Why You Should Stop Looking For Your ‘Other Half’ (Or A Relationship To Complete You)
By Shelby Reep
I am a romantic. I embrace the lovey-dovey sentiments and crave the butterflies! I know there must be some of you out there who have walked away from Rom-Com marathon with daydreams of your perfect love story. (Mine entails a modern Mr. Darcy walking through fields to proclaim his love for me outside of my apartment with a boom box raised above his head…hey a girl can dream!)
As much as I do love daydreaming and mindlessly pinning away the details of my dream wedding on Pinterest, there is this notion out there that always leaves me wanting…why does the perfect love story require finding your other half? Why does a person have to complete you?
It seems to me this quest for a “perfect mate who completes you” could be one source of the problem. Now obviously we want someone who can complement us in our weaknesses and encourage us in our strengths. However, I think it puts out a false message that a relationship is two incomplete people finding that completeness in one another.
I just want to say I think a relationship could be so much more than that. It starts with individuals being complete on their own.
Many of us spend so much time looking for the perfect person to spend the rest of our lives with and my question is: how much of that time are you using becoming a better YOU?
Relationships are not easy. Commitment is a continuing effort and daily pursuit. Finding one’s own purpose and goals is an extremely challenging front and combining those two forces seems a daunting task. I have so many friends who have been in a relationship since the day they hit puberty and have gone from one partner to the next without so much as a week of alone time. Many times, when the relationship ends, I see my friends go through a “who am I” crisis. They have so long seen themselves as a unit they have forgotten what it means to stand as an individual. Being someone else’s half, you never get the chance to invest fully in who you are and in turn, lose your identity in someone else.
I remember when I was a little girl I had so many dreams and visions for what my future would look like and what I would accomplish. Thing is, I still have those dreams and visions. I have a list of things I want to do, skills I want to retain, and qualities of myself I want to work on…but for me. I want to be the best version of myself that I can be for my own benefit. I want to be kinder, slower to judge, swifter to forgive, more generous with my time and resources just to name a few.
But I am not there yet.
I know I will never be exactly where I want to be. At least I hope not. I want to hold on to my desire to grow as an individual and find more outlets to better myself as a member of society. My point being, all of these things that I want to do and become, need to come from my own heart, not in the hopes of winning someone else’s. My identity should not rest on the whims of another’s affection, no matter how wonderful they are. No one is perfect which means no one person will be able to love you perfectly. They will fail, mess up, forget an important date, or record over your favorite shows on te-vo leaving you to speculate on who got the rose that night on the Bachelor.
Loving another person is probably one of the greatest treasures this world has to offer, but if you are looking for yourself in a relationship you will always come up shorthanded.
I want to be a whole person, happy and independent. And hopefully when or if that day comes that I bind myself to another for the rest of my days, they also have spent the time embracing who they are as an individual, so that us two wholes can become one, completely.
If not, I will be happy to be wholly me.