Yes, it is a cliche, but you can not have a successful relationship with anyone (A-N-Y-O-N-E) until you have a solid relationship with your self. Whoa there, person-reading-this-post! Before you react in an eyes-rolling, where’s-my-grandma-cause-you’ve-got-nothing-on-her kind of a way, keep reading.

Meet Sam One. Sam One did not really know who she was and dated Patrick because Patrick liked Sam One. That was pretty much the only reason they started dating. Patrick picked out Sam One as someone he wanted to date and not knowing what she wanted, Sam One agreed to date him. Why? Because Sam One liked the attention. It felt nice to have someone pay attention to her (normal!!!).

But over time, Patrick started to be mean to Sam One. He would would ditch her to be with his friends, ignore her texts and talk behind her back. Sam One knew these things, but she worried that she was the reason Patrick was being mean. Maybe she wasn’t smart enough, or pretty enough or funny enough… so she kept trying to gain Patrick’s attention back. In the end, Patrick broke up with Sam One telling her he never really liked her in the first place. Sam One was then really, really, really hurt, and really really confused.

Did Sam One put her self-worth in Patrick’s hands? Did Sam One have a solid relationship with her self before dating Patrick? What do you think?

Meet Sam Two (we don’t know how they got their last names btw). Sam Two hears that Patrick likes her. She doesn’t really know Patrick; she has seen him in one or two of her classes, but they have never really hung out.  Sam Two says so to her friend, who was the one who had asked Sam Two if she was interested in dating him. As a result, Patrick starts to sit with them at the lunch table. At first Patrick seems nice but then Sam Two notices that he ditched his friends after school a few times, he interrupts her and he blows off a lot of the texts he gets from some of his friends. She decides he’s just not her type. Sam Two was then really fine hanging out with her old lunch friends again.

 Did Sam Two put her self-worth in Patrick’s hands? Did Sam Two have a solid relationship with her self before dating Patrick? What do you think?

Knowing what you want in a relationship is part of knowing who you are… and what these posts are all about. Knowing what you like, don’t like, want, don’t want, expect etc., all all unique aspects of you. When you haven’t thought about these things, you can end up in a relationship like Sam One (or an even worse relationship than that) because you won’t have started dating with the things you want in mind. You can end up dating with some one else taking the driver’s wheel and that can leave you at a dead end.

In a relationship, no one is supposed to be “in the driver’s seat” of the relationship. A relationship is co-created by the people in it and those people should both have control. That means both people want to be in the relationship, both people like want happens in the relationship and both people contribute to it. When any of these become imbalanced, that’s when a relationship may be in trouble or someone might get hurt. Safeguard yourself by thinking now about what you want…