Self-Partnering: Taking Self-Love to the Next Level
Child star, Emma Watson has recently popularized the concept of self-partnering, which has quickly sparked much debate online. It has pushed some buttons in the very core of our typical social behaviors or what Russel Brand calls in this video, ‘biopolitics.’
The conversation was sparked by Emma turning 30 and reflecting on the subconscious pressure she felt to be living a certain way at this point in her life. She has publicly reshaped the idea of being single with her Vogue interview to help promote single positivity.
Generate Happiness
While the term is new to mainstream society, the concept is alive and has been in the healing arts for a long time as well as in counseling. Healing the inner child, developing a connection to your soul, understanding your triggers, projections, and mind is at the root of self-partnering.
This term ‘self-partnering’ is just one of the buzzwords in the personal development world that are helping both men and women become empowered. Another term, ‘conscious uncoupling’ has become the norm within mindfulness teachings and groups that want to take away the bitterness and negativity associated with the completion of a dating cycle. Undoubtedly, language is evolving to help us find new levels of happiness
To be candid, this is the most valuable concept you can grasp in your life because it will unlock your ability to generate happiness.
What is Self-Partnering?
Self-partnering means that we stop looking to others for validation and happiness and in turn begin to enjoy being on our own. It is unlearning the social norm that we must find a romantic partner in order to be a functional part of society and entering a state of self-love and self-pampering. It also involves us learning that we need to stop blaming other people for the way we feel and start owning our emotions and dealing with them.
We show up for ourselves when we feel negative by looking within, looking at our childhood, and dissecting why we allow ourselves to seek happiness outside of ourselves.
Consistency
Just as you would in a romantic relationship, develop a consistency with yourself. Treat yourself to things and take yourself out, learn your likes and dislikes and find love within yourself.
In this process, you will establish a strong and consistent habit of generating emotions and dealing with our emotions within ourselves as a best friend to ourselves instead of distracting ourselves by trying to self medicate with food, drugs, money, cars, looks, partners, jobs, or validation from the external world through social media or other means.
Healing
Essentially, the term is getting at healing the inner child’s wounds which makes us think we are not enough and make us insecure. In the process of self-partnering, we look at why we think negatively about ourselves, why we put our body down in our minds, why we think we need someone to feel whole, and we deal with these past experiences to see that we perceive as adults through the wounds of the child.
This inevitably leads to loving ourselves, taking care of ourselves, setting healthy boundaries, finding love by loving ourselves and being happy with ourselves.
How Can Self-Partnering Help?
The idea that being single is somehow a negative comes from our environmental conditioning. We are deep in the story that being un-partnered is inherently bad and being partnered is better. While we can be happy as a couple, we can only create healthy bonds if we have a healthy bond with ourselves. Otherwise, the same unhealthy patterns will continue to play out.
You can self partner by working on unlearning the learned behavior that we need someone to feel good. You can look at the experiences that shaped your world views, your personal identity, your relationship to your body, and how you seek happiness in others.
Love Yourself
Self-partnering means empowering yourself by loving yourself. Giving yourself gifts, treating yourself like a friend, listening to your own feelings, dealing with your own fears, taking away the need for approval, facing the fear of loneliness, looking deeper at your motivations, and finding which are helping and which are ego. The soul is what comes through to be our partner when we self partner.
We do develop a real relationship of unconditional love that helps us become radiant so that what we do end up attracting is healthy, not wounded.
Read this next: What Your Environment is Telling You About Your Soul: The Mirror Effect
How Self-Partnering Changes Our Programming
Instead of feeling like we need a partner, a drink, a gadget, a career, or a haircut to feel good, we start to see this story that has been habituated for generations. We stop looking outside of ourselves to soothe ourselves and we start getting to know our feelings, the reasons we are attracted to people who mistreat us, the reasons we seek certain stimulants to block our feelings, and the real way to heal all of it.
Our soul helps us see our lives from a bird’s eye view so we can see how we are impacted by culture, by certain deeply ingrained stories that don’t give us personal power. There are many people that live in this story so deeply, they have no idea there is another way to behave in life, it literally becomes most people’s sole motivations.
Reprogram Negativity
It’s not surprising because the childhood stories and parental treatment gears us up to fit into the role of ‘provider’ or ‘mate’ and hit certain milestones according to this plan. However, the world is evolving, and we are seeing that we need a new story where one seeks his or her spiritual self first in order to provide their own happiness and not bury emotional wounds.
When we show up for ourselves daily and stop talking negatively to ourselves, we start to heal. When we stop unhealthy patterns by first realizing how we are abusing ourselves more than anyone else, we start to realize the strength that is available to us so that we don’t feel desperate for love.
Related Article: Why & How You Need To Heal Your Inner Child
Don’t Be Afraid to Commit to Yourself
There’s a stereotype we are familiar with which is the ‘commitment-phobe.’ The person who is afraid to get into relationships because they have been hurt badly or because they can’t stand the draining arguments or perhaps because they feel constricted by the expectations. We are almost shamed into not being alone, with horrible names for older men and women who choose a life for themselves.
Someone who is codependent is often also afraid to commit to self-love and view outer validation as the only way to find worth. The younger generation is attempting to break the mould by finding themselves first.
Self-Love is Important
Many have been taught to think that feelings are weak, that relationships will make things better, and that it’s OK to blame people for our feelings when we willingly allowed them into our lives. The true work that will help us is the journey of meeting the soul and seeing the larger patterns that operate within society that dictate our relationship to our emotions, our bodies, our life plans, and our view of ourselves.
When do you neglect your feelings? Where do you seek to bury them in your life? What pattern keeps showing up in relationships? Sit and ask yourself these questions and journal about them. Check out the articles we have on healing your inner child and really start doing it every day. Knowing yourself on a more spiritual level means you will stop sabotaging your life.
Each year it will feel like you have more happiness as you unravel your past and heal your vibration. You’ll create new habits and patterns of thinking that are self-loving as you work towards self-partnering. Using self-love affirmations such as, “I feel my emotions and find the root cause,” or “I love and accept my body and soul,” will be the food you need to fuel the relationship you must develop with yourself to break into a world of blissful living.
How to Start Your Path to Self-Partnering?
Now that you’ve learned about self-partnering, the way to start begins entirely with you. It may be time to turn off your technology and take a moment to sit in your own thoughts. What would make you happy? What would you want a significant other to do for you? What do you love about yourself?
Start small and with positivity. Soon you will be falling in love all over again, with someone who will be there for your entire life: You.
