YOU must be enough!

So many of us seek validation from a number of sources - our partners, our family, our work, our friends, an unhealthy addiction to social media. Sound familiar? Often this need for validation is ingrained in us from an early age. I can't believe that I have become the type of women that starts sentences with "my therapist says", but my therapist says that childhood experiences of abandonment and bullying leave individuals with a powerful desire to be liked, to be loved, to be wanted.

As a pre-teen I recall straightening my wild curly hair for the first time to attend a party. A boy, that I had a crippling obsession with at the time, complemented me on the appearance of my now straight hair. My heart raced. I felt sick with dizziness. The exquisite high that his validation induced lasted all weekend. Then, when said boy ignored me on Monday morning when we were back at school, I was devastated. I continued to straighten my hair in vein for the next year. Nada. 

My unhealthy relationship with men really took off during adolescence. I discovered that my first long-term boyfriend had slept with somebody else whilst I was away on an expedition in Northern Thailand. "I just missed you so much". Clearly absence does not make the heart grow fonder. Absence forces the man (bit of an overstatement), the BOY you love to seek comfort in another girls vagina. I sobbed on my Mum's kitchen floor when he left. "I will die without him Mum, I will just die!" I didn't die. Here's what I did do - I spent far too long afterwards dwelling on why. Why wasn't I enough? What had I done wrong? Why didn't he want me? Years of self-deprecation. I promised myself that I would never let anybody make me feel this way again. I lied. 

There have been many, many more tears wasted on men since then, men that were absolutely not worthy of them. The worst of them all, ground me down to a version of myself that would be unrecognisable to those that know me today. "Don't frown like that", "You're not going to wear that into town are you, I have a reputation you know!", "It's not like I was actually going to meet her, they're just messages!", "Why do you always look so depressed, people will think I'm abusing you!" - he was, both physically and emotionally. He treated me appallingly but would always draw me back in, telling me that I was the only woman he wanted. He would tell me I was beautiful and in doing so gave me the validation I so desperately craved, at any cost. I went back, again and again and again, each time a more fragile version of myself. I went back, despite the physical violence, despite the numerous other women. I think, in the words of my most loved TV character, Carrie Bradshaw, I was "addicted to the pain, the exquisite pain, of wanting someone so unattainable."

It has taken me nearly 30 years to think with clarity about love, about men, about validation.  Validation can come from external or internal sources. But, if enough of your external validation comes from attention, it can become an addiction - a dependence on the affirmations of others in order to feel a sense of worth. I have achieved an awful lot in my life and yet I judge my success depending on how happy I am in my personal life. If I don't have a man, telling me that I'm wonderful, I feel far from it. I'm in a family full of wonderful, loving, eccentric women, who would move mountains for me. I have fiercely loyal friends, that will always tell me that my ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend isn't as pretty as I am. So why isn't it enough?

Here's the bottom line, here's the message. YOU must be enough! JUST YOU! You must make peace with YOU! Love YOU! Wear your hair in wild natural CURLS! Fall in love with your face, without the war paint. Be proud of YOUR achievements. Only through the internal experience of self-esteem can YOU ensure that your external validation takes the form of a constructive relationship instead of serial validation-seeking.

And that, my friends, I believe, is what they call a breakthrough!