“I need to look good so that men will talk to me,” a young lady said. An older lady affirmed, “Yes o. If you don’t look good, they won’t even notice you.” I asked them, “What if after looking good no man appreciates your look?” I went ahead and said, “Nothing is wrong with looking good in itself but to look good so that men will talk to you means hanging your happiness on that happening so that if you look good and men do not talk to you, you feel unhappy as a result of thinking something is wrong with you.”
If a young lady believes that she needs a man’s compliment to be happy, then she is not at home in herself. She may not be able to place her hand upon it exactly but there is a void, a fear, a pain, a level of dissatisfaction she has within. She does not want to give attention to the pain within rather she is constantly trying to escape it. But how can you escape what is in you already? Nonetheless, she continues her fruitless attempt to escape the pain. Before long she comes across something or somebody in her life that serves as a blockage preventing her from accessing the pain. She now has a partner or boyfriend. Because she desperately does not want to feel the pain in her, she is addicted to her boyfriend. In her fear of losing her boyfriend and facing “death” she manipulates him. Her manipulation frustrates his own attempt to control her. Things fall apart – they break up. Her story becomes, “He broke my heart.” She does not see it was her expectations that were broken, not her heart. When that happened, it brought her closer to her heart, closer to that pain that has been there before the relationship but constantly avoided by her, the pain she tried to use the relationship to cover. The relationship is ended and she feels the pain intensely. The pain seems overwhelming and she blames her ex-boyfriend for that. But it was the same pain that was there before the relationship. Now she is not far from the pain because she is not having her ex-boyfriend blocking her from accessing it. This why she feels the pain more intensely. One thing she does not realize is that the break up that happened needed to happen so that she can love herself and be at home in herself.
A relationship is a by-product of your connection to yourself. There are times when we need to work on connecting to ourselves and we need to do it alone. You may feel additional pain after a breakup because of your belief that you have to be in a relationship or because of the conditioning that love is found outside of yourself. The pain is there so that you can learn to love yourself but you will find it difficult to do so until you appreciate yourself on a whole new level. When you succeed in doing this, the pain will leave you.
A relationship is sharing and appreciation not control or ownership. When you truly love or appreciate yourself, you will not love your partner like an addiction. If in order to numb the pain you feel following a breakup you quickly go into another relationship, you succeed in doing a rinse and repeat.
There was a period following a breakup that I decided not to go into any relationship for sometime. That decision helped me to appreciate myself and to stop looking for someone to make me feel happy. I found joy in myself. I even asked myself what it was I saw in some of the persons I had relationships with. If I had loved and appreciated myself, I know those relationships would never had happened. If you are in a hurry to find love, you may end up going astray just because you found someone available and willing. It then becomes a case of “if the desirable is not available, the available becomes the desirable.”
During that period of staying away from an intimate relationship, I saw myself cherishing the bonds I have with my family and few friends. I saw how I had wrapped my whole life around relationships which stunted my growth in other areas of my life. I found myself developing new friendships and expanding my horizons. I felt an expansion within and I knew I was growing. In fact I was conscious of my evolution even though I was “alone.” I experienced peace in myself.
If you cannot be happy outside of a committed relationship, you may need to stop and reflect why this is so. In fact you may need to be alone even though you are scared of being alone. There is no way around pain but there is a way through it.
