My mom is a very routine person; she always has been. Part of that routine consisted of a daily after school routine. From 3-4:00 we watched two episodes of a show on TLC (it was a show called “A Wedding Story” and it was sweet and adorable—bring back the drama-free, feel-good shows, TLC!), then we watched Oprah from 4-5, then the news was on from 5-7. During one such afternoon, the topic of the Oprah show was finding the person that completes you. The idea that we’re all searching for that person who fills in our gaps. My mom, in the calmest, most nonchalant way said, “You shouldn’t be looking for someone who completes you. You should be a complete person all on your own. You look for someone in life who compliments you.” Ok, mom! Just dropping life lessons like a boss and not even batting an eyelash over it! I never forgot it, and it was certainly something that I held close as I moved into my dating years.
I fully admit that my view of relationships and what they should look like was full-on formed by quintessential 90s shows and movies. I mean from Full House to Dawson’s Creek to Boy Meets World and everything in between. What did those shows teach us? Girls with glasses and ponytails are inherently nerdy, unpopular and unattractive. On the flip side, all you need to catch someone’s eye is to ditch the glasses for contacts and let your hair down! Obviously! You will always have a male bestie who’s either gay or secretly pining for you, or you will be part of a trio, typically two girls and a guy for good measure. Feelings should be big and bold and all consuming. There should be grand gestures or, at the very least, a choreographed dance break during all school dances. The bad boy will change his ways for the quiet, good girl. The good girl will become less nerdy now that she wears her hair down and has a popular boy on her arm. To continue the gender stereotypes, girls will almost always be the smart ones. They will be the tutors who are helping a dumb jock pass his classes before he gets kicked off of the football team. Naturally, those tutoring sessions will take place in secret for as long as the girl shows up in her glasses. I mean, the list of tropes goes on and on! And, having watched every 90s sitcom, teen drama, and teen movie many times over, I loved them all! I longed for a similarly dysfunctional relationship experience. So, hearing my mom say that you should be a complete person on your own!? Mind BLOWN!
As I moved into the stage of life where friends were dating and/or got their flirt on regularly, I started to realize the wisdom in my mom’s words. I comforted more than one friend who was crying over a breakup, or a boy they liked dating someone else, or just boys being stupid. I also comforted guy friends over their cheating girlfriends or being overlooked because they weren’t popular jocks. There were times when I wished I was in their shoes, despite all of the drama. That would mean that someone was interested in me enough to date me to begin with! In the spirit of honesty, I realized that I was too chubby, too meek, and too much of a rule follower for most boys to be interested in me. I’m not saying that to be self-deprecating; it’s just the truth. Additionally, I was blessed with a solid blind spot when it came to anyone genially flirting with me. My default setting was that someone was just teasing me or trying to prank me. I now know that I didn’t have enough self-love or belief in myself at the time to accept someone’s attention. At that time, though, I got very comfortable in the “fat friend” role of the teenage movie trope.
While observing all of the drama from the sidelines, I realized that I needed to make a project of understanding myself. I didn’t need to be working on changing someone else. That formula never seemed to work out. I suppose that makes sense since the most important relationship that you’ll have in life is the one that you have with yourself. You are your one constant. Take yourself on adventures to figure out who you are. What do you like about yourself? What would you like to change? Then, pursue those things with intention. Believe that you’re worthy of that. I always thought that loving myself was congruent with being selfish, vain, or conceded. I was lost in the notion that being proud of myself was boastful, acknowledging my strengths was bragging, and admitting my shortcomings was weak. I thought that I had to stay in limbo between being humble and capable. I’m not sure who taught us that shit, but I know it’s not just me who thinks or used to think this way. I say these things because you, my beautiful people, are special and I want you to see yourselves the way that I see you. Not when you’re a grown-ass adult, but along the entire road of the journey.
In my years of Catholic school, I had a teacher, a nun, who said a lot of wise things, but one thing that she said that has stuck with me since seventh or eighth grade was that you had to learn how to be alone in silence. If you can’t sit on your own in silence without feeling uncomfortable or restless, there’s an issue in your relationship with yourself.
Another misnomer that we’ve been fed is that learning to love yourself or believe in yourself is a one-time pursuit. I figured out contacts and my hair, now that popular boy likes me—life will be smooth sailing from now on! That would be nice, but it’s inaccurate. We are forever evolving as humans. There will be ebbs and flows to your life that change your outlook, not only on yourself, but on the people around you, your environment, or your circumstances. You will have to meet yourself where you’re at over and over again, but that’s a worthwhile relationship to pursue. The important take home message here, though, is that whomever you choose to be your partner in life will be doing the same thing. Therefore, get comfortable taking stock of yourself. Get comfortable with knowing what you need from someone else so that you can communicate those things to your partner. They should also be doing the same thing for you. We’re not here to complete one another. We’re here to support one another in completing ourselves. So, I implore you, find a partner, not a project. If you enter a relationship and you have designs on changing that person in any way, shape, or form, that’s not the relationship for either of you.
The truth of it is, we are all going to come face-to-face with our own bullshit throughout our lives. What that bullshit looks like will be different in different stages of life. In my 20’s, I had to own up to the fact that I sucked at communicating what I wanted or needed from other people. Instead, I expected everyone around me to be just as empathetic and capable of “reading the room” as I was. It didn’t occur to me that I had to break down how I felt or what I wanted because not everyone out there has an intuition about these things. Now, in my 40s, I’m tackling my relationship with food and dieting. I’m unraveling how ADHD has impacted my life and the good, bad, and the ugly that came with having an undiagnosed learning disability. Additionally, and always, I must work on loving myself and advocating for myself—whether that means being direct about what I want to order for dinner to defending myself in an argument. Advocating for myself also means telling my husband how he can support me in those endeavors. Likewise, I want to know where he’s at and I want to know how I can best support him and what he needs. Because it’s not our responsibility to complete the other, but it is our responsibility to work on ourselves. He is my partner. I am his partner. We are not each other’s projects.
While I’m on the topic of working on yourself, let’s discuss a bit on what that might look like. I used to think that working on myself meant doing all of the things, all at once. I had to spend time in prayer and journaling to work on my mental and spiritual health; I had to exercise and count calories to facilitate my best physical health; I had to read the books or listen to the lectures on how to be better at (insert something here—communication, being self-confident, being a better partner, etc.), and the list went on and on. Then, as I added more awesomeness to my life, it got much harder to do all of those things. With a husband, a house to maintain, kids to raise, and pets to take care of, and a full-time career, doing what I needed to do to focus on myself seemed impossible. It took me years to realize that I was stuck in “all-or-nothing” thinking. If I couldn’t do everything, then I wouldn’t do anything. Also, if I couldn’t do it perfectly, then why bother at all? If I went over my calorie allowance for a day, I would assume my entire week was blown. Confronting that sucky attitude was some of the bullshit that I needed to face as the years went on.
Instead of beating myself up all of the time, I started to treat myself like I treated my patients in the OT clinic. I had no problem cheering them on—“hey, any movement is good movement!” “it might not be where you want it to be yet, but you’re so much farther along than when we started!” “I know it isn’t easy, but you’re doing a great job!” So, I started cheering for myself, too, celebrating what I did accomplish in a given day instead of focusing on what I didn’t. For example, maybe I didn’t get in the 45-minute workout that I had planned on, but I got my bathrooms cleaned, my laundry done, and I vacuumed my house. All movement is good movement! Instead of focusing on the scale, which for years, was my sole parameter for whether I was succeeding or not on any given diet or program, I would focus on the progress that I had made in my mindset. Maybe I had a piece of cake at lunch because we were celebrating a birthday at work. There’s nothing wrong with that, so instead of belittling myself or feeling shame and guilt, I would allow myself to enjoy it! I would savor that moment and then move on with my day.
This is a long-winded way of saying that you need to be your own project in life. You need to find the pieces of yourself that make you a whole, entire, person all on your own. That might take a lifetime to do, but with a supportive partner by your side, the journey doesn’t need to feel long and lonely. Complement each other, support one another’s growth, but don’t try to “fix” each other. That never ends well. Save yourself resentment and heartbreak. Put your own puzzle together and instead of looking for someone to help you find and place the pieces, search for someone who will cheer you on as you find them yourself. Wishing you all of the love and light–Lorie