To Find My Voice: A Place Of Need

My mother use to always tell me, "take a break...you've been in a relationship, now spend some time with yourself!"  I never understood why?  I just couldn't figure out what being alone would do for me, or more importantly, why being with a boyfriend was counterproductive.

The thing is, if you are always going from one relationship to another, you are operating from a place of need.  I always thought that I was operating from a place of want or a place of love, but what I was really doing was operating from a place of needing someone to "fill in the cracks" and "complete" what I was missing within myself.  If I had been operating from a place of WANT, I would have been forced to take a break between relationships, as I would have been more picky, and thus had a harder time finding a person that I wanted.

As we grow, we find things, people, jobs, religion, sex and so much outside of ourselves to attempt to fill the holes in our life.  We look towards clothes, eating, drugs, partying or money to attempt to define who we feel we are, or want, to be.  The problem is, nothing, nor anyone, can ever fill that space, and to continue to look for it, in vain, outside of ourselves leads towards misguided attempts at happiness and becoming complete.

I looked for, as my mother would call him, "Mr. Goodbar"...I think that is what she would say?  She would ask me, "why do you pick such losers?" and oh how right she was!  But the fact is that the holes in my heart and who I was as a person and what I was searching to fill, were the holes left by life.  My holes were from whatever it is that makes a woman feel that a man is the only thing that will complete her.  My holes could have been filled by anyone with a beating heart that told me they loved me.



So it wasn't that I always picked losers, it was that I didn't find myself worthy of waiting for a winner.  I didn't find myself as a complete person worthy of SURVIVING alone.  More importantly, I was working from a constant place of need, and when you are needy, people can sense it.  Many people would perhaps categorize this need as desperate or pathetic, but this need was a hollowness that made me susceptible to be walked on, abused, and made me feel honored to be loved or paid attention to by whomever was willing to see me.

When you work and operate from this place of need, those who are confident can see the desperation, the willingness and the lack of self-love, and are not drawn to people who need.  People who operate from a place of want, a place of confidence and a place of being complete, are drawn to people like themselves.  So it wasn't that I was DRAWN to losers, it was that others that were also operating from a place of need saw themselves in me and I in them.

To finally change myself from a person who needed, to a person that didn't need.  From a person who wanted to SHARE my life vs. stuff a person inside of it, I needed to stop looking for someone to complete me.  I needed to find a way to complete myself, to make myself whole with or without anyone around, and to do that I needed to be alone.

So many of us shop or work or create chaos in our lives to complete us.  We rely on a person to make us happy or sad or content..and thus whole.  But unless happiness or being content can be found within our own heart, in our own soul, we put ourselves in a position of need.  When we are in a position of need we are thus at the mercy of loss, disappointment or looking for a fix that can NEVER fulfill us forever.

The hollowness will never be filled.

I want to be with Jim.  I don't need to be with Jim.  I don't need him to come home and tell me what a great job I do, I don't need him to tell me I am pretty or thin or smart.  I don't need my parents to tell me that I am doing a good job or my friends to tell me that I am a good mom...I find that within myself.  Because when I find my confidence, self-worth, self-assurance and self-love I can move from needing people in my life, to wanting people in my life.  I can allow my husband to be my partner and not my care-giver or my life-giver or exhaust him with the job of telling me, all I would need to fill me up, to make me whole.  I am whole, before he walks through the door.

If you are curious if you operate from a place of need vs. a place of want, ask yourself:
* Am I offended easily?
* Do I  need people to tell me I'm pretty, smart, doing a good job, am a good mom to feel as though it's true?
* Do I base my self-worth on what I have or do?
* Do I feel unloved if people aren't paying attention to me?
* Are my feelings hurt if people aren't doing what I want them to do?
* Do I base who I am on what others are doing or saying?
* Do I do things because I want to do them OR do I do things because I feel it will make people like me more?

In the movie Jerry Maguire, Dorthy Boyd, played by Renee Zellweger, said to Jerry, "you complete me.."  A famous line, but also a dangerous one.  No one can complete you, the cracks will begin to leak, at first slowly, then a flood, because without wholeness coming from within, you only have a temporary fix, just waiting for the next big storm.

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