Have you ever had a relationship that ended badly, then another relationship comes along and it ends badly as well? This did not happen to me just once, but a number of times!
After this happened to me the seventh time I had to be honest enough with myself to see that if I wanted to have a different outcome I didn’t just need good relationship advice, I needed to approach my relationships in a completely different way.
Most of my relationships lasted a couple of months if I was lucky. It was quite a familiar pattern – a guy would be interested in me and I in him, then the game would begin. Firstly he needed to prove to me how much he liked me and cared for me. If I felt that was enough and I liked him too, then we would get together. As soon as we were together I would become a bit obsessed, I would think of him all the time, lose myself in him and become a dedicated ‘I will put up with anything’ kind of lover. As you can imagine this put quite a lot of guys off! When they did lose interest this would leave me somehow more obsessed and more ‘into them’, which was quite distressing really.
With most of these failed relationships came an intense feeling of falling in love, then not long after would come the familiar feelings of hopelessness and a desperation to not lose the relationship.
Looking back I can see I had no regard for myself, I had many beliefs and ideals, which kept me locked in an emotional prison of how a relationship should be and how I should be within that. I had set unrealistic ideals and standards of what this should look like.
I realize now I was being shown time and time again that I had to look deeper into what I was creating. I could no longer deny the fact that I must be responsible in some way for attracting the same situation to develop and be repeated again and again – just with a different person. I could no longer play the victim; I had been offered the choice to see how I (yes I, no one else) was creating these repetitive heartbreaks.
I started to be really honest with myself as it was now becoming very obvious how my lack of self-worth was infiltrating and affecting many relationships in my life. Inspired by the love in which I was held during Esoteric Healing sessions I began to make changes to the way I lived. Choosing a greater level of love and care for myself worked magic in breaking past self-sabotaging momentums.
I now am fully aware that until we deal with our hurts we can never move on: we may get a new partner or we may move to another country, but the momentum is still there hidden, waiting to manifest itself again and again.
The deep pain I experienced in all my relationships was undoubtedly caused by the lack of love I had for myself. I realize now without a foundation of loving myself, all my relationships were destined to eventually crumble.
With lack of self-worth I was ultimately setting myself up time and time again to allow heartbreak and abuse. Through developing the love I now have for myself, for the lovely lady I am, I have healed huge wounds that kept me from developing loving relationships.
Now, as I have developed my own self-love and have faced the pain that I had held onto, I find myself in my longest ever relationship (now 4 years) and engaged to a beautiful man. We are both committed to being and bringing true love into our relationship – to deal with our stuff and to evolve together. Of course there have been rocky times and I am sure there may be a few more to come, but overall our foundation is strong and built with a love and truth that pulls us back when we are off track to constantly remind us of our truth.
With the inspiration I have received from Universal Medicine, its practitioners and the women’s groups held monthly in London, I have deepened my level of self-worth and this has had a positive effect on all my relationships, whether they be with family, colleagues, friends or my partner.
I didn’t need good relationship advice – I simply realized that without self-worth and self-love I will always be looking for others to fill my need, which ultimately never truly works.
by Samantha, UK
Further Reading:
Self-Worth: Honouring the Beautiful Woman I Am
It is as Simple as Loving Myself First
Samantha, this makes sense to me
“Looking back I can see I had no regard for myself, I had many beliefs and ideals, which kept me locked in an emotional prison of how a relationship should be and how I should be within that. I had set unrealistic ideals and standards of what this should look like.”
we are so conditioned from a young age, we are given pictures, ideals, principals of what love looks like and should be like but I have discovered it is totally false and can lead us into another cycle of not claiming ourselves so that at some point in our lives we feel let down, disenchanted with life as it did not match up to the lies we were peddled, that Mr. Right will come along sweep us off our feet and we will live happily ever after.
If we don’t deal with what makes us live with lack of self-worth, we will have to deal with the reflection of it that soon or later others will bring into our life.
Looking at what we create from a curiosity rather than a critical eye allows us to learn more about ourselves.
How we are with ourselves will reflect in every other relationship we have wether it is with the lady on the check out til a stranger or our intimate partner, working on ourselves and healing past hurts are vital therefore for healthy relationships.
“I simply realized that without self-worth and self-love I will always be looking for others to fill my need” A beautiful realisation of truth.
What would our social systems look like if we were all taught to be at-least self-loving from day one of school? Maybe we would all live in a harmonious state with others with joy-full interactions, which would include everyone and there-fore every relationship would be an out-standing realization of how we can live together.
We live what we create and we create what we live, so when we depend on another to give us the love we crave we don’t realise that this, love, is something we already have within us but we have created the belief that it has to come from outside of us.
The relationship with ourselves definitely plays out in our relationships.
Loving and caring for ourselves first and foremost is a prerequisite for all of our relationships.
Without a relationship based on self- love and self-care we just do not have the foundations to possible love another.
If a situation keeps repeating then there is something within ourselves that we need to look at and address.
I think one of our biggest downfalls in relationships is that we see each relationship as a separate entity – rather than what manifests in one relationship is going to manifest in the next relationship until we deal with it. We think by leaving someone or closing the door that’s the end to whatever happened – not realising that we take it all with us and that whatever happened in our last relationship will naturally occur in a fresh relationship.
Life has a beautiful way of repeating the same scenarios over and over again , until we get the message to change something and be willing to explore our part in the ongoing cycle and then make new choices from a foundation of loving ourselves and then bring all of us to others with no expectations of them fulfilling our needs.
I love your honesty here ‘I had to look deeper into what I was creating.’ not very comfortable to do but something I know from experience when we do start looking at what we are creating in our life and start to change the healing is very beautiful.
Without a good foundation of self-worth and self-love we cannot expect to ever have a proper functioning realationship with another for there is nothing to build it on.
Building our own self love, through constant choices to care more deeply for ourselves, is a fundamental part of our foundation that supports us to hold steady, to know ourselves inside and out. Without self love and self care, we leave ourselves wobbly, precarious, unsure and unsteady and at the mercy of life, instead of solid and with ourselves.
As relationships are such a wonderful reflection of the way we approach life it is no wonder that many ‘fail’ if we are still holding on to unhealed hurts from our past, Those, hurts will be triggered in many ways and will continue to be triggered even if we leave one relationship for another. It is when we acknowledge the trail of ‘failed’ relationships behind us that it’s time to stop and wonder why. And I eventually found the answer was that I didn’t have a loving and caring relationship with myself and that was the most important one of all.
I totally agree, self love and self worth are a prerequisite if we want amazing and deeply loving relationships, and also to be able to offer amazing relationships to others.
This blog renders all the relationship books, men are from mars and women are from venus type books unnecessary – what is the point in going into any relationship if we have not first secured and solidified the relationship we have with ourselves – it’s like selling a car with only two wheels – the other person doesn’t get all of us and everything they also deserve.
Unless we bring all of ourselves to a relationship we will always be dependent on others to fulfil our neediness – not a recipe for success. Deepening my own self-love has impacted all my relationships as I support myself and am so much more open to what unfolds each day.
Coming to realise that we are everything before we are anything offers us all an opportunity to build a sense of self-worth and self-esteem that is not a delicately balanced juggle at the mercy of what happens around us or what relationship we are in. Building that sense of who we are as a solid lived foundation sows seeds that feed us back in all aspects of our relationships and we can start to recognise what takes us away from that ease and knowing in our bodies.
Absolutely there is nothing that we need to search for as we are already everything – so contrary to the messages that we are fed by society.
The divine design of our universe is its repetitive nature. I used to hate that I couldn’t just move on, it used to drive me bonkers and I blamed everyone and everything that reminded me of an issue I felt I had dealt with for reminding me that I had, perhaps, not dealt with it at all and was instead using a coping mechanism to distract myself from this fact!
Self love and self worth are the keys in developing relationships that bring true love, which allows each person to evolve. When these are lacking in our lives we become needy, always looking outside of ourselves for someone else to fill our void. It is beautiful Samantha, that you have come to the realisation that by bringing self love and self worth into your life, you are now able to have a beautiful loving evolving relationship.
It might be uncomfortable to feel how we create situations in life that we don’t like ourselves but, when the most intense feelings are over it gives us space to actually observe and change the pattern we were in.
Each relationship we have can be a space to heal our hurts or/and a space to confirm what we truly bring in essence.
The same undealt with hurts = the same destructive habits and patterns in relationships. It makes sense that we need to heal something in ourselves for our relationships to change. We are after all 50% of that relationship!
Yes, and that is taking responsibility, or we get the same next time, ‘The deep pain I experienced in all my relationships was undoubtedly caused by the lack of love I had for myself. I realize now without a foundation of loving myself, all my relationships were destined to eventually crumble.’
I can feel the difference between knowing my quality and holding this strongly and also the feeling of neediness. With the neediness I am prepared to accept less than my quality, when I hold my quality, I know from deep within that nothing from outside can complete me as I already am everything.
Great piece of advice plus when I read the words’With lack of self-worth I was ultimately setting myself up time and time again to allow heartbreak and abuse’.
This sums up my life but these lines have helped me beyond your imagination. Stay blessed. Love your post.
This line is remarkable!
“without self-worth and self-love I will always be looking for others to fill my need, which ultimately never truly works.”
This is the lesson that everyone becomes familiar with in their old age but words of wisdom have always been a great gift!
Being needy like this always feels horrible, both to deliver, and those on the receiving end.
Whenever we begin a relationship with a need to have the other person fill some gap we have in our lives ( such as lack of self love) there will be disharmony, as it is dishonoring for both people involved.
Oh yes I know this one, it is a hard one to cut, of not feeling full within yourself so needing someone else to fill you up or to feel complete. When we do this we are guaranteed to always bring issues into our relationships and never quite feel settled.
Self-worth and self-love along with self-nurturing are keys to forming relationships that will last with everyone we meet.
A beautiful transformation Samantha. In deepening a loving relationship with ourselves we do naturally bring love, who we are, to every relationship through which the opportunity to deepen our connection to love is offered, through openly and honestly sharing ourselves, being our selves. This is what true relationship is about; supporting each other to evolve in love.
This is a brilliant expose on a lack of self worth, how we feel about ourselves actually effects not only every single relationship we have but every single moment. What I am discovering is that it’s worth investing time into building an amazing relationship with yourself so that every moment is amazing and we are not relying on external sources to lift us up or make us feel great.
It is very correct in saying and worth being honest and aware about if you have any investments in a relationship. Those investments are usually made up of what you are not bringing to yourself and thus become hurts. The best medicine is appreciation for yourself to the endless degree . . .
This was very timely for me to read, I can feel that I have a need coming up of wanting to be in a relationship, but when I stop and surrender I can feel that going about it in this way, through a drive and a need, that I would then allow something that I don’t truly want. When I surrender more the need actually isn’t there and I am much more content within myself and allowing of things to happen.
Thank you Samantha for sharing your inspiring story. This is a gorgeous example of taking responsibility for what happens to us in life. Often we think it is easier to blame others but you did the opposite and started looking at your relationship with yourself, started healing your hurts and recognising the cause. A massive WOW to you for your commitment to love, to yourself and to being in a loving relationship.
” I simply realized that without self-worth and self-love I will always be looking for others to fill my need, which ultimately never truly works.” so true indeed Samantha it starts within us connecting to the love that is within into all aspects of our lives. Like you for a number of years I kept attracting the same type of relationships until one day I realised it was me who had to change, since after healing many hurts and taking more responsibility for my choices over time a beautiful man came into me life and we have these last 13 years grown and developed into a beautifully loving relationship.
‘I didn’t need good relationship advice – I simply realized that without self-worth and self-love I will always be looking for others to fill my need,’ This is awesome. There are thousands of books out there telling us what to do about our relationships and how can we ever expect a relationship to work if we are coming from a place of need for it makes us dependent from day one. Taking greater care of ourselves builds self-worth and self love and the need for anything outside diminishes and more love comes our way.
Reading this highlighted simply: Abuse stems from lack of love. Firstly within which is reflected in all other relationships. To change we have to address whats within first and not focus on whats outside of us. Thank you Samantha.
Thank you Samantha, always beautiful to read about the subtle yet very powerful effect that self-love can have on a person’s life. It is inspiring, and makes me feel that anything is possible.
Repeating the same mistakes in relationships seems to be something we specialise in. It might look different but the issue is largely the same. When this happens to me, it can take a while to realise it but it means that there is someone in me I haven’t been willing to face or a hurt I am hanging onto. Loving yourself first is a vital key to a loving relationship.
Truly magnificent indeed – without self-love, returning to our self-worth and seeing the depth of our innermost value – we are lost and living a life of loss of the most beautiful thing that there is – Love.
‘The deep pain I experienced in all my relationships was undoubtedly caused by the lack of love I had for myself.’
Samantha I think you’ve cracked (what is for many of us) the hard-to-crack relationship nut here! If we’re looking for love in all the wrong places (and in all the wrong ways) it’s because we’ve not yet learnt to truly value ourselves.
When the same thing happens over and over we have to be honest that we have a pattern – this is the first step to healing. The next step is to go for ground zero to deconstruct this pattern – and the only way to do that is to honestly admit why we do it, once that occurs the root cause is exposed the healing can naturally begin.
When we know that we are love then any loving relationship we have is an expansion of that love.
Being in a relationship that doesn’t come from a need is liberating for both parties. To choose to be in a relationship is very different to needing to be in one.
We were never taught that without self-love we will have no true relationships… but it is true
What a deeply inspiring blog Samantha. As I read it this morning I was struck by these words of wisdom;
“I now am fully aware that until we deal with our hurts we can never move on: we may get a new partner or we may move to another country, but the momentum is still there hidden, waiting to manifest itself again and again”.
Round and around we go if we do not deal with our unhelpful patterns.
“I didn’t need good relationship advice – I simply realized that without self-worth and self-love I will always be looking for others to fill my need, which ultimately never truly works.” I think you just rendered all relationship advice books useless! What if it’s as simple as – the relationship we have with ourselves determines the relationship we will have with another?
Healing the patterns of my lack of loving behaviour towards myself continues to improve all my relationships. This has been a gradual process for me but I have recently been appreciating the fact that I am letting go of the judgement of myself that has sabotaged me for so long. I have been single for many years as I knew that I needed to work on my relationship with myself but it is only since being introduced to the Ageless Wisdom teachings that I have been given tools to heal my lack of self-worth and allow for the re-connection to my divine essence and the understanding that I have all that I need already within me.
Thank you Samantha for sharing a situation that is often true for many people in relationships. When we go into a relationship needing to be loved this is a sure set up for the many problems we have. When we learn that we are first the love that we need and come from our own self love the relationship has a foundation to build on and an opportunity to become a deeply loving and evolving relationship.
It is so true that we will always be looking for another to fill our need if we don’t fully love and accept ourselves. This is a theme that has been big in my life too and when you don’t love yourself, if someone comes along who truly loves you-I have found that you won’t be able to accept it and will find a way through your lack of self worth to sabotage it.
The approach in making it all about the other person doesn’t work as you’ve clearly shared here! I too have experienced that it’s when I love myself more does more love grow in all other relationships.
How awesome it is to be shown time and time again that the way you were going about your relationships were not working, and that there could be another way to be with another. Quite often it seems like these messages given to us are lost and go unappreciated or ignored, but in this instance you were listening and evolving, and now have the benefit of understanding what was truly going on with all of your past relationships.
Why do we play games, with ourselves and with others? It’s like a form of distraction as it creates issues that we then have to ‘sort out’. I’ve been in relationships where this ‘sorting out’ seems like it’s healthy and we are working through stuff… but ultimately, we are making the issues in the first place to avoid deepening in the love we have for ourselves and sharing that with one another.
“I didn’t need good relationship advice – I simply realized that without self-worth and self-love I will always be looking for others to fill my need, which ultimately never truly works.” This is great Samantha – for me what you are sharing regarding re-connecting to your-self worth and self-love is brilliant. It is advice we can possibly understand, appreciate and accept when presented by someone who is living this truth in their own life.
It is very easy to fall into the trap of being self-judgemental and fight those patterns and behaviours that we know don’t serve us when the best medicine is to simply commit to self-love as it is only with love that that which does not belong to the true nature that we are can be renounced and left behind creating space to live our full potential.
Thing is, when we are willing to step out of our own self-created drama, and actually take responsibility for the outplay of our patterns of behaviour, amazing things can occur. It takes awareness, diligence, and a lightness in the end, to actually bring our authentic self to a relationship with another – and then realise that there is no ‘end’ and no ‘fixed point’ to get to in a relationship. If the foundation we set is true, the potential is there to continually grow, learn and build upon the activity and expression of love together, that each person may be all that they are not only for their partner, but for all.
Words such as you’ve shared Samantha, are often said, but without the authenticity of them truly being claimed, without the authenticity of a true change having taken place… In your words here, the authenticity rings deeply true. We can indeed heal that which leads us to seek to be ‘completed by another’, and foster a rich and loving relationship with our own selves – from which, all of our ‘outer’ relationships are defined.
very simple and very powerful truth – without ” self-love I will always be looking for others to fill my need”.
This is a beautiful blog, I don’t feel we take enough responsibility in what we bring from our end to a relationship, all our focus is on the other person and what they bring and whether they meet the mark, and we seem to forget that we have an equal part and an equal responsibility to play, this includes working on our stuff so we don’t bring things into the relationship that could destroy it or affect the other person.
Absolutely Samantha, it is key to heal our hurts and build a strong foundation of love for self, ‘ Choosing a greater level of love and care for myself worked magic in breaking past self-sabotaging momentums.’
One of the greatest responsibilities we all hold is the relationship we have with our Love within. As we are all equal in Love, the degree of Love to which we surrender to within, is what determines the quality of the movements we share with the world that we are always in relationship with.
Nearly all relationship suffer from the problem of emotional manipulation to varying degrees – unspoken agreements, communication problems born from a lack of true honesty with what is really going on, silent wants not expressed. And the moment you do start to communicate all of these things in a relationship, the gloves come off, and it gets ugly a lot of the time, and the truth as to what is really going on gets buried. So how do you avoid this? To a certain extent, you can’t. Life is by no means perfect, and neither are relationships. A good start however is to realise that what lies underneath a lot of our relationship problems is the fact that we seeking something from another to compensate for what we refuse to give ourselves, and so when that need is not met – in whatever shape or form it comes by – we react. And the harsh truth is that whilst ever we impose our unspoken needs upon another, we cannot truly love them.
Kids have a great radar for feeling neediness in adults, as I have noticed on several occasions at my workplace. When a child has a strong sense of self and totally walks it, watching them in how they are with others that try to make them like them, you can see their whole body squirm and they want to get away from the person as that energy coming at them is very imposing.
A lack of self-worth is poison in the body and can then poison any relationship. When we realise we are all equal in our own expression we can learn to love ourselves and find true love with and for others.
This is great to read, and exposing to feel the truth of the relationship with others is a reflection of the relationship with ourself. Life is constantly showing us what we choose, and when we don’t like it, we are the only ones to change it.
The shock of experiencing an uncomfortable situation twice or more often is a great ally in healing. Slowly but surely I can become aware of the fact that I am the creator of my issues and take steps for true change.
Samantha this is awesome to read. I’ve had such a dodgy track record of relationships because of my lack of self-love – some may have looked good from afar or on paper but they were based on a need to need the other person and vice versa. So important to be honest about this else the pattern just repeats in more sophisticated forms.
This is really eye opening Samantha – and your honesty is profound. Getting into a relationship just because someone is showing care is something I feel many women, including myself, get into out of want and need to fulfil something in ourselves. Evolving with self-love and nurturing first, to deal with the self-worth stuff we are choosing to be in and come from a place of solidness when starting a relationship feels like a much more loving foundation and one that I look forward to experiencing.
Hello Samantha and it’s interesting when you say, “Have you ever had a relationship that ended badly, then another relationship comes along and it ends badly as well? This did not happen to me just once, but a number of times!” I have experienced this and now realise that when this happens we are always holding onto hope that at some point ‘Mr or Mrs Right’ will come along and fit perfectly in with how we are. We don’t stop and bring awareness to the fact that maybe we need to make a change, there is no self reflection. It’s becomes about getting over it and then waiting for the next one, the ‘right’ one. As you are saying this is a point for us to reflect on how we are, how we have been, how we feel. It’s more than just the devastation of the emotion we may feel and more of a question to ourselves of what am I being shown here. It’s not a blame game either way but a building of awareness around how you or we were and how it felt. It can almost feel like we are going around in circles and if this is the feeling than keep asking the questions. Don’t look for better or right but look to be aware of what is really happening.
‘I started to be really honest with myself as it was now becoming very obvious how my lack of self-worth was infiltrating and affecting many relationships in my life.’ a great observation that brings the ball back into our court, as everything is only a reflection.
I think we need a globally different approach to relationships. Relationships have become about filling our needs and somebody else’s needs and ‘completing’ each other, or becoming someone’s ‘other half.’ We’re missing out on the richness and beauty that’s on offer when we first build a true and long-lasting relationship with ourselves, then we share that magnificence with another person.
Thank you Samantha, beautiful to read about your return to self loving and self care. Our lives are the result of our choices, and by choosing true love for ourselves by healing our hurts, loving relationship are possible.
This is gold Samantha and a great support for anyone who is experiencing similar patterns in relationships. To develop a strong foundation of love and respect for ourselves any abuse or disregard sticks out a mile and we no longer settle for less. Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine presentations have been key to supporting me to build this quality into my life and live free of abusive and dysfunctional relationships.
Its only when we take responsibility for the repeating patterns in our lives and stop blaming others that we realise we hold the key to our joy inside. No need to look elsewhere, just a need to stop for a moment and be honest with ourselves so the healing can begin.
Thanks Samantha for revealing some very valid points in regard to relationships, the main one being you have to treat yourself with love before anybody else will
‘Choosing a greater level of love and care for myself worked magic in breaking past self-sabotaging momentums.’ In a way it is super simple when we stop looking outside of ourselves and start looking within and find out what love truly is about, life changes and we learn to be responsible for what keeps us from loving and caring for ourselves.
Without doubt I can now see how I created my own relationship unhappiness, I spent years blaming, now to the best of my ability I look first to my part in what ever is playing out this way I remain open and willing to learn.
Having recently married my partner and feeling totally blessed to be in such a loving evolving relationship I can honestly say none of this would have been possible if I had not developed a certain level of self love within me first . The more I deepen within and my connection to who I really am the deeper and more profound my relationship will be.
I can relate to what you have shared here- as soon as you need another to be something for you it puts a demand and pressure on the relationship that then leads to a tension.
it is s game so many play, but getting self worth from someone else will never work. It is About truly seeing this and feel that we can love ourselves, letting go of the hurt and feel the amazing being we are.
I wish we were taught this stuff early on in life – that it’s the hurts we haven’t healed which attract the same patterns in relationships, in jobs, in life generally, time and again – until we eventually, finally get it. Thanks, Samantha, for shedding light on the momentum we create for ourselves when we don’t address the true cause of our relationship woes – that it’s the relationship with ourselves that requires the attention and needs to be our starting point.
I loved your story Samantha, amazing how simply learning to bring self love and self care into our lives, taking responsibility for our choices and being open to heal our hurts, is the true medicine that opens us up to a deeper relationship with ourselves and others.
Sometimes I find that just by thinking that who I am is not enough, that I have to do or be a certain way, can cause a feeling of great hurt inside of myself. It is a rejection of who I am from the core of who I am. By allowing myself to simply be and knowing that this is enough, is actually very liberating and so any prospect of a relationship feels more like a sharing rather than another thing I am setting myself up to fail at.
So true Monica and if you think of the current state of society you can clearly see that nearly everyone is searching for love yet are not willing to look first for it in themselves. – so crazy when you look at how absurd it is, how something we naturally are (love) is so easily forgotten and used away leaving us in the illusion that another can give it to us.
Yes thanks Kevin, there have been times where I had convinced myself that most men where just down right horrid, yet this was in truth a real lie and a lie I brought into so I didn’t have to take responsibility for the part I was playing.
This was also a sentence that jumped out for me as well Sue and it is great relationship advice. Having finally realised that I gave away myself in all relationships simply to fill the emptiness I could feel inside, I have been able to begin a new chapter in my life; one that starts with me learning to love me – the most important and precious relationship of all.
A large portion of the human race has always been looking for love in all the wrong places. Great that you had the willingness, Samantha to look truthfully at yourself for the reasons your relationships weren’t working instead of playing the victim and seeing all men as just evil and then forming a loving relationship with yourself so that your current relationship had something solid to spout from.
Without self-worth and self-love I will always be looking for others to fill my need. This is very true Samantha, we try so hard to be liked, recognised and accepted to fill the void, but all that trying to hang onto so called love, is like sand through a sieve as there is no love to fill the gaps and hence why we are constantly having to return to those unloving choices.
Beautiful Samantha, I love your reflections on what was happening for you and the choice you made to ‘get’ honest. Your last line sums it all up for me – ‘I didn’t need good relationship advice – I simply realized that without self-worth and self-love I will always be looking for others to fill my need, which ultimately never truly works’. Thank you for sharing.
This is truly beautiful to read again, and see that all that is needed is love for myself, there is indeed no point in searching for it outside ourself. As it will never fulfill that which we miss, as that actually is ourselves, no one else. Building this love is building a most steady foundation for all that is to come.
Well said benkt “Building this love is building a most steady foundation for all that is to come.” with out this initial foundation we are subject to life’s ups and down’s never truly knowing our own inner power and the gifts we can bring to any relationship. When we are love we cannot not be that with everyone we meet.
I just loved reading your blog Samantha, where you are now in a deeply self loving relationship with you and your partner. “We are both committed to being and bringing true love into our relationship – to deal with our stuff and to evolve together.” Beautiful, thank you for sharing.
This is a great blog Samantha – everything starts with us and the deeper we go with our own choices re self-love and self-nurture all of our relationships reap the benefits. “Choosing a greater level of love and care for myself worked magic in breaking past self-sabotaging momentums.” I totally agree with your words here and over time have noticed how I have released some unloving patterns from my life – the Esoteric Healing Modalities have been such a huge support in this regard also.
Yes Shelly there is nothing like it when it comes to Esoteric Healing Modalities, before these I had tried a number of different therapies – massage, kinesiology, reiki yet none of these went near the topic of my own responsibility and what I was in fact creating. Some of the modalities I tried actually encouraged the blaming of others I can now see how un-evolutionary this is and how the very emotion of blame is poison in the body.
Being in a relationship where there is a commitment to developing self-worth and self-love by both partners is magical. It is the key to bringing true Love through a deep appreciation of the beauty within and expressed by each other through first knowing this from yourself. The opportunity to heal old hurts and change harmful patterns of behaviour is to be grasped with both hands (gently!). Thank you Samantha.
I love the way you express Michael, you are so beautiful….
“I didn’t need good relationship advice – I simply realized that without self-worth and self-love I will always be looking for others to fill my need, which ultimately never truly works.”
This this is such an important point you make. For any true relationship to work it starts with us loving , accepting and appreciating ourselves, and also dealing with our childhood hurts.
It amazes me Linda how growing up there was no inspirational children books that promoted and inspired self love and self care, many of the fairytales I read where all about looking beautiful and getting a prince no wonder there is so many failed relationships in this world, we forgot what real love was.
I have recently been blown away by the books published by Sunlight Publishing, these are refreshingly beautiful children books which hold the beautiful and most necessary message of self love. I thoroughly recommend them for both children and adults alike. http://www.sunlightink.com
A lack of self-worth is crippling. If we do not value ourselves it is not surprising that others feel that about us. Developing a deep sense of self-love and self-worth is a game changer in every relationship we have with ourselves and others as we re-connect to our inner beauty.
I realize more and more that self love is the most important thing in relationships, as this love and honesty to ourself does provide the possibility to be this with someone else to.
I have had whirlwind romances that swept me off my feet, but they never felt real and there was always a volatile and brittle quality to them. After a few years of developing a relationship with myself, I can now feel that there is no need for a partner whatsoever and it feels very freeing not be constantly on the look out for a potential mate.
Thank you Samantha you make some great points in your blog – it does seem a bit ironic that in order to have a great relationship we need to development a great relationship with ourselves first – this turns everything we know about relationships on it’s head, especially as we expect and rely so much on another delivering us the perfect ideal and believe of what a successful relationship should be. I know I have done this in the past and then blamed the other when things don’t turn out the way I expected them to and then find out that we both had totally different pictures of what we wanted our life to be like. Now like you I am finding that when I appreciate myself I am more likely to appreciated my partner, which is then reciprocated.
“When I appreciate myself I am more likely to appreciate my partner, which is then reciprocated.” So so true Julie when we appreciate ourselves and others it spreads and is a sure fire way to bring more real love into our lives and to the lives of those around us.
I enjoyed the blog Samantha, when I became involved with Universal Medicine one of the first things I recall being said to me by a practitioner was that I must learn to love myself before anybody else can love me. How true.
Thank you Joe, yes this is fundamental to any relationship. Though the more I understand this the more sad and shocked I feel this is not the norm for our society or is not taught in our education.
Education needs to be about life and our relationship with ourselves and all others not just a matter of repeating knowledge, we need to understand how important it is to deeply love and care for ourselves, without this nothing else matters.
To be stopped by a disfunctional relationship may hurt, but it offers the possibility to go deeper with self-love.
Yes Felix how loved are we that the universe keeps offering us the same lesson again and again until we get it!
How loved indeed Samantha, unconditionally so, and forever.
If we feel that we need to be loved, no one but ourselves will be able to give us what we are missing.
A pleasure to read your blog Samantha, as it shows us, the primary relationship we have with anyone is actually the relationship we have with ourselves. Not with our partner, not our children, not our friends… And this is where self love and self care are vital ingredients in relationships.
Yes Johanne, self love is true medicine for any relationship issue. Without a foundation of self love we are at the mercy of our own need and the need of everybody else.
It reminds me of something very important – that I am a woman first and that the relationship with myself is the foundation for all my relationships after. I found that I have let go of many ideals & expectations that I was holding in regards to my relationship with partner/men. But when I was reading this blog by you Samantha, I could feel I never really took the time to stand still and appreciate how far I have come by letting go all these old patterns that were holding me away of my true love. It is now that I understand too that this prisioned , hard way of living was because I was lost. I did not had any clue! Saying this so allows me to feel that I have never done anything wrong, I was just desperately looking for love on the wrong places. It is now that I feel this absolute connection to myself and a higher power (Christ, God), that I know I am safe, I am love and It will only get more gorgeous.. Thank you Samantha, I look forward to my next relationship with a partner.
This is beautiful Danna – as are you! I love what you are saying about appreciation, for with out self appreciation we leave ourselves stagnate and unable to grow.
This is a beautiful line Danna thank you: “I could feel I never really took the time to stand still and appreciate how far I have come by letting go all these old patterns that were holding me away of my true love.” I can relate to this and loved reading this at this moment in time. Sometimes I do not realise how many changes I already have made in my relationship with myself and with men, there is always more to come to. Appreciating where I am now feels very lovely to do and to really feel what a load of neediness I have already let go off in the last couple of years by re-connecting to my own beauty and loveliness and from there knowing my worth.
It is fundamentally incredible the confidence that comes from having a relationship with oneself first, this gives a foundation to all of our relationships, it gives us a steady place to come back to and a place to share from.
So true Shami with out this foundation we can cling to anything for stability but in truth we lose.
Yes “The deep pain I experienced in all my relationships was undoubtedly caused by the lack of love I had for myself.” It sounds so simple but you can not really go around this one. I have tried it again and experienced that indeed without love for myself I cannot have loving relationships. I find this at times difficult but in the end I feel it is the greatest blessing that life and love works this way. Otherwise I would never stop to look at the way I am living with myself as I am doing now.
Spot on Lieke, we can not get around this one until we find our own love within! I love that you say it actually is a blessing offering us a stop to look at our relationship with ourselves – this is so true.
This is a profound realisation to come to for many continue either in, or searching for, relationships that will help them to not feel the lack of self-worth or self-love in their life and so looking to another to confirm their worth by loving them. It is beautiful that through building this loving foundation for yourself you have realised your worth and found a beautiful man to be love with you and not for you.
Yes thank you Samantha, I am sure if it was not for the support of Universal Medicine, Esoteric Medicine and The Women in Livingness groups I would have to be sure gone and repeated the same insidious pattern again and again.
Breaking strong momentums like the one I had can be challenging but absolutely totally worth it. Staying in myself made prison was not fun!
How beautiful I am and how much self-worth I already live is reflected in my relationships. And your blog is asking me to stop, take a breath and celebrate what is there. Thanks, Samantha.
So true Samantha the level of love that we hold ourselves in is the level of love that our relationships will reflect to us. Cool that it is us who can change our lives – independent from anyone or anything on the outside.
“Cool that it is us who can change our lives” Yes Michael at the end of the day it is our decision how much love we let in and our decision if we deal with our issues or not. It is beautiful that with the support of Universal Medicine we are truly shown how to deepen that level of love and when we deepen our level of self love then all our relationships deepen too. This science is extrordinary simple!
Another aspect that has played a huge part in my continuous development of love with my partner has been the Relationship Developers Groups presented by Serge Benhayon, I have been blown away by the level of love he shares with us all and the deep deep wisdom he offers in regards to being in relationships with all others. I am continually inspired by his relationship with his wife Miranda, together they are a huge inspiration for what a truly loving evolving couple look like.
I love what you have shared Samantha. How you chose to be honest with yourself reflects for me the choice to choose love for yourself first. That you chose to re-claim the love you are within, by being honest with what was not of this love is inspiring. A beautiful example of how the love we are, is always there for us to re-turn to, when we choose to heal that which is in the way of being all that we a naturally are. Thank you Samantha for sharing this powerful message of how essential and healing it is to develop a loving relationship with ourselves first.
For such a long time, I was always looking for others to fulfil my need and wondered why my relationship never felt right and I was always on the search for that true relationship. It wasn’t until I met Serge Benhayon, I realised that true relationships starts with self-worth and self-love first. Now my relationship with my husband is so beautiful, we have our ups and downs but we talk about how we feel, which really supports the deepening of your relationships.
I can really relate Amita, for years I was searching for ‘the one’ and ‘my soul mate’ what I have to learnt is this kind of searching always leads us down a dead end ally no matter how bright it looks to begin with. Thankfully I now realise I was the one I was searching for!
“I now am fully aware that until we deal with our hurts we can never move on: we may get a new partner or we may move to another country, but the momentum is still there hidden, waiting to manifest itself again and again”.
This is beautifully expressed Samantha, so simple yet so wise.
I love the way you have taken responsibility for the quality of your relationships, learning not to play games and developing an honesty that supports healing your hurts.
Thank you for sharing your experiences a very powerful lesson for us all.
I love your blog Samantha, such an amazing reflection for me as like you, I was trapped in the same momentum, but since I went to some presentations with Serge Benhayon, I was taught what self love and self worth was for the first time. It changed everything in my life and I am now in a happy relationship with ups and down but we always manage to talk things through on an equal level with mutual respect.
Yes definitely Tony I hear you! Without responsibility and honesty there is no real love. Responsibility allows us to see our part in the outplay of the relationship and being honest allows us to grow and evolve.
What a beautiful read Samantha. Your honesty and clarity is inspirational. This piece would be fabulous posted broadly in magazines for all women to read as it is such a common story. I love when you clearly stated that ‘until we deal with our hurts we can never move on’. I, too have been building my foundation of self love and replacing lack of self worth with deep self honour. My current relationship is also the longest I have been in (now nearly 5 years) and together we support each other to heal the hurts as they inevitably arise, knowing that that’s all they are; hurts to feel, own and let go of to make way for more love.
Thats awesome Emma to hear how you too are in your longest ever relationship. It is absolutely crazy that the press printed such lies about Universal Medicine breaking up couples, this could not be further from the truth. I know countless couples who have developed more meaningful loving ways and not to mention the many people who were not in a relationship due to fear and getting hurt who have now opened there hearts to let love in. All has been very beautiful to observe.
Reading this again does make me wonder about relationships and there quality. Sometimes after being with a person – any relation I can be left feeling inspired, at a flat, a comprise or even at a low after engaging with them or even our relationships with tasks or objects. If those relationships that leave us flat or dull are repeated or even detrimental to our health than I question – why do we continue to repeat them? What do we need from this relationship? And what is my part played and need for it to be this way? Thank you Samantha.
Yes I can so relate that pattern. It seems that if we don’t work on what it is, it will just play out in the next relationship. To truly connect with yourself and have that relationship first with yourself then what you bring to the next relationship is yourself, and the love that is in you. Thank you Samantha a great reminder.
What a great blog Samantha. I love how you have empowered yourself by realising your part in the ‘creation’ of the relationship and how it outplays. No more victim and ‘heart-break’ scenario. Now Love can enter stage right!
I especially love what you say here:
‘I now am fully aware that until we deal with our hurts we can never move on: we may get a new partner or we may move to another country, but the momentum is still there hidden, waiting to manifest itself again and again.’ This is such a key. these hurts sit and fester within us dictating our every move and response, leading us into the winding paths of desperation and devastation.
Brilliant Samantha!
From a young age we are told stories of finding the one and living happily ever after, happiness caused by others, unhappiness caused by others, we were as leaves in the wind being swept from one moment’s whim to another. However this is not true. What is true is that our choices and our self love determine our own happiness and joy. We are masters of our own lives and that self responsibility is an awesome freedom.
So well said Amanda thank you for this gem “What is true is that our choices and our self love determine our own happiness and joy. We are masters of our own lives and that self responsibility is an awesome freedom.”
All I know is that building love for yourself is the only way forward with any relationships be it with a person or your work. Everything hinges on the way you a willing to be with yourself, honest, loving, truthful. Can’t ask the outside for it as it just leads to disappointment and resentment, rather look inward and build the confidence in how you feel and that becomes everything.
“Everything hinges on the way you are willing to be with yourself, ” So very very true Vanessa.
This is such a great blog. Self worth and self love heal much within us as we choose to let who we really are out with others.
It is always easy to blame the other or find reasons in the other person why it is not working and why it is not the right partner. Looking at oneself means, facing hurts and responsibility- you did a great job ! You are a beautiful couple!!!
Thanks Steffi, blame had been such a big part of my life it was never really obvious on the outside but there was always an undercurrent of blame running through my relationships whether it was with my partner, my family or work colleagues, since attending Universal Medicine I have slowly learnt to drop the blame and instead take more responsibility in my creation of what has happened. This is so freeing and evolving- I am finally allowing myself to learn from my mistakes.
Great sharing Samantha. Low self worth is the scourge many of us find ourselves dealing with and it seeps into every part of our lives. Overcoming this issue is a work in progress for me but as I continue to be lovingly dedicated to healing myself through attention to all the little details that give me choices in my day to day life, it is gradually reducing. What is opening up more and more for me is the recognition of and ability to accept all the ways in which I am worthy of self love. This is a real game changer.
I love this Helen “What is opening up more and more for me is the recognition of and ability to accept all the ways in which I am worthy of self love. This is a real game changer.” Beautifully said.
The world is one big huge mirror and is constantly reflecting to us our level of love and self love. We can deny or ignore it but the fact is, this is happening all of the time, which may be a little squirmy at times but a godsend to pull us up and align us to a truer way of being, a most natural way to be with ourselves and with others, which we innately know deep to the core, when we let go and allow.
“I could no longer deny the fact that I must be responsible in some way for attracting the same situation to develop and be repeated again and again…”
Taking responsibility for our choices and choosing a greater level of self-love is huge Samantha. It shouldn’t be forgotten that our relationships with others is a reflection of the relationship we have with ourselves.
Absolutely true Peter, and that is why developing self-awareness, self-responsibility and self-love is key to developing healthy, loving relationships.
This is so so true Peter I am reminded of this daily as if I treat myself in a harsh criticising way then I am likely to attract the same energy back through other people.
It gives taking responsibility to whole new level!
Samantha I was engrossed reading your article and I got thinking that you could substitute relationships for any other addiction as this story is universal. We keep being presented with an opportunity to look at what is really going on in our lives and if we choose to ignore it, we keep repeating it. Be that a ‘bad’ relationship, the way we eat, are with our bodies, ourselves etc…. It’s getting real and honest and choosing self-love that can only really get us out of it and stop the momentum. And it is choosing that moment by moment that supports the overall.
It is so stunning to see how we repeat our patterns over and over again and still manage to convince ourselves that we are the victims of a hard or cruel life.
Your example, Samantha, shows how enormous the changes can be if we honestly look at the fact that we are the only ones responsible for our life and walk on from there.
Great blog Samantha. I have found that love and commitment to and for myself is a prerequisite for everything I do in life. It is only through connecting to the love within that I can truly connect to and love another. I lived a cycle of failing relationships until I came to this understanding and began to realise that only I can fulfil myself, and then and only then do I have something to truly offer another.
It is so weird how much energy and time we spend on focussing on filling our needs instead of just saying goodbye to them.
Agreed Michael Kremer. It seems we have gotten this back to front to our great detriment.
Fantastically put. It’s like an addiction, a race against time even, and we fail if we do not achieve them. Rarely are we taught to take a step back and understand why we are needing it this way, for if we did the game would be over.
Congratulations Samantha, developing self worth and self love and working with your ‘stuff’ are great ways of realizing loving relationships.
Good to finally realize that we are haunted by our self-created sabotaging and self-destructive patterns that stem from self-less and dishonouring choices we tend to repeat over and over again but like to blame on others or difficult situations or… In the end it is not blaming anyone but taking responsibility for the fact that we are the makers of our own fate in the sense that all our choices and behaviours come back to us as a reflection through other people or certain situations for us to learn. Self-responsibility is empowerment and self-liberation.
“I didn’t need good relationship advice – I simply realized that without self-worth and self-love I will always be looking for others to fill my need, which ultimately never truly works.” So simple, Samantha, and very obvious; if we look for anything in another in need of of some way completing ourselves and making us feel good about ourselves there is an imbalance that creates comparison and jealousy and conflict, and a lot of misery. There can be no true connection. Completing the circle of ourselves means we can bring the whole of who we are to the relationship. Becoming aware and naming and clearing our hurts, as you say, is where the work lies to bring us to that joy of a true relationship with ourselves and others.
It’s wonderful to read such an honest account of how bizarrely we can be entering into and getting lost in relationships. And if the television shows… (milkman wants a bride) etc are anything to go on, the foundations for relationships are getting more and more shaky and surreal. To truly know ourselves is really the only way to enter or begin any relationship, and this is where the courses and presentations of Universal Medicine are so effective… They are about knowing ourselves first, and then our relationships with everyone change and open up.
Totally agree Chris – if we don’t know ourselves first then there is no foundation for true connection and the expression of who you really are.
Yes Michelle it is an extra added bonus when you partner is truly up for dealing with issues and evolving too! How blessed are we!
Lovely to read how you were able to develop deeper relationships with those around you as a result of creating a more self loving relationship with yourself.
Developing self-worth brings true freedom and independence – that will than allow us to enter and live a relationship without conditions and pressure just out of love and for mutual support.
Beautiful Samantha. What a great and simple premise we could all live by if only it was something that was broadly and openly discussed from a young age, that our self-love and self-worth determines how we will be in all our relationships. It is an absolute ongoing revelation that the more we develop these qualities in our life, the deeper we are able to be in relationship with ourselves and all others. Thank you for sharing and it is wonderful to read how your current relationship is a reflection of the acceptance and work you did on your relationship with yourself first.
Yes Gill, and its very empowering to realise that every pattern we find ourselves repeating is an opportunity for our evolution. Its brilliant as a premise for self development and an especially wonderful way to free ourselves from a victim and blame mentality.
Yes Gill and Jeannette when shown an pattern over and over again we have an awesome opportunity to notice and nominate it, we can then choose to make loving choices to evolve droping the ‘victim blame mentality’.
Exactly Adam, well said, two people who can stand side by side in their own power is true relationship and true union. Two people dependent on each other is a convenient arrangement that is not conducive to real grown or sustainability.
Whatever we lack, need or wish others to give us – it is just us not valuing and loving ourselves as the magnificence that we are.
Yes Michael this is so true, to know how to value ourselves is an priceless commodity.
A super lovely lady you are indeed Samantha. Beautiful to read this and to be reminded that no one can complete me but me. Our relationship with ourselves first is key.
Thank you Candida, it takes one to know one!
I love your line here “no one can complete me but me” This completely sums it up.
… or actually realizing that we have been complete all along but by being identified with ideals and beliefs that belittle us we kept ourselves in separation to the completeness.
Lovely line Candida- no one can complete me but me- and I add, no one must complete me but me. In relationships I realized we tend to demand things from the other, because it would be too painful to first feel how much we miss ourselves because of separating from the love that we are because of hurts that are not healed in us.
Thank you Samantha for writing about your unfolding relationship with yourself. i would love, love, love to see this in teen and or women’s magazines. It would be so valuable and what a gift to have the opportunity to consider “that without self-worth and self-love we will always be looking for others to fill our needs, which ultimately never truly works.”
Yes I agree Julie it would be great to have more honest real articles in teenage magazines, a big part of the problem is that they are selling the idea you need to look outside of yourself to be happy and in love. This I now know is not true but there are millions of young adults our there thinking there is no other way.
Hi Samantha, more honest real articles in teenage magazines may not correct all the damage done by the women’s magazines but it is a great start.
For me what we need to do is learn to develop our own self worth and self love from inside us and to teach that to our children. With time the world will understand that love comes from inside us, that it’s not something we can or have to buy and there will be no need of a glamour industry.
Life has a loving way of reflecting to us our lack of self Loving behaviours in relationships, it gets put under noses until such time as we choose to take responsibility for our equal part in bringing all of us to the relationship. It was in a session with an Esoteric practitioner that my part was presented to me, it was a revelation as (of course) I hadn’t considered my lack of self Love impacting another. If I only present some of me in a relationship what is that saying to my partner? We can feel in each other when someone is holding back but not necessarily in ourselves. So building a loving relationship with ourselves ‘is the key to all others’ as you say Samantha.
This is a gorgeous and power-full reminder Samantha that healing our hurts and developing a relationship with self first is a great starting point for true relationships with others.
Yes it is defiantly the foundation of any true relationship, openness and acceptance and love of oneself is vital if we want to others to be open and loving with us.
So true Anna and we are shown by the world that it’s all about the relationship with others first and they are everything. We are sold this again and again in movies, the media, in the school yard – everywhere. But then in walks Universal Medicine, the Ageless Wisdom and Serge Benhayon and turns all the untruths about relationships on its head. Presenting back to us how we can once again have a true relationship with self first and then others.
Thank you for sharing Samantha, so true, our relationships with others are a direct reflection of the quality of our relationship with ourselves.
If what we have been ‘attracting’ isn’t so attractive it is an opportunity and a great reflection highlighting where we can bring more love for ourselves into our lives. I have seen many of my relationships expand and deepen as I have developed a truly loving (unemotional) way with myself.
Thank you Victoria I love how you say that relationships are amazing opportunities for reflecting and highlighting how where we can bring more love to ourselves, for how can we truly love another if there is no true love in the first place! it is really very simple the more love we hold for ourselves the more love we can give another.
Such a simple science that has been ignored for a long time!
Samantha what a lovely blog to read. its very inspiring to learn how you were able to identify your patterns in a relationship and you decided to look a little deeper. Looking for others to fill that need we have never works as I too have realised. Building a foundation of self love so that you bring your ‘full’ self to a relationship means you have something to offer and don’t expect the other to make you feel worthy.
There is a lot of recognition when I read your column Samantha. I do realize now that self love and self worth are the basis of any relationship and not until you have this solid relationship with yourself can you start building one with someone else. These facts are known by many but really understood and lived by few.
Thank you Samantha for such wisdom and clarity. I love how you say that is is a loving relationship with oneself first that is the key to all others ,so true . If only we were raised to know this and to honour and love ourselves also. This is the way forward for children today and all of us in every age and society and is a gift to humanity which is being shown to us by Serge Benhayon ,his family and Universal Medicine so beautifully.
My relationship with self serves as a reflection for my partner. When I show up in the fullness of who I am…it allows my partner the same grace. We are mirrors for our world and our world is a mirror for us.. We must have the honesty and humility to truly see the reflection and feel what it is saying to us. It’s never too late to make a different choice and allow more love to flow from our hearts. Never give up on yourself or throw the baby out with the bathwater. If you do that as you experience Samantha, the unlearned lesson will inevitably come round again.
“The deep pain I experienced in all my relationships was undoubtedly caused by the lack of love I had for myself. I realize now without a foundation of loving myself, all my relationships were destined to eventually crumble.”
Great words here Samantha, thank you for sharing. What an awesome turnaround, love in every relationship now.
To understand now that true love is a holding, an honesty and an appreciation for ourselves and others has shifted me so very far to my perceived version of emotional love.
For me there was a game attached to the word, laced with investment, emotion and abuse.
But as I see it now, none of that was ever true, pure, holding love.
I am so grateful to have welcomed Universal Medicine into my life, and been able to see what love truly is, and then make a choice to live it. I would not have anywhere near the open and beautiful relationships I have today with friends, family, workmates or my partner, if it weren’t for what I have learnt and felt to be the real deal. What an amazing opportunity it has been to feel the true meaning of this word.
Absolute madness that we have to re-learn what we once knew with certainty. How lost are we as a society that we cannot support our children, our most LOVED ones, to stay true to their innate knowing of what love is in truth. What kind of love do we offer when it is not confirming the love we all as children know before we obviously adjust to the outer version presented to us we later then have to undo to re-discover what true love actually is ?! Much to learn for all of us.
Beautiful every time I read this blog. “I simply realized that without self-worth and self-love I will always be looking for others to fill my need, which ultimately never truly works.” I keep feeling this every day, it is the choice I make to be loving with myself more and more that makes me much more open to being in loving relationships. Before I would just not be able to allow and accept so much love in relationships as I do now. Plus it feels really good to be supporting myself and not fighting myself.
Re-reading this post Samantha two lines stood out: “The deep pain I experienced in all my relationships was undoubtedly caused by the lack of love I had for myself. I realize now without a foundation of loving myself, all my relationships were destined to eventually crumble”. When we start to honour what we have built (the love for ourselves) then that same honour can flow back into our life as the honouring path has already been made. Simple. And anything that is not honouring does not belong and can easily be spotted should anything try to encroach or creep back in that doesn’t feel honouring. This builds a great and true sense of worth.
Your ending words: “I didn’t need good relationship advice – I simply realized that without self-worth and self-love I will always be looking for others to fill my need, which ultimately never truly works” – provide the ultimate in relationship counsel.
Samantha I can so relate to your blog. My relationships have changed a lot since i started healing my hurts and making them about love. I still have a work to do but I know that each day as I let more and more of myself out with people and let them in the richer my relating with them is and also with myself. To being once again to deeply care and cherish (my favourite word at the moment) myself and others feels so fundamental to me now.
Beautiful blog Samantha, very inspiring! I particularly liked your remark that you didn’t need relationship advice – but just to develop your own relationship with yourself. I too discovered this and the development of my own self-love and self-worth has made relationships so much more honest, joyful and loving! And I have discovered it is a never-ending journey that unfolds – it just keeps getting better!
Yes I also liked the comment about your not needing relationship advice Samantha. Taking the time to look at the bigger picture and seeking support through having esoteric healing session was a great step you took. Its so true that no one can heal our hurts for us and until we do so they will always be there, ready to surface and sabotage our relationships. Once we deal with the most important relationship, the one with ourselves, then everything flows from there.
“And I have discovered it is a never-ending journey that unfolds – it just keeps getting better!” this is great Janene you are right it just keeps getting better. Self love is full proof, the more we love ourselves the more love we allow in the more our lives are transformed and everyday becomes a blessing rather then a burden.
Imagine if relationship counsellors were taught to help their clients look at their self love and self worth issues first before worrying about anything else! Even better – if we were all taught this from birth. It would revolutionise most of society’s whole understanding of how to set the foundation for a healthy, loving relationship with another.
The relationship merry-go-round you describe is so common – I’ve experienced a version of it myself & can vouch for the fact that the only thing that makes any difference is the way I feel about me. I can also atttest to Esoteric healing modalities as the catalyst for learning to love me!
Hi Helen, yes I too have had esoteric healing sessions and they have been instrumental in me learning to love me more. It has been my experience that the way I feel about myself affects how I am with everyone. I have become more accepting of myself and more loving in the way I treat myself. As a result I am more loving and accepting of others and so all my relationships have changed in ways I could not have ever imagined.
Hear Hear Helen the Esoteric healing modalities are nothing short of miraculous!
Me too Helen – Esoteric Healing supported me to clear away so much self abuse and self loathing and lack of self worth. Still a work in progress but boy oh boy what a progress it is. When you get to look in the mirror you see this gorgeous person looking back at you.
Reading this today highlighted for me how we can be so intensely ‘into’ someone in a new relationship because of feeling a desperate need to be loved by another. There is this intense yearning of this one to be ‘the one true love’ and so much effort goes into it. But all that effort is not who we are. Of course it cannot last because it is based on a false image of who we are. Bringing self love into the equation is great because it is the real deal and then a relationship can be built on this solid foundation.
Samantha, you are so accurate in writing about hurts holding us back from having deeply loving relationships and that we may not even be aware that these hurts are what is driving the situations in the first place. I love how you have been learning to love yourself, to be non-judgemental of the choices that you make, to understand the motivations behind all choices and to see mistakes as opportunities for learning more.
I love your clarity and honesty, Samantha. Since I started having intimate relationships they had been a rollercoaster of intensity, mainly due to the fact that I was always looking to the other person to fulfil some kind of need or some kind of emptiness that I was requiring the other person to fill for me. When they obviously could not do that (because I did not tell them what I wanted) then things would start to fall apart, and the cycle would start all over again.
The turn around that I have made in my relationships since starting to attend Universal Medicine courses and sessions with Esoteric practitioners is miraculous. And it all started with focusing on the relationship with the one person whom I will always be with: myself.
“As soon as we were together I would become a bit obsessed, I would think of him all the time, lose myself in him and become a dedicated ‘I will put up with anything’ kind of lover.” Oh, how I know this one Samantha, I believe its called ‘Love Sickness’, aptly named. As you so beautify put it, what is needed to heal, is a good dose of self appraisal, followed by daily shots of self acceptance and self appreciation, leading on to a formula of self love containing a mixture of self connection, self awareness and self responsibility with a few drops of full bodied wisdom to complete the mix. Your well on the way to recovery.
Thank you for being so completely honest Samantha. I can relate to your feelings around relationships and losing myself completely and not really understanding what was happening and why. It’s now so glaringly obvious to me in hindsight that unless we have that love and regard for ourselves first it’s actually impossible to receive that from another and that it’s nothing personal but they are merely reflecting to us how we are in fact treating ourselves because after all as Serge Benhayon presents “everything is energy and everything is because of energy”. Simple.
Yes it is amazing how we are so patiently and lovingly given the same opportunity again and again and again to evolve from. In my case it took a lot more than 7 relationships before I figured out there was something completely wrong going on and that how I was in relationship was not working. Funnily enough just simply having the awareness without even any answers or solutions allowed something in me to shift so the next one that came along was my super, gorgeous, adorable, wise and wonderful husband who I have now been married to for over 20 years – mind you it took as a while for us to get to the great love and harmony we have these days! This mechanism of things going round and round and situations repeating themselves for us to learn from is called “time”. For a revelatory, life changing and fascinating understanding of time I highly recommend this book: http://www.unimedliving.com/publishing/books-by-serge-benhayon/time-space-and-all-of-us/time-space-and-all-of-us-book1-time.html
Well said Samantha. Looking on the outside for definitions of our worth has always been a recipe for self sabotage and old hurts emerging as new hurts which seem to build layer upon layer of self protection and hardness. Emerging from old patterns of looking for love is like the caterpillar turning into the butterfly – beautiful.
This is so true Janne, holding onto old patterns just keeps us going round and round in circles, leading to more self protection and harness. It can be a conscious choice to stop holding onto the past and emerge from old patterns of behaviour. Recognising them is the first step in healing old hurts, and sometimes it can be painful, but without wanting to turn the caterpillar into the butterfly we just stagnate forever and there is no true healing or evolution for anyone.
Gill well said, my blame game for everyone else was on full throttle most of my life. What I am now finding is the more I accept myself the less blame happens and the more at ease I feel in my own body. From there each relationship and meeting I have with people changes. And on the counter to that when I stop feeling what going on or want things to be a certain way every relationship suffers and all sorts of problems arise. I too am deeply grateful for the ongoing support of Universal Medicine.
This is an amazing price of writing Samantha. I really appreciate the support you said you received from Esoteric Healing as a Modality. The love that this healing modality has given to me has also seen me develop a deep honouring and loving relationship with myself, something I never would have thought possible before receiving them. My life was just a little out of control and I too was in a relationship that was not so great. Lovely reading your experience and I feel super loved up when I read how much love you now have in your life.
Thanks Natasha, yes the esoteric modalities are super inspiring, I would say every session I have had has been a miracle, the integrity and love from the practitioners have been amazing. A really great support for dealing with and letting go of any unloving behaviours.
Natasha, I love your comment to Samantha about her inspiring and beautiful blog – ” I feel super loved up when I read how much love you now have in your life”.
Every re-read is a reminder and healing session in itself – super loved up every time!
Such deep wisdom in this blog, Samantha. Should be mandatory pre-pubescent reading!
Yes Cathy, how silly is it that we can learn from so many subject areas in our education system yet the one subject, that is imperative for any kind of success – self love- self worth, is not taught; in fact in many cases it is sucked out of us! No amount of success will ever be worth it if love is not at the core.
This is true Cathy – instead of ready Pubity Blues in high school we should be given “The True Relationship of Loving You” or something like that. How different my teenage years would of been had I been given this wisdom of my loving relationship with self first. I was very sad as a teenager and had huge lack of self with issues as well as other issues on top of that. There should be a class every week on true relationships – this would change your teenage years and set you up for a life time of amazing relations.
The consequences of living with lack of self worth is huge, both for the person themselves as well as those around them. It brings a heaviness into relationships and takes all the fun away as you are constantly either trying to prove yourself or get another to prove to you that they love you. It sets up a complete game.
Yes Elizabeth the ‘prove it game! ‘ I knew this well, it is such a contrast from just feeling the real love that is there and being open and flowing to evolving with each other. Needing to prove love does nothing but prove it is not true!
I love this Samantha, and it is so true that you didn’t need relationship advice, simply a loving relationship with yourself.
Samantha I really relate to your experiences in the fact that from young I would have lots of problems with relationships, always considering it was the other person. Yet throughout this entire time there was no relationship with myself, actually a deliberate avoidance of one, which as you’ve shared is the key to start with. I’ve found a big difference when I look at how my relationship is with myself first and foremost rather than relying on another person. The quality of all my relationships has deepened as a result.
“I’ve found a big difference when I look at how my relationship is with myself first and foremost rather than relying on another person.” I love this David, what you say here is key to all successful loving relationships.
What you have written David is exactly how I lived as well, always blaming the other person for the problems and not honestly looking at my part in the relationship. Then it finally clicked that all my relationships had had a similar pattern and that the common denominator was me. So it was time to look at me, and what didn’t take me long to figure out was that my relationship with me was almost nonexistent. Slowly that has changed as I have got to know me all over again and like you have shared: ” The quality of all my relationships has deepened as a result.”
It’s so liberating to be released from the game of the ‘blame game’. To know we are equally responsible in that ‘blame’ which then rests the responsibility squarely at our own feet. It’s empowering to not shrink away from our part and it stops the victim stories as we are all equally part of the outcome.
Yes Merrilee I can’t believe how much I identified with being a victim to love! It is crazy now when I look back and see how I created it!
Absolutely Merrilee I played the victim card for quite while and it only bought me more of the same victimness. I no longer do this and see my days as opportunities to heal and evolve out of the misery and lovelessness that I had chosen and created for myself.
Our primary relationship is with ourselves. Our relationship with ourselves is the foundation of all relationships we have with other. The answers we seek come from with us as does all the love we will ever need.
Thanks for your blog Samantha – you are so right, good relationships start with us first, they don’t depend entirely on the other person doing something for us
I am starting to appreciate that every relationship in life is a reflection of the relationship I have with myself. This is huge.
And yet so absolutely common sense in its simplicity … gold!
That’s huge Jinya I absolutely agree. Wow that’s quite the revelation. Love it!
What I find gets in the way of this self-relationship is putting my worth out onto anything, everything and everyone that is not me. How can I build a strong foundation of me when my focus is on everything and anything other than me? If then with this lack of focus being on that self foundation what then do we share with everyone else?
Samantha there was a pivotal point in my life when I too realised that the common denominator in all of my repetitive relationship problems was me ! When I realised that then there was no one else that I could possibly blame because I was the one who had been at every single crime scene. It HAD to be me !
Love this Alexis…”When I realised that then there was no one else that I could possibly blame because I was the one who had been at every single crime scene. It HAD to be me !”
An honest and loving relationship with myself is the foundation for any relationship I have with someone else. And it is also good to realize how the reflections from others can show us where we need to work on in the relationship with our self.
Samantha, I really love this part about being honest with the effects that self loathing can have on relationships and that by giving yourself more care and love you have been able to break the momentum of old self sabotaging ways. This I feel is an essential part of growing and developing relationships, because how can we expect intimacy with another person without first having it with ourselves.
This is amazing Samantha – “if I wanted to have a different outcome I didn’t just need good relationship advice, I needed to approach my relationships in a completely different way”. A lot of people wouldn’t be able to be honest about that – it would be the constant ‘blame game’ that we see, of either blaming the other person or blaming ‘bad luck’, but it is very inspiring how you have taken responsibility for your part in it
Thank you for being honest enough to share this so openly Samantha. I can relate a billion percent to all of it. Now I have developed a level of self love that allows me to be in a relationship with a very beautiful, loving and honoring man, which of course is bound to happen as I chose this love for myself first. Every day my love for me can go deeper as I still see very small ways that I will look outside of myself for love, needing even the tiniest of thing that may seem so so minuscule, but still have great impact on my partner and friends and family feeing pressured to be a certain way. The more I go within for my love the simpler and more deeply loving my whole life gets. Having a partner to share this with is only one part of something that is already enormous.
What a lovely blog! It was beautiful to read how you came out of a destructive pattern and have created a harmonious relationship with yourself and partner. Why would we want to choose another way?
Awesome blog – so simple, so claimed and so loving and accessible to anyone who is deepening one’s love of self. Developing self love and healing self worth issues is a gift to all.
Looking for love outside of me has never worked. Since I have started to open to the love that I have inside of me and what is who I am really, my life became totally different. Thanks to Universal Medicine I could open this inner door again to my own treasure that is the love I am.
I also feel to comment Toni on your nomination of the abuse you allowed – this I have come to see is super-important to call out and get clear on. I too allowed abuse to be part of my life and examining the ways I let it in, and the subtle forms it can take, has been very illuminating. It’s become really clear to me over the last few years how a fundamental lack of self-worth was behind it, as well as a warped understanding of intimacy. Through my involvement with Universal Medicine and Esoteric Women’s Health I learnt there was another way – thank God for these two organisations. And I absolutely mean that: thank God.
Toni I completely relate to your comment about feeling like you are still dating your husband AND it keeps getting better and better – I feel like that too after six and a half years. Common ‘wisdom’ holds that marriage / commitment = boredom, frustration and worse and I can understand why people think this – my first marriage and the majority of my other relationships was certainly like this. Yet there is another way, and you, I, our partners and many others I know are living proof of this.
Thank you so much Samantha for being so wonderfully honest about the nature of your relationships ’til now – I can completely relate. I too spent years cycling around my own lack of self-worth, blaming others failing to understand it was always about me (or the true lack of me) first and foremost. It wasn’t ’til I started attending Universal Medicine courses and workshops that I started to see what was really going on and put an end to such fruitless pursuits. One thing I’m glad about though was I never gave up on the potential for true relationship – and now live that today with my husband.
This is the true fairy tale, Samantha. Not the glittery ‘happily ever after’ kind of fantasy that we are constantly fed about romantic relationships, but a real life story of finding and loving yourself first and the love with another flowing naturally from that. And of course, with its ups and downs, challenges and processing, without which it would possibly be more of an arrangement than a living, growing relationship. Thanks for sharing!
Wow! What an inspirational blog Samantha! This sentence stood out for me ”Through developing the love I now have for myself, for the lovely lady I am, I have healed huge wounds that kept me from developing loving relationships.” When we take responsibility for ourselves and heal our hurts all our relationships change. As I am healing the hurts within me too, I am recognizing changes in my relationships as they are becoming more honest and therefore more loving.
Thank you Samantha for sharing your frank account of relationships , the world and our relationships with it reflects what we have in our body , this glorious feedback we deal with by reaction to another outside our self or to heal the relationship we have with our self ,once healed we are reflected confirmation.
Need is so insidious and controlling – How free and spacious is our life when we self love.
Yes Paula your one liner sums it up completely – wouldn’t it be great if it was taught in our education system that self love was the key to neediness and self destruction- maybe then we would not have such high rates of depression, eating disorders and self harm.
For me it is a deep ingrained pattern to need something from the other, especially with men. I can still see where I go into needs and expectations and the effect this has on a relationship. I feel I am breaking with all the ideals and beliefs around relationships and wow, there are so many. My whole concept of what a relationship should look like and be is completely changing and then to actually realize it all comes back to me.
What a great revelation and journey yo have to share Samantha. And the result of your winningness to get underneath what was going on – rather than just keep on going in the same pattern has obviously paid off for you!
‘ … that without self-worth and self-love I will always be looking for others to fill my need, which ultimately never truly works.’ I wholeheartedly agree Samantha. I too expected a relationship should make me whole and complete most of my life – first with lovers and then with children and some extent grandchildren, but this never worked. The more I love and appreciate myself I drop the incessant negative self-talk and can love and appreciate others for all they bring.
This is a great re-read Samantha and what has occurred to me whilst reading this is the fact that, if there is no self love we are leaving ourselves open to all sorts of abuse within all of our relationships – work, family, friends and people we deal with whilst going about our day.
So true Julie without self love we are setting ourselves up to fail in every area, we are like as you say literally opening ourselves up to abuse.
Such wise words Harrison, thank you for your insightful contribution
Our relationship with ourselves is very important. How can we enter a relationship and be all that we are if we aren’t going to be that with ourselves first? I find that this is an important part of me bringing my true self to all relationships, is that My relationship with myself is solid first.
That’s exactly how it needs to be, great expression Harrison, thank you.
Hi Samantha, I can very much relate to this. I went into relationships that did not work because they were based on need. They actually were only chaos as I was chaotic and destroying due to a lack in self-worth and love for my self. Since I have started to heal this things have changed a lot, e.g. I do not feel the “need” for a partner.
The lack in self worth and love for myself did not only affect my relationships with men but also with friends, family and colleagues as it was not about truly connecting with them but about me getting accepted, loved and recognized. Today I can more and more let go of this.
I have built enough love for myself to not accept a relationship based on need anymore. My understanding of a true relationship, as presented by Serge Benhayon, is that love is the natural expression when neither partner are in it to fill their needs and they are there because they choose to share their lives with the other, to grow and evolve together.
Everything has it’s place in this life, and can take time to materialise, including a lasting relationship.
In my younger years,every lady dated was the one for me, how wrong I was.
That lady came into my life 34 years ago and she taught me how to love myself,and be a peace with the world. It was a long journey, but the light at the end of the tunnel was so bright, why had I never seen it before. she has now been my wife for the past 31 years and can say from my heart, the waiting was truely worth it.
When we go into a relationship it is impossible to leave our hurts behind. As much as we try to hide them in the beginning, they eventually surface if they are not dealt with. Obviously most of us do have some hurts and some degree of lack of self worth but reading this blog it strikes me that the difference is being honest about these hurts and aware of them and committed to working on them rather than pretending they are not there or using the other person as a bit of sticky plaster to cover them up. Ugh no one likes to be used as a sticky plaster over an oozing wound!
In re-reading this article, I had a little chuckle to myself, whilst we might have the option to end or break up with relationships we are not happy in we can’t really dump ourselves. So what do we do instead? I think I have done all the things to myself I have done to others, disconnected, withdrawn and shutdown, spaced out and checked out with activities, kept busy doing, numbed out with food, judged and berated myself, wallowed in self-pity and victim and the list goes on.. . We may not be able to “dump ourselves” but we definitely have a choice to reconnect with our inner essence and make loving choices and keep deepening our relationship with our inner hearts.
Yes that is true Jenny, but I wonder is being harsh on ourselves and being judgmental etc not already a way of ‘dumping ourselves’? It is definitely not a loving relationship! I love how you point out that this unloving relationship with ourselves can be turned around easily by starting to make more loving choices.
Jenny I love this awareness of “dumping ourselves”. It is amazing when we look at the truth so simply and clearly and can feel that this is exactly how it is. We dump another trying to escape what we don’t want to feel and yet at the same time we actually turn this in on ourselves. As the contributions here share we have a choice to re-connect and deepen our relationship with or inner hearts, which opens connection to everyone’s inner essence if we allow. That feels so different from internalizing the contraction
Yes that’s funny Jenny we give ‘dumping ourselves’ a really good go until such time as we get tired of us and we try something new. The really funny part is we don’t realise we are doing this to ourselves?
This is a gorgeous blog Samantha. It is really empowering to realise that we cause our own heartbreaks through the choice to search for love outside of ourselves.
I’d never thought of relationships like this before and it triggers that memory of when I was coming out of my teenage years and desperate for a relationship. And that desperation I now realise was all down to that fact that I couldn’t love myself so I looked outwards for a cure. Keep at it Samantha – it’s so gorgeous to feel what you now truly have.
Desperation is a great descriptor Michael, it perfectly captures what drove me to start 99% of my intimate relationships over a period of about, dare I say it, 35 years. It goes to show one can have a very prolonged adolescence!
Once I embraced and claimed myself as a beautiful woman first, my relationships with others changed dramatically.
I am no longer needy. I don’t give my power away in order to conform or to gain recognition. I now have a voice.
And I have more understanding and acceptance of where others are at, in their own self development, and life choices.
So very true Samantha, thank you for truly sharing you. To feel the love someone has for themselves is magnetising. To feel and build upon the relationship we can have with our very own love, everyone can feel, then its not simply saved for that elusive ‘one’ but for all.
I love the way you honestly and openly share this Samantha, and what is clear is that unless we start to take a wider view than towards blame we will be stuck in the same old sticky pattern that you describe. Then you took it deeper, “The deep pain I experienced in all my relationships was undoubtedly caused by the lack of love I had for myself”. So this is where the healing is: with ourselves first, and not trying to make the relationship better. This is an invaluable sharing for all our relationships.
I have discovered that changes can happen really quickly as well as soon as I have worked through the issue with myself my relationships start to transform around me.
Samantha i can relate to this so strongly – it’s extraordinary how powerful self love is, I am constantly amazed at how far we (humanity) have come from truly knowing what it is to self care and understanding the giant pay-off this self responsibility brings. Your willingness, openness to look at what was getting in the way is very inspiring and knowing you as I do – i can vouch for exquisite tenderness you and your partner hold for one another today.
Thank you Lucinda, I too also see and feel this in the relationship you have with your husband and your family.- totally inspiring for all to see.
Keeping it real and about truth is definitely the way to go!
Thank you Samantha for sharing your experiences, I can relate to a lot of what you have expressed especially – ” ‘The deep pain I experienced in all my relationships was undoubtedly caused by the lack of love I had for myself. I realize now without a foundation of loving myself, all my relationships were destined to eventually crumble.” Gosh! I use to believe that I could/would never be complete without having a man in my life hence I use to be so desperate to be in a relationship. Thank fully now I am fully aware that what I spent years so desperately seeking lay deep within me and all I had to do was simply re-connect with myself and open up to and and embrace who I truly am. Since then I have being enjoying and building the most loving relationship I have ever had and its still blossoming each and every day. Which is all thanks to Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine.
Kirsten I also had to have someone in my life, not only that but I had to have someone in my life every single night I went out ! I remember a very faint voice whispering the question ‘why is it that you have to grab a man every time you go out ?’ I ignored the voice and grabbed a man. Only now can I answer my own question and that is if I could get somebody to show interest in me then it momentarily filled the void that I had created with my own lack of self worth.
If we are not willing to love ourselves there will always be an emptiness that we expect others to fill for us, this is a viscous cycle in relationships until we realise real love comes from the depth of developing a relationship with ourselves first and no one else.
“The deep pain I experienced in all my relationships was undoubtedly caused by the lack of love I had for myself.” I can fully relate to this and it is revelatory to notice this in myself. That the problems that come up in my relationships are to do with me not loving myself in full and with that not being able to allow people to love me. I can feel how I am now changing this and it is not about the issues but about letting me feel I am beautiful and deserve to be cherished and loved deeply so, by myself and others equally.
To enjoy the company of oneself is a healing ingredient which I am detecting more and more.
Yay! you are right Kerstin to enjoy being ourselves is so deeply nourishing and healing!
I agree Kerstin and Samantha. Being ourselves is deeply nourishing and healing. When I am with myself there is no need for anything and therefore it is a true basis for relationships.
“I now am fully aware that until we deal with our hurts we can never move on: we may get a new partner or we may move to another country, but the momentum is still there hidden, waiting to manifest itself again and again.”
Yes, I found that until I dealt with my own lack of self worth , not feeling good enough, self loathing issues etc
I stayed in this victim consciousness which only buried the issues deeper, and resulted in me wanting another to rescue me. I now know that true loving relationships start with us loving us, and taking responsibility and dealing with our hurts.
I agree Ariana, this quote almost feels like one of those health warnings on cigarette packages! ‘Without self-worth and self-love I will always be looking for others to fill my need, which ultimately never truly works.’ Perhaps it should be stated to self before entering into any and every relationship?
The realisation of how much a lack of self-worth impacts so harmful on one’s life experience is so important. Thank you Samantha for sharing so openly your experiences as it is so beneficial for others to enable them to gain the same realisation for themselves.
I agree Jonathan. A lack in self-worth is harmful for oneself but also for others. I am in the process of truly understanding the extent of this.
A beautiful and honest blog Samantha. Your journey is inspiring to so many who may be going through similar relationship issues. I love what you shared here, ‘The deep pain I experienced in all my relationships was undoubtedly caused by the lack of love I had for myself. I realize now without a foundation of loving myself, all my relationships were destined to eventually crumble.’ This is so true, I have seen and experienced this myself. I love how you took responsibility without blame or resentment to reflect on your past relationships and made loving choices. So, awesome, thank you.
It’s amazing what we find once we begin to view / see our relationships differently …
It’s so totally different from what we’ve all been lead to believe.
Yes Jamie I can definitely remember being consumed in blame and judgement feeling I was a victim, yet when I started to take responsibility these heavy feelings started to lift. Taking responsibility and not passing the buck allowed me to get out of the sticky pattern I had created and instead start to evolve.
Samantha a very open and honest post, thank you. I recognise the disappointment and upset that sets in when a relationship with a partner ends. At the time, I didn’t know that I was stuck in a self-destructive pattern of relationship because I had not evolved. When I started to truly love myself, I stopped searching for the love of one person and found love in all relationships.
“When I started to truly love myself, I stopped searching for the love of one person and found love in all relationships”. This is gold Kehinde so true we can often fall for the illusion of just loving one person and having one soul mate, yet in reality every person we meet and every person we know creates an opportunity to evolve and just be love.
This is true Kehinde2012 that in a way we are developing an ever deepening relationship with love itself which naturally will change the quality of all our relationships including the one with ourselves.
Samantha I couldn’t agree more – building a relationship with ourselves is the foundation to all other relationships. It is so easy to seek in others what we lack in ourselves, but this common approach, which I have also used in the past, is transactional and doomed to compromise or failure until we ‘grow’ ourselves.
I too have also taken this approach. I can see so clearly now why it always places so much strain and feeling of frustration in my relationships because of this. By me placing this huge weight of expectation and neediness on any relationship at the end of the day it is bound to crumble. Now, I am aware to first build a true and loving relationship with myself and naturally the neediness and expectations just falls away. I feel complete and spaciousness which then allows my relationships to deepen and grow.
Awesome Samantha – I love your honesty in taking responsibility for your part in the breakups and heart break, it’s not very common in any society or from what you see in the movies
Discovering that it is not the others that make me feel uncomfortable or lonely, but me who creates all of this out of a lack of self-worth and out of old hurt has been a game changer. First I felt challenged, than it turned out to be a big blessing as now I am the one who can change my life and I feel not dependent on others anymore to do this for me.
This is huge Michael. Reclaiming full responsibility for ourselves is empowering and beautiful beyond words. It is the seed of our evolution.
What I am missing only I can give to myself and any attempt to fill my needs from the outside will in the end proof fruitless.
Thank you Samantha for sharing how when we are honest with ourselves we can truly begin to have a true relationship, with ourselves first. And with this we can then bring more of who we are in truth and love to our lives and all other relationships.
Excellent blog Samantha, very helpful for me to bring more understanding into my relationship(s), and to continue building my self-love and connection to me rather than looking to others to fulfil that.
Wonderful sharing Jane, I am realizing myself more and more how many beliefs and ideals I have around relationships and how they stand in the way of having a relationship which is based on truth and love. We hardly get reflected what it means to be in a loving and truthful relationship as most relationships are arrangements, just like mine have been. I am so grateful for Universal Medicine to reflect back to me that there is another way, a way which starts with having a relationship with yourself first. This is the foundation, the most important relationship of all.
So true Samantha. We can get all the relationship advice, but if the foundation of self-love is not there to begin with, no advice will suffice for a long lasting answer. I have had a similar experience with relationships and realised that I set myself up to fall in them by not going into them with a full tank of self love and therefore looking to be filled by the partner. The end of the relationships would lead to wallowing in more self degrading thoughts and round the vicious circle it goes – looking for another relationship to fill the now even bigger emptiness. All this is really just a form of control though. It’s the human spirit caught up in earthly attractions and staying in the comfort of not living the truth from which it separated – the eternally loving font of the soul.
Very well said Jinya. I agree and how to break this vicious cycle? This blog and what you’ve shared is the answer. Sometimes we can feel trapped and unable to break away from this cycle but it is definitely possible to choose change and to choose self-love.
Samantha I agree the responsibility of what we experience and feel lies with us.
When we lovingly take ourselves by the hand and start living with self-responsibility the more a world of understanding opens up for us. No one is doing anything to us –with out our permission on some level.
“No one is doing anything to us –without our permission on some level.” So so true Sandra, and I am sure this is for some quite hard to grasp but it is vital we understand this if we want to see true changes in our relationships.
Inspirational to read about your relationship with you partner and the commitment to love you share with another. Thank you Samantha.
How important self love is as a foundation for love, shows itself especially when we get hurt. If we have the foundation of self-love we do not allow a hurt getting hold in us.
Yes Kerstin, it seems to me there are many great potentials out there for amazing relationships whether it is with our partners, family or friends yet we can quite easily sabotage this potential if we allow our hurts to dominate over the truth of the relationship.
Samantha this is a deeply inspiring blog highlighting just how much we benefit from choosing to bring more self nurturing and love to ourselves first – this is the strongest foundation to build relationships with others.
I have had relationships that did not end well, what you share here feels very valuable “I realize now I was being shown time and time again that I had to look deeper into what I was creating.” There is a possibility that we are offered a precious opportunity to learn more about ourselves through observing our relationships. We can ask the question, “how am I responsible in this” first rather than the classic “why me?”. Responsibility enables the awareness to develop of what is love and what is not.
“We can ask the question, “how am I responsible in this” first rather than the classic “why me?” Wow Samantha this is the simple answer to nearly all relationship issues!
Samantha I wonder if we are returning to the understanding that we are the creators of everything. That life is just one glorious reflection of what we are constantly creating. Now that would bring a real level of responsibility to life if everyone knew that they are the receivers of their own creation.
Love the power, simplicity and truth of what you have presented here Samantha, our relationship with ourself builds the foundation from which we relate to all others. It makes sense that to have self-love builds self-worth and it is this quality that we can then bring out to the world. A must read for all.
Samantha, your article would be perfect for any magazine wanting to write on what a real relationship looks like, how seldom is out relationship with ourselves actually considered in the context of the relationships we are able to successfully build.
There is a great advise to give: establish the most possible loving relationship with yourself as the platform on which you then build loving relationships with others. As the blog wisely puts it, breaking the momentum is radically different from finding someone and starting a relationship. We would like to see that with the latter all of our problems will be magically solved. of course, this is not, and cannot be the case.
We are taught from very early on that to love oneself is being selfish, but as you say, we cannot truly love another until we have a good relationship with ourselves first. It would be great if Self-love and self-care were taught in schools alongside gentle exercise, healthy nutrition and group work, so that we can build great relationships with everyone, and be fit and healthy right from the start. Obesity in children is on the rise and it is not necessary. I see so many children having tantrums with their parents and carers because they are refused the sweets they crave, thinking that refusal means they are not loved. There is more than enough sugar in all the processed food they eat, without piling more on top. How great it is when children feel truly loved, love themselves, and can feel what their bodies truly need to eat.
I remember on many occasions that I pushed relationships away and played the game due to my hurts, I am so glad I no longer have this in my life. It was such an emotional roller coaster.
A very honest and exposing writing Samantha. It is beautiful how you have made choices that have returned you to self respect and love with yourself and this is touching every one you interact with. No wonder your amazing partner could not wait to surprise you with an engagement ring whilst attending a Universal Medicine Retreat in Vietnam!
Yes absolutely Stephanie. This is a great reminder for me to never underestimate the power of every self-loving and self-nurturing choice I make and the enormous impact this has on another. Thank you.
I agree Richard – very important. It is only when we stop projecting our hurts outwards and are accepting and taking responsibility for our own behaviours and patterns, that true change can happen. Love always resides within for each and every one of us to re-connect to.
Richard and Eva I can feel the solid platform that you describe when you talk about building relationships based on self love. There is a solid strength that is felt but not in a tough held way but in a filled from the inside kind of a way. That’s they key to life, everything gets taken care of by love.
LOVE it Samantha – ‘I didn’t need good relationship advice – I simply realized that without self-worth and self-love I will always be looking for others to fill my need, which ultimately never truly works.’ – this statement is pure gold!
I also had this realisation “… that without self-worth and self-love I will always be looking for others to fill my need, which ultimately never truly works.” I would seek attention and proof that people thought I was lovely and amazing everywhere, not just in relationships with boyfriends. It was imposing on other people, for me to be this way in life. It was definitely intensified in relationships with boyfriends and I use to get absorbed in the drama of it all. Building self worth and self love is so important to living with love with another without neediness getting in the way.
Every word a joy to read Samantha.
Such a beautiful, honest sharing Samantha, thank you.
Thank you Samantha for your lovely words. I met your partner and yourself in England , all the best for your special day.
I can see lots of reoccurring patterns in many of my relationships and am learning bucket loads as they unravel and reveal the truth of what it means for me and how I can return more fully to the love I am made of.
Sometimes self worth feels like such an enormous issue for us women so it is great to read you feeling so much better about that.
Thanks Belinha Jane, it amazing how relationships can expose to us all the nitty gritty of anything we have unresolved in ourselves. What an awesome opportunity we are given to evolve and get ourselves out of ruts we may be in.
Samantha I loved reading about the way you were able to stop blaming another and to begin to look for what was really going on with yourself. This takes courage, but you chose to find the true healing path to loving yourself first. It is a beautiful confirmation that you are now in a loving relationship with your partner.
Samantha what you share here should be mandatory information shared to the masses. Unless we learn to love ourselves deeply first we are never truly capable of loving another or being in a relationship that is not filled with needs and demands, which drain both parties.
So true Jenny and this is why learning to self love needs to be fundamental in our educational system. We can gain all the qualifications in the world but we will never be truly fulfilled if we are still lacking in self love. Therefore I feel the most important thing we could learn ever is to self love!
We break our own hearts by not being the love that we are then we hold the world to ransom for hurting us.
Thank you Samantha, for unashamedly walking us down this well trodden path so that we are better able to see the path that leads back home.
“We break our own hearts by not being the love that we are then we hold the world to ransom for hurting us.” Wow Liane, this is so true, we really could apply this to any issue we are having in a relationship.
Samantha the lack of self worth and the lack of self love that you have identified are the driving force behind most of what happens in the world. Certainly in myself I have identified that both have driven pretty much everything that I have done. My relationships, my hobbies, the sport that I have done, in fact how I have behaved for most of my life. It feels amazing now to have a lot of self worth and deep self love because the drive and compulsion to do most things has gone. I am left with myself and a feeling of deep contentment.
Relationships of all kinds bring great reflections of confirmations, learnings and things that need to be addressed. I can say that I have learnt much from each relationships that I have and have had.
That is true Johanna, relationships present such a great learning opportunities about yourself regardless of the outcome. Is is a great way to approach them!
However confident we may appear to others if, however, our foundation is of lack of self-worth then building anything is building castles on sand.
Love this Jonothan
This is so true Jonathan, we have to get the foundations correct first before we can build anything solid.
Beautiful sharing Samantha, I couldn’t agree more with your relationship advice. Loving relationships with others begins with the self, and taking responsibility for the part we play in all our relationships. Change always starts from within.
So gorgeous Samantha. I can relate so much to what you have shared here in how my relationships used to be. Seeing what you have written about them really made me see and feel again how unnatural and actually unloving they were – yet I thought they were exactly what I wanted or needed. Needless to say, none of them stuck and I too have come to feel how dedicating myself to my relationship with me, is actually the most important and beautiful relationship I could ever have. The impact of our self worth on our relationships cannot be understated, and is something I too will continue to share as one of my most valuable understandings from the teachings especially of Serge and Natalie Benhayon.
“Through developing the love I now have for myself, for the lovely lady I am, I have healed huge wounds that kept me from developing loving relationships.” – Samantha, I love how you acknowledge here that you truly are a lovely lady.
When you stated “I realize now I was being shown time and time again that I had to look deeper into what I was creating.” this stood out for me, as I have had relationships that had patterns appear time and again. So could very much relate. I did have the opportunity at different times to look at myself, at times I also wanted to make it about the other person. It really is about taking deeper responsibility, along with deepening your own awareness, plus building love for yourself, this allows you to become discerning and clearer about what you want in your life.
My relationship with myself is a good and healthy place to start. Who in the relationship manual forgot to write this in the beginning chapter?
Haha, very true Concetta. Although I have vague recollections reading in another ‘manual’ long, long ago words to the effect of; ‘human being love thyself and from there will flow the love for all’. Things went awry when we started to see self-love as a selfish act and in doing so robbed ourselves and subsequently all others, of our love.
Liane, your words are so true – we have been robbing everyone of our love.
Liane and Eva it feels like a set up to me. Bloody oath the one thing that would restore harmony to life is self love but it is weaved into the fabric of women that this is a selfish thing to even think about, let alone do. We are brought up to always eat the burnt sausage. On top of that, life has twisted the meaning of the word love, so that no one actually really understands it’s true meaning anymore. It’s no wonder the world is in disarray, it’s been set up that way.
Samantha I remember now so long ago, the time I had meet you at a Universal Medicine event. It has been fun watching you evolve from the coloured orange haired girl to the confident amazing women you are today… the transformation by self love is a beacon for others.
That’s the ‘best advice’ you could bring to anyone Samantha “without self-worth and self-love I will always be looking for others to fill my need, which ultimately never truly works.” True relationships begin with the one within ourselves, which eventually leads to a deeper love for everyone else equally. Self-love, is the most selfless act one could choose.
If people took on your example Samantha I think a lot of senseless chit chat around how to improve our relationships might disappear between friends. I am just imagineing having a more real and loving talk with a friend where we are open and honest about where we seek relief from our lack of self-worth and self-love in our relationships.
It’s funny how we put our all into making a relationship work but don’t pay attention to us within the relationship. It does seem all too easy when in a relationship to loose ourselves and feel less when we don’t have one, as though the relationship defines us in some way.
I agree Samantha, it is more important to look at where we are at first to see the quality that we bring to a relationship, than jump in head first out of need. Great topic.
Brilliant blog Samantha. So true we often blame the breakdown of a relationship on the other person without considering that it is simply a reflection of how we feel about ourselves. Lovely to hear that once you learned to love your Self you found a committed truly loving relationship. Enjoy …..
“I didn’t need good relationship advice – I simply realized that without self-worth and self-love I will always be looking for others to fill my need, which ultimately never truly works.”
So true, without this all relationships will fail.
Thank you Samantha, Such an honest reflection and account that offers so much healing. Self love really is the necessary ingredient in all relationships.
Hi Samantha, a beauty-full and insigth-full blog, I to at 27 said stop to myself and questioned what am I doing here!, I am hurting myself and others in the name and game of what I thought a Relationship was, I can relate to your pain on alot off what you spoke of. Heartfelt thanks to Serge Benhayon and Universal medicine for bringing the truth of what relationships are, and the gift if you choose to learn how to re-build self love and self care into your life.
When I read this line: “…if I wanted to have a different outcome I didn’t just need good relationship advice, I needed to approach my relationships in a completely different way.”, I could feel how true it is that true change does not come from advice but from being honest, willing and open to make the change ourselves in ourselves. Very self-empowering to feel too.
Absolutely Lieke – taking responsibility for our own choices is indeed self-empowering.
So true Lieke. True change can only come from being deeply honest and by taking responsibility for how we are in our relationships and the wider world. Taking an honest and loving look at this with a willing to change is hugely empowering.
i agree Monica, when we do not have a loving and fulfilling relationship with ourselves, not only are we setting ourselves up for a heartbreak when we rely on another to full fill us, but we allow for so much more abuse than we even realise. These days there are many things I allowed in the past, and thought to be normal, that I now recognise to be abuse through the fact that I am much more loving and caring for and with myself.
Good one Samantha. It’s certainly true to say “I simply realized that without self-worth and self-love I will always be looking for others to fill my need, which ultimately never truly works.” I’ve experienced the same many times and building that base of self love is a beautiful feeling.
Thank you for sharing your experiences Samantha. I can very much relate. You inspire me hugely in how you now embrace and live the deeply tender and loving woman that you are. Thank you.
I agree Anne-Marie, Samantha and her equally beautiful partner are reflecting a true relationship founded on everything that each and every one of us deserves .. love, and everything else that beautifully compliments it. Inspirational indeed!
So true Cherise. We all absolutely deserve ‘love and everything else that beautifully compliments it’ beautifully expressed. To know and deeply feel our preciousness and deep beauty allows us to build and nurture this in all of our relationships. What a beautiful foundation that comes from us first.
You just summed up everything I have been creating in my relationships in life – and yes especially in relationship with men/my partner. I can feel how much I have tried to fill myself up with love-lessness instead of my own worth, and self-love and healing.
This sentence makes it all coming together : ”I didn’t need good relationship advice – I simply realized that without self-worth and self-love I will always be looking for others to fill my need, which ultimately never truly works.” I completely stand behind this. I have chosen to make my life about love now and to truly first choose to love me first – so I can love everyone!
Awesome Danna “I have chosen to make my life about love now and to truly first choose to love me first – so I can love everyone!” Yes it is really is that simple if we have deep love for ourselves we can truly love everyone if we have no love for ourselves we can not truly love another.
This is beautiful ‘Of course there have been rocky times and I am sure there may be a few more to come, but overall our foundation is strong and built with a love and truth that pulls us back when we are off track to constantly remind us of our truth.’ I have the same experience in my relationship with my lovely man, our foundation is always where we come back to and some new imprints of this foundation were needed but now we are committed to love and thats what we express in our relationship together.
Beautiful to hear Annelies, thank you for sharing.
” I simply realized that without self-worth and self-love I will always be looking for others to fill my need, which ultimately never truly works.” – Beautifully expressed Samantha, we desperately try to fill the emptiness we feel, when we begin to truly love ourselves and heal our hurts the relationship with ourselves and others changes in amazing ways.
Thank you Samantha. There is so much I can relate to here. Growing up, when a boy liked me I then felt like I had to give him something back, but it never felt true. Honesty is so powerful, as you have shown here and such a simple tool to expose where we may be lacking love for ourselves. How you are now in relationships (especially coming from your love for yourself) feels so loving and supportive not only for you but for all others you connect with.
I’m with you Ariana, some exposures may be a little squirmy at times, but way better to feel that momentarily, than to live with something that is a total lie.
Love. Love and love.
Deeply honest and revealing blog.
Thank you for sharing Samantha.
I love this Blog and its simplicity. I am reminded of the words “it’s not you – it’s me” which I have used to end a relationship. Although when I said it I didn’t mean it, it’s one of those things we say when we try not to hurt somebody else’s feelings. Perhaps there is much more truth in those words than we realise, or that we want to admit to ourselves. Thanks Samantha for a beautiful and honest sharing.
Yes, Samantha, lack of self worth and self love is not a good basis for a relationship with another. These are two very important issues that need addressing. Wonderful that you did so and are now in such a great relationship.
Dear Samantha wow this is so inspiring and I could feel myself in your words so much…it is really all about to connecting to the love I really am and working on my selflove and selfworth and get totally rid off any neediness. Thank You so much for sharing this with all of us, I appreciate it a lot 🙂 with love Nadine
Thank you Samantha. A not unfamiliar story. I too had many relationships that started in all a blaze, including the desperation to see each other, to then ending in disappointments and hurt. I agree with you in full that taking responsibility for how I feel about myself, having regard for my own worth and value and treating myself with more love and care than ever has stopped that level off being needy in a relationship. I still have more things to unfold here with my partner for sure, but that level of pain from not feeling my own worth is now a memory.
A lovely blog, Samantha. Great that you were willing to take responsibility for your part in these past relationships failing. Yes, we need to recognise and work on our hurts and the patterns that we are carrying.
Samantha thank you for laying down the ABC’s of what it takes to create a solid foundation for a relationship with another. Your story is very relatable for many women and men for that matter, problem is we are not shown how important and essential this relationship is with ourself, how fundamental it is for a fulfilling and joyful life. Great sharing!
Congratulations on your engagement, especially as it is not at all lacking from love now you have developed that love for yourself first. So many people chase the dream life – the perfect man/woman they will fall in love with, but who ever takes themselves into the equation and considered what relationship they will have with themselves in the future and how this will effect all their relationships.
This is my experience with relationships with men too, always looking for them to make me feel good about myself and to bring love into my life. I now realise that I have to bring that love to me myself, and to develop a relationship with myself that makes me feel good. Otherwise I leave myself at the mercy of another, and that can lead to so much need, dissatisfaction, tension, frustration, even bitterness and anger, which doesn’t allow for a very loving supportive relationship to blossom. Thanks for sharing how you have changed this pattern Samantha.
Thank you Samantha for sharing your story so honestly. I can so much relate to what you have experienced. In the past I have found relationships so difficult, but just because I was not loving myself first. It’s so inspiring to read that you have now a loving relationship with your partner, based on truth and love.
So many things in this piece of writing are universally relatable to both men and woman. This is what we need more of in this day and age there are so many of us looking for relationships for all the wrong reasons. Relationships are the most single important thing to help us grow and expand and when I say relationship I mean with anyone, e.g.: neighbour, friend college but what we get out of them all depends on how we go in. If you go into it trying to fill up an emptiness you feel then you will be forever disappointed as that is not what relationships true purpose is suppose to be. True relationship is simply reflecting back to each other the next point of evolution and supporting each other to reach our full potential.
“True relationship is simply reflecting back to each other the next point of evolution and supporting each other to reach our full potential”… thank-you Sarah Baldwin for your words, so wise and true. I shall take them with me to remind me that life is a constant opportunity to embrace the next point of evolution in every moment.
Absolutely Sarah, you bring up some major points about relationship and how relationships are all around us. What stood out for me was looking at how we are going into every relationship, The responsibility of how and what we are choosing to bring is dependent on the evolution and what is then on offer in the relationship.
Sarah, that’s a perfect way to sum up the purpose of relationship. I know that when I have ‘used’ relationships to fill my need.. to fill an emptiness, it has never worked. I have always felt a disappointment and felt an irrational let down from the other person. Rather than seeing that it was my need causing a problem in the 1st place. For me relationship dynamics take on a whole new meaning when a commitment to having a relationship with myself comes first. From that foundation the ‘need’ gets taken care of and all subsequent relationships are amazing opportunities to reflect back to me what I haven’t yet mastered in myself, coupled with the possibility of expressing and receiving love with lessening/no attachment. There is so much more joy in being with others this way.
“True relationship is simply reflecting back to each other the next point of evolution and supporting each other to reach our full potential.”
Wow this puts a whole different spin on relationships, and like you say any relationship, and life. If we were supported from young to know that the most important relationship we have is a loving one with ourselves how different life would be for everyone. Thank you Sarah.
So very true Samantha – without love for ourselves, having a relationship with a man (or woman) is not likely to have a positive outcome . When I look at my past relationships and the lack of love and self worth I had, I am not surprised at what they became and how they ended.
Well said Nikki, we really do end up creating our own destiny!
You said it Samantha!
The timing of reading your blog Samantha was incredible for me, as it helped me be honest about a recent relationship issue I have had where I realised I have been holding back my love and cherishing of my partner. I can see very clearly now that this is largely due to my own level of self-love and appreciation (that has been a lot less than it could be). This can sometimes lead to an outward criticism of other people that is really based on my own self-criticism and not feeling ‘enough’. So yes, starting with self-love is the foundation to loving others truly.
Such great insight you share here Michael, I have often found that when I drop in self love my criticism extends outwards towards my partner. This is a constant work in progress but its been fantastic to see the truth in the situation rather than creating something not true just because I did not feel enough.
The truth always comes up, faster in relationships.
So true Felix, exposing what is not true can come up very quickly in close relationships and even though at times can feel really uncomfortable it is brilliant as it offers us a fantastic opportunity to heal hurts and pattens of behaviour that hold us back.
I agree Felix, this is what we react to, not wanting to see what we need to see to evolve…
That’s a bang of line Felix, evolution presents itself even faster through another.
Great point Felix, I think that’s why I have avoided relationships, because I know that it will catalyse whatever is there to be catalysed.
Thank you Samantha for sharing your deep understanding of how building a loving relationship with oneself changes relationships with others. Every small conflict I encounter is an opportunity that asks me to look deeper and to be more love.
When we have the courage to deal with our hurts and old wounds from the past, it is life changing. This has also been my experience, but a lot of resistance can come up, because it can feel to painful or overwheling at times, thus I was truly and lovingly supported by esoteric healing sessions and attending coures by Serge Benhayon.
A beautiful sharing, by a beautiful lady. Something we can all relate to in our own ways and be inspired by.
Samantha the honesty you write in allows me to also reflect and be honest with the way I approached relationships from the first girlfriend I had. I can certainly relate to the obsession and the thinking this is it, this person will make everything in my life better. I had almost given up on finding any true relationship as the moment I then wanted something deeper the relationship would fall apart – then enter my first Universal Medicine event and the start of a process of understanding that the way I am with myself, the love I have for myself is what really allows the foundation and depth of relationships.
Relationship advice is a massive one – the market for it is booming – and yet, the people who give the advice are often themselves in a dysfunctional relationship. The steps you described Samantha, being honest, not blaming other people and taking the responsibility that it takes two people to tango so to speak, allowed you to feel how it was your lack of love leading you down the garden path to heart break, not just your partner. How simple it is, no need to do or be anything, other than yourself and love yourself for that. I know that my lack of love has allowed me to be totally caught up in relationships where I completely lose all sense of myself and allow all sorts of abuse. Having a foundation of love gives women the power of the vantage point from which to not accept less than love, and to know her self and her worth first and foremost by there own qualities, not by her relationship status.
Destructive and/or obsessive relationships are probably the most common types of relationships we see in the world, I love Samantha how you have changed that pattern and that you decided that a different choice was needed. It has to be worth it to bring an end to the heartbreak of looking for love when we can give ourselves the love and be from there. Every relationship can then be fuller and more loving.
I loved your blog Samantha, “With lack of self-worth I was ultimately setting myself up time and time again to allow heartbreak and abuse. Through developing the love I now have for myself, for the lovely lady I am, I have healed huge wounds that kept me from developing loving relationships.” This sentence explains the merry-go-round we get onto in relationships and why we keep repeating them, we carry our hurts and wounds from one relationship to the next, not aware that these along with our lack of self worth are contributing to the demise and eroding of each relationship. I am realising how huge self worth and self loathing is and how it affects not just all our relationships but everything we do how we express ourselves.
This article and comments are a tribute to the fact that searching outside of ourselves for love is a fruitless and painful game and that the quality of our relationship with ourselves is the foundation for everything. As I develop this primary relationship I watch my life change and blossom before me. Thank you, Mary and Samantha.
Thank you girls for these comments. I love what you wrote Mary:
‘I am healing my lack of self worth and I am appreciating myself and what I can bring to the world, I love the confidence this gives me which is having a positive impact with my family, friends and work colleagues.’
My experience was trying to fill the emptiness with children and boy oh boy did my relationship with them and everybody else change after I started building a relationship with myself and let go of a lot of ideals.
I love what you say hear Matilda that as you develop your relationship with yourself you watch your life change and blossom before you, this is beautiful and so true, we only need to acknowledge that gorgeous love already inside us to then be able to see it in another.
Dear Samantha, I love the moment you woke up to the repetitiveness of the ill pattern in your relationships – it felt really powerful because once you had become aware, you gave yourself the space and opportunity to take responsibility and approach things differently. An amazing point of inspiration – Thank you.
Very true Kristy, it’s very common to blame ‘the other’ for the breakdown of a relationship instead of looking at ourselves. For real relationship counselling this blog by Samantha is perfect — an inspiration to how we can be lovingly honest and truly reimprint our relationships.
It really is so simple isn’t it… and it could certainly save us a lot of money on relationship counselling if we simply focussed on truly developing our relationship with ourselves. Without a foundation of love in us, we cannot bring love to our other relationships as has been my own experience too. There will always be complications and challenges and romantic relationships eventually fizzling out, Whereas if there is love within us already there, then that’s the reference point we bring right from the beginning and what we can keep coming back to. And from there the love continues to build. It is so worth investing in our own relationship with ourselves in love.
I agree Katerina, we must first build a foundation of love with ourself before we can have a successful relationship with another. Otherwise we are so needy of the other and this often ends the relationship. Even if the relationship struggles along, it is not worth the struggle, it is not a true relationship.
Beautifully shared Samantha, thank you. i particularly love the last line – “I didn’t need good relationship advice – I simply realized that without self-worth and self-love I will always be looking for others to fill my need, which ultimately never truly works.”
I love this line too Sally, and have come to discover that the lack of self worth has created so many problems of struggle and complications around relationships throughout my life.
I also love this line Sally. It is very powerful and would probably save a lot of people a lot of money.
If this became the standard responsibility for all relationships the world would be a very different place.
Your honesty is inspiring Samantha. Good on you for looking at your repeated patterns and then make the choice to heal the hurts that kept you in these patterns. Yes, our relationships are a reflection of what is going on for us on the inside and until we develop a loving relationship with ourselves, there is no doubt in my mind that we can’t have a relationship that is built on true love opposed to emotional love.
Since reading this blog a few days ago, I’ve been seeing clearly where I haven’t been loving me. How powerful it is to read another persons experience like yours Samantha, and learn how you’ve grown and developed. Just in sharing, you’ve inspired me to stop being hard and go deeper with bringing loving understanding to me.
Thats awesome Joseph, there is always room for more self love!
Reading this blog has been perfect timing for me also Joseph, as I have been uncovering how hard I am being on myself and because of that looking outward at my relationships with the same hardness. How simple really when we come back to the knowing that to Love ourselves first ensures loving others in the same way.
What a fantastic blog and I feel it can relate to any kind of relationship in the same way. I can really identify with what you have written as a woman, the lack of self worth and self love, and the belief that others fill needs for us. When we are filled with that self love, we can then experience all the love we need and take that into our relationships. It’s a work in progress for me too – love is pretty deep, there is always more!
Thank you Samantha this stirred up quite a strong feeling in me of how I used to ‘play the field’ with relationships because of not feeling enough -kind of the opposite approach to being ‘clingy’ but with the same underlying problem. Still the same obsession with needing a relationship to complete me. The completeness I often now feel does not mean I am perfect or feel great all the time, but I am able to now take a lot more responsibility for my actions and be honest about the choices I am making. For example as you have expressed, not blaming anyone else for relationship issues.
What a great blog. You clearly express from personal experience that it is not until we take responsibility for ourselves and our choices and behaviours can we establish true, loving relationships. “I now am fully aware that until we deal with our hurts we can never move on” – never was truer word spoken.
I like the title of this blog. To develop a relationship with oneself and deeply care for and nurture oneself is definitely a good advice for oneself and any relationship thereafter.
Well said Esther. It all starts with how we view and care for ourselves. The relationships that follow are a reflection of how we view and regard ourselves.
I love the simple and clear wrap up of this great blog : “I didn’t need good relationship advice – I simply realized that without self-worth and self-love I will always be looking for others to fill my need, which ultimately never truly works.”
The momentums we hold can shape and colour our lives in every aspect – being committed to loving oneself is the key to unlocking and releasing all of those protective hurts we tend to show the the world as being us.
It’s incredible how the way we are with ourselves affects every relationship we are in. But by loving ourself first I can feel the foundation for good relationships is there.
These ’emotional prisons’ you mention Samantha are completely destructive to relationships and friendships. People only get to experience you from within the walls of these prisons and not the ‘free living you’ without boundaries or restrictions.
I absolutely love you honesty Samantha and can relate to looking for another to fill me up with love which inevitably ended a long term relationship as a result. When you start to realize that what you were seeking from the other was there inside you all along and start to nurture it and express it, your whole life transforms immensely.
“I didn’t need good relationship advice – I simply realized that without self-worth and self-love I will always be looking for others to fill my need, which ultimately never truly works.” So much the best way, Samantha, coming from your realisation that the healing is inside yourself as you recognise and clear the hurts you are living from. We can get great value from consulting with those on the same path who are working with their relationships in the same way as you and your partner, and that is very supportive, as often there are blind spots we have not seen that are exposed by doing that, but the initial willingness to look deeply at our hurts is the first step.
It is indeed a set-up what we create ourselves by not loving ourselves first. The way you were relating to other men was a reflection of the relationship with yourself. This is big, because it shows that everything what happens to us is a set-up by ourselves. Almost like plan to fail or…..plan to evolve. That is the wonderful other side of it, we can constellate a loving foundation for us to enroll what we will experience next 🙂
Wonderfully honest blog Samantha. As I was reading it, it occurred to me that although my relationships were two lengthy ones the same applies as with your serial break-ups… that without my relationship with myself, my own self-worth and self -love, these relationships were founded on need and not founded on love, nor purposefully made to evolve with each other.
Absolutely awsome blog Samantha your honesty is beautiful and so are you.
Thank you beautiful Samantha. When you write: “Inspired by the love in which I was held during Esoteric Healing sessions I began to make changes to the way I lived” it has brought tears to my eyes. I can remember that deeply life-changing moment of feeling the first time the unconditional and holding love in an Esoteric Healing Session as something I am able to return to. Feeling it in me like coming home and getting all the answers I have searched for on the outside for so long, at once. Now I am building up this loving relationship with myself as a foundation for every relationship in my life. It is a great liberation to know, and getting more and more to feel, that everything is already in me.
So much ‘wow’ here, Samantha. Especially appreciating “Through developing the love I now have for myself, for the lovely lady I am, I have healed huge wounds that kept me from developing loving relationships.”. I can attest to your love-liness!
I have been shocked by how much of an issue self-worth truly is. I felt (and definitely seemed) like a confident person, but looking more deeply the harmful patterns and fear of embarrassment/caring what other people think told a different story.
Self love builds self worth and without self worth, every relationship will be laced with need. I am seeing this more clearly for myself and appreciating your blog for bringing even more clarity and opportunity to go deeper with it. thank you Samantha.
Relationships are gold, because they always show us, where we still have to look at our life. Reading them is the best way to evolve. Isn´t it a blessing of the soul, that it is always presenting itself again and again?! Great to hear you found yourself again and a partner that is willing to work on a true loving relationship. It is ver magical if you are in a relationship and the see the unfoldment from a emotional attached relations to a true love relationship. May many magical moments will celebrate your love .
Yes relationships are gold Steffi, I totally agree on this. Any kind of relationships.
I can attest to this myself – hugely: “Inspired by the love in which I was held during Esoteric Healing sessions I began to make changes to the way I lived”
Yes Jenifer esoteric sessions were absolutely fundamental to me in healing old wounds and to help me to re- learn what true self love was all about. I still regularly have sessions with an esoteric practitioner as they offer such great support in all aspects of my life.
Lack of self worth and self loathing is a sure recipe for heartache and failed relationships because we then allow others to abuse us and think it is love, when in fact it is so far removed from true love.
I am learning that the things I put up with within my relationships were not love but a need to be needed at any cost and living like that does not build your self worth it makes you feel worse about yourself and keeps the cycle going.
Yes Julie, I can relate – I have realised how much I had relied on being ‘needed’. I did not really think that I am loveable just for being me. This is slowly changing, and I see and feel that I am very loveable, and that’s without perfection.
“You have summed it up it one line Julie “Lack of self worth and self loathing is a sure recipe for heartache and failed relationships.” Yep it sure is and until we have self worth and half love as a foundation we are as Jonathan says “building castles in the sand”.
So true Samantha, there is no one who can fix our lives for us. Self-love, honesty and responsibility are the keys that will unlock the door of the cage we have put ourselves into.
Relationships that continue to fail and trying to fix them again and again without any self-love is like trying to fix them by getting rid of your shadow. Until you deal with what is creating the shadow and that what you and others see is just shade from your own light… that is always the first and best relationship ever.
As you have stated in your blog Samantha the relationship you have with yourself will be mirrored by reationships you have with others.
Loving ourself is truly fulfilling so when we enter into a relationship we don’t rely on it to fulfil us. Therefore taking the pressure off the relationship to be any particular way. This is the true foundation of a relationship – Love – the meeting of two loving people who are loving together. Not a need in sight!
A lot of people say “they lost themselves in the relationship and this put the partner off”. Could it be that it was also the partner’s issue?
I am with a person, I commit completely and the other person backs off because they don’t want to commit. That feels like a relationship failure but it actually is a shortcut out of a future bad relationship.
It may not all be our issue alone.
Thanks Samantha for sharing your relationship hurts and how you have finally overcome getting a broken heart.
I too thought love was something you found out there, and was looking for others to fill my emptiness.
Thanks to Serge Benhayon, Natalie Benhayon and esoteric practitioners, I have learnt to develop a more loving, selfnurturing, and self honouring relationship with me first. This has allowed me to bring this into my relationships with others.
Your blog incited a trip down memory lane for me Samantha, remembering past relationships and the part I played in their blossoming or their break down. The self love and self responsibility that I now bring to relationships after listening to the wisdom of Serge Benhayon doesn’t make relationships easier but it does bring more understanding and much more real love.
Stunning article Samantha, thank you for sharing so honestly on a topic so many women can relate to. Your closing line – “I didn’t need good relationship advice – I simply realized that without self-worth and self-love I will always be looking for others to fill my need, which ultimately never truly works.” is absolute gold!
This was awesome to read and really honest sharing what I am sure many can relate to, including myself. I had an epiphany the other day regarding relationships with men and that was how I allowed energies to come seeping in that weren’t actually true to me!!! But instead of being able to feel me and my truth I would feel everything that wasn’t then thinking that was my truth! Confused .. I was .. or have been all my life. Self-love and self-worth is definitely the way to go in all relationships; and as someone else said thank God for Serge Benhayon, Universal Medicine and Universal Medicine Practitioners.
Awesome sharing Samantha. This really stood out for me – ‘I now am fully aware that until we deal with our hurts we can never move on: we may get a new partner or we may move to another country, but the momentum is still there hidden, waiting to manifest itself again and again.’ Such a powerful truth to realise. It is impossible to get love from anything or anyone else as all the love that we are and that we are searching for is within. And when we choose to heal what is getting in the way of connecting to this love we can truly begin to live and share the joy of being love, and how natural this feels.
Samantha your line; ‘until we deal with our hurts we can never move on: we may get a new partner or we may move to another country, but the momentum is still there hidden, waiting to manifest itself again and again.’ sums it all up for me. We are solely responsible for dealing with our hurts and not taking them to our next relationships so that we can begin the next one anew and we are only left to deal with what the current relationship brings not undo the past ones.
It’s great to feel what happens to our relationships when we become honest and stop blaming others. Thanks for sharing.
Great to read Samantha and it got me to ponder why am I content to not be in a relationship? Does this mean the relationship I have with myself is enough or am I not open to a relationship because I still mistrust myself to be able to express within the relationship and that I am wotthy of a being deeply loved. Another layer of the onion!!!
I can relate to this Merrilee. I have been building a foundation of love for myself and am loving being in a relationship with myself. There is a fear there that I won’t hold that and I will crumble back into old patterns if in a relationship. It’s possible that the fear and the old hurts (hurts of how I have been with myself in a relationship) are playing a role in keeping me closed to a relationship.
It can be really comfortable being on my own but at the same time it can be avoiding what a relationship would have to offer. It can be the most wonderful thing being ‘single’ when I feel content within myself, but not so great when I’m not; so I guess it all comes down to how I am with myself, whether I’m in a relationship or not.
So very true Matts!
wow what a blog. Honest and thought provoking. I’m inspired by the way you were able to take responsibility and see your part to play in the outcome of your situations as the end result was always the same… Absolutely awesome your now in a relationship and truly working on your hurts and emotional issues. It takes a dedicate level of commitment to do this but the self love part in what you share is so critical in being able to nurture and handle the issues when they arrive.
Thanks so much for sharing this Samantha.
I agree Natasha. Self love , self nurturing and even self appreciation are fundamental for us to truly deal with all that a relationship can bring for us to look at. We must have a strong relationship with ourself first.
Hello Samantha England and your blog is a breathe of fresh air into the relationship cycles we can have. I can relate to this, “With most of these failed relationships came an intense feeling of falling in love, then not long after would come the familiar feelings of hopelessness and a desperation to not lose the relationship.” I didn’t have many short relationships but preferred the long term ones but they had a similar flavour. It is great to look at relationships from this perspective, “I realize now I was being shown time and time again that I had to look deeper into what I was creating.” A self responsible approach before you are even in a relationship, though you could say this is a relationship with yourself first. Thank you Samantha England.
A beautiful sharing Samantha. Thank you.
Until very recently I had no comprehension of what self love was, self like maybe but often self destruct and self hate. With the teachings of universal medicine and allowing myself a good deal of time, I am building a loving relationship with self that has allowed me far deeper connections with others.
I have found this too Fiona. The deeper I allow myself to be in a relationship with me, the deeper all my relationships can become. Sometimes it can take awhile for my other relationships to adjust to the increased intimacy and connection as it changes so much for both parties involved.
Great blog Samantha, self love is always the foundation of any true relationship.
Reading your article, I was reminded of my own relationship history whereby I only had one serious relationship in my late teens and we married in our early twenties. What I reflect on at the time we were dating was how often I was advised by friends and family to break off this relationship because I couldn’t possibly know who the ‘right one’ would be if I didn’t have comparison to draw from.
Thank heavens I trusted the innate feeling I had had all along too stay with my amazing wife as this has allowed me a relationship opportunity in which to explore who I truly am, with a constant support to developing my own self-worth from someone else who has always known it is there, dormant waiting to be lived.
Of course, we would still both be a long way off living this in our daily lives were it not for the presentations and support of Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon.
You bring a beautiful aspect to this blog Greg. It is interesting how others can bring their own particular bent or ideal around relationship to us to make us doubt whether what we do is ‘right’ or not. I love that you trusted your innate knowing and were unswayed.
Thank you for sharing that Greg. I definitely held the belief that you couldn’t possibly know that you had met the person you wanted to commit to in a long term relationships when you were younger. I had friends that married in their 20’s and I thought that they were far too young. I know that I imposed by beliefs onto them, even though I may not have said anything at the time. I held that belief until only recently. So thank you again and thank you to all the young people I now know in committed relationships, it makes my heart sing to see the sharing of self-love in action.
This was also my experience Greg with my husband and I being together since our teens. It is interesting how much false information is out there circulating around how relationships should be or how they should go… like you need to check a few out before you really know what you want or if they are ‘the one’. It so sets relationships up to be continually scrutinised ‘is this the one?’ or ‘oh well, if this doesn’t work, there are more fish in the sea’, kind of attitude. These kind of beliefs and ideals, rampant in society, feels like it gives many permission to not really look at how they are with themselves or what they bring to a relationship, but an easy way out. I also appreciate that my husband and I trusted what we felt.
I love this Greg, the depth of the appreciation you have for your choice brings a depth of honouring for you both. This has reminded me that my first boyfriend was a lovely person and I have pondered the possibly the sweetest and simplest. For some reason I went outside of myself and got all complicated and broke off the relationship. From there the choices progressed along the same vein. I’ve always felt there is so much potential with our first love as there is an innate sweetness in both and it hasn’t turned into complication through our hurts.
Beautiful Samantha, I feel like I have walked a similar path. In the past I have pretty much been in relationships in the way you described. Thanks for your honesty and inspiration.
This is a great sharing about true relationships. I have noticed in the relationships with my housemates that I live with, when things coming up we are dealing with honesty, ease and understanding with each other, what leaves everyone feeling equally and not excluded or judged. That allows us to grow together stronger what is beautiful and it makes living together very enjoyable, and it is a learning for any further relationships to come.
Lovely to read this of your’s too Monika, as well as Samantha’s beautiful blog, so many excellent comments.
All parties holding equal responsibility in the relationship you all have… that is truly beautiful Monika. This is certainly the way to be in relationship!
I agree Samanthas blog is a great sharing about true relationships so is your amazing command Monika – very inspiring to read. So we are always and constantly living in relationships what a wonderful realization.
Thanks, Ester, Jeanette and Robyn – we all can learn so much with our interactions every day, even a conflict cannot disturb long anymore, because we have learned how to deal in a loving way with each other and seeing the offer of healing in every dis-balance, when the underlaying truth is spoken and the love is seen again the healing is just there and the feeling of unity makes us stronger seeing the conflict as a little particle of dust next to the love we are.
I love your article Samantha. It now reverberates a truth within my body which has not been expressed in my own past couple relationships, because I had not want to feel this truth. True relationships are a new definition that the dictionary presently does not yet define, they start with self-love–love and appreciation deep and true for oneself, first and always.
Self love is far from selfish. As this level of love and regard for oneself is the only way to love anyone and everyone truly and deeply. Which leaves me to ponder, the many times when the world tells us that self-love is selfish, could it be that the world knows how truly powerful self-love is?
Samantha your honesty is deeply beautiful and your commitment back to self-love is the best testimonial and relationship advice we will receive–because you are living it. What a gift this is to the world.
A beautiful and inspiring article from a beautiful and inspiring lady, Samantha. I can see correlations between your experiences and mine and you have inspired me further to deepen my relationship with myself as this is what really counts towards building loving relationships with everyone.
The ouches are just as much about taking responsibility and not blaming anyone else anymore as it is about realising the lack of love for oneself.
Samantha – this is brilliant and so encouraging for me to see that change is possible once we put the focus into truly loving and appreciating ourselves. I spent my whole life reading about how to have successful relationships and you have nailed it in this one line ‘I had been offered the choice to see how I (yes I, no one else) was creating these repetitive heartbreaks.’ This really does take the blame out of it.
Facing up to the fact that we are all responsible for the state of our relationships can be a big ouch, but in reality the only way to find true love is to find it within ourselves first. It’s ridiculous that as a society we are all looking for someone else to fill our emptiness when all along we have more than enough love inside of us, it appears we are just resisting it, doesn’t make sense does it.
Exactly Sandra and if you look at the countless number of Hollywood movies all pointing to the fact that love is out there no wonder we are in such a mess! It does seem that we are set up from an early age to fail when we learn that love and the ‘one’ is out there. We will never sustain a love with anyone if at first we do not have this connection with ourselves.
Yes thank you Shevon, I have to say it took a while to truly understand it was about me rather than the other!
It sounds crazy but as I sit here after reading this I reflected on my past relationship behaviours, not just close relationships but with others as well. There’s an expectation towards others to fill the void we have within us because that void is being created by holding onto our hurts. It’s like saying “I don’t want to let go of this hurt so I expect you to come and relieve me of what I am holding onto and of which only I can let go of.”
“As soon as we were together I would become a bit obsessed, I would think of him all the time, lose myself in him and become a dedicated ‘I will put up with anything’ kind of lover. As you can imagine this put quite a lot of guys off! When they did lose interest this would leave me somehow more obsessed and more ‘into them’, which was quite distressing really.” – Oh yes, Samantha, I recognise myself doing this in relationships in the past.
Great sharing Samantha. Often the hardest relationship to do is with ourselves and yet this is the one we avoid the most! You have illustrated beutifully how this is the foundation of all relationships. Thank you.
Fantastic blog Samantha, I can relate to so much of what you have shared. Some different circumstances and the like, but the energy you describe and certain behaviours, yes I definitely have experienced with relationships of the past. It is amazing how when you do begin to build a love for yourself, that the unloving behaviour from others and so importantly, the unloving behaviour with yourself can stand out like the proverbial. So then we can look at relationships we have with others, take the opportunity to choose a different way of being with them. It can be hard at first to change, if you have been going around a merry go round for a long time, which is not evolving. But if you bring awareness to what is there, you can begin to change the patterns, make more loving choices and not repeat again those patterns any more. In the process, bring appreciation and understanding, to yourself and the other people you are in relationships with.
What simply beautiful honesty Samantha. Thank you for this gift you have shared about relationships, the aspect of our lives we can’t ignore and which reveals so much about ourselves to learn from and to heal.
This is so spot on Samantha, building a relationship that is based on a love and honesty for ourselves first feels like a great foundation. Thank you sharing your inspiring journey.
Agreed Melissa, the foundation Samantha has laid here should be lesson 1 in any relationship advice given out to others.
Our love from within and our ability to access it through self loving and caring choices is so powerful that thousands have turned their lives around- living joyfully, truthfully and with amazing relationships built on love.
Thank you Samantha. I totally agree – if we don’t deal with our hurts we just keep bringing them into every relationship we have. Just because someone somewhere hurt us does not mean we have to walk around protecting ourselves from everyone, just in case we might get hurt again.
Yes Elizabeth I absolutely agree with you.
I fully agree and I found stepping out of that cycle is so liberating, freeing up the love within to connect with others instead of just shutting ourselves away.
Thank you Samantha for the very revealing truth of the fact that, you can not love another until you have developed love-for-self first. Your expression truly lights the way for us all to return to the love that is innate in us all.
Wow! This is a must read blog for everyone on the planet. It’s amazing how many times we need to have the same pattern occur to ‘get it’ (what we are supposed to be learning) and even then we still don’t ‘get it’ sometimes! We can get so hurt in relationships but as you beautifully expressed, it is down to the lack of love we have for ourselves. Lately when I feel hurt, I ask what I was wanting from the other person. Without fail, it is what I am not prepared to give to myself. From this clarity I have the opportunity to choose to be this for myself.
I agree Fiona. What I have noticed if I am feeling angry or frustrated with someone, there is something that I am ignoring myself and often is something so simple like not appreciating or accepting myself. So simple but with huge ramifications.
So cool Samantha. I can relate to your experience of understanding that self-love is a key player to be able to accept, give and share love with others. When the connection is based on a need there is always prices to pay.
Oh I love this Samantha. I can relate to it completely, really wanting others to fill me up with everything I was not offering myself. Your blog is gorgeous and an inspiration which should be shared in schools during their health and wellbeing classes.
Samantha, this is a beautiful blog. It is a great insight – if you have had seven failed relationship – what did they all have in common? Me. And that is where we there is work to do, not in finding the eighth relationship and making sure that this person is completely different or the relationship is setup completely different. First we need to start with ourselves and how much love we live in our life. Then…
True relationships should not be about two halves coming together to make a whole, but rather two wholes coming together in union.
That is poetry adam warburton and that needs to be up in lights somewhere, “True relationships should not be about two halves coming together to make a whole, but rather two wholes coming together in union.” How often do we take the half into a relationship looking or compromising to make the whole? This “union” is a real and true way to look at any relationship, thank you adam warburton.
Exactly Adam – well said! So often the fantasy of relationships is sold as finding the one to complete you, the missing piece, when the truth is that we are already complete, nothing outside of you can magically deliver this. When we allow ourselves to see and deeply appreciate all that we are, we allow others to see this also and can equally see and appreciate them.
Well said Adam. That needs to be quoted and shared with the world…
Love it Adam, so true. 2 wholes make a whole, 2 halves make a mess.
Spot on Adam this makes so much sense.
That is so beautiful expressed adam warburton and so true!
It’s so true, looking outside of ourselves for the love that we are missing from within ourselves is a long and painful process! Building self-love and self-care has developed me beyond anything I could have imagined and I now realise the levels of abuse that abound in so many relationships and in society in general. As I deepen my personal commitment to myself, I also see and feel vast improvements within all my relationships. It feels great and very confirming and with so many of us experiencing so much more love in our relationships, it provides a wonderful reflection to humanity.
No Good relationship advice or self help books needed – just love and care for oneself. That’s the way to go! I can agree too Samantha that having a relationship with yourself first does wonders. Literally wonders.
Ha, yes Emily, all the time that people have spent delving themselves into relationship self help books (by themselves), separating us in to Mars and Venus, expanding the falsehood that we are completely different beings. Those moments would be greatly spent just realizing that we are all looking for love, that we all need to be loving ourselves and that we play equal parts in any relationship.
Well said, Emily, and it is never too late to start introducing self love, even when you are in a relationship. To let go of the beliefs and ideals and no longer need another to make you feel good about yourself is truly liberating.
I fully agree Janet, never too late and new choices can be made every second. It is very liberating to let go of old beliefs that don’t serve and start making choices that connect us with ourselves – that alone will bring more self love into being.
Thank you Samantha, this is an inspiring blog (heart rending in places), even so, uplifting to read of your big changes and the way you have developed a love for yourself. Self-worth is something all women need to address on a daily basis.
Congratulations on your engagement.
Thats Awesome to read Samantha. It brought back a memory That I have of my first real relationship. I was so happy that we got together as I really liked this girl, but I went into trying to make her like me as much as I could because I didn’t want to lose her, and when she broke up with me I was devastated! But now I look back I realise I didn’t have any love for myself and if I did it would have a been a truly different relationship. I would have come with my true love because I would be expressing it without needing to hear it back. It makes me feel completely different about a relationship. And now I think of it, I’m in plenty of relationships right now, so why don’t I do the same? 😀
Thanks for sharing Harrison, absolutely awesome you are now aware of this, I could have easily gone my whole life creating the same patterns of devastation if it weren’t for seeing there was another way.
When you say that “until we deal with our hurts we can never move on: we may get a new partner or we may move to another country, but the momentum is still there hidden, waiting to manifest itself again and again”, I couldn’t agree more. All we are doing by changing the outer circumstances is to shuffle the stage props around and the roles, but in essence nothing at all has changed and as you say, the issue comes up over and over again.
Well said Gabriele, I had tried all the outer changes, but as you say so beautifully, changing the outer is just changing the stage props around and the roles, but nothing really changes until we go deeper and look at what is being reflected back to us. If I’m in a relationship where I’m not treated with love, I have to look at how I am treating myself. How I am treating myself gives a strong imprint, so it pays huge dividends to start truly caring and loving ourselves, no matter what.
Thanks for this Samantha, seem to me ‘falling in love’ should be replaced with being (as in myself) within love.
GORGEOUS Samantha – what an incredible journey you have shared with us. I sometimes struggle with self love and self worth, and thus similarly to what you experienced relationships just don’t seem to be doable. But its very important we don’t realise this and make relationships our end goal, so feel we HAVE to ‘love ourselves more’ in an effort to have a successful partnership. It’s something that has to come from us, for us.
Great point Susie – it can be easy to fall into the trap of “ok I’ll start loving myself and dealing with my self-worth issues and then I will have a great relationship” – which is totally missing the point of learning to deeply care for and love oneself as a natural, normal way of being every day, not as a fix, or to obtain an outcome. If loving ourselves is not as you say “from us, for us”, then it’s no different to going on a crash diet to look good for an event – inevitably any weight lost in a quick fix is re-gained once the event is over and one gradually returns to their old, “normal” way of being.
What you write is fundamental Samantha, that our primary relationship is to be a loving one with ourselves, before we can expect to have a truly loving partnership with anyone else. The idea that someone else can fill us up with love and meet our needs is very deeply entrenched in our societal conditioning, the ideal of falling in love and finding that perfect someone is part of our human condition. Looking around us at all the broken relationships and partnerships that do survive but with little joy, it is evident that something is wrong somewhere. Learning to really know ourselves and hold ourselves in deep appreciation, regard, tenderness and love should be taught at school under life skills. If it was we would see very different relationships between people at all levels.
Yes, I agree Josephine, imagine how teenagers would go through their challenging hormonal years if they had at least a basic understanding of self love and self worth.
Wonderful blog, Samantha, and a great reminder that until we deal with our issues we will make our problems about others, and create a false reality that does not resemble the truth of who we are and what is actually going on.
Thank you Samantha for sharing your rocky relationship path until you were willing to recognise that you were the common denominator and heal your hurts so that you could bring all of you to a relationship. So beautiful to read your commitment now: ‘We are both committed to being and bringing true love into our relationship – to deal with our stuff and to evolve together.’
Hi Sam, what a beautiful opportunity, with the honesty to look at yourself and how that repeating pattern was coming from behaviours and beliefs. Clearly to find and maintain a loving relationship you have identified and healed those past ways of being. This blog offered me the opportunity to stop and ask myself have I done the same? Are there patterns still playing out within relationships? Thank you for showing us there is a way to live a loving and committed relationship and life.
Hey Samantha, so simply brought to the point!
Love with a partner does not work without love for oneself first. How you deal with yourself will be reflected in your relationship. That’s it.
Spot on Sonja; very simply said. It amazes me how much of our relationship with ourself is reflected in our relationships with others.. Not just partners, but for me I notice it with my friends and family.
Thank you Samantha, some great insights in to the foundation for building true relationships and the importance of the most necessary one being with ourself first, which for me, also with the support of Universal Medicine healing courses and practitioners, I am aware of and work to deepen as time goes on. When I read things like this I can also see how important it is for children to be brought up with this awareness from the start rather than this way of living happening after many heartbreaks. How different would our relationships be with anyone, as well as ourselves, if this were the case?
I completely relate to your description of how you were in relationships Samantha, I remember it well! It will no doubt be very familiar to many women. When I was younger I did hear people speak of this pattern, and of the need for women to go into relationships with a greeter sense of themselves, but I had no idea how to build this. That is where Universal Medicine is different. Instead of telling me where I was going wrong in life, and what I needed to do ‘to fix it’, it just showed me a different way, and showed me, if I wanted to look, how life can be lived more lovingly.
“I didn’t need good relationship advice – I simply realized that without self-worth and self-love I will always be looking for others to fill my need, which ultimately never truly works.” Your message in this blog is really simple but true Samantha! Thanks for your absolute honesty and sharing. It’s incredible how self-love can turn around those feelings of need.
I would say this is true for most people. Self-worth and self-love are the key for everyone so it stands to reason that all relationship ‘advice’ should start here.
I can so relate to what you have written Samantha, I too lacked self worth and in relationships would “become a bit obsessed, I would think of him all the time, lose myself in him and become a dedicated ‘I will put up with anything’ kind of lover.” I would even go for men that didn’t feel right just because they showed an interest in me. I too have developed self love and would not now allow many of the things I previously have. In my now long term relationship I have the self worth and confidence to call things out when they do not feel right.
Thank you Samantha for such an honest and important sharing of your life and relationships. Building self love and self worth is fundamental and basic to our whole lives, how we live and how we see the world. With taking responsibility for everything about ourselves first, this is the only way to heal and develop the love in our bodies to bring this to all our relationships, and hence change our patterns and life to one of truth, love, commitment, joy and harmony which we can live consistently. This is such a beautiful sharing and brings a wealth of knowing and experience to all who read it.
Great blog Samantha, as you have clearly shown until you can truly love yourself there can not be any foundation to build any relationship let alone a loving one with anyone that will last.
Hello Steve Matson and I agree this is a great blog. The only way I could clearly see how to “truly love” myself came through Universal Medicine. I was always looking outside for love and Universal Medicine pointed me back in.
Very true Steve and one of the beautiful things that we can experience when we have that foundation of love in ourselves is that we don’t have a ‘need’ for the other person, but that we simply love being with them. This is so beautiful and the way relationships should be. It’s one of the sweetest and most joyful things to feel.
I love this Katerina: ‘ we don’t have a need for the other person, but that we simply love being with them, which all comes from self love and putting ourselves first in our lives.
Samantha I was nodding with everything you said, how I want a man to prove he cares, the needyness and the holding onto a relationship regardless of me and what I was really feeling. It is such familiar pattern. Learning that loving myself before I can love another has been one of the greatest and most challenging gifts to be given. I have chosen not to be in a relationship at this moment of my life as I unravel all the hurts that I have carried that then play out in all relationships not just with partners but with friends family…everyone we meet. I loved your blog, it asks us to look past our frustrations of why the same things happen in relationships and offers a possibility to change what can be very old and deeply entrenched behaviours.
It’s really inspiring how you were able to take responsibility and start looking at yourself to pull a full stop to a pattern that didn’t serve you. I can totally relate to having very little self-regard leading to re-creating one situation after another that keeps confirming the worthlessness. I agree with you, committing to a relationship with myself first and foremost is the only way to make a real change in all other relationships I have with the others. Otherwise, no matter how hard I try to be sweet and lovely with another, there remains a drought that constantly wants and seeks to be filled up in return which would inevitably cause a heartbreak.
It is so true Samantha England, that we firstly must be able to love ourselves first and must have an understanding that we cary hurts form the past that, if not properly dealt with, will control us in many situations to come. To my own experience the relationship with my wife is deepened every time I deepen my self-love and/or have healed some of my hurts.
Samantha thank you for your sharing, it really highlights how important it is for us to work on our self love and self worth. Since I started to understand and take reosibility in my life, so much has changed, all my relationships are different and blossoming.
Samantha I am sure your experience of being in reoccurring relationships that end up in heartbreak is one many people can relate to.
How inspiring to know this cycle can be broken with the comittment to developing self love and self worth.
Beautifully said Samantha. When we expect a relationship to give us the love that we crave but do not have for ourselves then it is destined to fail as no one can give us self-love, this has to come from within. Building a firm foundation of tender self-love offers the opportunity to share all that you are with another in a relationship with no empty need to be filled.
Samantha, you’ve written my relationships history in your blog and have summed it up brilliantly with “I didn’t need good relationship advice – I simply realized that without self-worth and self-love I will always be looking for others to fill my need, which ultimately never truly works.”.
Reading your blog Samantha, it occurs to me how life has this wonderful way of repeating the same cycle over and over until we get the learning from it. It is always generous in giving us opportunities, as we cannot truly move on without dealing with what is holding us back..
Very true Simon, there is no way around, we have to deal with our things that are in our way to evolve back to who we really are.
Hello Simon Williams and I also agree “how life has this wonderful way of repeating the same cycle over and over until we get the learning from it.” So at times we think we change how are and do something different but only to see a similar outcome in a different setting. What if we looked at everything in life from here. If a cycle or behaviour is repeating itself don’t try and make it better but honestly look at what is going on. Don’t blame someone else but look at our own part in it and go about doing what you need to do for yourself first. Universal Medicine is a great place to start, no magic pill but a great dose of self responsibility.
Thank you Samantha – wow this is a familiar story to me and I am sure to many others.
In looking at a number of failed romances where I painted myself the victim – I too had to stop and see that the one consistency in all of this was ME. And just like you I gave my power away to the emotion – to the needing and the filling and someone else completing me. It was a very deep cycle – in which I could easily convince myself that I was just the victim and men were crap! What was missing all the while was love for myself, respect for myself and appreciation for myself. And wow what a difference! Not just to relationships – but to every single area of my life.
“What was missing all the while was love for myself, respect for myself and appreciation for myself.” It is amazing isn’t it Hannah how really it is that simple! Once we start to self love and appreciate we open ourselves up to the love we have been searching for.
Yep hands up I can relate to this – and I would agree it was the level of disregard I carried for myself, my feelings and my body. I would also agree that a lack of self worth can allow abuse, and the only true way to heal this is to know and choose love for self first. This is not a selfish act, but one that is deeply caring and honouring. It is important to cut this idea that has been fed to many, that self love is being selfish or arrogant – this is in fact, not true. Self love and love are one of the most beautiful, natural and deeply honouring ways to be, it is naturally part of our divine rhythm and body.
As you, Samantha, I had several relationships with men which failed. And even the marriage I am in now would have almost failed if I would not have stepped into Universal Medicine and learned about the difference of soul and spirit and how the spirit manipulates situations where it can, which mostly leads to disharmony. So it was a blessing for me to understand that a true relationship with others can only come by having a loving relationship with myself and this is a journey which never ends in deepening itself, when I choose so. Today the relationship to my husband is much more respective, playful and light.
Great blog Samantha and well worth the read. Imagine the world where everybody loved and cared for themselves and each other deeply. There would be so much joy and truth, and most of all, harmony.
Very beautiful Samantha. I love the way you have described that basically everything you need is already inside of you, and it is just about building a relationship with all that is there and then sharing this with another with commitment and in truth. Wonderful to read and very inspiring too.
‘without self-worth and self-love I will always be looking for others to fill my need, which ultimately never truly works.’ Six years ago I left a 41 year long relationship with a beautiful man because in the end we were just destroying each other with our misery. Looking back I can see that it wasn’t a true relationship from the start, because Just as you described in your relationships, Samantha, I got lost in being everything I thought he wanted me to be, got involved in all his interests and was loving the attention he paid me at first, and hating the lack of it the longer we were together. He never really got to see and appreciate the true me. Looking back I can see how needy I was, how my own lack of self worth was affecting our relationship, how I would attack him with my judgements and criticism instead of appreciating what a truly lovely man he is, and what a beautiful woman I am. My neediness undermined my whole way of being and destroyed any chance of developing what could have been a powerful relationship.
Thank you Samantha for sharing your story, I am sure many can relate to this pattern and have been through break ups and heart breaks. I myself had been caught in that cycle you are describing… it is devastating. It is so good to read and hear that there is a way out of that, which truly works.
I completely agree Samantha England that the most important relationship we have is with ourselves which then affects all our other relationships. I can remember being in a similar pattern of a string of short relationships which all ended abruptly because of the way I was in them. But I remember thinking it was just because I had not met ‘the right one’ who would understand me! How often do we keep looking and searching for ‘the one’ thinking that we will find them out there somewhere when actually we already have ‘the one’ inside us.
Absolutely Andrew. What a lie we have all been fed that ‘the one’ is out there. Movies, music, tv constantly keep this lie alive by the way relationships are depicted. And yet as you say ‘the one’ will only ever be found within – and what a find that is.
I agree Andrew Mooney and if you look at the flavour of all the commenting there is a similar message as you have said, “the most important relationship we have is with ourselves which then affects all our other relationships.”
If we have relationship issues, there is always this tendency to look ‘at the other’. He or she is doing something wrong, he or she has to change, or I want he or she to give me this. But in fact the seed of all relationship issues, whether with a partner or a friend, lies in the relationship we have with ourselves. If we deal with our own hurts and issues, our own relationship changes, and therefor all of our relationship changes.
It really does appear that most of our emotional problems are down to a lack of self worth and self care. What we need is a world self love day that would hopefully extend to more than a day or even a week or more so people could get a taste for it and realise the necessity of it in healing a lot of the worlds problems.
I can relate to all you share here Samantha. I am realising that when you are in a true relationship with someone there is a lot of Love there being lived, and that without the foundations of a solid relationship with oneself there can never be the the love there to embrace all the love there that can be lived with another.
An amazing sharing Samantha and a complete confirmation that life keeps bringing us what we need to look at and what we have had a part to play in creating.
I too have healed many relationships issues and continue to do so each and everyday in order to deepen me, who I truly am and who and how I am with others. After all the world is filled with people and relating is something we do everyday.
Yes Johanna life does keep bringing us what we need to look at with in ourselves. As you say we get to deepen who we truly are by be willing and open to take the responsibility that is ours. I’ve discovered there is no escaping this part. It can be denied, buried, projected and transformed only to resurface with more force and dis-ease in the body. It’s worth taking the step towards our true selves and re-connect where love truly lives with-in us all.
I had to smile to myself as I read this blog as I was thinking back to the time a few years ago when I separated from my partner and moved out. Although I thought I’d worked on my hurts a lot up until that point, there was still an arragance in thinking that some of the relationship issues would automatically be resolved for me by the fact of moving out and not living with my partner. In other words, if I’m totally honest, I thought that most of the relationship issues were to do with my partner. Boy, did I get a bit of a wake up call when I realized that some of my issues were still there even after I’d moved, and that in fact, some of these issues came with me, which meant that I had to consider that ‘I’ was part of the issue!!! Through realizing this, I became aware there were still more things for me to work on. As with you Samantha, the key for me was to take responsibility for my own relationship with myself, and the more I have worked on this through deepening my self-care and self-love and my commitment to myself, the more I have been able to feel and develop this commitment and love in my relationships with others.
Thanks for sharing that with us Angela, love you honest expose!
I love this Angela and how true it is that we can think we have healed our hurts. When my husband and I separated I remember being lovingly told 12 months on that I had not healed my hurts and to get on and deal with them so that I could move on. A difficult time in my life as I got very honest with myself.
Beautifully honest and real post Samantha. So great to become aware and then break this pattern to result in a blossoming and lasting relationship that has a fullness and truth to it. Your healing words here say it all: “The deep pain I experienced in all my relationships was undoubtedly caused by the lack of love I had for myself. I realize now without a foundation of loving myself, all my relationships were destined to eventually crumble”. Realising and accepting the natural love and worth of oneself, naturally pulls in the love of another. Beautiful.
Gorgeous Samantha. It completely turns relationship advice on it’s head when we have a loving relationship with ourselves to begin with.
Samantha, I really felt the joy of revelation of you finding you as you expressed in your blog. Thank you for your amazing honesty – it reminds me that we are always responsible for our experiences. Thank you.
What a beautiful and honest blog Samantha, this is a beautiful inspiration to man and woman young and old. Every relationship in life is as good as the quality of the relationship you have with yourself.
“Every relationship in life is as good as the quality of the relationship you have with yourself”… spot on Diana. This sentence is a bit of a wake up call to deepen the relationship with myself, thank-you.
Wow Diana, I always thought that relationships were all ‘out there’ I never considered that how I feel about myself is what I take into my relationships. Thank you for this refreshing way to look at things, I can feel it makes sense.
And what a beautiful relationship I can feel you have built with yourself Samantha. Your words here, I didn’t need good relationship advice – I simply realized that without self-worth and self-love I will always be looking for others to fill my need, which ultimately never truly works, are so spot on, as it makes so much sense that we look to ourselves first as to where we are at and what is going on for us as we are in fact in total control of the choices we make and how we feel, even if at times we don’t like to admit that. Everything begins and ends with us.
I know so well the pattern of out of control relationships that you describe so honestly here, Samantha. Irrespective of our age, women are beset by incredibly beliefs and ideals of how they should be conducting themselves in relationships. The shallowness of these beliefs is readily exposed when we embark on a course of loving ourselves first. A foundation of love and regard for ourselves means that we have something – ourselves – to bring to a relationship. Without that foundation, we ‘got nothing;’ with that foundation, we have everything – we have ourself – simply beautiful.
So lovely to hear that you have reached that place for yourself, Samantha, and that you are so open to sharing it.
As my relationship with myself deepens and expands, all the historical madness of the needs and game play dissolves. Relationships have become an amazing confirmation of love, rather than a sticky, icky need and expectation. I can feel that this can only get more amazing as my tenderness and commitment to me develops. This article and following comments are an inspiring insight into the power of simply taking responsibility. Thank you.
‘sticky, icky need and expectation’, thanks Matilda, this sums up perfectly how I have been in relationships. It is very healing to acknowledge this, and to know that the solution lies entirely within me, and is there to be chosen, and built upon in every moment.
“Historical madness” such a great way to describe it Matilda!
How many people make a living out of helping us with “relationship advice” when all that is needed is within us. Self-respect and self-love are the root of any healing. When we give ourselves to others out of what we think is love we lose ourselves and multiply the hurt. Thank you for sharing Samantha.
Agree Patricia, selling relationship advice is a big market place and the absurdity is that most advisors are not living in loving relationships themselves. Serge Benhayon presents how to re-connect to ourselves and build first of all a truly loving relationship with ourselves and live the love we are. He himself and his powerful and absolutely gorgeous wife Miranda are amazing and true role models of living love every second of their life. And the beauty is when you see and feel them it is not lived for themselves it is lived to reflect to everybody to live the same. When I look at their pictures on http://www.sergebenhayon.com/the-family-man.html I don’t feel “I want this” I feel “I have this too” and I can feel the absolutely deep love I have within myself. Very inspiring way to live!!!!
Brilliant Samantha. I felt reading this, that the truth you share here is something you deeply know. The details about the intensity and obsession are what I have felt too. It is exceptionally beautiful how you describe the love in which you were ‘held’ in the esoteric healing sessions. Its clear this inspired you to hold yourself and others this way too.
Beautifully expressed Joseph. Yes, it is beautiful how we can all be inspired by true love.
I agree Joseph – and I love how Samantha has expanded the idea of love just being an emotion with one person to something to we can have with EVERYONE. And also that we need to have it with ourself too!
You’ll be putting many conventional relationship counsellors out of business Samantha, because your last line says it all. Nearly everyone I know including myself, have given themselves away to someone else to fill them up with validation and worth. I’m so aware of how much my self worth has been lacking through my life that it’s something I’m working very hard at rebuilding. And, should there be another relationship around the corner, I feel I am ready to approach it very differently to before, by simply bringing me and my foundation to it, without perfection.
Thank you Samantha. This truly does go to show how amazing a relationship can be, and the stupendous love it can have, when it is not based on need, but simply love
Well said Ben. It is sad to see so many people in the game kind of type relationships, like Samantha talked about above, while what is possible is relationships based on love, stupendous love.
I love how you share that finding yourself having the same experience time after time, just with a different person, made you realise that you had to take responsibility for how you were in that relationship. It would have been easier to blame the other person or wonder why you are so ‘unlucky in love’, but you chose the only option that could bring about change – taking responsibility and being committed to self-love first. I can relate to this in so many aspects of my life, not only relationships, thank you Samantha.
This is awesome Samantha and the best relationship advise any one can get. I came to a point where I felt I did not know what love was and deliberately choose to be without a partner for a couple of years to build a foundation in the relationship with me. If I am not living me and supporting myself fully then what is it I am sharing with my partner? As you say it then becomes about fulfilling needs and this definitely is not love!
It is a powerful statement to make “not knowing what love was”. I have also been in that position and it wasn’t until I stopped to really question my relationships, including with myself, that I realised I had quite a bit of work to do in really understanding what I had made this to mean and what it truly could mean.
Yes me too Nicole. I can relate to this.
Yes, it is quite amazing. In the beginning, love has nothing to do with the other. Only when we live and express love that is already within ourselves can it interact with another who responds or chooses not to.
The last line says it all Samantha “I simply realized that without self-worth and self-love I will always be looking for others to fill my need, which ultimately never truly works.” to heal the need to look out to fill us up is a empty path. It’s so beautiful that it comes from within and being loving, caring or just nice to start with! to ourselves.
I remember breaking up with a partner and in some ways doing the whole blame game thing. Then on a Relationship Course with Universal Medicine I realised that I was actually a lot more responsible than what I thought. I was outsourcing love and getting angry when it was not being returned. I was not prepared to bring the love to myself and to know that I was OK (or even amazing) as I am so I outsourced it and said to my partner (not officially) you be it for me because I am not going to be it for me. Not surprisingly it ended! So really awesome Samantha to read your blog about how you took responsibility for yourself and started to bring the love to you and look at the hurts & layers of protection you had around you. Awesome and inspiring work.
Outsourcing love. I have never seen it written like that, but this is exactly what happens. It’s actually no different to having to pay someone for something. In this case the payment is done through giving our power away and therefore being constantly drained because of the lack of love we are choosing for ourselves. And then from that drained, less than vital state we demand another to give us something we can’t be bothered to give ourselves. Not a recipe for a healthy relationship at all.
I love your phrase ‘outsourcing love’ Sarah. It totally sums up what we have been taught love is. I love you and you love me back and then we both feel ok! The minute one withdraws that love then the whole game is exposed.
I agree Vanessa, and not only do we look for relationships to fill our ‘needs’ when we don’t have self worth, we also can look for it in friendships, in our families, and even in our kids (if applicable)…
Developing self love and self worth has been a big issue for me to have to deal with. As you say Samantha, it’s foundational to all the other aspects of our lives and experiences. Over time I can see my sense of myself slowly growing as I develop a more steady, loving rhythm in my life. It often takes me by surprise when I notice how much easier things seem to fall into place once I have taken care to nurture these aspects of my life.
This line sums it up completely Helen “It often takes me by surprise when I notice how much easier things seem to fall into place once I have taken care to nurture these aspects of my life.” this is so true Helen life flows so much more easier when we self love, we do not have the emotional rollercoaster of looking for love outside ourselves.
So true Samantha, our own foundation of self-love is what is essential. Being able to truly get to that by clearing our hurts is part of developing and nourishing the self love that we already are and naturally there waiting to be claimed. This part is absolutely worth feeling and embracing even if it’s a bit uncomfortable at moments. I’ve discovered so much more joy, love and acceptance with myself and everyone rather than staying stuck in the cycle of being broken hearted because a relationship didn’t work out.
Thanks Samantha for your honest sharing. I had this patterns in my relationships with men, not as many as you, but still I noticed that it was just a repeating of that what I had not wanted in the last relationship, because I had not truly healed from the deeper issue with it. We cannot run away from our undealed issues. It helped me so much to take responsibility for my part and looking at my hurts I had been pushing away for so long.
Thats great Monika, by taking responsibility for our past hurts and dealing with them we open the floodgates for healing. By healing the hurts and taking out the blame we are able to move on and to see the truth of what is really going on with fresh untainted eyes.
Well said Samantha, we are so blinded by our hurts and blame that we often miss out on what life is offering us. It is well worth feeling our hurts and clearing our line of vision so we can see and appreciate ourselves and others and enjoin life with an unclouded openness that welcomes all lessons coming our way.
I agree Monika, sometimes issues can be extreme and obvious, and sometimes they can be subtle, but either way they can affect our relationships negatively. Actually exploring having relationship with ourself first can mean we don’t seek anything from anyone, removing need from relationships and allowing for true love and intimacy.
Your last line Samantha encapsulates your blog really well…’I simply realized that without self-worth and self-love I will always be looking for others to fill my need, which ultimately never truly works.’
Its so true because if we are not filling ourselves with our own love and care we are forever at the mercy of others feeding this need which keeps us on an unpredictable rollercoaster being puppeted by life and outside circumstances…not a fun way to live.
I love what you have said here Marika: “if we are not filling ourselves with our own love and care we are forever at the mercy of others feeding this need”. I can absolutely relate to this, and the crazy ride that follows; a most exhausting way to live.
Yes this is so true Marika. I can see how in my past relationships I wanted others to fill my needs. The thing was though, back then I could not see that this is exactly what I was doing and how much of a pressure that would of been for others.
Very true Marika. If the self-love and self-worth is not there in our lives, we are constantly looking for others or outside sources to fill the gap and take away the empty feeling inside… Indeed not a fun way to live.
Oh yes Marika I agree it is so true that it is “not a fun way to live” and we all know this. So why people are living not filling themselves with their own love first?? This question I ask myself and I could say that before I met Serge Benhayon I was not sure what love is – therefore I never said “I love you” to no one including myself. I need first him as a role model to remind me what true love means so that I could chose to love myself as well. I could feel that you and Samantha are also great role models to show the world what it means to truly and deeply love oneself and this I find very inspiring.
Samantha the way you have supported yourself to deal with your hurts and build self love so you could take a full you to relationships is very inspiring. Looking for others to fill an emptiness in us is something we can all relate to. I am finding the more I build self love the more full I get of myself and the less needy I am. This has supported all of my relationships to deepen and be more harmonious. Thank you for your awesome blog.
“I am finding the more I build self love the more full I get of myself and the less needy I am.” Wouldn’t it be great if we encouraged to build self love from an early age – that it was subject in schools even! We could have the best exam results or the highest paid job but neither is worth anything if we don’t self love.
This would change everything Samantha, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we encouraged to build self love from an early age – that it was subject in schools even!’ It is such an important subject but one that is not currently taught in schools, if it were all the other subjects would probably fall into place because the children would be rested, nourished, confident and so from here it would be a lot easier to learn all of the other subjects without self-doubt and exhaustion getting in the way.
This is pure gold Samantha and I can say from my own experience that this is true. I also have been going through the merry go round of the same relationships issues again and again. It is only since I stopped and really honestly looked at my relationships and how I was living with myself, that I have been able to make changes. I must say it is amazing to start loving myself and then bringing that love out into my relationships without the neediness creeping in.
Amazing Lieke – how you noticed the problems arise again in a relationship and instead of react, traced back your steps and discovered it was actually linked to how you were with yourself and the relationship you have with you.
Thank you Susie and yes it is amazing to see that even the things that happen and I think obviously have absolutely nothing to do with how I am with myself are always coming back to the relationship with myself. Even if the other person, be it a friend, family member or partner, is not being nice to me and truly in reaction, if I choose then to react as well and not stay in my loveliness and connection with myself, it is showing that I am not loving enough in the relationship with myself. This is truly empowering and inspiring to realise as it shows I can choose to come back and claim what I feel I deserve from myself.
Wow Samantha, you have described my past experiences with men perfectly! It is very refreshing to read of your transformation and inspiring to witness your present relationship that is built on true love and truth.
Absolutely gold relationship truth I say. I can feel how powerful this turnaround has been for you Samantha and really appreciate all you have shared. What a great reminder to work on my relationship with me.
Indeed – absolutely gold relationship truth
“The deep pain I experienced in all my relationships was undoubtedly caused by my lack of self love I had for myself” that one line sums up how we sabotage our relationships, without that foundation we are lost before we’ve even started.
Whoa but thats takes honesty and responsibility!
Yes Alison I completely agree. Without self love there is no foundation for any relationships to endure. That is huge .
Yes Alison, I agree and also, ‘ I simply realized that without self-worth and self-love I will always be looking for others to fill my need, which ultimately never truly works.’ This is a no win situation that feels horrible. How can we ask someone to do something for our selves that we have not been prepared to do? We have to deeply love, honour, cherish, connect and understand our selves first.
That is indeed the only way. All the other ways are outside of ourselves trying to ‘get’ something we don’t allow to give to ourselves.
What a beautiful article Samantha, I realized as I was reading that this can apply to any relationship, whether it be one with our children or work colleagues and even friends. Such a great realization that nothing will change without us taking responsibility, looking at the patterns and identifying why. As you say, a lack of self worth and self love will naturally set us up to fail. The relationship you have with yourself now and with your partner feels very warm and loving. Congratulations on such great work.
Jeanette, I agree, it doesn’t have to an intimate relationship between 2 people, it can be this way with all of our relationships. I have my own scientific experience of how since developing my own self love, and self worth, how this has effected and changed the many relationships that I have with friends and family. Real life proof… what is there to argue with?
This is very true Jeanette everything shared is applicable to all relationships, what I have realised lately is that I am not equal with all the different relationships I have, I compartmentalise myself and expression to suit the situation, massive control. Rather than feel I am enough as I am and to share that openly and equally with all, what I love about the esoteric work is that the medicine is more love, more care of myself and more appreciation of who I am. A living son of god. There is no need to work hard at this, rather it is getting out of the way and letting it run through.
I have been caught out lately by ‘outside’ influences, and allowed it to take me away from myself, so thank-you vanessamchardy for reminding me that the only medicine we need is more love and appreciation for ourselves, that way we can build a strong foundation and not impose on others, or let ourselves be imposed upon, because in truth it is not until we start to honour ourselves that this will be reflected back to us in all our relationships.
It’s true Jeanette. If we were to apply the same to all relationships not just intimate ones imagine the change in the world.
Spot on Jeanette, definitely true by my accounts. I found this out after I separated from my partner of 35 years and moved into a shared house with a friend and found the very same problems coming up for me. Only this time I realised that I was the common denominator. This has allowed me to know myself and my husband in a whole new light.
Very true Jeanette. The quality of how we are with ourselves is the quality we take to each and every one of our interactions in the day even if on the surface it may not always appear that way.
Yes very true Joshua, I especially like the last part of your comment: “even if on the surface it may not always appear that way.” I notice that I am not always aware of the fact that how I treat myself comes out when I am relating with someone else. I actually noticed this recently, that I was a bit hard on myself in the day, stressed, tensed and not holding myself lovingly, then I wanted to be loving with someone but the only thing that came out of my mouth was hardness too! Like I couldn’t be loving. Very interesting to feel.
I love your honest appraisal of your past relationships Samantha,all of mine were very similar and like you what has changed these destructive relationships is developing and forever deepening self-nurturing and self love. My relationship with my self is now one based on love therefore my relationships with others is also based on this same loving foundation. Thank God for Serge Benhayon and Universal medicine.
Here here Mary-Louise; ‘Thank God for Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine’… and everyone else making the changes to self-love and care so others may do the same, we are paving the way for more Love on earth with each tender touch.
Yes it is beautiful to inspire and to be inspired and to have such amazing role models around us. Thank you Serge Benhayon!
I look back at my relationships and see a repeating pattern…different men, but always the same outcome of excitement, obsessive wanting to be around them, then starting to find faults, losing interest, then ending it after a few weeks of sulking.
I remember going to relationship counselling with one partner, sitting in the room thinking to myself “I have already left this relationship emotionally, I just haven’t physically moved out”.
I was always the one to end my relationship, bar one. At the time I believed each one was completely different, a whole new set of problems. All along it was the same pattern with subtly different flavours.
What I see now is that my pattern with men was an exact replica of the way I was with myself – periodically interested when I was going well, but an expert fault finder and relentlessly self critical, and very good at giving up myself when times were tough. There was no way I was going to be loving with those men when I was not loving with me.
The relationship I am developing now is one with me. It is actually tremendously good fun, challenging, and I can see that it is the key that has been missing from every other relationship.
This is such a great example Rachel, whenever I went out with guys on dates (in the past), I always had the feeling that the depth/their depth was missing, and that this depth of connection was the one thing I wanted, even craved. When I didn’t get it, all guys/dates were ‘never right’, until such a time where I ended up compromising and just accepting (but not really wanting to accept!) that ‘this was how it was’. Back then, I had not made the connection that: what we look for or want in a partnership must be lived by ourselves first: tenderness, cherishing, honouring, depth, warmth, understanding, LOVE, true union and deep connection. And so began my relationship where I’ve fallen in love with a gorgeous woman – myself.
Greatly put. I have found out as well that whatever I want to find in a relationship I need to live first myself. It’s almost like an open door (Dutch expression) when I write it down, but hardly ever lived in relationships. We always seek in others, what we don’t live ourselves. So yes, me too have fallen in love with me and I get that reflected by….my boyfriend.
Yes Zofia, The lack of depth in “them” is something I relate to. I was ignoring the fact that there was no depth in the way I related to myself. In a way it was laziness! I wanted them to connect to the parts of me I was not willing to.
Well said Rachel. It is a laziness and so very demanding. What a strain that puts on any relationship.
Great point Rachel and Zofia. It is awesome when we have the realisation that if we are nit picking something about another, that we really should turn the tables back at ourselves and see the reflection that they may be offering us.
Beautiful Zofia, I had the same experience, where nothing felt right or true in any relationship I’ve had, but now I realise that was never going to be possible because my own relationship was self-criticism and damning – turning that around is turning my life around.
I love the way you say you had to “rehabilitate destructive patterns within yourself” Felicity, it’s a perfect description of what it’s like to liberate ourselves from ingrained non-serving patterns and behaviours. To me it’s been like a big ‘detox’ as well. I’ve needed to cleanse myself from self-doubt, disregard and self-loathing which Esoteric counselling, healings and chair-puncture have greatly assisted me with, whilst ‘rehabilitating’ new self-loving and self-honouring patterns as my new norm.
Like you Zofia I always felt there was something missing in the man I was dating. He was never good enough to start or continue a relationship with. And when I did like a man I would totally loose myself. Very confronting to realize that to be able to find what I am looking for in a man I have to find it in myself first.
Wow thank you Samantha and Rachel. Rachel this is gold, I completely understand and relate, “my pattern with men was an exact replica of the way I was with myself – periodically interested when I was going well, but an expert fault finder and relentlessly self critical, and very good at giving up myself when times were tough. There was no way I was going to be loving with those men when I was not loving with me.”
Love what you have expressed above Rachel, it is amazing all the many different types of behavior patterns we can fall into. What you share here is priceless “The relationship I am developing now is one with me. It is actually tremendously good fun, challenging, and can see that it is the key that has been missing from every other relationship”
I have been single now for 4 years, after 36 (ahem!) years of serial monogamy. Every relationship I entered expecting it to fail!!! Oh my! I had not really contemplated that until I read your blog…but that is how I have been with myself too. Always anticipating failure, always ready for the rejection of me, the blame and the scathing critique.
Being single, by choice, has allowed me to gain this momentous insight, right now, sitting in my PJ’s no less, completely undistracted by laying the blame on any other person.
So true Rachel and others that have responded to Samantha’s blog. We put out what is inside; how simple is that? How complicated and emotional do we make it? We have been set up to believe that our truth and fulfilment is beyond us and that someone or something else (intimate partners, work, religion, sport, politics, etc.) holds the key. When we are taught in our homes, schools and workplaces that WE ARE IT and that all we need, is inside us and is already complete, then what a beautiful journey to understand that our relationship with ourselves comes first, is treasured and is reflected in our relationship with others. This is the future.
I am contemplating just how wide spread is the message that the answer lies outside of us, and that we will be fulfilled by our relationships. It is in EVERYTHING. For a girl, this is overlaid by such a strong romantic notion. Every generation of of girls grows up believing that having a boyfriend and then a partner will be the icing on the cake of happiness. How is it , when this is so clearly untrue, that we have seemingly not moved on?
Rachel this is such a deep resonating truth about the reality of how I’ve waxed and waned in relationship: “periodically interested when I was going well, but an expert fault finder and relentlessly self critical, and very good at giving up myself when times were tough. There was no way I was going to be loving with those men when I was not loving with me.” Thank you for brining this in to the light. Time for deepening my self-loving connection with me, there is no space for any self doubt or criticism as it not only hurts me but as you say – shows up in relationships – all of them. The truth of energy can’t not be hidden it can be smothered, denied, rejected and projected but it doesn’t go away.
Beautiful comment Rachel and one I can completely relate to. It took me a long time to realise that I was simply repeating patterns in my relationships and usually blaming others when they failed. Great to see that and begin to take responsibility for my part in relationships by taking responsibility to deepen my relationship with myself. How much lovelier it is to be loving myself and living my relationships from there.
This is so simple, ‘My relationship with my self is now one based on love therefore my relationships with others is also based on this same loving foundation’, if we love and care for ourselves we are naturally more loving and caring for others, this simple truth is not taught or talked about, apart from by a very few and yet if lived this would change everything.
My feelings exactly Mary-Louise; thank God for Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine – me too, I am deepening my love for myself, instead of needing others to provide the love we all want to live in. It all starts with our relationship with ourselves.
Marie-Louise that is they key, to really work on our relationship with self love and with this foundation of love we can then build relationships with others.
Yes Amita, and we can know the details of what to work on by the flavour of the reflections we receive from others. One thing for sure everything that we experience with another, every relationship, is a direct reflection of how we are with ourselves and where we are at in life. It’s so amazing, a total blessing to have every single other person on the planet as a mirror. I am very grateful to have learned about the ‘Science of Reflection’ from Serge Benhayon through Universal Medicine, for until I knew this I was caught in the same cycle of expectations, blame and defensiveness that seemingly plagues us all.
Samantha, that is very much to the point and honest. I recognize many things you describe, such as the game of attracting and pushing away. It was a very emotional game that I played with myself. I am so glad I don’t have to do that anymore!
It is wonderful to have the choice not to play that game, with its exhausting cycles. Your point about the fact that we do this with ourselves is well noted. And of course if we are oscillating between loving and hating ourselves how on earth can we be consistent with anyone else?
So so true Rachel
Yes Rachel. How can we bring consistency to another if we are not building a foundation for ourselves first.
Wise words Ariana, and it’s crazy when you stop and ponder this; we push away what we truly want most.
Great words Michelle, we push away what we truly want most. I am becoming more aware of this every day. I keep people at arms length to avoid getting hurt but I’m hurting me by having no close relationships and having to feel this in my body.
This is so crazy, the fact that love is what we all truly want, and yet at the same time we spend all our time pushing it away! Yes Lindell, I can relate with what you share, ‘we push away what we truly want most. I am becoming more aware of this every day. I keep people at arms length to avoid getting hurt but I’m hurting me by having no close relationships and having to feel this in my body.’
This game of attracting and pushing away, is most certainly done with ourselves and others. It is something we don’t do consciously, but up to us to bring awareness to our patterns or behaviour, so to change and bring choices to how we live.
Well said Raegan, I so agree the power to change this lies within each and everyone of us. All it takes is making a choice for truly living lovingly.
So true Ariana. How crazy is it that we push away love?
Yes, great comment Jane and Ariana, I wonder if it is actually a reflection of our own love that we push away, or disregard our own love, and this is mirrored by pushing away the same love that is expressed from another. So in deepening our own self care and self love, we open ourselves to receive it from ourselves – first, which then opens us to be able to receive it (love) from others. This perhaps demonstrates that a loving relationship really does start with loving ourselves first and not looking for love in another.
Yes Ariana that’s true we all do want love and either push it away or create barriers around ourselves to stop its gorgeous light permeating through.
Thanks Simone and Samatha, I loved this piece – “I didn’t need good relationship advice – I simply realized that without self-worth and self-love I will always be looking for others to fill my need” –
Crazy isn’t it; but why do we push love away?
Oh my goodness, thank you Ariana. I had not seen how I play the same game of saying yes, and then no to my own love. As you say, we push away our own love. How completely crazy, when love is what we all crave.
So true Ariana, its not just with our partners we can play the attracting and pushing away game it is also with ourselves! A steady commitment and consistency is needed for loving oneself, this for me is forever developing and a constant work in progress, it is so worth the effort as self love is the foundation upon which we look out at the world with.
True Ariana – as I am more honest with how attached I was to playing the game, I can see how it came into every relationship in some way.
Understanding how people tick and adjusting our game to get what we want out of it. That isn’t love or humanity, that is total manipulation. It’s great to see this for the rawness of what it is and let go of it.
The roller coaster ride of highs and lows in so many relationships comes from an unsettling feeling of who we are and so the seed of doubt is shown. As you shared Samantha the greatest relationship of all is to start with oneself and only then are we ready to share this with another.
Without a doubt, the kind of love we need to foster a loving relationship is love of ourselves first and foremost. Thank you for your blog Samantha, an absolute pleasure to read.
Hear hear Matthew!
I second that Johanna08.smith! True relationships can only come from self-love first and before we can truly love another.
Wow such a game changer for Samantha and so many others around her- she is blessed by the fact she chose to look at her contribution to the mess she found herself in time and time again. I too have had to rehabilitate destructive patterns within myself, and found a new simple way forward stemming from the fact I was already enough just as I am, and didn’t need anything from anyoneelse. My relationships have improved out of sight with this approach.
So true Angela
You are so right Matthew. That love we hold for ourselves then permeates to all around and that’s pretty magical.
I agree Kelly it is pretty magical.
Yes Kelly, magical and truly inspiring for all.
I agree Jane. It’s really bizarre that we’re brought up to believe someone outside of ourselves will deliver us all the love we’re not discovering within ourselves. I’ve been so needy in past relationships I’ve completely missed appreciating what was there to be appreciated. But I couldn’t appreciate a thing because I didn’t even know how to appreciate myself. It’s no wonder I always felt disappointed. It’s a cycle set up to fail.
So true Karin. Trying to get someone else to fill in the gaps inside ourselves is a recipe for disaster. As I am learning to be more appreciative of myself, so I have noticed my friendships are reflecting that aspect back to me. Its a win-win situation. Great blog Samantha.
Yes Samantha I feel the same. There is no room for a true relationship with another unless we appreciate who we are and what we bring to ourselves first.
That’s great Lorraine that you noticed that the more you appreciate yourself you find your friendships reflect this back. I do not feel there is a relationship in this world (whether it is a fleeting meeting with a stranger at a shop or an age old friendship) that does not truly benefit from us bringing more self love and appreciation into our lives. If we want to change the world it really does start with true self love first.
I agree Karin and Jane and it is ridiculous nearly everybody is seeking outside of them. It is like a disease most people get effected by. Jane you mentioned it very clear: “It is bizarre that in our upbringing we are not raised, or educated at school to understand that the most beneficial and foundational relationship we have is first and foremost with ourselves.” So lets love ourselves first and stop this disease.
This explains why when we starve or give up on the forever deepening relationship with ourselves, our focus can become more about what we are getting from relationships opposed to what we bring to them.
This is how it had been for me Karin, I couldn’t appreciate any relationship before as I was always measuring it and expecting it to fill a space where I should have been loving and appreciating myself. Doing so means all relationships become more open and have much much more potential to flourish.
Yes and this is a point too, that partnerships can flourish. We should have a solid foundation with ourselves before engaging with a partner. But that does not mean that we have to wait till we think we are perfect. We have to be aware of certain behaviours we have as Samantha did. As a relationship is there to grow and evolve together. It will bring things to the surface which we wouldn’t have seen on our own.
Great point shared Stephen. Measuring and expecting in a relationship, does little to foster the potential to love more and grow in partnership with another.
I love the tenderness in your sharing Willem, and also how you have raised the question of what happens when the ‘gap filling’ or attraction wears out. For me I used to to turn to drama at that point. Drama is certainly no substitute for the love that I was seeking, but not building.
Quicksand !
When truth is expressed it is felt in the body and reading your words here Jane was one of those moments. My relationship with myself is my relationship with others as it reflects me – my self awareness, my self expression, my connection to my own love. So powerful and beholding when this is truly felt.
Yes Jane, it is bizarre that we are not raised to build a foundation of love within ourselves. But this can’t be taught by a society that does not have this understanding in the first place. But now we know the truth we can change societies way of thinking by reflecting to them our own foundation of love and then take it to the next generation and the next, that way ALL of our foundations will then be strong enough to withstand anything because we will be well on our way back to who we truly are.
It is bizarre but all change starts with ourselves first. We can change the future by choosing to live the true love that we are now.
Absolutely Donna, can only start with ourselves choosing moment to moment to live from the love that we are.
Where not only raised not to build self love we are actually discouraged from it! This has happened generation after generation – time to change the mould I feel!
Yes Samantha, generation after generation we have imposed a false ideal on each other and forced ourselves into a mould that we do not fit. When we try to fit in it is so un-natural and restrictive it makes us sick.
Yep I agree this needs to be changed .. lets do it
Absolutely Mathew
What a great concept Jane. What would the world look like if the foundation with ourselves was taught as being just as important as reading writing and arithmetic. Now that is an impressive solid foundation of 4.
Let’s make that the international and compulsory curriculum – Love 10101: Learning to Love One Self then One Other and One Another!
I will back that Victoria, bringing a compulsory component of ‘love’ into our education curriculum worldwide, ‘Love 10101: Learning to Love One Self then One Other and One Another!’ Essential teaching, so it becomes everyone’s normality.
Yes please Victoria! Love 10101 needs to be compulsory teaching for everyone in every part of the world.
Let’s bring it on!
So true Matthew – it is the bestest foundation we can ever stand upon as Samantha’s blog so clearly shows.
Yes I agree Matthew, also from being a student of Universal Medicine I have been able to see my part in relationships with partners and why they didn’t work instead of always blaming the other person; but yes we definitely need to honour, love and cherish ourselves first.
I totally agree Jane, the relationship we have with ourselves, becomes the foundation of all others we have with family, friends, colleques or with our partner. Investing in a deep loving and caring relationship with self is a healing for everyone we are surrounded by.
So true Jane, if we had some education on self love and self care then so much heartache could have been avoided. The constant merry go round of one relationship and then the next and the hurts we bring from one to the next could well be avoided with a little education on how to self love who we are.
How can we be in aloving relationship when we don’t love ourselves? Thank you for sharing Samantha.