If you find yourself chasing after someone who isn’t making time for you, isn’t treating you well, or seems to be on the fence about diving in or taking off, listen up. When we aren’t loving ourselves, it’s hard to imagine why anyone else would love us, either. If, at your very core, you doubt whether you are truly lovable, you’re going to be susceptible to people who don’t seem overly interested in being your friend or your lover because that tiny part of you that worries you may not be enough will want to conquer the people who are reflecting that doubt back to you. If you can convince them, maybe you can convince yourself. Except it doesn’t work that way. We all want to heal, and we all want to feel worthy of love, but you can’t chase that down. You’ll never find the satisfaction you’re looking for in another person, because that need is too big, that hole is too deep. You’ll drive people away if you look to them to solve that for you. It’s like getting to know someone and asking them right away to please carry a huge elephant around for you. The weight is crushing, and the burden is too much to bear.

It’s easy to see when a person is coming from that fearful, longing place because there’s a desperation and a neediness that’s palpable. It’s a very different energy than a person who’s in love. That requires vulnerability, bravery, and a willingness to be soft, to open and to trust. There’s an excitement to that because you can’t feel it by yourself when it’s real, both people are going to feel it. When there’s something else at play, there’s a sick feeling to it. The need for a fix. The hope that you’ll get that call instead of the confidence to pick up the phone and make it yourself because you know the person you’re calling will love and want to hear from you.

I have two children, a son and a daughter. I look at them with such total love. When they speak, I want to listen. I don’t take a smile or a laugh or a scrape that needs a band-aid for granted, because I treasure them. I cherish them. Everyone deserves that kind of love, but maybe you didn’t get that growing up. Maybe your parents weren’t loving themselves well, and didn’t understand how to love you well, either. Or maybe nine hundred other things happened. If you somehow got the message that you weren’t enough (and if you’ve ever watched television or picked up a “beauty” or “health” magazine, you certainly haven’t been helped with your doubts and fears), then you really have to unlearn that. Because if you don’t, you’ll keep trying to chase down love, and let me just let you know, in case you don’t, love is not something you can own. It’s something you give and you receive, but you don’t get to own it. Even if you heal yourself and make the world within you a loving and beautiful place, that’s not a possession. It’s a gift, and your job and your joy will be to give it away freely. So you can run as fast as you like, but all you’ll get for that is your exhaustion, and a broken and battered heart.

If you need unconditional love twenty-four hours a day, go rescue a puppy, and after you do that, get yourself a great therapist. There’s my Rx for you. Don’t date for awhile, don’t chase after friends who are “crazybusy”, just work on your relationship with yourself. I did that for a year and a half many years ago, after another relationship crashed and burned in the aisle of Whole Foods. I did my practice in the morning, taught all day, took my dog hiking in between classes, and came home to my dog and a good book at night. I wrote in my journal and I meditated and I got my sh&t together so that I truly enjoyed being on my own. It wasn’t comfortable, and I’m not going to tell you I didn’t spend the first few months of that time weeping a lot. But after that, it was actually quite nice, and then it became awesome, and then it became so awesome, I thought, only someone amazing could make me want to change this up. That’s how you enter a relationship coming from a place of curiosity, and not need, so it’s a choice you make and not a problem you’re trying to solve. If someone is running from you, by all means, let them go. You have you. You get to have you. Make that a great thing. Realize what a gift that is so that you value yourself, your time and energy, and would never dream of giving any of that to anyone who wasn’t running in your direction.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here, and my yoga classes and courses here.