In creating self and building relationships I was misled by the belief that another person could fill the voids left by my need for belonging; belonging to something, to someone. I thought that unconditional love by another would be the way in which to meet all of my needs.
But building a partnership with another person isn’t about filling a void. Not until my foundation of self was built up beyond a level of giving myself to others could I become part of it, part of anything. Being in love or building a life with someone else really only happens once you have created the ability in your own foundation of self to meet your own needs. I had spent much of my life in search of some person, to fill in the parts of self that could make me whole.
It’s crazy to think that someone who had such difficulty trusting others would put herself in a position to have her needs met by someone else. The reality of it is, perhaps on some level I knew that it wasn’t possible. Instead, I lost myself in others. But once I became aware of my need to belong, to be loved by someone else, I realised I had to do things for myself first. Only then I could start building up the parts of my foundation that could connect or become part of another person’s foundation. The trouble was this took years for me to understand. Historically, I had sought refuge in relationship after relationship, but I was still lost and too much of my sense of self was still empty.
It is easy to imagine that building up the foundation of another person, has the power to limit and compromise the integrity of one’s own foundation. But it has a way of tricking you into believing that it feels good to be taken care of by someone else, even if it means your needs are not your own.
In contrast, by building up my own foundation of self I was able to gain the understanding and necessary awareness of where I begin and where I might begin to become part of something else, part of someone else’s life – a partnership. Once I realised that my search for love and happiness outside of self was unattainable I began the difficult journey of searching and creating those blocks within my own foundation.
I now had the understanding that the failure of maintaining my own foundation had compromised my own sense of self. Never again would I find myself at the end of anything without a map of finding love and happiness within my own heart and soul.
