“If we’re dating, I want to be your second priority. I want your first priority to be you, your ambitions, your life, and your future, because my priority right now is me and mine. Finding happiness and security alone is crucial to finding it together.”
~ Steven Bartlett
Beyond the Quote (348/365)
Want to know the secret to a happy relationship? Two happy people. Not two dependent people who are constantly negging each other for attention/ validation/ reassurance. Not two people who are constantly placing expectations on the other person to fulfill. Not two people who are so scared to be alone that they demand the other person be in every single faucet of their lives. And definitely not two people who are trying to use the other for selfish gains. The secret is being happy first—as an individual—and then sharing that happiness with the other.
Relationships that are composed of two “halves” don’t last. Thinking that you and your loved one are each “half” of a person, if nothing else, is the fundamental flaw in the entire relationship. You have to be a “whole” person first, before you can ever expect to, not only find happiness and security in yourself, but in your relationship.
You are not a puzzle piece who is looking for the matching piece. You are the entire puzzle set who is looking for a complimentary set. You are not two legs of a table looking for another two-legged table to lean on. You are a complete table who is holding and supporting all that life has already given you, who is looking for another complete table with whom you can share the load with (and vice versa). And you are certainly not half of a heart who is looking for another, compatible, half of a heart to unite with. You are a whole-hearted person whose full love flows from the self-love that you’ve manifested from within.
The problem with the relationship notion that, “you complete me” is that it implies that you’re incomplete. And that can be a dangerous idea. You are never not complete. When you mentally associate yourself as being “complete” when you’re in a relationship with another, by definition, you become “incomplete” when they are gone. And it’s very possible that you don’t spend the entire duration of your life with the same exact person/people. Even if you’re convinced that you will, there’s yet another person who you will still always spend more time with—yourself. And if you never prioritize the person who you’re with the most—yourself—how can you ever expect a relationship with you to flourish?
We have to remember that we are not in a relationship solely to fulfill the needs or expectations of the other. They may certainly be a priority, but it is nobody’s job to fulfill another person’s needs and expectations. The job of fulfilling needs is an inside job. And so is the process of managing expectations and desires. To expect another person to do the inside-out work for you is ludicrous. They are not your servant. They are not your slave. They are not in your life solely to make your life better. They are your partner with whom you share the responsibilities of happiness, growth, fulfillment, contribution, and service with.
Dependence should never be the reason for a relationship, it should be the perk. In other words, you should never feel incomplete without another person—but having them in your life should feel nice and like it makes things better. This is why happy relationships can be so hard. They are composed of two independents who need to self-manage their own happiness. And sometimes, those individual needs might lead them away from the other. Or it might go against the feelings or emotions of the other. It’s inevitable!
You and they are not identical people with identical needs. So, when it does inevitably happen, you have to pay particularly close attention to how it affects the individuals first, and then how it affects the relationship second. Otherwise, you might end up with an unhappy individual (or worse—two) and then everything will get compromised anyway. Including what you thought you were trying to protect in the first place—your own happiness.
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