The Radical Guide to Being Your Own Primary Partner | Radical Relating

The goal is self-knowledge, self-reliance, self-love, self-trust, and improved intimacy with others. It is often hard-won. And it often takes many years to feel that any shift has occurred.

And yet, no matter what bravery we show to the world, most of us have recurring doubts about our worth. We worry that we’re not desirable enough, good enough, successful enough. We fear we’re not enough, period. Intellectually, we may appreciate that loving ourselves would give us a firm foundation, one from which we could extend love out into the

It may seem like a sign of weakness to have needs. Actually, needs direct us to grow in the ways we were meant to. Childhood yearnings for attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection, and the experience of being allowed to be ourselves are not pathological but developmental. In trying to get a parent to pay attention to us, we were seeking what

As they do this, they will have to give up their idealized image of themselves as superior and super-competent, and return to seeing themselves as an ordinary human being. This will include learning to track their own weaknesses and needs, rather than just their strengths. Their patterned habit is to see only their strengths. To balance that, they

Because regardless of how loving and committed and well intentioned they may be, no person can meet the essential needs of another. No one can replace the authentic self of someone else. Once we leave ourselves, we are bound to suffer, until we return to our own authenticity.