End of Heartache: How Self-Love Stole Me From Loneliness

What Disney doesn’t tell you.

Once in a while, someone will come into your life unexpectedly, light up your world, awaken your soul, steal your heart by surprise and change your life forever…

This isn’t that story.

This the self-taught, the-instructions-are-in-another-language, hoping the jigsaw piece fits, kind of story.

Love isn’t as linear as Disney makes it out to be. It’s a raw roller-coaster that pushes the human emotional bandwidth to its absolute limit…and even then it still may not even be guaranteed.

However, what we can do is learn to be acquainted with love by enacting it out on ourselves.

Here’s my Orpheus-embarking-into-the-Underworld tale of how it all fell into place once I began to love myself.

Figuring It Out

Growing up, I had done well to avoid the birds and the bees conversation with my parents, so there was no way I would ever dream of asking them to explain to me what love was (a streak that gladly continues to this day).

The closest thing I ever got to an understanding about love came from Buffy and Angel, an unsustainable ‘burn in a flash’, ‘doomed to be’ kind of love…but as it turns out, for some reasons vampires and humans just can’t seem to make it work.

I thought I had to be in a relationship to be happy, and throughout my teenage years, I silently put pressure on myself to meet this metric.

It wasn’t until I had turned sixteen that I had my first proper relationship, at a time when losing one’s virginity was a skewed form of social status.

It was a far departure from the puppy-love I had experienced at the beginning of my teenage years, but…it wasn’t love. It was obsession.

I never felt enough, nor did I ever feel comfortable enough within myself.

I had become codependent. Wishing away my entire school days until I could see her next. I was ‘fix’-driven, and I used her to try and mask the pain I was feeling. I thought that being with her would make the emptiness go away, but in reality, it excavated a deeper issue that would carry through into my adult years.

The Hamster Wheel Detour

In my early twenties, I stayed clear from dating.

I began discovering more about myself, more so than I ever could while I was in a relationship.

I began to learn how to push my own limits, hone my discipline, and commit for the first time ever, to a project that wasn’t based on academic achievements: myself.

I viewed discipline as a form of self-love, a way to give myself what I wanted by holding myself accountable. I exercised, I diligently tracked what I ate, and I started a video diary so that I could look back in glee over the progress I had made. This routine kept me anchored…for a while.

The emptiness that I had in my previous relationship had emerged again.

The discipline I had started with had soured.

I became ruthless, pushing myself each and every day, going hard and intense for a few weeks, only to then crash and binge-eat myself into oblivion for a few more weeks, and start all over again.

I’d often lie, making up bullshit reasons to my friends as to why I wasn’t available when in reality I was a prisoner of my own shame. My self-discovery and growth venture had become an all-consuming, vague pseudo-life.

I’d convince myself that what I was doing would pay-off in the long run, but this was not the case. My level of self-awareness and growth had plateaued. I had grown so much in one aspect of myself but at the expense of the whole.

On the rare occasions, I did venture out, I’d shudder at conversations of ‘dating’, slipping out silently to go to the bathroom, or minimize my level of engagements in the conversation, because, after all, what did I have to offer?

While others were regaling their tales of dates they had been on, when the focus came to me I’d say I wasn’t looking to date and that I had lost interest, but the truth was, it had been so long, that I simply became adept at not putting myself out there.

I was alien to it. It was as if I had built an anti-dating repellent within myself.

Even when dating opportunities did arise, I would sabotage myself, because it went against who I was, or the very least who I thought I was.

For years I hid behind these self-projects, convincing myself that it would help my dating effort in the long run, but that simply wasn’t the case.

I was on a hamster wheel and forgot that I had the ability to get off at any time I want.

The Shift

“When we flee our vulnerability, we lose our full capacity for feeling emotion. We may even become emotional amnesiacs, not remembering ever having felt truly elated or truly sad. A nagging void opens, and we experience it as alienation, as profound as ennui, as the sense of deficient emptiness…”

— Gabor Maté

I can’t pinpoint how it exactly happened, nor distinct memories to highlight, but I just remember feeling like I had lived enough of a life to not allow myself to be swayed by little things anymore.

From enduring ruthless bosses to sleepless nights as a teacher trainee, reading hundreds of self-help books and losing over 40lbs in weight (twice), I had reached the point where not only had I learned so many life lessons, but I could articulate myself better than ever.

“Because true belonging only happens when we present out authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance”.

— Brené Brown

This change didn’t happen overnight, but day by day, a quiet confidence, had grow within me. Years of accumulating the foundations for a more refined version of myself had finally paid off.

I knew who I was.

What I do remember…

“Despite how open, peaceful, and loving you attempt to be, people can only meet you, as deeply as they’ve met themselves.”

— Matt Kahn

A huge moment happened a few years ago when on a night out in the city, a girl I knew was trying to set me up with her sister.

Prior to this point my ‘normal’ self probably would have nervously laughed it off, quickly changing the subject, because engaging in such a subject was not ‘what I would do’.

This time I changed the script.

Before she had a chance to elaborate her intentions, I quickly halted her in her tracks and boldly told her, that I was instead interested in her.

She was taken aback, in a good way.

I had been out of the game for a while, and this was huge for me. I had swayed from my typical behavioral pattern and I backed myself…and it paid off!

I was determined to not let the opportunity of reaching out to her pass me by. I followed up with a lengthy (albeit, authentic to me) Facebook message and we soon exchanged numbers.

Looking back, there were no major openers, there was no secret sauce to it.

It wasn’t about what I said, it was about how aligned I was with my authenticity that mattered.

For a long time, I had heard about owning oneself. Theoretically, it made so much sense to me, but to actually experience and embody this concept was an entirely different matter.

I presented my most authentic version possible, unapologetically.

I’ll admit, even with this newfound, confident ‘authentic guru’ guise, I was still panicking when I arrived to meet her for our first date.

I reminded myself that all that time of not dating, spending it on growing a deeper understanding for myself, I knew what my strengths were, so I doubled down.

I knew that if I had someone who had some level of self-awareness in front of me, that I could have an in-depth conversation with them every time.

From then on, no matter who I was dating, I would always make sure that the first dates were done over coffee, in order to best demonstrate my strength. I wanted the person I’d be dating to like me for my sober authentic me rather than it being a drunken fluke.

What I later discovered was, by doing so, it initiated my date to present their authentic self in return.

The world is a mirror to your feelings.

I dated that girl for four months. It had reached the end long before that. The writing was on the wall; it was never meant to last and it had long served its purpose.

She had come out of a long term relationship looking to bounce back, whereas I had found a confidence that I can honestly say, was not there prior.

I had now reached new unseen territories within myself. I had discovered that my circumstances correlated with how I was feeling; the world was my mirror.

I became super-conscious and inversely paranoid, taking the reins of my mind when I felt it running away from me as consistent as I could. I’d catch myself when I’d begin to revert to my less-than-optimal habits and then in that moment I would plant the seed to a new behavior, one of self-confidence, self-compassion and dare I say it…self-love.

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

— Viktor Frankl

Circumstances may happen to me, but it always came down to me to choose how I respond.

It wasn’t about being perfect, it was about being consistent. All that time away working on myself and growing in self-awareness, I had established a strong foundation for a new behavior for the person I wanted to become.

Your vibe is your tribe.

I began to thrust myself into dating apps (just about all of them). From Tinder to Bumble, Hinge and the lesser well-known ones, copying + pasting the same bio and photos to each one, with each dating app attracting a certain niche of personalities.

Tinder would typically be reserved for a more casual audience, Bumble would be towards a more particular/specific audience, Hinge was more open, while other dating apps were Catfish open-season.

I began to play with openers that went beyond the cringe-worthy ‘Hey hun u k?’. I began experimenting with my openers, ones that best demonstrated my qualities as a person, ones that were congruent to me. Knowing that I hated small-talk, again, I played to my strengths.

Were my openers fool-proof? Of course not. But then my new metric was not to impress, but express who I was. When it came to dating I made a point to put more stock in my own validation (and have fun doing so!) and every once in a while I would meet with someone just so happened to correlate with my vibe or at least in the ball-park of my vibe.

Fill your cup first.

The term plenty of fish in the sea is as true now as ever. If you’ve ever been in a position of being hung up about someone, then you’ll know how easy it is to fall into the trap of believing that they’re the only ‘one’ out there.

I learned that if your qualities were not already apparent to someone, the worst thing you could do was compromise yourself by proving your qualities to someone.

Does the beauty of a diamond cease because a person does not appreciate it?

For me, I knew that I simply had nothing of value to offer a relationship, business or personal, if I was an empty vessel.

Filling my cup of self-worth first and letting it overflow to others was the way to go. Only then I had value to offer. Only then I would be in a place to love.

End of Heartache

“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are” — Carl Jung

These days self-love gets a bad rap for coming across as narcissistic and egocentric.

Trust me, I have been on the other side of self-hate and am still to an extent shaking off the desperation that came with being a chronic people-pleaser, so honing my self-love has not been a picnic…but it’s definitely one of the more rewarding things I’ve ever done.

I learned a long time ago that I needed to ‘win’ on the inside first before I could truly win on the outside. No amount of winning outside could subside an internal loss, no matter what I did.

Addressing the Loneliness in one’s heart first is vital, otherwise, the Loneliness will still be there… just in a relationship.

It is better to be loved for you, than loved for who you are not.

Not everyone will like you for you. That’s just the breaks.

The quicker you work out your compatibility with someone, the better off you’ll be.

Why spend your time and try to be with someone that you couldn’t have the fun of being yourself with? Why would you want to be with someone who only accepted 62% of you?

Bet on yourself. Be who you are and amplify that.

Self-love is the genesis and catalyst for all good sustainable things in Life.

To be love is to recognize love. If you cannot recognize it in yourself, you will never to able to recognize nor access it in others.

I still flirt with my rigid routine from time to time, but my intentions are healthier and from a more loving place than before.

I now have a girlfriend, who sees me for me. There’s no ‘volume’ button or a watered-down version of me. It’s loud, authentic me, and it’s honestly the easiest and most rewarding thing to happen to me because I learned to love myself first.

I didn’t need to be in a relationship to be happy.

I needed me.

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