The First Secret to Happy Relationships
Sep 4th, 2009 by Rachel
Oops, I did it again!
I’ve been having some difficulty in a close friendship of mine. This person and I have been friends for about eight years and just in the last six months, things seem to have gotten pretty challenging.
In fact, the other night, I sat on the floor with my back to the wall just really confronting whether or not we could still be friends. I thought about how I’m no longer sure if this person even enjoys spending time with me. And I dealt with ALLLL the different issues that come up for me when a relationship feels troubled.
And I cried. A lot.
I’ll tell you, there’s something about just making time to really go into all those stories and wounds and hurt places inside that really helps me to get back to reality.
And here’s my reality: Why am I asking ANYONE else to validate me?
If I’m feeling unhappy because someone doesn’t seem to like me at the moment, I’ve given them permission to decide whether I’m good enough, funny enough, caring enough…just enough!
That’s not anyone else’s job but mine. So I took it back. This friend’s opinion will always matter to me, AND it’s not healthy for my heart to try to feed off of it. I have to feed myself.
And wouldn’t you know it? Ever since I took back that responsibility to validate me and gave it to myself, that friendship seems to have recovered. My parts and my heart are relieved. Life feels much simpler and friendlier to me this way.
(For those of you reading this, I must confess…this is not my first time having this realization. I have it again and again and again. And obviously there are times when I forget it. We’re all human and we all forget these deep things we know. I, for one, forgive myself for this.)
I help people struggling with self-esteem and body image issues. 
Rachel, This seems like radical self awareness plus extrodinary responcibility to me. I am not sure why you would loose clients over it. I would speculate that perhaps victem\perp\witness was shaping their consciousness but that would be my own projection. It is interesting to me that in this story and in you tweet about it is the validation theme. More opportunites to practice the cycle will emerge as long as we need to learn those feelings in the soul school..
Love you, rl
Such an interesting point, Rachel Lyn!
I love that one of my very good friends here is pointing out that I tweeted about this blog post because immediately following publication, several of my blog followers unsubscribed.
And I tweeted and Facebooked about it, partly because I wanted more feedback about the post. But isn’t it funny that I’m seeking outside validation about…a post about not seeking outside validation.
That’s awesome.