It Begins with You: The 9 Hard Truths About Love That Will Change Your Life

by Jillian Turecki

The Difficult Child. It

everyone is afraid that they are not good enough in some way:

“When you realize that you don’t have to heal, fix, or rescue someone in order to feel significant and worthy, you will start choosing partners who do not need to be saved.”

The mere acknowledgment that we might be stuck in our heads and lost in a story that is fueled by fear is by itself a huge step in the right direction.

Inside our minds lives an untamed, restless monkey that swings from one fearful, critical thought to the next.

but I believe the most underrated relationship skill is the ability to question our thoughts so that our monkey minds don’t take over our relationships.

“Change your thoughts, change your life.”

The truth is, you ultimately decide who your “one” will be. And when you do decide, you’ll have to make that choice many, many times throughout your relationship. My hope is that you choose the one who gives you

To love someone is to make a conscious choice to accept someone we often will not understand.

To love someone is to love them in the ways that they need us to, not just in the ways that are comfortable for us.

A relationship filled with true love and understanding requires commitment, accountability, intention, patience, communication, creativity, self-awareness, gratitude, and grit.

Truly loving someone means that meeting the other’s needs is as important as meeting our own.

Every single one of us is flawed, and we do the best that we can with the level of maturity and awareness that we have at any given stage of our lives.

going. Of course, you want things to progress between you and

someone you like, but that is not the same thing as already planning your future with someone you don’t know that well who is on their best behavior.

How do I feel when I’m with them and when I’m not with them? Do I like myself when I’m with them? Do I feel comfortable being myself with them? Can I safely express an opinion with them? Do I actually like this person, or am I mostly preoccupied with getting them to like me? Do we share the same core values in life? Do we have the same goals in life in regard to family, children, money, and lifestyle? Have I seen them yet when they were stressed-out? What was that like? When they’re stressed, are we still able to remain connected emotionally?

Are we compatible? Do we agree on what a great Saturday looks like? Do we like to do a lot of the same

How are we different? Do these differences add to our relations...

Typically, in very unhealthy relationships, there’s an addictive cycle of fighting, followed by making up and regaining closeness, followed by more fighting.

the truth was that I didn’t love myself enough to believe I was worth being treated with basic respect.

I eventually had to come to terms with the fact that I allowed such ugly behavior and that, frankly, I still was in many ways a little girl afraid of her own shadow.

I allowed behavior that violated every fabric of my being and intuition. This was extremely humbling. I wasn’t the strong, self-assured, have-it-all-together woman I saw myself as, and as many others also saw me—and that was a painful reality to face.

Whenever our need for someone’s love is stronger than our self-love, we will abandon ourselves in the pursuit of their attention and validation. We’ll

Why is it hard for us to completely love ourselves? Simple. We know every mistake we have made. We know every judgmental, hateful, and spiteful thought we have ever had; every lie we have ever told; every mean or manipulative thing we have ever done.

You don’t have to love everything about yourself to have self-love.

It’s learning how to stop being so hard on ourselves while simultaneously challenging ourselves to grow and be better people and partners.

It’s wrestling with the tension that exists between full self-acceptance and the drive to grow and evolve. First

But the truth is, we don’t climb the mountain once we love ourselves—we learn to love ourselves by courageously climbing it, even when we don’t necessarily feel prepared to.

The need for safety (this includes the need to feel in control) The need for adventure (this includes the need for change) The need for validation (this includes the need to feel important) The need for love (this includes the need for connection)

The need to grow (this includes the need to be challenged) The need to give back (this includes the need for purpose)

Safety/control Adventure/change Validation/feeling important Love/connection Growth/challenge Giving back/purpose

The truth is, we must be willing to lose our relationship if we want to have any chance at saving it. And sometimes, telling the truth will mean that we do lose the relationship, but we might end up saving ourselves instead.

The good girl is typically sweet, agreeable, and a nurturer. She follows all the rules and is polite. Her belief system says, If I have boundaries, then I’m unkind. If I have a strong opinion, then I’m aggressive. If I have needs, then I’m selfish. As much as I think most people could learn how to be more selfless in their relationships and not always make everything about them, the good girl is selfless to a fault. Not only does she put everyone else’s needs and comfort before her own, but the good girl is also at risk of making excuses for horrible behavior.

They both unconsciously believe that if they speak up and tell the truth about how they feel, what they need, and what they want, they will be rejected and unloved.

They lie because they believe that to tell the truth means they could be seen as bitchy, whiny, needy, masculine, cold, or annoying.

James, whom you met earlier, was the typical “nice guy.” The nice guy, just like the good girl and the cool girl, lies in order to avoid rejection and gain validation and love. Healing the impulse to please varies from person to person, but as we saw with James, his healing meant unlearning the belief that a man is either aggressive and unhinged

or nice and basically without opinions. He needed to learn that he could be kind and loving while still having his own needs and feelings. He needed to learn that he could be accommodating without compromising his values, needs, or dreams. Healing meant learning how to lean into his discomfort, pursue his dreams, and communicate.

themselves. Constantly comparing one’s own life, body, and relationship to another’s has made people become totally consumed with themselves and how they look instead of focusing on becoming better people and helping others.

Our relationships determine our happiness in life. Even if we have our physical health, our work

is going well, and we have money in the bank, if our most important relationships are struggling, we will suffer.

The paradox, though, is that the very thing we do to self-protect in a relationship is usually what sabotages our connection with our partner.

As you read earlier, romantic relationships are a mirror; whether a relationship is the right one or the wrong one, it will show us where our work is.

Then you can be in a relationship in which you need someone because you love them (in the words of Erich Fromm), instead of loving them because you need them. Learning how to need someone because you love them, rather than the other way around, is learning the language of love.

Whether we call it anxious attachment, jealousy, feeling overly dependent, or neediness, what we are essentially experiencing is powerlessness, and we don’t talk enough about that feeling.

But in today’s world of social media, where in theory we are more connected than ever, we are paradoxically also more starved for real connection than ever.

Relationships hold many paradoxes, and one of them is that our strengths as a person can also be our fatal flaws if we choose the wrong person to love.

Amanda’s patience and empathy led her down the road to relationship hell because she lacked the boundaries necessary for a relationship to be a two-way street of love and commitment.

This is how most people in situationships ruin their lives. Because these “relationships” are so uncertain, we have to work extra hard to feel safe in them; therefore, we tend to ignore the other parts of our lives in the pursuit of love that isn’t fully available to us. Trying to convince someone to choose us becomes our full-time job, and we end up abandoning our personal goals and deepest longings. This is how we self-abandon.

The tragedy is that relationships rarely end because of a lack of love. They more commonly end because of a lack of connection that comes from feeling chronically unseen and misunderstood.

People struggle to stay connected to each other because they don’t know how to overcome their fears, tell the truth, love selflessly, and love themselves more fully.