yourself.
Just take a look at some of the relationships you’ve attracted and the mess you allowed to happen within those relationships. The bullshit you put up with because you subconsciously thought that’s what you deserved. Look at the things that you viewed as “love” that were actually hurting you.
So, how and when did you stop loving yourself? And Did you ever love yourself at some point in time?
Let’s go back to that need for connection that we’re all born with. That need is fulfilled by our parents. (or at least it’s supposed to be.)
For many, many people, (like me) that basic need was neglected in one form or another in their early childhood.
This can look like a parent that is not in the picture, or parents that were just not there emotionally. Maybe they yelled at you a lot and cursed and said very negative things to you.
It can look like seeing your parents depressed, or seeing them choose alcohol instead of quality time.
It could even be that you missed out on that connection because your parents were just working way too much.
When children are deprived of connection in this way, at such an impressionable age — they begin to feel different and unwanted. They feel unworthy of love.
Lonely kids don’t stop loving their parents, they just stop loving themselves, while at the same time craving love externally to fill their void.
Childhood experiences are crucial to our emotional development. Without the safety net of a secure relationship, children grow up to become adults who struggle with low self-worth and challenges with emotional regulation in general. They end up holding onto a deeply rooted fear, well-into their adulthood. A fear that the people they love most can and will easily abandon them.
They also have an increased risk of developing depression and anxiety as a result.
You see, the Mind is wired to keep going back to what is familiar to us while avoiding things that are unfamiliar.
It’s a survival tactic, encoded in our brains that is meant to help keep us alive.
Your familiarity has been with your childhood relationships with the people who meant the most to you.
Take me for example, my father was not in the picture for the first half of my childhood and my mother was a very depressed drug-user, who then attracted to her a man who was physically, emotionally, and verbally abusive to us all, for years.
Every day there was yelling and arguing and hitting, and that was my first experience of love and relationships.
So as an adult, unknowingly to me at the time, when I was in a relationship I connected my love and self-worth to arguing and fighting.
The more extreme the argument was, the more that meant that we must be in love.
I had a lot of pain inside, and you can only give away to other people what you have inside of you.
Pain that would show up in the form of jealousy, resentment, or anger whenever my triggers were touched.
I didn’t know how to love myself, so how could anybody else know how to?
Relying on someone else to fill that void will always result in pain because love and happiness are not external forces.
Love is not something that is outside of you. Love is something that you are.
When you love someone, it’s because you have love for yourself to give. Being in love with someone is really just you being in love with YOU, and adoring them for making you love yourself even more.
When you recognize and acknowledge the reason behind your pain, you can start to heal it.
If you’ve connected to my words so far, then this message is for you: IT’S OK TO FORGIVE NOW.
You can forgive your parents for their unhealed wounds that they passed onto you.
Most importantly, you can forgive yourself for carrying it with you this whole time.
Instead of holding that negative energy in, you can turn it into positive energy by becoming the person you needed when you were a child and becoming everything that you want in a partner.
Be loyal. Be honest. Be present. Be giving. Be LOVE.
You can rewire your mind to be familiar with those things instead, and before you know it, you will be in a thriving relationship!
Not because you are filling a void, but because you found that real connection.
And trust me…it’s all worth it.
