When Mr. or Ms. Right comes along there’s only one thing that can mess things up. Katie & Gay Hendricks step in to help before you scare away love.
If you’ve been searching for your life partner for a long while, it can be downright scary and nerve wracking.
You’d think the longer you’ve been at it, and the more experience you’ve built up, the more confident you’d feel about the choices you make; but it’s often the opposite. As you get older and you’ve “been around the block a few times,” the stakes get higher. There’s more to lose. You’ve been hurt before, and you don’t want to go through that again. You want to make sure you get it right.
So you go out on a date, and self-doubt sets in. Especially when you felt attracted.
Did you say the right things? Should you have let your date pick the location rather than come right out with a suggestion? Isn’t that making you look pushy? But wait, don’t people like it when you know what you want?
And what about setting up the next date? If you’re a woman, did you give him enough indication that you had a great time? What if you weren’t appreciative enough? What if he thinks you’re not into him? Should you send a reassuring text?
If you’re a man, do you think you showed her you could take care of her? What if you did too much of that, and now she thinks you’re a control freak? Should you have played it more cool?
Ugh. It’s enough to make anyone’s head spin and give up.
News Flash: None of These Things Matter
What?
That’s right—none of these typical dating woes you worry about will make a shred of difference when you’ve met the right person.
You can say the “wrong” thing. Or neglect to say something you think you should have. It doesn’t matter if you sleep together after three dates or three months. You can talk about your exes. You can talk about your kids. You can admit you still haven’t really figured out what you want to be when you grow up.
If you don’t believe us, talk to a few couples who enjoy a genuine, lasting relationship. Ask them what their early days were like. Chances are, their stories are full of interesting little details that could have spelled the end. And those things could have put the brakes on a budding relationship between two other people. But when you’ve found your life mate, these details really don’t matter.
Except for one thing: whether or not you love yourself.
The Automatic Dealbreaker
The only detail that can derail a relationship with the right person is how much you believe you are worthy of love, and how much love you give yourself.
Lack of self-love will prevent you from truly connecting with another person, because you are fundamentally disconnected from yourself. You are rejecting parts of yourself, making it impossible to freely give and receive love with another.
Gay is adamant about the fact that if he hadn’t learned to truly love himself, his relationship with Katie would have been over in a month or two.
And the same goes for you. Your unresolved self-criticism and judgment will create all sorts of booby traps that will keep you from fully engaging in a new relationship—and building the necessary intimacy. Your feelings of unworthiness will create “triggers” for you, and the developing closeness will shore up your underlying fears of not deserving this love.
No other person but you can make you feel lovable—not even the right person. It has to come from you first.
Make Sure You Are the Right Partner
The best way to increase your odds of landing in the right relationship—and getting off the dating treadmill for good—is to BE the right partner.
The critical ingredient for that is self-love.
You can mess up the right relationship if you’re not emotionally ready to create a healthy partnership. The issues you haven’t worked through will continuously get in the way of love, causing a breakdown in the way you and your partner relate. Instead of joy and harmony, there will be struggle and pain.
If you are plagued by self-doubt and insecurity, if you’re highly critical of yourself (more so than you are of others), or if there’s any part of you that you wish were different, then you need a primer on self-love.
When you subscribe to our free relationship e-newsletter, Hearts In Harmony, we’ll tell you how to banish the personal demons that keep you from being completely at peace with yourself—and that are keeping you from forming a lasting relationship with someone who is ready and willing to create a genuine partnership with you.
You’ll learn how to:
- Fully embrace all the parts of yourself (especially the parts you’ve been rejecting for so long) so someone else can fully love you, too.
- Dissolve the long-standing (often unconscious) patterns that are keeping you stuck.
- Create the right emotion, mental, and physical (yes, we’ll get your body in on the act, too!) space for love.
Once you learn to love yourself, you’ll be free from the burdensome self-doubt that you’ve lived with. And, you’ll finally be able to share your life with that one person who truly wants to be with you, and only you. Don’t spend another minute without your Soul Mate—subscribe for free today.
[image: via shutterstock]