Are You Ready For Love?

Relationships can be tough. They bring two individuals, and different, people together and force them to get along, without losing their individuality. Having strong mental health can prepare you for such a relationship. Having a high self-esteem will keep you from falling prey to co-dependency.
Mental health does not only mean free from mental illness, it is your overall psychological well being. Some characteristics of good mental health are: feeling content; a passion for life, laughter and fun; resilience; being flexible and adaptable; finding balance; and self-confidence and high self-esteem. You must be happy and comfortable in your own skin before you can accept others or hope they will accept you. Contentment in your own skin, in your own life, will increase self-confidence and put a glow on your face. If you can be passionate about life, you can be passionate about other things and other people. Finding a good balance between work, play, dating, love, kids, family, all the things going on in your life can be a challenge, but it will help relieve stress in your life.
Good mental health is important because it is what will get you through the tough times. Life is never perfect and we are all faced with ups and downs. Resilience is what helps us bounce back from those tough times. You face adversity head on, deal with the problems and issues, maybe scream or cry a bit, but then you pick yourself back up and move on. Adversity sometimes leads to change and nobody really likes change. Flexibility and adaptability will get you through those times of change; sometimes it is better just to roll with it.
Everyone struggles with self-confidence and self-esteem, some more than others. Self-esteem is simply defined as how much you value yourself and how important you think you are. Self-confidence is how you live out your self-esteem. If you feel good about yourself and value yourself, you are going to go out and get the things you feel you deserve. If your self-esteem is low your self-confidence is low, you will hang back and let opportunities pass you by. Many times when we are in relationships we start to depend on our partner to build our self-esteem. The truth is that self-esteem, comes from “self” not from other people’s thoughts or opinions. Although we value what other people think, we must first be confident in ourselves and learn not to rely on our partner to give us confidence.
Relaying on our partner to give us self-esteem can quickly turn into a harmful co-dependent relationship. Co-dependency has many means, but when you rely on each other for happiness, fulfillment, and self-esteem you are in a co-dependent relationship. Co-dependency causes you to lose sight of yourself and become immersed in each other. You mental health depends on the other person leading to an unhealthy relationship. Many people enter into relationships feeling like their partner will save them from their low self-esteem and distain for life. In reality, each relationship is doing more and more damage and when the relationship ends, and it most likely will, they are left with lower confidence and broken self-esteem.
It is up to each individual to take charge of their lives. Develop good mental health and a strong self-esteem before you enter into a relationship. Relationships can be hard and you must be prepared mentally. Do not rely on other people to make you happy, instead be happy with yourself and confident that what you have is great. Relationships can add to your overall well-being and help boost your self-esteem, but never rely solely on another person to do those things. Finding your own mental health will make you a stronger, happier individual who lives every day to the fullest.