If you truly love yourself then the people who truly love themselves enter your life.

Others may have their attractions but also carry problems. For most of us relationships are need based, where there is need there is some form of control. There is no one person out there who will necessarily change you, unless you are willing to change from within ie. question your values and beliefs (Yet some people will trigger this) In relationships your partner reflects back to you aspects of yourself that you are comfortable and uncomfortable with. Alot of time is spent deflecting and ducking the feelings that consequently arise.

What most relationships do is distract you from you, allow you to pretend to be someone who you aren t, as you work on getting your partner s approval, you can forget about youself then children appear and before you know it your life has passed you by. Salvaging the memories, most us look back and convince ourselves that what we ve had is a loving reltionship and so the myth is propelled into the next generation. What we have done in effect is to pass on the emotional thumb print passed on to us by our parents as we learnt as children.

Love comes from within, if you haven t learnt (probably from your parents) how to love yourself then you will probably be working on some form of control/approval/need based relationship, badged up as a `loving relationship`, complete with check list, therapists and endorsement from our families/friends

If you can t love yourself how can you expect anyone else to do so? If you need a check list of how to behave as if you love someone then you probably don t love them. If you can t love yourself you can t truly love anyone else. Conforming to the charades of societal gift days as a way to proving your love for your partner reinforces the happless state.

But there is a caveat, with a broader picture in mind, we have lessons to learn in life, some of us find them, some leave it too late (this time round) and others don t even begin to see anything. A partnership can be mutually beneficial in that you and your partner may help each other to find your true paths, this may result in you both taking separate paths. But a path that leads one to awareness and love of oneself. This process of self enlightenment, which can at times be painful and convoluting, comes about through being totally honest with each other, often occurring after a period of pain, coupled with a desire to question beliefs and values. This I consider is to be the most useful aspect of any long term relationship, it doesn t require a lengthy check list just a willingness to strive for honesty and awareness.

Relationships work at multiple levels reflecting back at you issues that you have with yourself, quite possibly as far back as when you were a child, allowing if you wish to address these issues when you are ready to do so. With marriages the chances are that you will relive emotionally the sort of relationship that you you had with one of your parents. If the inputting was sound then true love will result anything else gives the insightful something to work on.

Well, I tried to talk of my mother with people of the family that I felt close, but it didn't work well at all, because, even if conflicts with parents are the most common event on earth, there's a sort of tabu around it that compells others to always speak not too sincere for the sake of reconciliation. They all get damn worried when you talk bad of your mother! so the general feeling is that they also don't listen to you after all, they just get too nervous, they don't want to enter some family telenovela with conflicts and declarations and taking parts of this and that. Unless your parents abuse you physically, and even then, they will want to avoid the boiling potato the most possible. At the end you find yourself in the unconfortable role of the only freak around. So what I think is forget it.
Someone told you in a post to be considerate and go to funerals and remember birthdays, and that's a way that works. Another way that is more my style is become personal with the ones in the family that you like. A cousin of mine invited me once to the seaside with her and her two sons, it was just a week-end, but we were me and her and we've been talking together about everything in those few days, it was so beautiful, she told me her secrets while I was combing her hair, I told her mine while watching the kids playing in the ocean.
Then I met Erik and it was such a tornado, I left everything for him, my house, my country, my friends, my things, and that friendship with Cristina didn't have the chance to grow further, and my family is very far in my thoughts now. But that could have been a start, if my destiny had not carried me here.