If you’ve been trying to build a healthy romantic relationship but keep ending up in the wrong one, my friend, there is still one central thing you need to focus on first.
Before you can build a healthy romantic relationship with someone else, you have to begin with a favorable one with yourself.
And the foundation begins with God.
Your relationship with God shapes how you understand your identity, your value, your purpose, and your gifts.
That affects how you relate to yourself.
How you see yourself.
How you speak to yourself.
What you believe you deserve.
What you tolerate.
What you bring into a relationship.
And when your relationship with yourself is unhealthy, it becomes much harder to build something healthy with someone else.
This is why I believe that if you are struggling deeply with self-love, you should work on that before seeking a romantic relationship.
A relationship should not be responsible for creating your identity for you.
That work begins with understanding who God created you to be.
Your Relationship With God Comes First
For me, identity begins in Christ.
Who are you?
Whose are you?
What has God placed inside of you?
What do you value?
What kind of life are you building?
What kind of person would actually fit that life?
Those questions matter because if you do not know yourself, it becomes much easier to choose someone based on attention, chemistry, loneliness, or desire instead of alignment.
When you begin to understand your identity in Christ, you also begin to understand your value differently.
You stop looking to another person to prove that you are worthy.
You stop needing a romantic relationship to tell you who you are.
And you become better able to recognize the kind of relationship that actually fits the woman God created you to be.
Your Relationship With Yourself Affects How You Love
A healthy relationship with yourself changes the way you show up in love.
It affects how you communicate.
It affects your boundaries.
It affects what you accept.
It affects what you pursue.
It affects the way you carry yourself.
And it affects your ability to recognize whether someone is actually a good fit for you.
This does not mean you have to love every single thing about yourself.
It means you have to begin developing a healthy self-concept rooted in truth.
You need time with yourself.
You need to learn what makes you you.
You need to understand what you value and what you bring into a relationship.
Because before you can build something meaningful with someone else, you need to know who is doing the building.
Healthy Love Has a Foundation
The way I think about relationships is simple:
God → Self → Others → Romantic Relationship
Your relationship with God affects your relationship with yourself.
Your relationship with yourself affects how you relate to others.
And all of that affects how you show up in romantic partnership.
Healthy love does not begin with simply finding the right person.
It begins with becoming rooted in who God created you to be.
Before you position yourself for love, know the value you are bringing into it.
Before you ask someone else to recognize your worth, learn to recognize it yourself.
Before you build a life with someone else, spend some time becoming grounded in the life God is calling you to build.
You’re not behind. You’re becoming.
xoxo
Chauntel
email questions: askchauntel@gmail.com