One of the most important lessons we must learn in life, especially if we are hurt and unsatisfied in our intimate relationships is to love ourselves. To love ourselves we must respect and value ourselves, even when others are unable to. In the end, this is the Greatest Love of All.
Like many of you, I have had a life-long pattern of attracting narcissistic people in my most intimate relationships. And this was to help me to break this pattern of self-depreciation and co-dependently jumping through hoops in order to try and please my partner.
It is natural and normal to want to please the one’s we love, but where do we draw the line? When pleasing others involves self-sacrifice, we are in the wrong place. In our own wisdom and self love we need to be willing and able to identify when we are in the wrong place.
A truly empowering relationship will be a harmonious one. It won’t involve the kind of conflict, chaos and drama we find in narcissistic relationships. Because when you have two people who love themselves and respect themselves, that love and respect is naturally given to the other.
If we don’t fully love and respect ourselves and we are with a partner who doesn’t love or respect himself, there is no way that relationship has the power to be a loving, respectful relationship. The ingredients aren’t there. The deep, abiding love that comes from loving and valuing the self is not there.
So many people I work with say that they love the narcissist more than life itself, but they don’t love or value themselves. They focus entirely up the narcissist and seek after crumbs of love and attention, while completely dismissing their own inner cries for true, authentic love.
We can’t go on a search for that true, authentic love we long for “out there” in the world. We will only ever find it within. And this is the challenge we all face.
This is the challenge for all humans, whether Codependent, narcissistic, borderline, or addict. Our challenge is always to seek after that deep, abiding love within ourselves and stop looking for someone “out there” to complete us, to rescue us, and to give us the love and attention we never got as children.
This is truly our life’s journey, especially if we find ourselves in unsatisfactory or abusive relationships time and time again. We are being asked to step up and be the one we are waiting for. Find that love that we always want to give away to another, within ourselves.
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