It’s very tempting, especially in a new relationship, to structure your whole life around this glittery shiny lovely boy you’ve met. It can be quite easy to fall into bad habits and unhealthy behavior. These are 10 reasons you absolutely cannot make him the center of your universe:
- You never know what will happen. Surely you’ve been in at least one relationship prior to this one. It didn’t work out. You may have the highest of hopes for your new love, but reality will set in eventually. Even the happiest of couples have issues, and often those issues lead to separation. It’s a sad but basic fact. You can’t make someone else your main focus. You have to be your own main focus.
- It’s bad for the relationship. You’re putting undue strain on your partnership by making it so very important to you. You think it makes you the happiest out of everything in your life, but it shouldn’t be that way. Yes, it’s a priority, but it can’t be the biggest one. That’ll actually end up sinking the relationship, or at the very least killing the romance. It should be fun and easy, not stressful.
- It’s bad for you. Life is much easier when you distract yourself with love. You can take the focus off of yourself and what you need to achieve and instead direct it onto another person. When you’re all about taking care of him and his needs, you neglect your own. You forget to nurture yourself and grow as a human. Eventually, the relationship will stagnate along with you. It’s about developing and learning side by side with someone else, not making him the only priority in your life.
- It puts unnecessary pressure on him. How would you feel if a guy abandoned everything else he had going on and just wanted to be with you all the time? I hope you wouldn’t like it. That’s completely unhealthy and the two of you would be doomed to fail. People need a little space. If you make all your decisions based around him, you’re giving him no room to breathe. He’ll feel suffocated, resent you, and eventually make moves to escape.
- You’ll never be satisfied. How could you be? You’re using your heart and not your head. You are trying to fill up voids in yourself with another person instead of doing the necessary work to fill them for yourself. Until you enter a relationship as an independently complete person on your own, you will never be happy with it. He can’t be everything for you, and he shouldn’t. It’s not fair to him or you.
- You’ll lose sight of who you are. You’re so wrapped up in him and “us” that you lose your individuality. The two of you do everything together. You abandon old habits and hobbies. Your friends never see you anymore. If he’s interested in something, suddenly it’s your favorite pastime also. What is that crap? Cut it out! You are awesome just the way you are. If you feel the need to change to fit someone else, perhaps he isn’t the right guy. Just a thought.
- If you two break up, you’ll fall apart. The biggest problem with building your life around someone else? If that person goes away, the foundation crumbles. You’re lost, alone, and confused. You’ve let the other relationships in your life go to crap and now you’re left without support. If you’re lucky, those people will be good enough to forgive you your trespasses and come back. You can’t count on that. Don’t set yourself up for a terrible situation in the future. You have to consider all possible outcomes.
- He’s only human, just like you. Everyone has flaws. You can’t require him to be the perfect partner to you. It’s a losing game. If you want to be accepted for your imperfect self, you need to do the same in return. You can’t blame him for failing to live up to your unrealistic expectations that he be your moon, stars, and sun. No one wants that kind of attention. It’s stressful.
- Good relationships aren’t rooted in codependency. Again, there’s no way it’ll survive if you only focus on each other. It feels good to be needed, but it isn’t healthy in reality. You should want to be wanted, not desperately clutched. That kind of behavior isn’t even about love, it’s about insecurity. Develop who you are while you’re single so that when you do end up finding someone, you can stand by his side upright and proud instead of strangling him with expectations.
- You’re the only person who can be the center of your life. At the end of the day, who’s left? You. You can only truly count on that. If you don’t even like yourself, how will that work out? You have to be able to truly sit with yourself and be comfortable spending time alone. Work on that relationship and great relationships with others will follow naturally.
