Relationships are a journey. I believe one of the greatest and most valuable purposes of relationships is to learn about ourselves.
A breakup can be devastating. Starting the dating process all over again with someone new, just to do it all over again after it ends, can be especially daunting when you’ve just become single again.
But what if the end of one story was a work in progress in the writing of a more important script? In reality, even tough breakups help to write the story of the best you.
Redefining Single Life
Two people can have the same experience (often at the same time) yet define that experience entirely different from one another. For one person, a German Shephard could correlate to a loved family pet that is associated with fond memories. For a different person, a German Shepherd could be associated with a painful experience where that person was painfully bit. The German Shepherd is just a dog; the meaning we give to it makes it good or bad.
We give meaning to things all the time, whether we are aware of it or not. And the meaning we associate to people, places, objects, experiences and relationships dictate how we relate to them. That meaning becomes the subconscious blueprint that our mind stores and recalls when an experience occurs. If we associate pain as the primary meaning to single life – even if that pain is not so much physical as it is mental and/or emotional frustration – we are wiring a crucial experience in our mind as pain. When objectively, the same experience is most valuable (given a new meaning, of course).
New Meaning, New You
No matter how a relationship ends, only we can control how we allow that experience to influence our beliefs. We can only steward what is within us and give from the abundance we possess. The power of new meaning can reward us with something eternally more valuable to give to the right someone when they show up. And they will … when we are ready.
That is what being single again is all about: figuring out the person you need to become to be ready for the person you are meant to be with. To this day, I recall a certain Joyce Meyer message I heard after a particularly painful breakup. Meyer referenced times in her life that she had not learned from her past experiences. As a result, she said she had to “go around the mountain again.” That statement struck me profoundly. I began pondering my own life, and how many times I had to traverse the same mountainous problems again and again because I had not learned the first time.
Better Than Before
If you are single and frustrated, I want to encourage you to try a mindset shift that changed my life. Wherever you stand in your singleness, the path leading to the right someone is revealed a little more every time you take a step toward becoming the right person for them.
Every relationship that fails can reveal how to become a little better than you were before. When you learn from each relationship you have, you’ll be more ready, more refined, more attuned, more confident and more true to the person you needed to be for that right someone to discover you.
When I found new meaning in being single, I felt empowered. I had to learn through many losses, and in the end, it paid off. I prayed many a frustrating prayer in my single days. I had to learn that God was not going to bless me with something that I was not ready for.
I invite you to give your single life a new meaning. I’m not asking you to be content with single life or pretend you don’t want a relationship or marriage. Rather, ask The Lord to help you understand what you need to learn about yourself when a relationship has ended. If you open your heart and are willing to be vulnerable with yourself and God, I believe He will lead you down the path of discovery. And in time, perhaps a very short time, you will be meeting the love of your life.
What could single life teach you if you gave it a new meaning?
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