What happens if you try to put a puzzle together and find that you are missing a couple of important pieces? It's frustrating right? Some of the surrounding pieces are loose and you can't see the entire picture. You probably even check the box or floor to look for the pieces you are missing.
What if the puzzle described above were a person? Just like a puzzle with missing pieces, no one wants to be incomplete or to lose a part of themselves. So how do we ensure that doesn't happen to us, especially when it comes to romantic relationships?
Don't be too quick to give pieces of yourself to someone who hasn't earned that privilege.
- Make sure they are worthy of your trust and what you have to offer. It should be a privilege for someone to be an intimate part of your life.
- Take your time to get to know a person before you share too much or give them your heart.
- Read their cues, observe how much effort they make to develop or maintain a relationship. Are they as invested as you?
Don't rely on others to complete your picture.
- Don't search for someone else to make you happy, give your life meaning, or validate your worth.
- Embrace who you are. You are good enough, important enough, and a whole person all on your own.
- Don't sacrifice your life to fit into theirs. Having your own interests and maintaining other relationships are an essential part to making you a whole person.
Think about what would happen if you took 2 puzzles and mixed them up in a box together. It would be kind of a jumbled-up mess, right? In the same way, you shouldn't lose yourself in a relationship by attempting to interlock all your pieces with someone else's. After all if the relationship comes to an end someday, it will be much more difficult to separate those pieces and to make you whole again.
When you give too much of yourself away, or your life gets too tangled up with someone else's, you begin to lose your identity and diminish your own importance. Be strong, be independent, value your worth.
Life isn’t about finding pieces of a puzzle. It’s about creating and putting those exceptional pieces together.
