Whoopi Goldberg wrote a book in 2015 titled “If Someone Says ‘You Complete Me,’ RUN!: Whoopi’s Big Book of Relationships,” and it has stuck with me ever since.

There needs to be growth both in and out of a relationship, and you can not grow completely without having both.

There is a certain point of growth you must reach before getting into a serious relationship. You must reach a good understanding of yourself before even thinking about trying to understand someone else.

In fact, if you have not done the work of understanding yourself emotionally and sexually, you will enter romantic relationships from an emotionally dependent place, according to Psychology Today

If you haven’t found yourself, you’ll be looking for what you lack more than what you want when looking for a partner.

Thinking of Goldberg’s book, the part of the title that stood out to me was  “If Someone Says ‘You Complete Me,’ RUN!” because no one would ever think of that saying being a red flag. But it really can be.

How can an individual let someone else complete them?

Completing someone is a huge power to have and give.

Imagine giving someone that much capacity over you as a person, where they are needed for you to feel whole. That will definitely change how you treat your significant other or how you are treated.

Having the feeling of someone completing another person will have them depend on someone so much that they could treat them like dirt. That will make a person still stick around because they don’t want to lose that feeling of completion. That person will stay in a toxic relationship and never realize that they are good by themselves.

People need to find out how to love themselves first before learning to love another person.

With all that said, there is growth that needs to come from being in a relationship as well. But growth can’t come from any relationship though, it has to come from a GOOD relationship.

In this generation, a lot of people will let Twitter threads and youtube couples determine what that is.

Lifehack.org says “A good relationship is like anything you love, you must be committed to learning, to growing, and always looking to improve.” A good relationship can really give a lot of growth as a person.

It can teach people what they really want in a partner and how to build on themselves with the help of their boyfriend or girlfriend while they do the same for them. Through helping someone that you love to grow, you will be growing yourself.

The growth that a person get from someone else is also essential when someone is growing as a person as well as growing by yourself. People feel like they can’t grow with someone else because they won’t be able to focus on themselves while sharing that focus with another person, and while that isn’t wrong it isn’t all the way right either.

Learning to share focus is another part of growing, if someone is always focused on bettering themselves then they won’t really learn how to love someone else. Relationships aren’t rainbows and buttercups but the right ones can be worth the effort.

It’s a new generation with new standards and morals. People rush into relationships think that they are ready when they are really not, or people are scared of relationships and won’t even give it a shot

I think everyone needs to grow separately and with someone else to really grow as a person. I hope that more people take time to grow right and with the right person.