The Most Painful Separation – the Separation with Yourself

The title of this article should have been understanding and practicing self-love, but it seems many don’t understand what this means yet and still think that the aggressive and selfish self-appreciation, the me-before-you attitude, has to do with self-love. This will only make your relationship suffer, and there is no bigger mirror than a relationship. 

But relationships are also means of expansion. They are the cause of our greatest joy and greatest suffering. But the main cause of this suffering is the relationship you have with yourself. Looking at this mirror can help you understand your desires and yourself better.

1. Cultivate Self-Love

As already said, your relationships mirror the relationship you have with yourself. If you don’t like the way things are going and feel as if you’re not getting your needs met in some way, you should really start thinking about the ways in which your self-esteem is damaged. Soon, you’ll find that this is only reflected upon your relationship. 

If you improve and heal this internal wound or conflict, all your external bonds will align to match this new and improved attitude you’ve built and you hold towards yourself. 

2. Form Appreciation, not Attachment

Easier said than done, right? This is because we form attachments and identify our needs with our partners. This is why we can never actually see the love we get when we get it because we are mostly focused on the absence of this person which makes our needs unfulfilled.

This makes your happiness depend upon what somebody else does or doesn’t do. But as soon as you realize this, you can stop making them the instrument of your desires and needs and start having positive and more appreciative focus. 

3. Face Your Fear

When you really start thinking about this, you’ll start to see that most of your love acts and relationship problems have been underlined with fear. And this is because we have, in some ways, very primitive brains when it comes to survival. And our first way of surviving upon being born was – being loved by the caregiver. 

When we feel that we need love, our survival mechanisms are triggered, and we can no longer reason rationally. We struggle for survival and this way, we form attachments, we are desperate, we fight and try to please, and lie unconsciously to ourselves and others so that we can get what we need.

4. Stop The Vicious Cycle

Every relationship you form this way is a reflection, or better yet, a reincarnation of the relationship you first formed with your parents. Having the need for their love shape you and your behavior is not all. It also shaped your needs. The way you need to be loved, ironically, is the kind of love you didn’t get from your parent.

This means you’ll probably find a partner that is similar to that parent in the way in which they give love; you’ll make a replica of that initial relationship and try to get out of it what you could not back when you were a child.

But if you think about what you want from this person and try to provide it for yourself, you’ll find that you no longer need these desires to come through another person. This will lead to you not attracting the same kind of partners anymore.

5. Stay on the Same Page

This is something where even healthy relationships start to fall apart. Even though you might be a good match to some degree, you still go through changes. If both partners are not keeping track of these changes and molding their relationship to match their new desires, you are likely to either separate or – worse – separate from yourself.

If you can’t see how your personal evolving can match, it is time to separate before you start growing resentment for being separated from yourself and, ultimately, unhappy. In the long run, this separation will escalate to such a degree that it will lead to illness and even death if left unaddressed. 

But in formerly unhealthy relationships, even though you start seeking separation from your partner, it might be more complicated to cut the invisible strings and may prolong the abuse. This is especially hard when it comes to marriage, where emotional and legal abuse coincide. This is a separate and complicated topic on which you can see more information here. 

To love somebody, you first have to love yourself; and to love yourself, you first have to know and accept yourself. If you ignore this simple wisdom, you risk leading an unhappy, unfulfilled life.

Photo | Pixabay

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