I recently shared on my personal Facebook page how I am giving myself one year to truly re-discover myself and my purpose in life.

To be quite honest, when I shared that post I wrote out what I was trying to convince myself of. Now, be that as it may, I re-read what I wrote and now I am fully committed to it. Only this time, I am in a place of complete peace and happiness.

So, to make that post more real and to help bring some fruition to it, I decided to come up with a Date Night Jar list…Remix.

Remix?

Yes. I’m going to spend quality time with myself, and with those whom I have neglected over the course of my relationship. The balancing act was HARD, but now I want to make sure I am caring and loving myself more intentionally.

I also want to be more intentional and caring towards those whom I consider to be great friends. Towards my family. Towards my children.

For those who don’t know, or those who don’t remember, back in the beginning of my blogging days, I posted a Date Night Jar list of 50 date night ideas.

The purpose was to help out my marriage (which it did, DATING YOUR SPOUSE IS SO IMPORTANT AND SHOULD NEVER BE ON HOLD EVER…MAKE TIME TO DATE YOUR SPOUSE!!!). However, my marriage came to an end and I recognize now that a lot of it came from a lack of dating one another (yes, there was so much more to our end than this, but if I want to dig to the deepest root of our falling out, it was definitely this).

But I will take it a step further…. I don’t think it was only a lack of dating each other, I also believe it was a lack of dating myself.

I will be honest, I have never spent time being single and dating myself before I got married. I jumped into a relationship after a tough break up, and got married 9 months after we started dating. Recipe for disaster right?

I don’t regret my marriage. The outcome has forced me to love and grow in so many ways. We almost made it to year 7. Considering how quickly we jumped in, I can only imagine how much further we could have gone had we done things the right way.

By allowing ourselves the time to get to know one another more, and to prepare ourselves for the real fight of making a marriage work.

We were young, underprepared, and fully driven by emotions with no structural foundation. Although we felt what we had worked for us, often times we both would tell our friends to not do things the way we did.

I look back and ask myself now: If I didn’t know how to enjoy my time on my own, how could I expect anyone else to enjoy their time with me?

Yes, some people add to our lives, and that is awesome! However, your happiness should not depend on others. It is all on you. I wish I knew that last part before getting married. I wish I was more self aware of my needs and my responsibility to myself… but I get to fix that now.

The people you surround yourself by, they should be add ons, not the main focus…and vise versa. It is not your job to make sure someone else’s “happy cup” is full to the brim. You can add to it, but you can’t BE it. That kind of balance will never work out.

Hindsight is 20/20 for a reason though. You learn from your mistakes. You learn from others mistakes. It’s why blogs and books exist.. to share those stories, and to help others out.

So take my advice here:

Before you seriously consider dating someone because you are tired of being lonely… date yourself first. Truly date yourself, and respect yourself. Be the example of what it is you want and deserve from others. They will follow suit.

If someone else can’t beat your standard of self love, then, they simply don’t deserve your love.

It really is that simple.

Be intentional with how you spend your time as a single person.

I started this part of my journey a few weeks ago, and the amount of changes that have occurred are crazy awesome. I am so grateful for this change. I look forward to the extra changes I know are coming my way.

So, with all of this being said, let me redirect you to a new Date Night Jar post…

Where you will find a list of ideas that I have written down and tossed into a glass jar as a means to discover how to love myself with more intention every week, date myself by doing something I’ve been wanting to do but never made the time for myself to do before, and a few things that I will be doing with specific friends, family members, or even strangers!

Like my last list (for the times I actually remembered to do it), every week after completing my “date”, I’ll create a post to talk about how that self date went.

So buckle up readers… It’s going to be a long, fun, error filled, and growing based journey.

I hope you enjoy this part of my expansion in life. I know I will.

-Jaz

P.S.

I have been investing a lot of time in reading, listening to podcasts, and watching YouTube videos on self growth, relationships, etc. Here is a fabulous link to a sermon series called “Relationship Goals“. More specifically, “Relationship Goals: Single, Not Alone“. It’s about an hour long, but it has some great fundamentals for those who want to gain a better understanding of dating, singlehood, and living differently from a faith based perspective. ❤