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By Mitzi Bockmann — Written on Sep 18, 2020
Many people have a hard time believing that being yourself is the best way to succeed at finding love. But what does it really mean to "be yourself"?
You may wonder, why would someone want to fall in love with you? Or maybe you don’t think you're smart enough or hot enough or funny enough. Is it hard to imagine that anyone would ever want you?
You may create someone else you believe will be more lovable, and put that person out there, hoping to find love. You curtail your perceived flaws, hide your true, authentic self, and try to be more agreeable to get people to like you, instead of trying to figure out if you like them.
Unfortunately, not being yourself is definitely not the best way to succeed at finding love. It will sabotage you in so many ways.
Here are 5 reasons why following the advice to "be yourself" is the best way to succeed at finding love.
1. Being yourself is natural.
Being yourself is the easiest thing in the world to do. You have been yourself for decades, and you can do you like no one else can.
Not being yourself takes work. Not being yourself, presenting yourself as someone else, making conscious decisions to do things differently, all require a tremendous amount of energy.
It takes keeping on top of the lies that you might be telling. It takes maintaining a façade of who you are not. It takes hiding things from your new person, all the while doing the very difficult task of trying to find love.
And if you're working so hard at being someone other than who you are, you'll have a hard time finding the love you seek, because it’s hard to do both at the same time.
2. You will doom any relationship from the start.
Imagine you meet someone, and they are everything you hoped they would be. You fall in love, and you look forward to living happily ever after. And then you learn the truth about them. How would you feel?
Let's say a woman meets a wonderful guy, and they have a summer romance. He made her laugh and the sex was great.
She develops hopes for the future, based on what she knew of him when they first met. He passed himself off as a successful businessman with a lot of ambition.
As their time together progressed, however, she noticed that he didn’t seem to have a professional job. He spent his time working on his boat and with her, but he never talked about what he did — and he definitely didn’t have money for dinners out.
She repeatedly asked him about this, because she wasn’t comfortable with him not working and her having to pay for dinners. He was vague and put her off.
Eventually, she got fed up with the whole thing and pulled the plug. He wasn’t the person she thought he was, so she moved on.
So, while you might find love by not being yourself, you won’t be able to keep it!
3. Honesty is the key to any relationship.
One of the most important part of any relationship is honesty. Without it, there is no trust and a relationship will fail.
If you start a relationship off not being yourself, you violate the trust of your partner by not being honest.
When you fall in love with a person, but then something big, like their personality, or their habits, or even what they do for a living isn't what you believed it was at first, you'll feel like they've done bait and switch.
You'll feel that they've sucked you in, presenting themselves one way, when in fact that's just not the case. If this happens, your relationship will be tarnished because you no longer trusts your partner the way you'd like to.
So, the best way to succeed at finding love is by being yourself. Honesty is the basis of every healthy relationship, and thats what you want — a healthy relationship.
4. You will feel better about yourself.
It’s very hard to put yourself out there as someone who you are not and to feel good about yourself. To deem that who you are is not good enough to be loved, and you must therefore be someone else, sucks the life out of you.
How can you, if you are pretending to be someone you are not, feel good about yourself? How can you look yourself in the mirror and not judge yourself?
How can you not walk in after a date and wonder how you are going to keep this up? How will you feel if your person falls in love with someone who doesn’t exist?
And how can you be attracted to someone who doesn’t feel good about themselves? If your self-esteem is low because you aren’t being yourself, you are going to have a hard time attracting the kind of person you want to be with.
Being yourself in a relationship is the best way to keep your self-esteem intact and be attractive to the kind of person you want to be attractive to.
5. You will keep your friends.
This might seem like an odd one, but one of the biggest consequences of not being yourself is that you might lose your friends.
How many times have you, or one of your friends, changed to get or keep a relationship? How frustrating is it to watch them be someone other than who they are for some girl or some guy? How quickly do you get sick of it and stop hanging out with and respecting them?
If you want to keep your friends, I would encourage you to be yourself when you are looking for love. You need those friends. They are there before you meet your person, and they will be there long after if the relationship ends.
I know it’s hard for some people to believe that being yourself is the best way to succeed at finding love.
But being yourself is the best way to find happiness, not only in a relationship but in the world. Being yourself is natural and you are good at it.
You will doom the relationship from the start if it’s based on a lie. You can’t have a healthy relationship without honesty.
Your self-esteem will plummet and you won’t be as attractive to others. Plus, you could lose your friends in the whole messy process.
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Mitzi Bockmann is an NYC-based certified life coach and mental-health advocate. She works exclusively with women to help them to be all that they want to be in this crazy world in which we live. Contact her for help or send her an email.
This article was originally published at Let Your Dreams Begin. Reprinted with permission from the author.