Welcome to Spark Siren, where stories inspire impact ✨
Introduction:
The summer heat is in full effect here in the UK, and that includes romance. My last few years of living here in this lovely country has taught me that summer is prime time to meet new people, date and explore the city to the fullest. It’s the time when the sun is shining, our skin is glowing and the chances of meeting someone is at an all time high.
Many of us are looking for healthy and secure relationships in today’s dating world, especially around my age (30+). However I often wonder if there are perhaps aspects of ourselves that we could improve in the process, before we meet that special person. So I thought that it’s probably quite important to be able to identify what our strengths and areas of improvement we can focus on in our own emotional behaviour too.
For us to foster a healthy dynamic, we should not only aim to find someone of that caliber, but embody those traits that we so much desire in another too. That sort of healthy dynamic is both emotionally mature and empathetic. It’s the sort of dynamic where when we can do our best to grow and mature through our challenges, it gives the other person permission to do the same.
Emotional maturity alongside empathy are both key factors to maintaining a healthy relationship, and it’s important that both (or all) people involved are actively doing their best to show up in that way. However, it’s a rare find in today’s world of instant gratification. I think it’s harder for some of us to give people grace or even appreciate the effort that they’re putting in as a result.
Importance of Self-Awareness
Firstly, understanding what you have to offer in a relationship is crucial for building healthy and fulfilling connections. It gives you insight into who you are and what you’re looking for. In addition, we can only meet people emotionally at our own psychological level. So to see ourselves and someone else clearly, we should take the time to align our thoughts and views. Meeting someone halfway is about developing a healthy perception, as wel as being willing to see from another person’s perspective in addition to that.
Self-awareness is equally as important as the awareness of others. Knowing who we are gives us better understanding on what we have to offer and what we want. It helps us define what we are contributing, as well as helps us understand when someone else is putting forward that effort forward too. However, it involves honestly assessing our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to gain insight and promote our personal growth. It may also require listening to our partner’s perception on how they believe our behaviour affects others (a-hem, I object!).
Showing up with an open mindset and the desire to meet the other person halfway can even encourage more peace and co-operation between each other. Even as a single person, we can start that process by reflecting on our past relationships and interactions. Reflecting on our previous choices and their consequences can be confrontational, but it gives us the opportunity to gain valuable insights into our decision-making processes. This sense of accountability helps us redirect our energy and inform our future choices regarding our own behaviour and our choice of partner.
Reflecting back honestly can be difficult. However, it will equip us with a new sense of resilience and clarify the opportunities for growth.
How Knowing Yourself Benefits Your Partner
As we become more attuned to our emotions and their origins, we can navigate social interactions with greater empathy and understanding too. By recognizing our own patterns and triggers, we can communicate more effectively and avoid provoking sensitive areas in our relationships. Forgiveness for our own shortcomings and areas for growth, instill patience for the growth in others too. We’re ultimately fostering deeper connections with our partners through presence and patience. Being present and showing care take us so much further when we’re with the right people.
A healthy relationship will require us to fully invest not just in the development of the partnership, but will many times ask us to look to ourselves and be accountable too. Relationships are an amazing mirror that can indicate to us where our areas of improvement might be, and really give us the chance to learn about the different aspects of each other in a new light. It’s also important to note that, yes, our mindset is important. But the way our partner shows up counts too. If a partner shows up with the level of empathy that we hope they do, those mistakes we make from time to time will seem less personal. It will genuinely feel like an opportunity to learn and grow. Mistakes happen.
Self-awareness can also lead to incorporating more intentionality. When we are aware of our own wants and needs, our intentions become more clear. In that same regard, understanding where our efforts are not coming across as we intend, can also help us better navigate our way forward. A partner that meets us halfway can be a wonderful anchor that helps us with our sense of direction. Even as a single person, being open to learning about ourselves through our other relationships can be incredibly insightful. You get to curate the person you want to be and curate the type of person you would like to meet. Intentionality sets the tone for desire and alignment.
In case you need a reminder, there’s nothing more attractive in a partner than someone that is actively choosing you.
Show Up As Your Dream Partner
Show up in the way you would expect a partner to. It’s easy to demand a standard from someone else, but could we honestly say that we are all meeting our own emotional needs too? Embodying the qualities and behaviors we desire in a romantic connection can directly communicate through action what we expect in another. Emotional maturity is an essential trait to grasp, in that regard.
Set that positive example so that the right person knows how to recognise and appreciate you. I think that trying to prove or perform your way into someone else’s heart can only lead to personal disappointment. There is no point in relinquishing your sovereingty over to someone that has no intention of meeting you halfway. At least not in my own personal experience.
My take on this is: attract what you are. Become your best version so that you can meet someone truly phenomenal, just as you are someone phenomenal. When we’re actively working on ourselves, our potential to match with our dream person is likely to happen far more quickly and the results are all the more fulfilling. Creating a standard of behaviour for ourselves, will result in us hopefully not expecting any less from anyone else. It’s in the knowing of how much it took us to develop into a confident and complete person, that our standard rises for the other as well.
Consistency is ultimately the key to learning about ourselves, about others, as well as how to meet them where they are. To genuinely tap into the frequency we are looking for, it needs to become apart of who we are too. Can we consistently meet those standards that we’ve set for another? Often times, this involves being reliable, dependable, and forthcoming. Consistency builds trust and creates a sense of security in the relationship, and overall creates a stable foundation for the partnership to thrive. Better yet, are we consistent with ourselves? Do we keep promises to ourselves?
Conclusion
Understanding what we bring to a relationship is a journey of self-discovery and growth. By looking inward and recognizing our strengths, we set the stage for healthier, more fulfilling connections. This self-awareness allows us to show up as our best self, nurture our partner, and build a strong foundation of trust and commitment. If we establish that foundation, I believe that our relationships can set us up to learn even far beyond that.
Reliability is a key factor in showing what we have to offer in a relationship too. Simple adjustments such as following through on your promises and commitments make a huge impact. Sometimes being a great partner can mean simply being reliable. Presence, patience and consistency are all valuable traits, even if we don’t believe that we’re at our ‘best selves’ yet. Showing up with those traits alone make us standout people, especially in a world of instant gratification. Consistency builds an immense sense of security and trust in the relationship.
In the end, what we offer in a relationship is uniquely ours. It’s shaped by our experiences, values, and the effort we put into personal growth and in the commitment we show to our partners. By continuously working on ourselves and striving to be the partner we’d want to have, we create the potential for deep, lasting partnerships. Really, the most valuable gift we can give in any relationship is our authentic, evolving self.