🌻 **Know Your Why:

Choosing Love Without Losing Yourself**

By Lady Flava

Before we talk about dating, commitment, or building a life with someone, we need to talk about something deeper:

Why are you choosing this person?

What do you honestly need?

And what level of emotional and physical safety does your spirit require?

Most of us jumped into relationships before we ever knew ourselves.

We loved from survival, from loneliness, from habit, from hope.

And that’s how settling begins — not out of weakness, but out of being uncentered.

A relationship should add peace, not trauma.

🌿 Know Your Why

Your Why is the foundation behind every yes and every no.

Your Why cannot be:

loneliness fear of starting over pressure validation rescuing someone hoping they’ll change

Your Why must come from:

who you are what you value how you live what you truly require for safety, peace, and joy

When you know your Why, you stop letting tiredness make decisions your spirit must later undo.

🌿 Know Yourself First

If you don’t understand you, you will keep choosing partners who activate your unhealed places.

Be honest about:

your patterns your wounds your triggers your communication style your boundaries your emotional capacity

When you know yourself,

you stop confusing chaos for chemistry

and caretaking for love.

🌿 Emotional Safety Isn’t Optional

If you can’t:

tell the truth be vulnerable have a disagreement without fear express your needs without punishment sit in silence without tension be yourself without being judged

You are not emotionally safe.

Emotional safety means you don’t walk on eggshells.

You don’t shrink.

You don’t carry their moods like it’s your job.

You don’t lose yourself trying to “keep the peace.”

🌿 Physical Safety Is Non-Negotiable

Your body knows before your mind does.

Physical safety is:

not fearing anger not being grabbed, pushed, or intimidated not feeling unsafe in their home not feeling your chest tighten when they approach not feeling pressured sexually or emotionally

If your spirit pulls back around someone — listen.

That is intuition trying to protect you.

🌿 Know What You Need — Not What You Wish They’ll Become

Be real with yourself.

You need:

consistency honesty emotional maturity reciprocity self-regulation respect peace

Hope is not a strategy.

Potential is not partnership.

And a project is not a partner.

🌿 Know What You Will Not Tolerate

What you tolerate becomes your life.

You should never sacrifice:

your peace your safety your dignity your goals your boundaries your identity your future

Love should build you — not break you.

🌿 We Settle Too Often

We settle because we’re lonely.

We settle because we’re tired.

We settle because we think time is running out.

We settle because we’re caregivers.

We settle because we want to be chosen.

But settling is the fastest way to abandon yourself.

The real relationship begins the moment you decide:

“I choose myself first.”

When you know your Why,

when you’re rooted in your worth,

when you protect your emotional and physical safety,

when you stop negotiating your values —

You stop settling.

You stop shrinking.

You stop attracting chaos.

And your spirit finally gets to breathe.

And let me be clear:

This truth isn’t just for women.

It’s for men.

It’s for transgender, nonbinary, genderfluid —

for anyone navigating love, identity, healing, or partnership.

Everyone deserves emotional safety.

Everyone deserves physical safety.

Everyone deserves to know their Why

before they give their heart away.

— Lady Flava