Seeking Love Is Finding Yourself
Many women look for love in their lives but ignore the fact that love is found when we first love ourselves. Seeking love implies finding yourself first. Much of the book ‘ Hambre de Amor’ (Hungry for Love), by Ana Moreno (Obelisco, 2016), revolves around this issue, and it is this and other related ideas that we will talk about next.
I ask you, woman to woman: why do you need a partner? To complete a part that you feel is missing, to complete an inner emptiness, why are you afraid of being alone? Why alone do you feel helpless? If you haven’t figured this out yet, I’ll tell you something: having a partner isn’t going to solve any of these problems, it’s just going to make them worse.
Creating such a relationship, based on codependency, only leads to sentimental failure. Only with a conscious relationship is it possible to have a healthy romantic life.
true love is born within you
We women need to feel loved, but true love is born within us. A woman who loves herself radiates love and gets love. Think you can’t attract into your life something you don’t have.
If you don’t feel that you are love, you will believe that you need someone else to complete you, but in that need to complete yourself you will try to possess the other, because you feel that without him you are nothing. This is a selfish way to act. And love and selfishness are not compatible concepts.
Another thing that is even more important is to realize that just as you cannot attract love if you don’t have love, what you will attract is what you will have to offer. If you strive to appear to be what you are not, you will find a person who is not authentic. If you don’t show true love and respect for yourself, you will find someone who not only doesn’t love and respect yourself, but who won’t love and respect you.
It’s never too late to find yourself
Whether you haven’t found a partner yet or you’re not satisfied with your relationship, it’s never too late to find yourself, to start cultivating love from within instead of going after it. For Ana Moreno it is as simple as acting with love, honesty and appreciation, sharing it with others, giving love to yourself and others.
The best part of this way of understanding love is that you don’t need anyone to feel full, you don’t depend on going after love, on how others see you or how they react to your needs or dependencies. All of this involves performing an important exercise in self-esteem, self-improvement and the search for your own values, because you can only love yourself when you know who you are.
You don’t need anyone to complete it
You are enough, you don’t need anyone to complete it. Your partner can help you to be better than you are, to bring out the best in you. Together you can put into practice a common life project, you can grow together. But if you depend on your partner and/or your partner depends on you, you are doomed to drag each other down.
Knowing yourself enough to create love in your life will keep you from expending effort in situations as useless as living trying to please others or acting on the desires and aspirations of others. If your priority is to make the other person happy, in the end you will feel even more empty and incomplete.
