There are nights I wake up to one of those infomercials trying to sell you something I do not need. If I am smart and realize they are not the solution to my problem, I turn off the television and roll back over and go back to sleep. However, I know there are people and times in my own life when that was not always true. There were times that I wondered if that machine, that diet plan, that whatever was going to be the solution to my problems.
I used to think that about people as well. If only I did what X wanted then he/she would love me. If only I gave them what they wanted, then they would love me. I did so much of this out of fear. I feared nobody would love me. I feared being single. I feared this would be my last chance to experience love. I feared having to spend the rest of my life by myself and with myself. As long as I was living in this state of fear, I kept making decisions out of this fear, which enabled the fear to grow and the search for love to seem further out of my grasp.
I guess I hit bottom when my fear I would die in a relationship was greater then my fear of leaving and being alone, so I left. That was when my journey into self-love began. It is not as if the healing occurred overnight. It did not. The next relationship was not physically abusive, but it was emotionally abusive at times. The next relationship was even healthier, and my marriage to Zoe is the healthiest relationship with another person I have ever been in, next to the relationship I now have with myself.
So what changed? I stopped making decisions out of fear and began making them out of love. I stopped fearing that I had to do or say something in order for someone to love me. What I came to realize is that I had to be me. When I love myself unconditionally, then I am not hungry or dependent on the love of others. Whether I was single again or not, I still love me. I don’t mean that in an egotistical way, like I’m too sexy for my shirt kind of way. Rather, I know I was created by love, in love, to be love, and that I am love. So hit me with your best sales pitch and my answer is simple – No Sale!