YOU First

Summer is here!! You know what that means? Wedding season!

The glorious time where our beautiful friends are tying the knot; professing their undying love and commitment to each other. The wonderful time where we celebrate our friend’s happy day by dressing up, eating too much cake and drinking too much wine trying to forget that we are alone.

All alone.

Some very individuals are lucky enough to find their soulmates young and just know that they will be together forever. For the rest of us, the road is rocky; bad relationships at great times and great relationships at bad times. The cycle of dating, relationship and breaking up is exciting, demanding and heartbreaking. That feeling of despair when you realize you are alone is truly the reason cartons of ice cream were created.

Perhaps you have hit the age where all of your friends are coupled up and having children, or when your mother or grandmother has started not-so-subtly hinting that they won’t be around forever to see their (great)grandchildren.

There is a lot of pressure to meet someone and fall in love, so much so that often, women and men find themselves changing to be more like the ideal version of their significant other. The art of being alone but not lonely is one of the hardest things to learn.

However, there are 3 things (and many more, I am sure) that you being alone can teach you that you will likely not learn when in a relationship that will leave you a changed person.

1. The feeling of INDEPENDENCE that you get when you realize that YOU CAN hang those shelves yourself (even if they are slightly crooked), YOU CAN change a flat tire (even if you have to youtube it), YOU CAN fix your computer problems (even if that means just calling the Geek Squad), just knowing that YOU CAN and that you don’t need to rely on someone else to survive is so empowering.

2. The support system and FRIENDSHIPS that you are forced to cultivate when you do not have someone on speed dial to amuse you, listen to you or save you can last you a lifetime should you choose to maintain them. Hopefully, by the time you are done being alone, you will realize how much these people mean to you and enrich your life and you will choose to work at keeping it that way.

3. The art of BEING BORED by yourself and being OK with it and finding ways to amuse yourself difficult and takes practice. However, if we can’t first make ourselves happy, how are we supposed to make someone else happy?

By defining YOU as an individual entity, with a confidence that can be created only by proving to yourself that YOU CAN survive very happily on your own, you enter into relationships with a very different level of expectations and a very different perspective. You are not looking for someone to take care of you but rather for someone to support you. You are not looking for someone to amuse you, but to have fun with you. You are looking for a partner to enhance the life you have already built for yourself; to make the tough times just a little bit easier and the best times just a little bit better - not because you need them to but because you want them to.

Love,

RDRL