A lot of sad things have happened in the run up to Valentine’s week, but one of them in particular caught my eye by the sheer incomprehension of it. It was the cosmonaut who set out to kill her love rival without batting an eyelid and, according to one news comment, “went from being gloried to sordid in the space of a short drive.”

This lady, Lisa Nowak, an Airforce Captain, the lead communicator for the next space mission, is clever, good looking and very successful. The type we expect to be solidly sensible and law abiding; to be at peace with herself and her needs. Yet, in a moment of madness, she would kill another human being for a man. NASA’s answer to her strange and unexpected action was to say they would review their psychological screening process again. But no amount of checking and double checking will deal with the one most basic need in all of us, one of the four crucial pivots which give us our purpose for living: the need to be valued appreciated, wanted and desired by someone we too value. It is such an essential need because it carries the fear of rejection at its core. And once we are rejected, we feel unwanted, excluded and insignificant, depriving us - in one fell swoop - of the other three attributes we crave. Life just seems to lack meaning after that.

Yet, it is precisely at those sad moments when we need to keep our nerve because everything that happens is designed to test our resolve, to strengthen our weak points, to make us more resilient and to give us that crucial experience for dealing with the next crisis and the next meeting in our life. Imagine if we were completely pampered every day, having everything done for us without even having to think, then suddenly we lost everything and had to start from scratch in a desert miles from anyone. Where would we begin to find the knowledge and resources we need to survive? We might survive, yes, but our lack of experience and weak fibre would not help at all in those first few terrible moments of adjustment.

Or, if we never run in our life and was suddenly being chased by someone wanting to harm us. Any attempt to outrun them might result in a heart attack through lack of practice. So relationships are just that - key points in our life which can either last a long time or be transitory. They give us the essential practice we need in building our emotional maturity and capability. It is our expectations that decide their outcome because we burden them with the need to have permanence and then miss the message they give us when their work is done.

One thing I can guarantee is that this lady lacked self-love. She felt that her happiness would come from another person - the man she loved, so she did not nurture her own resources to be independent and self-loving. Naturally when the rejection came she couldn’t deal with it. But NO ONE can make us happy. They can only enhance the happiness we already feel inside of us or temporarily rob us of some of it through hurt. But when we don’t love ourself, we really don’t love others either, because we become too dependent on their attention, affection and presence. One-sided, in fact. Soon the relationship becomes fraught with jealousy and insecurity, ultimately getting restricted and claustrophobic. Under those circumstances, love is the last thing that would be in that relationship because it would have given way to control and fear. If we have to worry about the constant movement of our partners, where they are going, what they are doing, whether they still love us or not, there is no trust. And where there is no trust, there is only insecurity, fear of what that person might do and the consequences for us and a rapidly reducing enjoyment. We then need to get a life.

When we truly love ourself we bear in mind that we were born alone in this world and, apart from our Maker, we die alone. No one accompanies us. No one is there with us throughout our existence except ourself so we are the most important in the scheme of things. We have to learn to live with ourself 24/7. If we dislike ourself and depend on others to like us to compensate for that, we will never be happy in any relationship. It is too much of a burden for someone else to carry. Once we truly appreciate the wonderful beings we are, we then realise that every person we meet takes us from one point in our life to another. That’s ALL they do. Our parents begin the cycle, then the baton is passed to our lovers and friends, then on to our children and finally back to us in our late years. The longer we live, the fewer people will be there for us at the end. So everyone else simply adds to our store of experience, whether good or bad, while increasing our strength and value. When lovers take their farewell, we should wish them well with confidence, knowing that the next exciting part of our journey with our next guide is just about to begin. After the QUICK grieving and adjustment period, it is time to do justice to every day of that precious life again to complete our purpose and fulfill our potential.

How are you feeling about yourself, your lover or your partner today? If you are at all anxious in any way about where he might be and what she might be doing and how he might be treating you, it is time to take the focus off him/her and begin the process of self-love which will make you even more lovable and loving. Nothing else improves your attractiveness more than simple self-love. It makes you shine in the most desirable way.

Author of: 10 Easy Steps to Growing Older Disgracefully; 10 Easy Steps to Finding Your Ideal Soulmate!; Money, Sex & Compromise and Managing the Diversity Maze, among others (available on http://www.amazon.co.uk). Also the founder of the British Diversity Awards and the Windrush Achievement Awards.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 13th, 2007 at 5:36 pm and is filed under Dating love. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.