Latest / Dits & Dahs / good morning, love
Transcript
- Sue: I'm thinking about the first thoughts that I have each morning when I awake. That moment when you open your eyes and you haven't even gotten out of bed. Maybe you look to either side of you and see your life partner next to you. That initial moment of does it come off as joyous, happy, stressful, fearful? I've experienced all of those emotions upon waking at various points in my life. These days though, I wake up with a peace, calm, relaxed. At the time in my life when I was married, I look back on it now and realize that I awoke happy and looked at him as the reason why I was happy. And unlike being single, the lesson that I've had to learn as a widow, waking up solo, no different than waking up single, but having the perspective of having been married, I recognized that I was codependent on him for my happiness, seeing that a few years into my widowhood as a unhealthy sign of a relationship. other than I wouldn't have known it at the time. Unhealthy for myself for not making myself aware of just how much I do love myself and that no one can make me happy except me. Life partners enhance it and amplify what you feel. But you're in charge of your own happiness and self love. Putting somebody else in the position of being responsible for your happiness is acknowledging that you are giving up your own control. allowing somebody else to remote control you, even though you're happily thinking that, ⁓ no, I'm being autonomous in my relationship and making the best decisions for myself and in the relationship and and then finding out when a life event such as a death happens to a spouse, how apparently wrong that view was to hold on to. And I think it's a common thing. You get together with somebody initially, you start a relationship with them perhaps, and your friends and your relatives ask you, Does he make you happy? Does sh does she give you joy? Does it feel good? Now I understand that whether or not I have a life partner in my life, I'm the one responsible for being happy because here I am by myself. When I wake up in the morning, it's just me. And that it's up to me to be happy. It doesn't come from another person. I mention it because I think that had I had my own advice as I'm speaking it now when I was in the marriage with Gareth, I would have been more proactive about ensuring that my needs were met by myself first. I would not have yielded territory to allow myself to f put my music down, to not engage with my music for the sake of the marriage. Yeah, that's exactly what I did. I think there was a time in my life when I was married when I would wake up and look over to him and think, okay, I'm covered because he's there. And then shortly after he died and I woke up with him not there, realizing he can't cover me anymore. He can't be there for my happiness. Now, on a spiritual side, you can make the argument that his energy is around me when I'm ever whenever I've got him in my thoughts and that he is there for me and my happiness. But at the time it was much more about I would say maybe a whiff of codependency on my part, even though it wasn't financially or you know, in a material view of life. It was all about the energetic spiritual view of life, that I relied on him for my happiness. I think there's this mindset when you're single, and this is where I'm talking about waking up single compared to being solo as a widow, that I was also thinking that while I was happy, I would be happier once I had my husband next to me. I think it's a mindset that's very pervasive in our culture. I speak to America and our society locally. But how we view others as being in a couple is being complete and those that aren't is not. And therefore if they're not with somebody, they can't possibly be as happy as somebody who is. And of course the reality of that is complete contrary to that, you've probably deal with people all the time in your life that are not making a good go of it as a married couple or sharing a life with somebody. And it's just both parties are taking the same view, expecting the other to make the other happy. Somehow that's supposed to be some magical panacea in my life when I was single. I was looking as though I was ⁓ just waiting for the next part of my life to begin, a marriage. So if you're listening to this and thinking about what you're feeling every morning when you wake up. You're looking to your side to recognize that that partner that's laying beside you is the one holding your happiness, it might be an opportunity internally to look within and see what you can do to make yourself happy. It's the opportunity to recognize that when you work on yourself and take care of all of those opportunities to do the things that make you happy and give you joy, you're feeding yourself love and that in turn opens you up to give and receive more unconditional love on the Right parameters. You're no longer needing it or thinking you need it because you're doing it for yourself. The fact that you have a life partner next to you hopefully means that they're doing it for themselves as well. That's the perspective here. Because once you realize that you're creating happiness and joy for yourself, and see that what your life partner isn't doing it for themselves, that may be the opportunity to view that with a different perspective. It's not about whether that relationship should continue or end. 'Cause I can't ever make that statement. But it is about lifting the burden and taking accountability for yourself and your feelings. And I think oftentimes when I was in my marriage, I was mostly concerned about ensuring my husband was happy, rather than seeing it from my perspective of taking care of myself first. Again, it goes back to the oxygen mask in an airplane scenario. You have to take care of your needs first before helping somebody else. Reminds me of that old Tom Jones song Help Yourself. Context is different. But it does serve a purpose in that in the song it's all about wanting the person that they are in love with to notice them as a love and to come on in and make the most of it. Having realized this for myself, I see my life as a very happy, joyous one as a result. Is it to the exclusion of having another life partner? No. It's gonna be better with the next life partner, that's for sure. Because I don't need to have them in my life. That's a much stronger emotional place than where I was before I got married. So maybe this is just a little bit of sharing of what my single life was and the emotional state that I allowed myself to get in as a guide for those of you who are listening that may feel that you're single but unfulfilled confirmation to just work on yourself within a bit more. I recommend spending time doing the things that give you joy, your hobbies, your activities, the things that are your happy places. Fill your brain with the fun stuff. And in the meantime, thanks for listening.