love yourself

   The sculpture Love by Alexander Milov captures one of the most poignant moments in a couple’s interaction. From the outside, the two adults have thrown in the towels with their backs turned against each other, while, deep down inside, their inner child parts are still trying to reach out to each other—desperate for contact and connection. To be seen, heard, felt and understood by another is a healthy human need that we can hardly live without.The need to bond starts at birth in our relationships with our primary caregivers. How they interact with us influence how we see ourselves (as lovable/unlovable) and others (as trustworthy or not) and shape our relational templates later in life. Once formed, these templates are very difficult, if not impossible, to modify. They are comparable to different pairs of colored glasses through which we see ourselves, others and the world. The tricky part is that oftentimes we are not even aware that we are wearing one!  

Many of us live our lives through the filter of our past relational wounds, secretly hoping that someday when we meet our soulmate, all our wounds will be miraculously healed. So we keep searching for that special someone who will sweep us off our feet, shower us with unconditional love, and eventually complete us. When that dream fails to materialize, we try instead to change our real-life partner into our ideal partner, only to realize that we cannot find love this way, either. In this disappointing pursuit of happiness, we may lose heart and start to wonder whether “the one” actually exists in this world. I believe “the one” does exist. And the reason we haven’t been able to find them is simply because we’ve been looking in all the wrong places, because that special someone does not live somewhere out there, but someplace in here—inside each of us. 

Yes! We are the one we’ve been looking for! And until we meet “the one” in ourselves first, we won’t be able to meet “the one” in any partner. As Marianne Williamson jokingly said in Letting Go and Becoming, “How can I blame him for not wanting to spend the evening with me? ‘I’ don’t want to spend the evening with me!” How can we ask others to love us when we don’t even like ourselves? How can we ask others to treat us nicely like our best friend while we’re tearing ourselves to shreds like our own worst enemy? Such requests are not only unfair but outright absurd. Before we ask others to do anything for us, first, we should ask whether we are willing to do exactly that for ourselves. For example, if we want our partners to accept us whole-heartedly for who we are, we need to first ask ourselves, “Can we accept ourselves in the same way? Are we showing to our partner who we are? Or, most importantly, do we even know who we really are?” 

So next time when a wounded child part pops up during a fight with our partners, rather than expect them to take care of it for us, let’s try something different. First, be still inside and notice any impulse to escape. Then, just let that impulse be there without fighting it with fire—just feel and sense into that impulse to escape without caving in to our default coping, be it eating, drinking, or sleeping, whatever that may be. These ineffective coping mechanisms, or “symptoms,” are our repeated failed attempts to solve the problems; at the same time, they are portals to the core issues underlying our real problems. If we can stay long enough with that impulse to escape and face our fear, we will little by little discover the hidden solutions to heal that wounded part and release its burdens. 

Recently, I had a session with a client who has been working herself to death for unknown reasons. She has no time for herself, let alone for her intimate partner. When I asked her to stop her work talk for a little while, she said she felt a tinge of sadness welling up inside her chest. Instead of letting her ramble on and on about work—escaping into her default work mode, I invited her to just notice that tinge of sadness and see what would happen next. Unexpectedly, that sadness led to her unresolved grief over the death of her father, coupled with overwhelming guilt for not being able to be with him at his deathbed. She said sobbingly that she still couldn’t forgive herself for not being there with him at his final moments and that there was a part that kept admonishing her, “You should be punished!” As she was experiencing the intense guilt of “abandoning her father when he needed her most,” she was surprised to see an image of her father smiling at her lovingly and telling her in a soothing voice, “I’m so proud of you. And seeing you happy is what makes me most happy.” With that, she felt her guilt got lifted and her whole body started to relax. At the end, she promised her father that, from now on, she would learn to “make time for herself and stop punishing herself through overwork.” 

Deep connection with another comes from deep connection with yourself first. So learn how to be “the one” you’ve been waiting for, especially during the most trying time in your life. As you learn to lift yourself up, you learn to lift your partner and your relationship up as well. And only when you can meet yourself deeply first—body, mind, and soul—will you be able to meet another at that intimate level.