I Do

I Do

Johnny and Sally sitting in a tree. K I S S I N G.  First comes love, then comes marriage...
That's it!  All we ever needed to know about love, we learned as kids!  Right?
Well, Tina's song sounds a little different.  Tune in today and she'll sing it for you!  She really will, like it or not!

What does it take to fall in love, stay in love, and have a life as wonderful as the song implies as possible? 
The answer really is in the song!  But you'll have to listen in to today's episode to make sense of this one!

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Transcript

Everything we needed to know about how to do relationships and family, we learned on the playground at school when we were young!  Didn’t we?

Oh, come on.  You remember.  It was even personalized for us, if we were so lucky as to be the target of the day.  I’ll remind you using myself.

Tina and so and so, sitting in a tree.  K I S S I N G.  First comes love, then comes marriage.  Then comes baby in a baby carriage.

Ok.  Got it.  Find someone I think is cute.  Climb a tree.  Kiss.  Marriage.  Baby.

Seems easy enough.  I mean climbing the tree might be the hardest part of adulting when you look at it like that.

How many people nailed this song?  I have to be honest.  Had to add a few lines to mine.

Tina and lots of boys sitting in a tree.  K I S S I N G.  First comes love, oh it’s not love, moving on, oh I’m pregnant and I do love you, lets get married, pushing the baby carriage and we are terrible at being married, let’s divorce but stay friends and let’s both date and now I’m getting married again.  And we are terrible at being married too but let’s keep working on it, with bio kids and step kids and foster kids and adopted kids and wow that’s a lot of kids I think I’ll go to college now. And hey I like my husband now so more K I S S I N G.  But please, no more kids, lets wait to push the grandkids in the baby carriage.

Ya, so that’s a vague song more accurate to my life.

And I guess the lyrics paint the picture of a crazy ride.  Oh ya.  That’s accurate.  But its not the only way to look at it.  

I didn’t find the wrong person to marry.  I didn’t divorce the right person to divorce.  I didn’t marry again, another wrong person.  I didn’t stay married to the wrong person who I should have divorced.  Right wrong, shoulda, shouldn’t have, blah blah blah.  

I think everything I did or didn’t do was entirely separate from a focus I missed a long the way.  But I’m thee now.  I’m here now.

No matter where I am in the song of kissing or marrying or babies or what… I needed to first figure out how to climb a tree, sit with myself, fall in love with myself, and not try to fill that void with anything or anybody else first.

That was never part of the song.  I didn’t know.

So, no matter where you are in that song now, and don’t try to fool me, you go lots of extra lyrics in your song too, let’s not forget to add some tree climbing adventure with ourselves.

Because here’s the deal, if we can learn to fall in love and make a life with ourselves, all of our relationships after that will be successes, even the failures.

Wait.  What?  All the relationships after loving yourself will be successes, even the failures?

Ya. Because they will be so-called failures maybe by the rest of the world, but if you love yourself and something between you and someone else doesn’t work out… you’ll know why, you’ll understand, and you’ll see why it had to be that way.  By your choice, or by accepting someone else’s.

You see, when we learn to fall in love with ourselves, we are really saying that we commit to ourselves fully.  Good times and bad, in riches or poor, healthy or sick, mentally unstable or not… in anything, no matter what we think, feel or experience in life, we are committed to loving ourselves through it all.

That sounds silly?  Because how could you possible fall in love with yourself like that?  Go back and listen to the episode called “Have word with yourself”.  We are made up of so many different pieces, it’s easy to love some of us, but harder to love others.  It’s a real commitment to say that we will love ourselves fully, and truly.

It is in the loving ourselves wholly that allows us to feel whole.  And that is so important because if we can feel whole by loving ourselves, that means that other person comes into our lives with the job of making us feel whole.  That really is too much responsibility and expectation to put on another human.

Another person cannot provide what only you can give yourself in loving yourself wholly.

How do I know that?

Can anyone honestly tell me that their partner knows 100 percent everything about you?  There is no way.  Everyone has parts that they keep for just them to know.  That’s not bad.  It’s just the way it is.

I know everyone is out there now saying they keeping it 100.  They not.  They can’t.

If people were keeping it 100, they’d all be single and have no friends and no job.

It’s called being a grown up.  You can’t walk into work Monday morning saying this is the last place I want to be right now.  I didn’t get a long enough break from all y’all people over the weekend.  Nope.  That wouldn’t be good.  I love my job and the people I work with.  But you were all keeping it 100, you’d be fired wouldn’t you?

You still think you’re keeping it 100?  That wasn’t a good example?  When was the last time your wife asked you if she looked ok in that new skirt?  Asked if it made her hips look big?  You keep it 100 then?

Even being asked, “how you doing?”

How many times have we said fine?  When that wasn’t the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

Let’s be real.  We’re keeping it about 75 aren’t we?  Some maybe more.  Some maybe less.

And that’s not us being liars.  That’s us knowing that we don’t owe people are whole truths all the time, and sometimes it’s maturity that keeps us less than 100.  Maturity keeps what we are thinking in our heads sometimes.  Cause to say it would be damaging.

So to feel whole, is to love ourselves wholly.  Not giving that job to someone else, who doesn’t even know us wholly, cause they can’t.  Cause we really aren’t 100 with anyone else.  And that’s ok.

But you have to climb up a tree and sit with yourself at 100 and still want to kiss who that is.

Still want to love and commit for the rest of your life to that person.

You are honestly in real trouble if you don’t want to spend the rest of your life with you.

It’s the one person you can’t ever break up with.

So you stay together miserably, or you learn to love everything about yourself.

No, I didn’t say like and accept.  I said love.  You can love yourself while also knowing you want to work on this and work on that.  But that is what the commitment is about.  Loving in spite of.  Loving through the processes.  Loving in transitions.

Committing to yourself is essentially marrying yourself.  With no escape clause.  No option of divorce.  You can’t just live with yourself for a bit and see if it works out.

You are saying until death do us part and then some.  I’d go to the grave with you.  Because ya, you are going to do that.

You need to say vows to yourself.

You are going to say for richer or poorer.  Because this is saying no matter where you are today, I’m right here with you.  I don’t love you BECAUSE you have wealth, and I won’t look down on you if you don’t.  No matter where you are in life, I love you.

It’s not hating yourself for having 20 extra pounds.  It’s not promising love for when those pounds get dropped.

It’s not judging and holding it over yourself that you said you’d be somewhere else in life by this age.  It’s not saying I’ll love you when or if you reach that goal.  

It is loving no matter where you are, right this very moment.

If you can love yourself exactly where you are, that is the best chance of getting to where you always wanted to be.  And the journey is not lonely this way.

It is saying yes to the possibility of for better or for worse.  And the better, really isn’t too hard.  Good hair days, feeling like a million bucks, just got a promotion.  Yes, of course we love ourselves.  But what about the days when you can’t get out of bed.  The days you are at your lowest and so depressed.  The day you get fired? Or fail a test or tank a project?

You need you to love you even more on those days.  You need self-love and compassion on those days, even if you see accountability and ownership in the situation.

You can love yourself and want better from yourself at the same time.  Isn’t that a new concept.  Why do we struggle so much to say the word AND.  We always tend to want to use the word OR.  Like I can love my self OR hold myself accountable.

Do you know you can love yourself AND hold yourself accountable.  You can.  And it’s the best way to grow.

Of course we also need to love ourselves in sickness and in health.  And this means that you need to be the person you can count on the most, to sit at your bedside and let you get through whatever it is that is affecting you.  You need to seek the treatment you need.  You need to be available through the night, and you need to be willing to hold your hand and tell yourself to get some rest.  And you’ll be right there when you wake up.

And I know this kinda sounds silly.  And it’s lovely if you have people in your life who will do this for you.  But the thing is, if there is ever a day when no one is available to be there for you, you will still not be alone if you have committed to loving yourself in this way.  It means that the people in your life who cannot meet all your needs all the time, are not on the hook as failures who let you down.  Because as much as it is a lovely blessing to have that, you have that no matter what.

Now, to have and to hold.  To have something is to be able to say you got it.  So to have yourself, is your way of being able to say to yourself, I got you.  No matter what… I got you.  Even when someone else does to, but especially when no one else does… I.  GOT.  YOU. Babe.  So, hold on.  Hold tight.  You are gonna be ok and you are not alone.  I got you.

If you love yourself first, you just are a better mama, daddy, partner, co-worker, boss, friend.

Because no one else is put into the place of having to fill that void in you.  No one else in your life is taken out of the relationship and put into a job of making sure you feel loved.

When you love yourself first, you free up the people you love to love themselves, to discover things in life that they are good at and enjoy and have gifts in, because their whole life didn’t have to be dedicated to making sure you feel loved.

If they make you feel loved, that fabulous, that’s a bonus, that’s more love for you.

But it isn’t their job, it’s just a beautiful bi-product of being in a loving relationship with yourself first, freeing them to love freely.

And you’ll know if they truly love you.  You’ll recognize it because you know love.  

You’ll know if it feels right or not.  You’ll know if its true love or a manipulation or control or toxic unhealthy fake love.  Cause you know true love.  You can see it when it’s there because it’s familiar to you.  It’s what you have for yourself.

It’s hard for someone to abuse you, calling it love when you already know what real love is.

Loving yourself is also how you learn to love others in the way that they deserve.  If you know already what better or worse love is, or richer or poorer love is, or sickness or health love is, you already know how to do that, how to offer that, how to give that.

If you already know what it is to say, “I got you”, then you know how to provide that kind of love for others.

In some venues, we’ve been taught that this is selfish.  That real love is denying yourself and giving all of who you are to another.  It is sacrificing everything for someone else.  And I think that’s dangerous thinking.  Those things aren’t terrible.  But they’ve been taken out of context.

To deny yourself, or give of yourself… to sacrifice for another – that’s not at the expense of loving yourself.  That’s not a sentence to include the word OR.  You don’t love yourself OR deny, give or sacrifice.

You love yourself and commit to loving yourself no matter what, AND you deny, give, and sacrifice if needed because you have enough love to do that for someone else if needed.

You are not selfish to marry yourself first.  You are pouring in everything you need, so that pouring back out doesn’t empty you.  It’s just sharing.

And sharing is caring isn’t it.  Isn’t that something else we learned early on at school.

So maybe we need to climb that tree, sit with ourselves and fall in love.  Fall in love.  Don’t fall out of the tree.  Some of us aren’t climbing trees like we used to.

But it is never too late to fall in love with ourselves.  It will transform all the relationships around us in so many ways.  

And that’s what it’s all about.  Keep learning and growing and transforming and loving and sharing and caring with all the people we love, including ourselves.

If today is the day you realize that you haven’t loved yourself the way you’ve needed and deserved, then say your vows today.  And really commit to them.

It will change your world.

That’s all for today.  I don’t want to hold up your honeymoon.  I’ll meet you back here again next week though.  Until then, this is good-bye for now, and we’ll speak again soon.