Tomorrow is New Year's Eve.  People in my life are talking about parties, food, football games, gatherings, resolutions, gym memberships, and going back to work next week.  As I sift through people's Facebook posts, Instagram posts, and Tweets, I am looking for inspiration for topics to cover on these last days of 2017.  Something that a few friends have mentioned is finding love in 2018.  Whether they are divorced, never married, or widowed, I know people who are hoping to find that one true, and final, love of their life next year.  Sounds great.  Truly.  It does.  As I filter through advice columns, dating app reviews, and comments made by married people who are offering their own advice on dating, I have noticed a concept that has come up a few times.  Self-partnering. 

Have you heard of self-partnering?  Until this week, I had not.  Self-partnering, in the simplest terms, is loving yourself unconditionally.  It means being "whole" without a relationship, feeling complete without external validation.  There appears to be a strong connection between recovering from emotionally abusive relationships and learning how to self-partner in order to fully recover.  Before someone can move on to a healthy relationship, they must first learn how to self-partner, self-accept, and self-love. 

When researching this topic, Melanie Tonia Evans' blog came up repeatedly.  You can read her blog here:https://blog.melanietoniaevans.com/ .  She talks about societal and systemic influences that lead to us feeling that we need "stuff" in order to be happy and successful.  She talks about materialism, narcissism, and trauma.  She talks about facing your negative emotions in order to grow.  Ms. Evans has some great information available on her blog.  I am going to borrow an excerpt she includes from Don Miguez's book The Mastery of Love.  This excerpt describes what the narcissist and co-dependent relationship looks like.  See below:

“Imagine that you have a magical kitchen in your home. In that magical kitchen, you can have any food that you want from any place in the world in any quantity. You never worry about what to eat; whatever you wish for. You are very generous with your food; you give your food unconditionally to others, not because you want something in return from them. Whoever comes to your home, you feed just for the pleasure of sharing your food, and your house is always full of people who come to eat the food from your magical kitchen.

Then one day someone knocks at your door, and it’s a person with a pizza. You open the door, and the person looks at you and says, ‘Hey, do you see this pizza? I’ll give you this pizza if you let me control your life, if you do whatever I want you to do. You are never going to starve because I can bring pizza every day. You just have to be good to me.’

Can you imagine your reaction? In your kitchen you can have the same pizza, even better. Yet this person comes to you and offers you food, if you just do whatever he wants you to. You are going to laugh and say, ‘No thank you! I don’t need your food, I have plenty of food!’

Now imagine the exact opposite. Several weeks have gone by and you haven’t eaten. You are starving and you have no money in your pocket to buy food. The person comes with the pizza and says, ‘Hey, there’s food here. You can have this food if you just do what I want you to.’ You can smell the food, and you are starving. You decide to accept the food and do whatever the person asks of you. You eat some food, and he says, ‘If you want more, you can have more, but you have to keep doing what I want you to do.’

You have food today, but tomorrow you may not have food, so you agree to do whatever you can for food. You can become a slave because of food, because you need food because you don’t have it.”

Don Miguez’s story has a profound message for all of us when we substitute the word “food” for “love”.

If you haven’t as yet self-partnered and come home to loving yourself, and you do not know how to connect with love to others and life healthily – then you are going to be a “love junkie” paying a horrible price in order to try to get some love.

That is the terrible process we played out in narcissistic abuse.

So, what can you do about it?  To start, it is helpful to recognize the signs that you are NOT self-partnering.  Melanie Tonia Evans outlines several indicators which I will call "warning signs."  These are:

• Dislike spending time alone
• Not feel joyful when alone
• Feel scared to connect to and be out in life
• Demand more of yourself
• Criticise and shame yourself
• Seek self-medication choices to avoid painful feelings
• Seek outer stimulation and people to try to feel better
• Self-abandon in times of emotional distress
• Be your own worst enemy
• Dismiss and not take care of your own wellbeing

Do any of the above indicators sound like you?  It's okay.  Acknowledge, accept, and take the next steps toward a self-accepting YOU.  It is important to recognize that this isn't a linear process with the end-goal of a "self-partnered" status.  This is a life-long process that is cyclical and will require various depths of energy at different times of your life.  The days will pass anyway, right?  So, why not use each day as an opportunity to self-reflect and make changes wherever necessary.

Here are some helpful resources.  This is not an exhaustive list.  I encourage you to search on your own and find what feels right for you and your place in life.

Melanie Tonia Evans' blog

10 Ways to Start Self-Partnering Now (audio version below)

Melanie Tonia Evans' Blog Radio- 10 Ways to Start Self-Partnering Now

Article on Being a Better Partner

Wellness 101- Self Partnering YouTube Vid