self
A few years ago, I was flicking through the ‘must watch’ section on Netflix and I came across RuPaul’s Drag Race. I instantly fell in love with it. I adored the sentiment with which RuPaul closed every episode: ‘If you don’t love yourself, how the hell you gonna love somebody else?’ There is so much wisdom in that sentence; the understanding that we can’t validate ourselves through others’ validation of us and the understanding that loving someone else starts first with loving yourself. As someone who’s been single most of her life, I thought I was good at loving myself, but it took some RuPaul wisdom to see that, while I liked myself, my own relationship hadn’t gone beyond the ‘casually dating’ stage.
This is what I’ve learned about loving yourself first. Think about how you’d like someone else to treat you and go from there. If I asked you to write a long list of what you wanted from an ideal partner, you’d probably be able to come up with a fair few things. While you might not be able to be your own version of tall, dark and handsome, you can be kind to yourself, you can make yourself laugh and you can sit down with a journal before bed and ask yourself how your day has been. See this time and space to take care of yourself as a gift, and appreciate it in that way. In essence, spend the time you’re alone taking care of yourself in the way you wish someone else would. That way, when they do turn up, they’ll know from the outset what is expected from them.