Am I Ready for a Relationship?

Asking yourself the question, “Am I ready for a relationship?” indicates an internal wisdom. Most people don’t consider the importance of this question and therefore struggle with dating, and often breakups. 

If we aren’t prepared for an actual relationship, no matter how much time, energy, and even money we might put into our dating efforts, we won’t find the relationship within which our heart feels “at home”. Quite often people think they’re ready, or at least want to be ready. Yet, after a series of painful experiences they start to wonder “what’s wrong here?” 

The sooner you ask the question and answer it honestly, the less heartache you’ll experience.

When someone has the courage to look within at how ready they are for a relationship, most will find a combination of past resentments, walls of protection, self-doubt, insecurities and mistrust that combine to create a consistent internal saboteur that thwarts our well-intentioned efforts to recreate love. However, once these sabotaging patterns and habits are seen, we can set a path to clearing out that so-called “baggage” so that we are truly open and available for loving and being loved. 

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There is nothing wrong with you

When you choose to look within in this way, when you choose to ask if you are ready for a relationship, the good news that you can count on is that nothing is wrong with you. Truly. Too many people actually start to believe they are somehow inadequate or incapable when it comes to love and relationships, but that’s far from the real truth. We, as humans, are designed for love. It’s necessary for our survival when we are young, and for our happiness as we move into adulthood. To be clear, a romantic relationship is not necessarily for us to be happy, but an experience of love is. And, you lack nothing when it comes to your ability to love.

With that said, it’s no wonder many of us aren’t ready for a relationship. Rarely were we taught the ins and outs of having a good relationship. We weren’t taught how to have conscious conflict. No one showed us how to mend an aching heart or told us the importance of conscious endings. Nor were we told that if we end one relationship and simply trying to “move on” taking our hurts and patterns with us, that we’ll actually cause more pain. When we fall into this repeating pattern, relationship after relationship our habits and hurts have a compounding effect. We hurt more and we can be sure the answer to the question, “Am I ready for love?” is no. 

But that you can change. None of your past experiences happened because you were flawed. The sooner you can know that in your heart, the sooner love can live there too. 

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How to be ready for a relationship

If you desire a heart-to-heart, body-to-body, soul-to-soul connection, then preparing yourself for that relationship will benefit you greatly. 

If you truly want to meet, date, and eventually marry your soulmate, if you want to build a deep, intimate, passionate relationship where the love lasts, then you must look for the deepest and truest answers to the question, “Am I ready for a relationship?”

First, let’s consider the common approach and what you don’t want to do when it comes to getting ready for a relationship. 

Many go searching for dating advice, tips for being more attractive, even suggestions for creating more polarity through masculine-feminine energy, yet those won’t do any good in the long run, if your inner protector is more committed to staying comfortable and safe. 

Yes, we can find a sense of security in an intimate relationship, yet soulmate relationships are rarely comfortable. By design, soul love is meant to evolve our souls, which means they are also designed to show us all of our barriers to love. 

Looking honestly at the ways we are not available for, or actually block, love is rarely fun. It is, however, worth it because on the other side creating a deep soulful relationship will take our breath away and leave us in wordless ecstasy time and time again.  

So, understanding how to be ready for a relationship means, in a nutshell, that you look within to see if your heart, your mind, your body, your being, and your life is open and available for another soul to walk in and share it with you. Said another way, as Rumi said, 

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it”

Rumi

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Am I ready for a relationship if I don’t feel happy?

Before we go into a full exploration of how to know if you are ready for a relationship in the next section, let’s explore an important and often misunderstood prerequisite for creating a satisfying  romantic relationship.  One of the most common misconceptions about relationships and one of the reasons relationships fail is that we think finding a romantic partner and building a lifetime relationship will make us happy. Yet, it doesn’t work that way. So, one of the most important things we need to consider when asking ourselves “Am I ready for a relationship?” is actually asking “Am I happy?”

As you’ll see, if we don’t have access to our own happiness before we get into a relationship, no matter how much we might believe finding a relationship will make us happy, committing to a romantic partner does not bring you happiness. It can’t. It can’t because if we weren’t available for and connected to happiness before meeting that person, we won’t suddenly develop that capacity just because they appeared in our lives. Actually, even the strongest and most well-fitting relationships, especially those with soulmates, have the capacity to bring as much challenge and hurt as they do to bring happiness. 

Relationships are not the source of happiness. 

~Joanna Shakti

This is why knowing how to be ready for a relationship includes feeling happy, confident, and whole within yourself. It is that inner strength, and yes that often misunderstood thing called self love, that allows you to navigate the ups and downs of soul love and sustain it over the years. 

Yes, relationships can absolutely enhance happiness, as long as it already exists within – and is expressed by us. But relationships can’t create lasting happiness where it didn’t already exist. 

Therefore, we need to be make-happy-able. We need to be connected to our internal joy and fulfillment before we seek love. 

Fortunately, when we are connected to and aligned with our joy, that happiness amplifies our attractiveness and hence our ability to attract our soulmate, a partner who feels like an extraordinary fit for us. Happiness begets more happiness. 

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How to know if you are ready for a relationship

Now, let’s get even more specific. We know happiness is essential and it alone isn’t the only way to evaluate the answer to “am I ready for a relationship?” 

To get a clear understanding of your readiness for a relationship, in addition to considering your capacity for happiness, answer the ten questions below to see if you are ready for loving soul-to-soul..

You will benefit the most from this these questions if, as we discussed above, you are willing to be a bit humble and a lot honest with yourself. The more you see what’s in the way, the more you can change it, and the faster you can create what you truly desire. 

That openness to self-inquiry  is not always easy, but the alternative of staying blind to the saboteurs can create much more pain, and even leave you feeling powerless. Wisdom is power. If you acknowledge something in the way, you are empowered to do something about it, getting help if you need it. 

Answer these questions to discover “Am I ready for a relationship?”….

1. Is your sexual essence turned on or is it in neutral? Your sexual essence based on your authentic combination of masculine and feminine energy is the secret to chemistry, attraction, and passion. 
2. Are you in love with you?  Do you accept yourself as you are? Do you feel worthy and deserving of love? Do you honor yourself? If not, self-abandonment may be the #1 destroyer of your future relationship.
3. Do you have a clear vision of the relationship that you want to create?  This is not a list of the qualities that your ideal partner has. This is a description of what you want to experience in that relationship and why that relationship matters for you. It even includes who you are being in that relationship. (Who you are in relationship? Who your partner is?  Your must haves?  Your deal breakers? Even your “bonuses”?)
4. Is your heart open?  Which means, have you let go of the baggage from the past, including all heartache, resentment, anger, bitterness or grief?
5. Are you willing to be authentic? Which means, are you willing to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, right from the beginning? Are you willing to allow all of you to be seen and known – the good, the not-so-good, and even the ugly? (In other words, are you willing to tell the whole truth, from the beginning? Especially about your desires – or not – for kids, marriage and sex.)
6. Are you willing to be rejected and heartbroken? You simply can’t find love if you’re not.  Otherwise your walls of protection block rejection, hurt, and love.
7. Is your life shareable? (Women, that’s means happiness comes frequently for you.  Men, that means you have – or are seriously getting – your life in order.)
8. Do you have space for a partner in your life? Is there space in your life, in your home, on your calendar, in your heart, for a partner?
9. Are you active socially?  If you’re not out there connecting – you can’t connect with anyone… dates aren’t delivered. Do you regular make plans to be where others will be and follow through with those plans? If you’re social plans and activities are focused on where you’ll find a partner over what you truly enjoy, you’re efforts to find love may fail you. 
10. Are you committed? There’ll be ups and downs in dating. There’ll be challenges in love. Are you in? Are you willing to stay the course no matter what? (There will be ups and downs in dating.  There will be challenges in love.  Are you in… no matter what?)

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If you answered yes to each of these questions, then you are most definitely ready for a relationship. Go for it.  Get out there.  Write your profile. Smile.  Enjoy being you.  And, watch love appear.

If you answered no to a few, or even most, of the questions, that’s actually good news. Now you know. You no longer have to wonder why things are difficult or don’t work no matter how much effort you put into it. 

Now you have the possibility to do something about it. You know the problem is no longer “out there” and hence outside your control.  Knowing what’s happening in and for you gives you massive power to have a different experience when it comes to dating and relating – an experience you truly want to have. 

You now have the chance, and the choice, to clean up and prepare your space for a love greater than what you can actually imagine right now while the barriers and saboteurs remain in place. 

You are encouraged to do whatever it takes to open yourself to and attract the extraordinariness of Soul Love. 

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Since 2006, highly conscious men and women, with a commitment to extraordinary relationships, have chosen Ecstatic Intimacy to find and cultivate Soul Partnerships from their bedrooms to their boardrooms. Ecstatic Intimacy believes in coveted relationships, for all. 

You too, are invited…