Intimacy Starts with "I"

I frequently work with individuals and couples who can't seem to find the right partner, keep choosing the same partner or aren't satisfied with the partner they chose (cause it IS a choice). Endless arguments, secrets, miscommunication, enmeshment, codependence and lack of connection are sadly the norm. Over and over, I try to explain the concept of loving oneself first before love happens fully, effectively, healthfully with another. Many times I am met with blind eyes and deaf ears. "Doesn't love happen when one person completes the other?" clients ask. Gag me! NO!!! One broken soul doesn't compliment another broken soul. It just equals more broken. Love needs to happen with the self first. I repeat: YOU are your soulmate. YOU are the one you've been longing for. 

Sometimes we need to see, read, hear the same message multiple times by various sources for it to stick. I am not immune. My journey began at age 7. These words by Anodea Judith in "Eastern Body Western Mind" are so significant that I need to share the entire passage. She writes it well. 

"Intimacy, as Thomas Moore so aptly points out, is about bringing forth deeply interior aspects of the self. In order to have intimacy we first need to have a sense of self. We need to be intimate with our own interior, to know our needs, wishes, fears, boundaries, and hopes. Through knowing the self within, we can honor the self that lives within another. We need to be able to love our own self enough to offer it openly to someone else. Without self-love, this cannot happen. 

The most common block in the heart chakra is the absence of self-love. How can we have intimacy with others if we are distanced from our own self? How can we reach out to others when we are drowning in shame and criticism? How can we maintain balance between ourselves and others if we have no balance within? How can we treat another with respect if we treat our own selves abusively?

Ideally, the demon of shame has been transformed in the third chakra, leaving us ready to enter the heart with an honest regard for the sacredness of our being. To love ourselves is to act respectfully and responsibly toward ourselves, to enjoy our own company when in solitude, to honor our limits and speak our truths. In general, self-love is an act of treating ourselves the way we would treat anyone else that we love—respectfully, honestly, compassionately, with feeling and understanding, pride and patience. 
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Our relationships with others reflect our relationship with ourselves. We will find others who treat us the way we expect to be treated, others who respond to the relationship program we carry inside our heart chakra. Self-love is the foundation for loving others."

After you fall in love with YOU and let go of needing another to feel loved, love WILL show up for you.