Most people spend a good amount of their life waiting for someone else to bring them joy. I am certainly no different. I wanted someone else to make me happy, blamed others for my unhappiness, and sought to fulfill my needs through others. The problem with this is that, it brings on all kinds of problems that you don’t even realize exist. In relationships, especially, if you feel the other person isn’t meeting your needs, you start to build resentment. I spent many years with a low level of happiness because I thought happiness was outside of me, therefore, it was unreliable and elusive. This left me helpless because if other people are supposed to make me happy and fulfill my needs, then what could I do if they didn’t? What then would happen if they hurt me instead? Believing your happiness lies outside of you, completely hands over your power to an unreliable universe and leaves you feeling helpless and out of control.
Over the past decade I have become increasingly more aware that I am capable of self-reliance, interdependence, and therefore freedom from needing others approval or willingness to be who I needed them to be to me. Dropping the built-in idea that we are emotionally dependent on other people in our lives to fulfill certain roles, behave a certain way, or give us what we need, gives us the autonomy to fulfill our own happiness.
The first step is to gain insight into yourself … are you emotionally dependent? You need to take a good, honest look at whether you are waiting for the people in your life to give you what you need before you will allow yourself to be happy. Here are some questions you can ask yourself …
Are you looking for a romantic partner to make you happy?
If you have a partner, do you look to this person for love, sex, support, reassurance or validation?
Are you upset when your partner doesn’t react in the way you wanted or doesn’t meet a need?
When you’re alone, do you feel the need to fill the loneliness void with a distraction? Are you always on your phone when you are alone?
Do you complain a lot about other people? Get angry or upset by the things they do?
Is your relationship the center of your world? This includes relationships with your kids.
Do you get bothered if your partner does something that doesn’t include you?
Do you get jealous?
This is certainly not a comprehensive list of questions to ask yourself, but if you see yourself in a few of the questions above, read on.
Of course, knowing this about yourself doesn’t mean you are a bad person. It’s not meant to encourage you to see more clearly into yourself, rather than shame you or create negative self-thoughts. We all suffer from these types of issues in one way or another. We all seek to have healthy, intimate, and fulfilling relationships and knowing yourself in the most honest and vulnerable way, is the pathway to get there.
We begin our lives completely reliant upon our parents to meet our physical and emotional needs. We innately need their love, protection, support, comfort, validation, acceptance, etc. As adults, however, without having learned emotional self-reliance, we look for someone else to fill our emotional needs. We look for the perfect partner and usually are fairly unsuccessful for a while because we aren’t emotionally independent so we do needy things that hurt relationships – and our partner is likely the same. If we get hurt along the way, we blame the other person for hurting us. If they aren’t there for us, we blame them; if something bad happens to us, we become victims. We struggle to move on with our lives if someone has done something bad to us.
Becoming emotionally self-reliant means we stop looking for happiness form others because this is an unreliable source. Other people will come and go. Other people will be emotionally unavailable for their own personal reasons. It is not their job to fill our emotional needs as they are struggling to meet their own. So, instead of looking for happiness from someone else, we have to realize it’s not out there … it is within us. Happiness isn’t in the future; it’s not somewhere else. It’s available right inside of us, right now.
Here are some ideas to consider as you look for your own happiness …
Sit by yourself, without a device or distraction, for a few minutes. Look inside. Notice your thoughts as they come up. Get to know your mind. See how fascinating it is. This in itself is an endless source of entertainment and learning.
One of my sources of happiness is creating, coming up with ideas, producing something. I don’t need anyone to do those things, and they give me wonder at my own abilities.
I also love learning. It gives me happiness, helps me grow.
Curiosity is a boundless source of happiness for me.
Learn to fix your own problems. If you are bored, fix it. If you are lonely or hurt, comfort yourself. If you are jealous, don’t hope that someone will reassure you … reassure yourself.
Take responsibility. If you find yourself blaming others, tell yourself that the other person is never the problem. Of course, you can believe the other person is the problem, but then you are reliant on them for the solution. If you believe that they aren’t the problem, then you look inside yourself for the solution.
If you find yourself complaining, instead find a way to be grateful.
If you find yourself being needy, instead find a way to give.
If you find yourself wanting someone to help you, help yourself.
Create your own source of built-in happiness. Walk around as a whole, happy person, needing nothing. Then come from this place of wholeness, of self-reliance and independence, and love others. Not because you want them to love you back, not because you want to be needed, but because loving them is an amazing thing to do.