Stop Looking For Happiness in a relationship....!!!!

“My significant other makes me so happy!” 

“Thanks to my significant other, I finally found happiness!”

“I’m done with my significant other, they just don’t make me happy anymore.”

“Break up with your significant other, you deserve to be happy!”

When I read or hear any variation of the above quotes, I cringe and die a little inside. Why have we become people who willingly and voluntarily allow someone else to control the state of our happiness? We’ve collectively accepted that it’s totally fine to give someone else the remote control to our emotional state.

A relationship is not meant to make you happy. It is nobody’s job to make you happy (unless you’re rich and can hire someone to fulfill all your needs, then by all means!). 

YOU MAKE YOURSELF AS HAPPY OR AS UNHAPPY AS YOU WANT. 

Don’t put that kind of pressure on someone else. Don’t allow someone else to have dominion over how you feel on a day to day basis.

Yes, relationships are wonderful and they add so much to our lives, but they are not here in existence to provide a happiness we can’t find in ourselves. Relationships don’t fill a void or affix an emotional band-aid on your pain. Relationships aren’t the missing piece to your fulfillment. 

A person is not your other or better half.

YOU ARE A COMPLETE AND WHOLE PERSON WITHOUT A RELATIONSHIP.

A man or woman is not a BFF pendant, where they have the other half of your heart. Our happiness or our wholeness is not outside of ourselves. There is no finding happiness. This is not a scavenger hunt. You feel happy. You don’t find it or lose it or attain it or buy it. You feel it, just as much as you feel sadness or anger or frustration or attraction.

In a relationship, you grow. You’re attracted to someone based on how much they can allow you to grow, to understand parts of yourself you couldn’t understand without them, to experience what it’s like to be vulnerable. And through that vulnerability, you learn more about who you are; you shed layers of yourself that don’t serve you; you heal painful memories, and share and release trauma.

It’s not sunshine and rainbows and a constant euphoria. It’s not about breaking up because you’re no longer happy. A relationship ends when you’ve each served your purpose to each other, in terms of growth. You part ways when you’re meant to part ways, when there’s nothing more you can learn from each other, when you’ve, quite literally, grown out of each other.

And that’s what love is. Love is higher expressions of yourself. Love is expansion. Love is openness and vulnerability and rawness and nakedness. Love is facing your darkest parts of yourself. Love is being ashamed one day and liberated the next. Love is infrequently pure, unadulterated ecstasy and happiness.

And that’s okay. We’re here for more than just constant bliss. We’re here to, each day, shed layers of ourselves, be better versions of who we used to be, and to be strong and vulnerable, and to grow.