Choose Yourself
I have read that in relationships, especially in marriages, that the secret to success is to wake up everyday & choose that person. You have to choose them through it all. You have to choose them when things get hard, you have to choose them when you don't agree with them, you have to choose them when they age & you have to choose them if they fall ill. You have to wake up & make a choice every single day to be with that person. I cannot claim to know a lot about marriage, I have not yet walked in those shoes. However, over the past few months between being newly single & living in a new city I have given relationships A LOT of thought. I have thought about the characteristics I am looking for, I have thought about the things that mean the most to me, I have thought about all of the red flags I saw early on in previous relationships & ignored. I have made promises to myself not to continue on in situations that don't serve me. I have spoken with friends who are in similar circumstances and found a trend in people claiming "we stayed together about a year longer than we should of." I have been there, I have overstayed when I knew I shouldn't have.
It got me thinking about all of the wasted time we spend. Surly there is always something to learn but what if we listened to ourselves earlier on, what if we paid attention to what didn't feel quite right & what if we then did something about those feelings?
Life is a continual process of trial & error. We will never have all the answers or have it all figured out. In the meantime whether we are in a relationship with someone or not, what I have come to understand is that our longest committed relationship is actually with ourselves. The relationship we have with the person looking back at us in the mirror is of the utmost importance. We have to wake up everyday & also choose ourselves.
This realization showed me that all of the over analyzing I've done & how critical I have been of potential partners is what landed me and kept me in unhappy relationships in the past. We have to feel whole on our own in order to make it work with anyone else. Choosing yourself & whoever is lucky enough to stand beside you, in harmony.
Meaning we choose to love & accept ourselves as we are. We aren't too hard on ourselves when we miss a work-out, forget things or hit the snooze button on the alarm one too many times. We just try harder the next day. It's my belief that when we forget to choose ourselves everyday we eventually wake up one morning in a life that we don't want & we have no earthly clue how in the hell we got there.
The good news is, it's never too late to make a change. You can begin to choose yourself & the people & the circumstances that create a better version of you anytime you want. Then get ready to watch the love that you give to yourself come back to you tenfold.
xxVB