“How do you know Kalvin is the one?”

This is the one question I get asked a lot. For a lot of people, the wedding day has been one of the most important milestones.

Getting married to one awesome guy myself, I have to agree that my wedding day is something I will treasure. My marriage has been so wonderful and blissful – and there is nothing I’d want to change between us.

And yet here’s my advice to all my sisters out there: Stop putting other people or ‘The One’ on a pedestal and start inventing the perfect relationship with yourself – because eventually, the one person you will actually spend the rest of your life with is yourself.

To some people out there, they spend their entire lives looking for ‘The One’. That included me. I used to look everywhere for the perfect man and put romantic relationships as something to be proud of or to look forward to.

If I can be honest with you, even after I dated Kalvin, I still had that kind of mindset for the first few months into our relationship. However, after a while, I realized that putting someone else on a pedestal is the key to a failed relationship. For the first few months of our relationship, as I put Kalvin on the pedestal, I demanded him to be my center of happiness. I expected him to make me happy – and if I wasn’t happy, it was all his fault.

You see, entering a relationship with this kind of mindset sets everyone up to fail. This was the root of all problems without us realizing it. When we expected the other person to meet all our needs and personal happiness, we’d be unhappy most of the time because we looked for happiness outside of us. External happiness is unreliable and elusive; because the truth is, everyone should be responsible for her own happiness. It is to realize that no man, relationship, job or circumstances can happen to us that would make us more whole.

Instead, we are already whole. So the one person we are supposed to build and maintain the relationship with is ourselves. When we look at ourselves in the mirror, we should see someone with whom we should take vows to and that is someone that we will spend the rest of our lives with. It is literally till death do us part. It is literally for richer and for poorer.

Now the question is: How can we build a healthy relationship with ourselves?

It is as simple as: date ourselves – which means get to know ourselves. Get to know what we like and what we don’t like. Get to know what can make us the happiest after a long day. Get to know what can drive us mad and how to prevent it from happening. Get to know what kind of food can cheer us up after a tough day. Get to know the kind of person you are in your best and worst days.

Take ourselves to a movie. Treat ourselves something nice to eat after a long day. Dress up for ourselves, not for him. Buy ourselves skin care products. Go exercising. Eat healthily. Forgive ourselves after a terrible mistake. Speak kindly to ourselves in the mirror and drop the criticizing thoughts. Push ourselves to pursue our dreams.

Understanding a new way of thinking, I changed my perspective. When I changed my perspective and shift the emphasis towards myself, I become more emotionally self-reliant; thus it magically made a better relationship with Kalvin and increased my personal happiness.

So to my dear sister: the one person and relationship that you should nurture the most is yourself. For me, I took a commitment to myself through this bracelet from Cartier. This bracelet reminds me to continuously nurture a healthy relationship with myself and find the happiness within.

Cartier Love Bracelet