How Dating Yourself First Can Lead To A Healthy Relationship With Your Future Partner

Is it our partner’s responsibility to make us happy, or is it their job to complement our happiness?

Many are unwavering when it comes to their beliefs on such a debatable topic, but the answer, as complicated as people make it out to be, is quite simple. It’s OUR responsibility to make ourselves happy, because once we inadvertently place that pressure on our partner, we unconsciously station unfair expectations on them—expectations that they will never fully be able to live up to, even if they try.

Dating ourselves FIRST is vital. It’s imperative that we take the time to learn, accept, and truthfully appreciate the little things that speak to and stimulate our emotions. This is an awareness that most of us take for granted. Most of us can easily be open and honest with others about how we feel, but it’s quite difficult to exercise that same willingness to communicate those truths when it comes to being that transparent with ourselves. We must make a conscious effort to confront our internal truths and weigh them daily so that when we face future hurdles or other forms of friction in the relationship with our partners, we’re able to temper those emotions in real time. We can also discipline our thoughts to know that we’re in control of how we feel—not the situation. Most importantly, we can evaluate our expectations to see if we’re the ones being unreasonable or not.

The key is to always retain power over how our hearts feels, even though we’re willingly giving our partner the most precious thing that we own (our hearts), along with giving them the power to hurt us with the hopes of them never doing so.

Here a few tips on how to date yourself so that when you make the commitment to give your heart to your partner, you’ll be able to truthfully communicate what’s going to aid their efforts of complementing you emotionally:

1. Write Down All Of Your Insecurities And OWN THEM

As I mentioned earlier, most of us can easily be open and honest with others about how we feel, but it’s quite difficult to exercise that same willingness to communicate those truths when it comes to being that transparent with ourselves. Understanding this is truly the first step to dating oneself. Writing down all of your insecurities on paper and making the decision to confront them, no matter how uncomfortable it may be, is the first step to healing.

2. Take Yourself Out On A Date To Better Appreciate Your Own Company

This is important, because if you can’t be comfortable with enjoying your own company, you can never expect your partner to. Think about it. How can your mate enjoy your company when YOU don’t even believe that you’re worth entertaining, or at least being around at a bare minimum? Don’t get me wrong, all of us deserve to have someone that complements us and our very being as individuals, but if you haven’t taken the time to find what makes you interesting, fun to be around, unique, or what you have to offer that adds value to the next person’s life, then there’s only so much that can come out of the interaction between you and the person that you’re trying to build something with.

I recommend that you surprise yourself by visiting new restaurants in town that expand your experience and exposure. Go to places that you’ve yet to visit, because even if the atmosphere is not typically your vibe, the new exposure to something new may allow you to develop a new outlook on stepping outside of your comfort zone. You must be willing to do this and explore life through new lenses that challenge the old you, because when you do so, you create new neurons that communicate to and throughout our body that will in turn create a vibrancy that you once lacked or that was sitting dormant.

3. Listen To No One But Yourself

Quite often, people such as your friends, your family members, acquaintances that you trust will try to give you advice pertaining to relationships and how they work, but have you ever noticed that the people that can’t keep a partner give the best advice? This is because they don’t practice what they, and if that’s the case, you must ask yourself, “How credible is the information that they gave me?” Now, in their defense, there can definitely be substance to what they’re saying, but only to a degree, of course.

Our job is to filter out what’s redundant and to digest what has potential relevance in relation to the new ‘you’ that you’re creating daily. You must always be in a state of mind that is willing to be open to all information that comes through and registers in our conscious awareness, because even if it doesn’t make sense at first, you may one day grow into a space to where that previous information is now useful, which in turn helps you adapt and exercise what you heard in the past.

All in all, I recommend that you take the pressure off of others to make you happy and make the commitment to become better yourself, because when you become better, you continue the process of becoming the person that you one day want to love.