A woman I interviewed recently had a wonderful piece of advice about marriage and partners.
“That person in your life should enrich your life. Make your life more fun, more awesome, more great. They should make you feel more beautiful than you already do. Not the opposite.”
I love the distinction that it is about enriching your life rather than enriching you. Making your life more great — not making you great. But absolutely making you feel more beautiful than you do. That is beautiful.
And it’s important. So many of the women I interview in their 40s regret staying in relationships that made them feel bad about themselves. You can be a strong, independent woman but a partner that doesn’t at some core level believe you are great or thinks more of himself than he thinks of you will slowly chip away at your independence. Watch out for that and question if that is what you want. One woman I spoke to spent years with a guy that was always comparing her to other women. They had dated a long time and she thought she had invested so much time in him and liked the idea of him, but at the end of the day she left for herself.
“When you are in your 20s there is always the challenge of getting the hot guy but overtime you lose so much of yourself it’s not worth it”
(and ended up with a guy who totally “digs her dish” (another 40-something piece of advice…”he should dig your dish”).