Hello old friends, new followers, and fellow bloggers-

Happy Friday! Today’s topic of conversation may be a tad controversial but hey… I’m known to ruffle a few feathers every now and then. If we’re gonna talk about relationships and emotional wellness, we must have hard conversations. So, welcome to a hard conversation today!

Once upon a time, I believed the lie.

You know, that lie…that Hallmark and Netflix feed us to convince us that without the presence of a certain person in our lives, we’re gonna crumble. We’re fed this lie all the time. The lie is perpetuated in scripted movie lines such as:

My world would be empty without you in it.

I feel like I can’t breathe when you’re not with me.

Oh and here’s the doozy, My life is incomplete because you’re no longer here.

I, like all of the overly romantic women of the world, would ooh and ahh because I mean who doesn’t want to hear the person they love say those sappy lines. And loves, those lines are SAPPY! Yet, these same sappy words are lies. I hate to break it to you but your life is not going to crumble at the absence of someone you love. It’s not. In fact, to give extensive power to an individual to the point that their presence- make or break you is inherently dysfunctional.

Romanticism without boundaries bred in codependency is the foundation for emotional irregularity and pure craziness.

I know many of you may be saying: “She’s a hater.” I get it. To be a young woman in her late 20s over the rose-colored glasses of love seems to paint me as a bitter old hag. Yet, I have enough relational experience to know that to continue to see through willful ignorance does no one good, especially oneself. Where it concerns the matters of the heart, I believe that we must get back to relishing in sobriety. Let us become sober in our decision-making, refusing to tie ourselves to people all willy-nilly.

Today, I going to share a secret with you:

YOU DO NOT NEED THEM.

You don’t.

• You do not need them to be loved.
• You do not need them to believe in yourself.
• You do not need their attention, affection, or advice.
• You do not need their money or provision.

YOU. DO. NOT. NEED. THEM.

If the person you love, woke up one day and decided not to love you- you will be okay. You will move on. You will love again. You will thrive without them. And guess what? Newsflash: They will thrive without you.

We must stop teaching and projecting this doctrine of co-dependency. We are co-dependent upon people who are not even equipped to love us. We are co-dependent upon people who have no business sitting at our table of decision making. We give way too much power emotionally to fallible people- people liable to fail, to make mistakes, and to cause pain. WAY TOO MUCH POWER. You have the power to do all that you need to do to change the world- all on your own, with no one attached to you.

How do I know? Because some of the leaders we honor: changed the world alone. It can be done. Furthermore, those who chose their partners did not choose their partners because they needed them but rather because they wanted them by their side in this journey called life.

As a believer, I am convinced of one thing, the only person I will ever need is God. That’s it. Everyone else is a gift that I choose personally. I choose my friends. I choose my business partners. I choose my mentors. I choose my significant others. And finally, they choose me. I am capable of doing this thing called life alone, but I desire to have others join me.

We must break this practice of worshipping people, placing them on this God-pedestal- giving them the power of the Divine to shape and mold our lives. We don’t need broken flesh to make us whole, but rather we need a holy God to make us whole. To think otherwise is to sink into the idolatrous narrative of this world.

Unlike the handsome knight in my favorite Netflix christmas movie, my life will not be empty if someone is not in it. My life will continue to be filled with other people, other experiences and other moments. The presence of another does not make or break me.

I know this type of thinking is not romantic. It doesn’t fill one with warm feelings and butterflies. Neither does this mindset create great movie lines to gush over. However, this mindset is healthy and it allows individuals to live freely absent of the presence of whom they believed would be the love of their life.

Loves, all you will ever need is God. Everything and everyone else is a beautiful bonus!

Xoxo,

Simone