"You need to know how to be alone and not be defined by another person. You need to know how to be happy with yourself before you try to be happy with someone else. If you can't love yourself, how do you expect someone else to love you"
Seeing that I have recently been called a "Media Junky" I thought I would share with you the types of people that I have noticed in the past few months via facebook/twitter/instagram and in my everyday/every other day life...
The first person is a "Relationship Hopper"! They break-up with or stop talking to one person and start with another person a day later. You know the people you see on Facebook who are in love with one person one day and the next they are with someone else and are "all smiles"! Yeah those people! As irritating as that may be, a lot of people do not notice what they are doing to themselves. I have seen this from males and females. I am a strong believer of when you end a relationship with one person, you should take time to reflect on the situation. See what you did wrong, what that person did wrong and how you can make sure it doesn't happen again. There is always room for improvement but you can't make those changes without assessing what went wrong. This DOES NOT MEAN drown in your tears and cry listening to Keyshia Cole or Jay-Z Song Cry every night. This simply means take a step back and figure out what is going on. I do not believe that you can do this while being in a relationship with an entirely different person. WHY? you ask...Because your focus is on them, how they make you feel and how you make them feel. Your focus is not on the past because at the current moment you might be "happy" (and i use the word "happy" loosely). SOO many times I have seen people hop around from one relationship to the next and they can never figure out why things are not working out. MAYBE the problem isn't them, Maybe it's you!!!
The other type of person I see is the person who stays in a relationship way too long because they are scared to be by themselves or they are scared to start all over (Raises hand, I'm guilty of that). Those are the people who you see on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram who are in love one day, saying they hate their spouse the next day and 3 days after that are back in love. I have also seen this, from males and females. Sometimes you have to just walk away from people and never look back. Scary I know but it can be done. But there is no way you can bring happiness to someone else if you are not happy yourself. If you are in a miserable relationship, and you are a miserable person, no matter what that person does, no matter how great they may be, you will bring misery to them as well. Misery loves company!!!
This is a lesson I had to learn on my own a few years ago. After a rough break-up I found myself, by myself. I spent a lot of time getting to know myself. It was a scary place to be, because at no time in my life before that moment had I taken real time out to get to know who I really was, and I'm still learning! I learned what I liked, what I didn't like. What I wanted and what I did not want. Personally, it took me to actually ask myself those questions, and it took for me to be by myself, alone, to figure those things out. It was not easy. Being alone is not always the easiest thing to do. TRUST ME, I've been there, I've done that. Getting to know yourself is an amazing experience! The things that I learned about me have changed me for the better. My overall morals and values stayed the same but I defined those things for myself. But getting to know yourself and loving yourself isn't about bringing happiness to other people, its about bringing happiness to yourself. I have a joy that no one can ever steal from me because they didn't give it to me. YES people do add to my happiness but they can never take away from it. That is something I learned from taking time out to step back from people, and spending time alone and away from everyone.
PS.....take yourself on a date! Go buy yourself some new shoes! Make yourself a huge dinner! Go to the movies by yourself. Those small things, and that time spent alone will become more and more valuable as we get older because we will be surrounded by people all the time and wish that we could have a moment alone!
