LOVE, LOVE & MORE LOVE: How to Find Your True Love (Hint: It’s NOT Who You Think) + FREE Self-Love Weekly Planner

Love comes in many forms. We all know that. But because of what we’ve been taught by pop culture, the retail industry, and even our own friends and family, we tend to believe that there’s an ultimate form of love: the love we share with a romantic partner. In other words, we’ve come to believe that our romantic partner is our one true love.

So if you’ve been struggling to find love with a romantic partner, you might be feeling pretty frustrated. You might be thinking, “Why can’t I ever experience that highest form of love? Why does everyone else seem to be in a great relationship except me?”

How do I know that these are the thoughts that have been running through your mind lately? Because I’ve been there.

You see, I used to think that I was the only woman on Earth who kept making stupid mistakes and falling for the “wrong” guy over and over again. I kept desperately asking myself things like…

“Why me?”

“Why can’t I find the right guy?”

“What’s wrong with me???”

I was deep into these feelings of frustration, loneliness, and emptiness in my 20s and 30s. But at the time, I didn’t have the self-awareness to find the real answers to these questions. And I was completely unaware of the patterns I kept falling into that caused me to attract the same guys and make the same mistakes over and over again.

But after going through several major heartbreaks over the past 20 years and learning some big lessons along the way, I realized why I was having so much trouble finding my one true love: I was going about it in the WRONG way.

Specifically, I was looking for my true love in the wrong place.

And you know what?

You might be too.

Although it might not seem like it on the surface, this is actually a good thing. Why? Because it means that your true love is out there. You just need to look somewhere else to find it.

And in this blog post, I’m going to tell you exactly WHERE (and HOW) to look for your true love.

Let’s get right to it!

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Who Is Your REAL True Love?

Do you want to know where to look to find your true love?

All you have to do is look within your heart. Because your true love is YOU!

In other words, the highest and truest form of love you can ever experience is the love you have for yourself. You are a child of God and you’ve got that spark of love within you.

As I told you in my blog post on embracing love on Valentine’s Day, most of us focus a lot on finding love in our relationships with romantic partners, family members, or friends. But we rarely think about or direct our energy toward cultivating the most important relationship in our life: the one we have with ourselves. In other words, we tend to forget or even lack awareness of self-love.

I did a deep dive into self-love in my post on embracing love on Valentine’s Day, so I won’t get into too many details about it here. But to summarize, self-love is a state of appreciation for yourself that grows from your actions and supports your physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual growth. It’s about living your life and making daily choices in a way that allows you to respect, nurture, and care for yourself.

Self-love has tons of benefits for your physical and mental health. But what’s more is that it’s essential for building strong, healthy relationships with other people.

Why?

Because love originates from within. You can’t truly love another person or experience the love they have for you if you don’t love, respect, and nurture yourself first.

In my case, I wasn’t able to find a loving partner because I kept pursuing and staying in relationships for the wrong reasons.

In one relationship, I stayed with an emotionally unavailable man for 9 years because I wanted him to love me so badly and I kept thinking that if I just stuck around a bit longer, he would finally love me the way I needed to be loved.

And in another relationship, I married someone who wasn’t right for me because I was too scared to say “no” to him and hurt his feelings when he proposed.

I was looking for love in situations where I was saying “yes” even though my heart was screaming “NO,” where I was desperately hoping for love from someone who couldn’t give it to me, and where I was disrespecting my own boundaries. In other words, I was making choices that were completely out of alignment with what was right for me for the sake of “love.” And that guaranteed that I definitely wouldn’t find it.

When I finally realized this, it became clear to me that to find love with others, I first needed to cultivate love with myself. I needed to respect, care for, and prioritize myself so that I could ultimately pursue and build relationships that were in alignment with who I truly was and what I needed.

What I hope you’ll take away from my story is that it’s by building a healthy relationship with yourself that you’ll be able to experience joy, feel fulfilled when you wake up in the morning, and find a loving partner who’s really right for you.

That’s why your true love (and your key to building satisfying relationships with other people) is YOU!

How to Build Self-Love

Okay, now that you know WHERE to find your true love, let’s talk about HOW to cultivate this relationship effectively.

Here are 3 of the most important things I did to build a healthy, loving relationship with myself and, ultimately, experience fulfilling love with other people in my life. These are also 3 key practices that I teach my one-on-one clients to help them experience more love with themselves and with others.  

1.  Practice Self-Compassion

When I first realized that I needed to build a healthier relationship with myself, I had spent years beating myself up for “not being worthy enough” and “not being a lovable person.” That’s why an important first step in cultivating self-love was to practice self-compassion.

Self-compassion is compassion that’s directed inward at yourself instead of toward someone else. When you practice self-compassion, you treat yourself with the same kindness and concern that you would express toward a good friend. So in the same way that you would comfort a friend who made a big mistake at work or experienced a sudden, painful relationship breakup, you extend care and support toward yourself even when you make mistakes or “fail” at something. Instead of being critical or judgmental of yourself, you focus on being loving and kind.

I’m willing to bet that if you’re reading this, you’re very good at being kind and loving toward the people in your life whom you care about. Practicing self-compassion allows you to take this skill and direct it inward so that YOU can receive the love and care you so deeply deserve. It also helps you understand what genuine, healthy love feels like so that you can recognize when you’re receiving it in relationships with other people and when you’re not. 

There are lots of ways to practice self-compassion, but here’s a simple way to start incorporating it into your life: Every day, write down three things you did well. Anything counts. It doesn’t matter how “big” or “small” it seems. As you reflect on what you did well during the day, notice how you feel. Really soak up the feelings of love and compassion that you feel toward yourself.

Ready to go deeper? You can find a powerful self-compassion exercise in my video on practicing self-compassion.

2.  Put Yourself First

If you’ve been struggling to find love in your life, there’s a good chance that you’ve been putting other people’s needs before your own.

This is what I did when I married my ex-husband even though I knew it wasn’t right for me. I felt so bad about hurting his feelings and turning down his proposal that I put his feelings before my own happiness and needs. And as you can imagine, I could sacrifice my happiness and what I needed for only so long.

As women, we’re especially used to putting the needs of the people around us—whether it’s our partner, kids, parents, siblings, or friends—before our own needs. After all, we’re essentially taught to do this while we’re growing up. We’re expected to cook for and clean up after our partners (even while working full time ourselves). We’re responsible for making sure our kids have the right shirt for “Purple Shirt Day” at school or the right materials to complete that science fair project. And we’re expected to say “yes” and even make sacrifices when friends or extended family members want us to do something for them.

That’s why when it comes to love, it can be very easy to sacrifice your own happiness for the sake of keeping other people happy.

The problem, however, is that you can sacrifice your needs and happiness for only so long. Because sooner or later, you’ll become so burned out and resentful that it’ll strain your relationships and push you to a breaking point.

What’s the best way to stop this from happening? Prioritizing yourself.

When I tell clients this, they often look at me in shock and say, “But Vera, isn’t that really selfish???”

What’s selfish is if you act as though it ALWAYS needs to be your way or the highway. Selfish is if you always force your family to go out for dinner at the restaurant that you want to go to or watch the Friday night movie that you want to watch. Selfish would be never doing anything for your kids or partner if it inconvenienced you at all.

But that’s not what I mean by prioritizing yourself.

When I talk about prioritizing yourself, I’m talking about directing your time and energy toward the things that really make you happy or that align with your needs.

For example, if you identify that it’s really important to have at least one evening a week that isn’t jam-packed with cooking dinner, chauffeuring your kids to extra-curricular activities, and helping them with homework, find a way to give yourself a break. This could mean asking a friend or relative to supervise your kids one night a week or asking a co-parent to drive your kids to basketball or swimming practice instead. Alternatively, it could mean asking your kids to narrow down the number of activities they do next season or next year so that your evening and weekend schedule isn’t as hectic.

Now, I know you might be reading this and thinking, “But Vera. I don’t want to take opportunities away from my kids. I don’t want them to sacrifice anything for my sake.”

But think about it this way: Yes, being able to participate in activities is important for your kids. But so is having a parent who isn’t completely exhausted and burned out all the time. By prioritizing and taking care of yourself, you’re putting yourself in a better position to be a present, involved parent. And that means that by putting yourself first, you’re actually also prioritizing the well-being of your kids.

When you put yourself first, you’re able to extend love and care toward yourself by giving yourself the chance to fulfill your needs and do the things that make you happy.

3.  Set Boundaries to Remove Toxicity

Another important step in cultivating self-love is to set boundaries and remove toxicity from your life. This is about letting go of relationships, activities, and commitments that drain you, trigger stress, or negatively affect your life in another way. To put it simply, it’s about saying “no” to other people so that you can say “yes” to yourself.

When I remained in relationships that weren’t right for me, I allowed myself to continue pouring time and energy into people who weren’t able to give me what I needed. Not only did this leave me feeling lonely, hurt, and drained, but it also robbed me of time and space in my life for relationships that were healthy and nurturing. It was only when I ended these toxic relationships and put boundaries in place to protect myself that I was able to honor my worth, focus on what was important to me, and begin to experience true love and joy again.

When setting boundaries to protect yourself, it’s important to identify your needs and put limits in place to protect them. For example, if your family is constantly putting pressure on you to be in a certain type of relationship or marry a certain person, you might decide that you don’t want to have conversations about your romantic life with them.

Once you identify that this is what you want, it’s time to have a compassionate but firm conversation with your family about your wishes. And once you put the boundary in place, it’s important to enforce it on a continuous basis by ensuring that your family doesn’t violate it.

(You can find a step-by-process for setting boundaries in relationships right here. Although the post focuses on setting boundaries in romantic relationships, the process I describe works for any type of relationship.)

Keep in mind that just like with prioritizing yourself, putting boundaries in place can feel awkward and uncomfortable at first. But in no way is it selfish or bossy. When you set boundaries to remove toxicity from your life, you stop people from bringing their negative energy into it and, ultimately, compromising your happiness and well-being. That’s key to cultivating self-love and setting the stage to build healthy relationships with other people too.

Find True Love by Loving YOU

Many of us struggle to find deep, fulfilling love in our lives because we keep looking for it solely outside of ourselves. And often, we sacrifice our needs, well-being, and happiness in the pursuit of this love from others.

As I’ve shared above, however, your true love isn’t a romantic partner, the high school sweetheart you’re hoping to reconnect with, or your current crush. It’s YOU!

You can probably tell from reading this blog post that self-love is a lesson that I learned the hard way. And I definitely don’t want anyone else to have to waste years in an unfulfilling relationship or sign up for an inevitable divorce to learn it. That’s why I’ve made it my mission to write blog posts like this, work with clients one-on-one, create courses, and deliver workshops that guide women through this challenge and help them clearly see what I wasn’t able to see before. 

I’m so honored to serve and guide you in this way because understanding and experiencing self-love is incredibly powerful. And so I very deeply hope that you’ve gained something valuable from this blog post and will be able to walk away knowing how to cultivate a stronger relationship with yourself. 

Of course, I know that even though I’ve given you some simple ways to incorporate self-love into your everyday life, it can be tough to do when you have a hectic schedule. (It’s totally normal to struggle with this, by the way. Many of my clients do.)

That’s why I’ve created a FREE self-love weekly planner for you. It’ll help you carve out space for self-love on a daily basis so that you can start experiencing the joy and fulfillment that comes from the highest and purest form of love.

And if you haven’t done so already, follow me on my Facebook page Vera Velini – The Assertive Happiness Coach. That way, you’ll be among the first to hear about new blog posts, resources, and courses.  

Until next time!

Vera

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