The One Key to Attracting Your Ideal Partner

After being married 25 years, I’m suffering a bit from PTSD. Not necessarily from the divorce but rather from being thrown back into the dating pool! Maybe you are like me too, where finding that ideal partner has seemed like a bad joke on most days. For many, dating is a game. A competitive activity involving skill, chance, or endurance on the part of two or more persons who play according to a set of rules, usually for their own amusement or for that of spectators. No wonder I felt like a loser in the game of dating… competitive games were never my forte.   

However, while playing the dating or “match” game, as I’ve heard it called, along the way I’ve learned more about myself than I ever dreamed possible as well as ONE important key to attracting the ideal partner. 

Love yourself first.

Attracting the ideal partner begins with being the ideal partner. Be what you seek. In the famous scene from the 1996 movie, Jerry Maguire, when Tom Cruise tells Renée Zellweger, “You complete me.” Although a beautiful moment in the movie, it can’t be true in the real world IF what we want out of a relationship is true partnership. If we desire a fulfilling relationship with a partner of our equal, we must already be full of love for ourselves and give from the overflow, not expecting someone else to complete us.

What happens when we seek love out of that desire for validation and worthiness? It’s a messed up affair that usually doesn’t last long. One of the partners is most likely the taker in the relationship while the other one is the giver. Giving until they are absolutely exhausted.

The relationship with yourself is the most important relationship you will ever have. No one else can love you more than you love yourself. If you are expecting someone else to make you happy do not anticipate that relationship to be healthy or lasting. 

No one can love you fully (even if they tell you they can) until they love themselves FIRST. Each must focus on being our highest and best on our own, without the need or attachment for another person to complete us. Only we can do that for ourselves.

 Loving yourself is a gentle acceptance, an unconditional sense of support, caring, and compassion for yourself. It is a steadfast willingness to meet your own needs, allow yourself to feel and think whatever you choose, and to see yourself as essentially worthy, good, valuable, belonging in the world, and deserving of happiness.

That old homage will always be true that if we can’t love ourselves, we cannot love someone else authentically or accept love from someone else. We are naturally inclined to find problems and focus on the negative of situations. It will take extra effort to make a decision to love yourself no matter. Here are a few ideas:

• Journal each day about something you did well, or a great quality in yourself that you observed.
• Take a few moments in front of the mirror to focus not on your imperfections but on everything you like about yourself.
• You know those things you keep complaining others don’t do for you? Stop waiting… Do them for yourself! Take yourself out to a movie. Buy yourself those nice earrings or shoes. Take yourself to your favorite romantic spot.

I believe many of us are living the single life right now in order to learn to love ourselves fully and freely FIRST. It doesn’t mean we will never have a partner to share life with. It just means we needed to learn this step first before we take the next step of divine love. This new partnership will honor each other and challenge each to be their best. It will allow for a deep and satisfying relationship on all levels — physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. In the meantime, do the inner work, release the attachment of having to have a partner, and hold the vision for love that you already are.

Love yourself first fully and you will already be complete when you meet that special someone in the overflow. For more information on Lara Jaye and her work, visit www.larajaye.com