265. When you love yourself you can share with a partner, not need him

We hear all the time that we should love ourselves. Loving ourselves, we’re told, is our job and we can’t expect someone else to do it for us because they’re busy trying to love themselves. But what does it really mean to love ourselves? One of the ways we love ourselves is by realizing that we’re the ones deciding how life is (for us!). It isn’t about what life is dishing out but how we judge it – either good or bad for us. In article #264 I wrote about believing someone should want what they don’t want. In that belief and its naturally following expectation we’re hurting ourselves, not loving ourselves. We’re not seeing reality. We’re telling ourselves a lie, without realizing it.

Willingness to question thoughts and beliefs and see the truth takes us immediately to self-love. In this case we see specifically that who a person is and how they live is exclusively their business. When we don’t resist that by thinking they should be different we’re left with a feeling of ease and freedom – peace, or self-love.

We let the other person be who they are (as if we had a choice anyway) and we do whatever is apparent for us regarding them. In dating we may choose to be with the other person as she is or we may move on to someone else. But we don’t need to try to change them or fight them. If we move on it’s without judgment and anger toward them. After all, they’re being themselves, just as we’re doing.

That respect and love for the other person is also love for us: We’re no longer feeding ourselves a story that isn’t true and making ourselves miserable. Instead we’re just observing the way things are. Seeing the way life is rather than judging that it should be different is the primary way we love ourselves. “Seeing”, with no need to modify, alter or change anything, always feels peaceful, content and satisfying. We’re quietly and simply in love with life as it is.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer