Do not compromise on self love during dating with vitiligo

In our earlier blog post, we discussed the importance of truly loving yourself before you get into a relationship and love the other person.

Most of us believe that we do love ourselves and Samantha Cox, a confident woman from the US also had similar views until she got a reality check in a hard way after her breakup from a relationship of 2 years. 

Samantha’s beautiful journey through heartbreak will definitely inspire many of the people with vitiligo to not compromise on their self-love and self-worth as they explore dating and relationship opportunities.

Before she met her dating partner, she had begun to gradually accept her vitiligo and feel beautiful with it. It was a work in progress as she was getting transformed from a hesitant, insecure young woman to a confident vitiligo acceptance advocate..

She believes that this newly found self-confidence helped her a lot in her dating success as she discovered her match fairly quickly without much turbulence.

She was pretty open about the vitiligo from the beginning and luckily for her, the boyfriend didn’t seem to be bothered about it either.

So it was like a ‘dream come true’ scenario for her and everything looked so perfect.

During dating with vitiligo, she made an awful mistake

As their relationship grew, her priorities changed and now she would put their relationship above anything else. She started to be more invested in that relationship than her own well being and this really affected her emotionally when her two year long relationship failed.

Although she believed to be independent, but on a subtle level, she was relying on her boyfriend for almost every good emotion and it was a warning sign that she ignored.

In a healthy relationship, your partner would be a major source of happiness in your life, but it does not mean that you rely on that person for happiness.

There is a clear cut difference in both the scenarios.

Your partner cannot be the only source of happiness as you have so much more in your life that should make you happy and confident as well. Such a dependency will be eventually detrimental to the relationship as well as you as an individual.

Simone started to associate her self-worth with her relationship and would seek his validation to feel worthy and good enough. While it’s true that a validation from our partners makes us feel good, it should never be the final say in our life.

Due to this over-reliance, her vitiligo acceptance started to diminish as she stopped investing in herself and doing things that promote self-love.

She was like ‘I don’t need to do anything about vitiligo because my soulmate doesn’t care about it.’

So, whenever she would feel low or marginalized because of vitiligo, she would assure herself that at least she has a partner who loves her and finds her beautiful.

Whenever she would be stared at or asked questions about the white spots, she would share her emotions with him seeking reassurance that he loves her for who she is and she doesn’t need to care about those people.

In short, her boyfriend became her entire strength and support system as if she just can’t function without him by her side.

For Samantha, her boyfriend became the one stop solution to every challenge in her life as she tends to forget that she already had this inner strength to face the world with confidence.

She just forgot that she had a life outside that relationship and it also deserved her attention.

Reclaiming the self-worth after breakup

 Breakups are painful in general, but when you are depending so much on your partner, it is even harder.

She was deeply immersed in this relationship and as it failed, she felt completely lost at first and took some time to recover. Eventually, she came to terms with the reality that she needed to move on and open a new page as that chapter of her life is closed now.

Now, Samantha was left with a difficult task of rediscovering her identity and rebuilding self-love.

It was a tiring process and took some serious effort at the beginning but once she gets going, things got easier.

She used this opportunity to undergo emotional detox and reconnect with self and discover what exactly she wants out of this life.

She realized that self-love does not mean that you must love everything that you don’t like in your life. Rather, it is about accepting the present day reality and investing in yourself to become a better version.

Self-love implies understanding your insecurities and fears rather than rejecting them.

She vents out the negative emotions by journaling and started practicing yoga to establish a deeper connection to her inner self. Also, she would spend quality time with family and valued friends on a regular basis. 

I have realized that self-love is a continuous journey and had I practiced it more, I would have never given the key to happiness of my life in someone else’s hands.

I smiled and lived a happy life before he entered my life. So, what happened now? It’s my life and it’s my decision how I am going to live it and I prefer to live with love and joy.

Why it’s easy to love others and difficult to love ourselves

Loving others come naturally to us because from the childhood we got to love our parents and they further teach us to love our siblings, cousins and friends. But rarely we were told to love ourselves.

From the time we were little, we have been taught to be compassionate to other people, animals and the environment, but very little has been the emphasis on self-compassion.

So, loving others is not as much a big deal as loving your own self.

Thanks to social media, we are constantly faced with the society’s definition of beauty as visuals of the movie stars, models, fitness and beauty professionals are everywhere. It leads to a comparison trap as we try to become like them and seek approval from others that we are good enough.

People with vitiligo need self-love more than anyone

Self-love stands for accepting and loving yourself in a realistic and healthy way independently of the opinion of people about us.

A person with self-love will draw confidence by looking inward and doesn’t depend on approval from others.

You have to be your own cheerleader. If not you, who else will be?

To develop self-love, we need to shine light on our imperfections, faults, and dark secrets to understand them better and subsequently embrace them as a part of our lives.

With a chronic skin condition on sleeve, self-love becomes way more important for us than anyone to live life on our own terms without taking the social pressure.

People with vitiligo need to have extraordinary self-compassion because a lot of things are already unfavorable to them in the society.

Connect with your inner being and be the number one priority of your life. Taking good care of all your physical and emotional requirements should come above everything else.

(A staff reporter at DermaCupid.com has penned this article about Samantha Cox’s dating journey as shared by her. Would you also like to share your dating and relationship journey for the community to take inspiration from? Please get in touch with us at support@dermacupid.com)