Madam – When we don’t love and accept ourselves fully, we can’t ever have a great relationship or a happy life.
Our partner may whisper, “I love you so much” and we won’t believe them.
We’ll always be looking for evidence that they are secretly losing interest. We can’t tell them our secret feelings or fears, because it will push them away.
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We feel like we “aren’t good enough” to date our crush, or we settle for someone who is “safe” or “fine” but who doesn’t make our heart leap with joy. We don’t trust our partners.
We think they are cheating.
We carry around the pain of never feeling good enough to have the kind of love other people experience.
We doubt ourselves; we doubt our partners; we doubt love. We let challenges demoralise and deflate us, and it’s not long before we realise we’re a much smaller version of ourselves.
We don’t ask for a raise; we’ll stay in dead-end jobs. We’ll lose weight and feel fatter than ever. We give up on our health, thinking it’s too hard or takes too much effort.
We’ll look for quick fixes to make ourselves feel better: a new haircut, a one night stand, a bottle of bourbon, a brownie sundae. But none of these fixes fix us at all. They leave us feeling lonelier, emptier, sadder.
And we will remain that way until we stop looking for other people to give us the love and care we yearn for and deserve. After all, why would someone else love us, if we don’t think we are worthy?
Marina Smal
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