What is the most important relationship you will ever have in your life? Do you have any idea, and no it’s not your spouse or your parents, it is someone closer than you think…..
The most important relationship we will ever have in our life, is with our own self.
So, the most important relationship anyone can have in their own lives is with themselves. Isn’t that an amazing thought?
Although this website is about aging gracefully, this relationship with ourselves is something that we need to develop throughout our lives.
We are the only ones who are present at every moment of our lives — from birth onward — think about that. This relationship with yourself can be the most difficult one to cultivate. This may be because society places such emphasis on the importance of being in a romantic partnership, even teaching us to set aside our own needs for the needs of another.
Until we know ourselves, however, we cannot possibly choose the right relationship to support our mutual growth toward our highest potential. By allowing ourselves to be comfortable with being alone, we can become the people with whom we want to have a relationship.
Perhaps at no other time in history has it been possible for people to survive, and even thrive, while living alone. We can now support ourselves financially, socially, and emotionally without needing a spouse for survival in any of these realms, unlike our ancestors in the past.
With this freedom, we can pursue our own interests and create fulfilling partnerships with friends, business partners, creative cohorts, and neighbors. Once we’ve satisfied our needs and created our support system, a mate then becomes someone with whom we can share the bounty of all we’ve created and the beauty we’ve discovered within ourselves.
As we move away from tradition and fall into more natural cycles of being in the world today, we may find that there are times where being alone nourishes us and other periods in which a partnership is best for our growth.
We may need to learn to create spaces to be alone within relationships. When we can shift our expectations of our relationships with ourselves and others to opportunities for discovery, we open ourselves to forge new paths and encounter uncharted territory.
Being willing to know and love ourselves, and to find what truly makes us feel deeply and strongly, gives us the advantage of being able to attract and choose the right people with whom to share ourselves, whether those relationships fall into recognizable roles or not.
Choosing to enjoy being alone allows us to fully explore our most important relationship — the one with our true selves.
So always remember that the most important relationship that you will ever have is definitely with your own self.
The primary thing in life should be to get to know yourself and discover what lies beneath your own exterior.
You’ve all probably heard of the saying ‘love yourself first, then others’ which can be paraphrased in this case as well: we need to get to know ourselves first so we can get to know others around us, which is often not such an easy task.
I think getting to truly know yourself only happens later in life. When you are young you think you know yourself, but more than often do not.
You are right though, it is not an easy task to really get to know yourself.
I love articles like this. Especially since they go very well with my site. You see if one can’t have a healthy relationship with themself then how can they be happy with anyone else? That is because in the end you truly don’t know who you really are. So it’s vital one does such that. It just takes time. Thanks for a helpful article.
Thanks for stopping by to comment Kiersti and you are right. If you can’t learn to love yourself, you are going to find fault with others, so it is vital to work on your relationship with yourself to get to know yourself before trying to make outside relationships work, as you will then know exactly what you are looking for.