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We all want to be loved and accepted.  That’s why relationships appeal to us.  And when we feel loved and accepted in our relationships, we feel overjoyed, invincible, energized and excited.

But what about when we feel unloved?  Feeling unaccepted and unloved triggers other painful emotions, feelings like anger, hurt, sadness, disappointment, resentment, judgement, depression, jealousy and unhappiness.

The problem in relationships is that we’ve been taught that our relationship is the cause of these emotions.  When our partner does things that please us, we feel loved and accepted.  When they do something we don’t like, we use that as our measure of lovability and acceptance.

The beautiful gift of love in a relationship is that it is something extra.  It’s the bonus, the icing on the cake.  It feels good because it comes to us freely. 

But, when we start looking for love to make us feel better, it can become no less harmful than any other addiction. 

We start to crave it and feel we need it.  We allow our lives to be dictated by whether or not we are getting enough of it. 

But the truth is, we can always feel love and accepted in our relationships if we love and accept ourselves.  When we feel good about ourselves, when we take care of ourselves and our needs, we feel love, we feel acceptance and we feel it because it comes from inside of us. 

We get in trouble when we start expecting someone else to give us all the love and acceptance we want and need because this is simply something no other human can possibly ever, one hundred percent of the time give us perfectly and in the timing and quantity we seek.

Let the love come to you instead of looking for it and demanding it of someone else.  Realize that true love and acceptance has to come from within and when we are giving those to ourselves, our partner’s love feels like the most incredible gift in the world.