Wait For The One Who Deserves You

I used to think of myself as a serial dater. I didn’t like being alone. The greater portion of advice I had received as a young adult revolved around being happy with myself in order to be happy with another person. I ignored it, thinking I knew better. I thought I had learned so much about myself through my trials and errors of dating all the wrong people; like somehow all that pain was worth the peace of mind in knowing I had tried.

I’m learning now just how wrong I was in this line of thinking.

I had learned about other people through the process of experiencing so many misfires in dating. It took me nearly two years to figure out that even though I thought I was finding myself, I was actually only losing myself and losing time with each atrocity of a relationship. Myself, and everyone else, absolutely, one-hundred percent need to be happy with themselves before ever pursuing another human.

Think about it: you’re unhappy, so you’re filling that void with what I like to call a Warm Body. Warm Body will make you feel less alone when they’re snuggled up next to you on a couch watching movies any given Friday night. Warm Body will have breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner and 3:00 a.m. Jimmy John’s with you so you don’t have to eat by your lonesome. Warm Body will appear in your Snapchat from time to time so everyone knows you have a significant other, or something along those lines. And Warm Body will certainly share your bed with you a few nights a week to break up the silence between your sheets.

One thing Warm Body won’t do? They won’t make you feel any less shitty about yourself. I learned this the hard way.

I quite literally worked my way through an entire roster of men after breaking up with my most recent ex because I felt so hopelessly broken. I was struggling to find someone that would make me feel the way that he did. I was grappling at any glimmer of romance I could find, and I wasn’t finding it with any of the men I was wasting my time on. I spent months wondering why my Warm Body count was going up, but my self-esteem and happiness were going down. One day, as if by an act of God, it hit me. I could finally admit that I was not happy where I was, and I couldn’t be happy with anyone else until I made it to that point.

Don’t change yourself for anyone but you.

Alter your lifestyle because you know that you’re not happy with the status of your life, and you know you won’t be happy with it until you make the appropriate changes. Once you’re happy with the skin you’re in, you’ll finally be able to be happy with another person. Make that your end goal. Make that who you’re fighting for. Fight for yourself.

Be thrilled to be alone. Take a hiatus from Warm Bodies everywhere and work on finding your happy before you ever try to offer yourself to another person again. Know what you’re willing to give to someone else, and make sure you take inventory of all of your bits and pieces before you go offering them to anyone else.

I promise you that this will be a refreshing, welcome and long-overdue alteration to your crazy, beautiful life.