If you’re happy and satisfied within yourself, you’ll find any reason to be happy while in the company of anyone else. Your perspective will be shaped by your state of mind, and thus, you’ll see only the good in them and all around you.
But, if you aren’t happy and satisfied within yourself, you’ll find any excuse to be disappointed by what the other does or does not do. You’ll notice the offenses readily and will be quick to spot the deficiencies everywhere.
The latter sets up a kind of neediness, in which, you’ll look constantly to the other person to do certain things or stop doing certain things, so as to fulfill the fantasies in your mind and your idealized vision of how things should go.
This is what Esther Hicks refers to as “looking for love in all the wrong places.” It is why self-care and your relationship with yourself is at the core of all other relationships. Like a healthy heart, it keeps everything else around it healthy and happy.
I know it is tricky because… “what about when the other really does display intolerable tendencies and inappropriate patterns?”
In response to this all too realistic objection, I am thinking of Alain de Boton, a fellow philosopher, and his successful Ted Talk called Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person. In a humorous way, he suggests that we are all… well… a bit crazy. We’ve all got surprises and hidden neuroses that make us all challenging to be around. And to expect to find someone who doesn’t require some tolerance and patience and forgiveness is fanciful. Even foolish.
It’s not to say that there is never a time when walking away is the right thing to do, but when it is, you’ll know so surely and confidently, that you won’t need an article or a Ted Talk to tell you. You’ll feel the answer in your bones.
Donna Quesada 