Tonight, over pinot grigio with one of my favorite people in this wide world, the topic of relationships arose. While we spoke of our respective experiences, I posited that in order to successfully interact with another person in a loving and sexually satisfying fashion, one must first and foremost love themselves; we must be the partners to ourselves that we hope to find in another. In other words, it's impossible to give yourself fully to another person if you don't already care for, and admire yourself.
In this day and age, we don't need a partner...We can survive on our own. That certainly does not mean, however, that we don't desire the company of another person both physically and emotionally, only that we don't need it...it's therefore important that we are happy within our own skins, that we know how to be alone and be happy as such.
However, my dear friend disagreed with me. He countered my point by saying that, in his experience, the success of a relationship is in no way connected to the extent to which its respective participants love their own selves.

I stick to my guns.

The other day, I was sitting on the Q train. Sitting in the window across from me was my own reflection. To my left and right were other people, all looking across the way, seeing their own selves staring back.
After having acknowledged myself, I returned to my own thoughts, other thoughts...Whatever they may have been.
You know that feeling...when you really like someone...when it's just starting out and you have reason to be excited and they float into your thoughts. That moment...you feel a jumping rush of happiness solely because they exist.
Anyways, it's a beautiful feeling, and that afternoon, sitting on the subway, meandering through my own thoughts, I felt that same sudden rush!
It made me grin and settle into myself, feeling that savory satisfaction that comes with a significant other...And then I remembered...There is nobody in my life right now that in any way fits that description.
So then what does that mean?
Sitting there, wondering, I concluded that it meant one or both of the following things:
That emotion was elicited by my feelings towards myself. Either that or my feelings towards my life...or both.