Self Love Can Help Your Relationship

Self Love Can Help Your Relationship Grow In a Whole New way

If you want a healthy, loving relationship, both you and your spouse need to be healthy and loving individuals. Although physical health is certainly important, that is not the kind of health we are talking about here. It would be best to be responsible for your own mental, emotional, and spiritual health. Each of you should support and care for yourself in these areas and not become dependent on the other to carry your load for your health in these areas. No matter how much you love each other, you must love and care for yourselves for the benefit of the relationship.

Four Things to Consider About Self-Love

• The way you treat yourself is how others will treat you. Others, including your spouse, will take their cues from you. If you treat yourself well, including protecting yourself with healthy boundaries, others will follow suit and treat you well also,

• Self-love and care produce a partnership relationship, not a codependent union. If you don’t love yourself, you will likely begin looking to your mate for approval and love. This leads to the devaluation of you as a person and creates a very unhealthy dynamic. You have no identity apart from each other. As a result, you will lose yourself and the relationship. On the other hand, if you each love and care for yourself and the other, you will create a partnership of equals who value not only each other but themselves.

• Your happiness is your responsibility. No one else can make you happy. Happiness is a by-product of working on yourself and your own life and situation. Finding and living your purpose, defining and living by your values, and drawing and enforcing healthy boundaries can all bring more happiness to you. None of these things can someone else do for you. You must each take responsibility for your own life and your happiness. Your relationship will be healthier… and happier…if you do.

Ideas for How to Practice Self-Love and Self-Care

• Be Kind to Yourself. Kindness is love in action. When you are kind to someone, you act lovingly. What kindnesses do you extend to others? Do you compliment them on their appearance? So, when was the last time you gave yourself a compliment like that? In every area, give yourself the grace that you give others. Cut yourself some slack! You are human – flawed, yes, but wonderfully created in the image of God with personality, gifts, and strengths.

• Practice Positive Affirmations. In other words, stop the negative dialogue, the “stinking thinking,” the negative self-talk. Positive declarations or affirmations state who you are becoming and what your future looks like, even if you are not there yet. In Love Recon, participants have the opportunity to eliminate the negative thoughts and create positive affirmations about themselves and their future.

• Associate with Positive People. Choose to limit your contact with “vampires” who will suck the life and joy out of you. Instead, find and associate with those who will encourage you and motivate you to shoot for the stars.  

• Go For It! What is “it”? Anything you have been afraid to attempt but know would be incredible if you achieved it. Self-esteem is not built by someone giving you a participation trophy. It is produced when you accomplish something challenging, something you had to work and strive for. Nobody gave it to you, and nobody can take it away.

• Change Your Physical State. Breathe. Change your posture. Your physical state often dictates your mental state, so change the position of your body to change your attitude. For example, sitting for too long and breathing shallower can foster negative thoughts and feelings. Instead, stand up with your head raised and your arms lifted high in a V-shape. As a result, you will feel more confident and self-assured and can more easily like and love yourself.

• Go Solo. Turn off electronic devices. Meditate. Reconnect with yourself. Dream. Pray. Play. Re-center. It’s not easy to do, but you are worth it!

• Adopt An Abundance Mentality. There may be other people in the world who have achieved in your field or accomplished something similar to your dream. There’s still room for you. It’s not “either-or,” but “both-and .”There is always room at the top! An abundance mentality also leads to gratitude for your life and yourself.

• Discover Your Purpose – Give Back! Do some inner work and discover your purpose in life. Pay attention to what you are passionate about, what you enjoy, what you are good at, what you have learned through pain, and then create a purpose statement for your life. Let it be a statement of who you are and what you will contribute to the world in your lifetime. Then begin to seek opportunities and ways to live it out.

• Don’t Forget the Self-Care and Have Fun. Eat well. Exercise. Take care of your soul and spirituality. Relax and do things that you enjoy

Learning to love yourself is one of the most daunting of life’s challenges for most people. But once you do, you will be amazed at the positive effect that healthy self-love can have on you and your relationship. Self-love is one of the most selfless things that you can do!

You can learn more about our marriage retreat for couples right HERE.