My dissertation took forever. Being slightly — only slightly, mind you — OCD, I had to do the most thorough job of research ever. It actually was about 8 years. Well, I had little kids; sue me. Anyway, when I was all done, I had this stack of transcripts in my hand from the interviews I had with the people who volunteered to tell me their stories. It was time for me to pick a title.
I poured over all the transcripts, flipping from one to another. And then this cold shiver ran down my spine. I couldn’t believe what my eyes saw. I double and triple checked and there it was. Somewhere in each conversation, every person I had interviewed said nearly the same thing using nearly the same words: “I was never good enough.”
That became the title of my dissertation.
Many of us grew up with that “not good enough” message. And when we hear that message in varying ways over long periods of time, it unfortunately seeps into our souls. We believe the message.
That’s not a good thing.
When we feel that in some profound way, we are “not good enough” we sure don’t want to look too closely at ourselves.
This presents a paradox. If the only way to “fix” ourselves — if we really aren’t so good after all — is to look inside so we can tinker around and see what needs fixing, but the very act of looking is too painful because we’re “not good enough” then how do we begin?
The problem is compounded by the fact that in order to have a great marriage, we *must* love ourselves.
Think about it: You go into a marriage wanting love, right?
Well, how do you get love from your partner if they don’t love themselves? Where do they get that love from when they don’t even know what it is?
And, to complicate things even more, it could be that the *reason* you wanted the love so much is that you don’t sufficiently love yourself.
Well, then, how will you ever give back the love to your partner?
Man, you see how complicated this gets…
Look at it this way: There will always be competition in the relationship for who gets the attention and who gets things “their way.” You can’t do both at once except in those rare occasions where both want the identical thing. So you can decide by flipping a coin, of course.
But the essence of the problem is that if you don’t completely love yourself, then you feel a hole inside, a gap that you expect the other person to fill.
That is the reason why there are fights. In fact, it is the only reason there are fights. All fights stem from this one thing. One person is feeling lacking and expects the other person to fill the void. The other person may have some reasons not to:
- a needy person doesn’t love themselves so she may be attracted to a mean, unloving person. Can you see that? If I don’t love Me, then I don’t expect anyone else to either – even though that is exactly what I really want. So I will be attracted to someone who shares my belief in not loving me.
- a partner may have a void of their own which demands filling
- a partner may think a one-way street is a sign of an unhealthy soul and an unhealthy relationship and doesn’t want to be part of that.
But there is a huge piece of logic missing in the notion that your own emptiness can ever be filled by another person. After all, if you don’t love yourself, how can you expect anyone else to love you?
To make matters even worse, if you feel empty inside and yearn so badly for someone else to fill it, just exactly what do you picture yourself doing for the other person all that time? If you can’t even love yourself, how can you think you’ll be able to be an adequate source of love to someone else?
It may seem paradoxical that to make a great marriage you must love yourself, but it always works out that way. Besides from what I’ve said above, here are 3 more reasons why you *must* both love yourselves to make the marriage work:
- When you’re needy, it’s not attractive to your partner. It just isn’t. Your partner is going to be automatically attracted to someone who is not needy. And so will you. And you know it.
- Even if your partner saw something inside of you that they loved to pieces in spite of your neediness, they’d get tired of being the only one giving. Fair is fair, after all, right?
- Chances are your partner is about the same level of neediness as you are. Yes, I know opposites attract, but in terms of neediness, uh-uh. So they just wouldn’t know how to be a giver. And you wouldn’t. So bam! That’s where the fights and hurt feelings come in.
Seems like a big obstacle, right?
It is. Take any complaint a couple would have – neglect, cheating, verbal abuse, “she doesn’t care,” “he doesn’t listen” – and 90% of the problem boils down to a lack of self-love. With self-love you can have compassion for the idiosyncrasies of your partner, patience with their struggles, and enough warmth and sweetness to overcome most issues.
I personally believe it is the real reason the divorce rate is so high.
However, there is a solution at hand. It’s DrDeb. Yes, me. I created an approach to solving all of this that begins with developing self-love. It’s the foundation. And I invite you to discuss it with me and see how or whether it applies to your situation. Book a call for a personal meeting between me, you, and your spouse and let’s roll up our sleeves and take a look to see how this is going to work for you. https://drdeb.com/book
When you’ve booked, be sure to fill out the application that is on another page you will be taken to. That info will help us in our meeting and it probably saves 20 min of talk time.