If it's been a while since you've dated, think of any relationship that requires cultivating, as I draw some parallels. As an aside, I spelled parallel wrong in the 4th grade spelling bee which, at the time, crushed me. I’ve never spelled it wrong since then. Don’t get me started on separate.
Back to dating yourself. Let’s think of your practice as a coffee date, platonic or romantic. Let’s set the scene, you are looking at this other person but you are shuffling around in your seat while they talk, fine tuning what you are gong to say when it’s your turn to share spring your opinion on the topic. Are you actually listening or are you caught up in your own dialogue of self distraction and judgement? Maybe you’re concerned with how you are presenting instead of taking in the person across from you. Does that happen on your mat physically and/or mentally?
Let’s say this relationship is progressing date five, then twelve. The longer you spend time with someone, the deeper you delve into finding out who they are and they into who you are, one good reason why date twelve doesn’t turn into long-term love. Maybe their dark side emerged, jealousy or jumping to conclusions which get harder hide with time and you don’t like who you find there, so you’re out! Or worse yet, you accept those qualities and let your boundaries down and allow those qualities to bring you down because it’s easier than starting over or enforcing boundaries.
When you are dating yourself, you can’t just get out. In that moment when you’ve really started to listen and the conversation gets uncomfortable, when you find out something about yourself that you don’t like, what do you do? Do you push it back down and leave the coffee shop, come up with your justifications why, start scrolling social media or do you sit with yourself and address what you are uncovering.
When you hone the relationship you have with yourself, you build the skills for stronger relationships elsewhere. There is so much beauty in dating yourself. You can find out things about yourself and decide, I see this side of me and it is not a quality I want to feed but that I don’t have to deny. It doesn’t make me a bad person. In doing so, ultimately accepting what/who you find there, decide it doesn’t define you and cultivate the qualities that you love without feeling shame in the ones that have been stifled.
Now, in long term relationships/friendships, you know it’s important to continue acknowledging the qualities that make you love someone while also knowing that they are dynamic, evolving beings and they deserve to be seen for that as well. You can love yourself for your great qualities, even for the ones that aren’t, and for the evolution you experience as you get to know yourself better. You can have an acumen for spelling, spell something wrong, then never spell it wrong again.
Every time you get on your mat, sit in meditation, breathe, practice your yoga, you have an opportunity to fall in love with yourself.
“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection” – Buddha