Everyone brings a fair amount of baggage into a relationship, but you can mitigate how many personal problems you drag into your next relationship by working on yourself before dating. Finding solutions to as many of your internal dilemmas as possible will help your next relationship flow a lot smoother. You should consider the following 3 pieces of advice for a stronger, healthier relationship when you decide to put yourself back out there, into the dating pool.

Learn to Love Yourself

How can you love anyone else if you don’t love yourself first? Self-acceptance is the key to establishing healthy relations with any other individual, whether it’s a romantic relationship or strictly platonic. When we neglect ourselves, we limit our abilities to care for other people. There is a sort of cognitive dissonance associated with a lack of care for oneself. Coming to terms with who you are and the mistakes you might’ve made is the key to a healthy relationship. Forgiveness is vital. Whether you’re struggling with childhood trauma or suffering from addiction, realize that no one is perfect, and there is almost always time to make a change.

Improve Physical Health

A healthy body leads to a healthy mind which, in turn, leads to a healthy relationship. When you put good in, good things generally come back out. Compare the lifestyles and attitudes of people who exercise regularly and eat a healthy diet to those who sit around all day and eat nothing but junk food. When we take better care of our bodies, we typically experience improved moods, more positive mindsets, and feel overall better, physically. Bringing a positive mind and body into your next relationship will significantly increase your chances of success with love.

Work on Your Career

There’s nothing wrong with success. Working on your career could be the best step toward a better you and, therefore, a better relationship. It’s hard to establish yourself in a particular industry or even college while also working on a relationship. Take this time to better yourself and advance your career. In addition to the financial benefits this could bring, a lot of people are attracted to success. You could just find that special someone while, in fact, working on your career. The more doors you open in life, the more opportunities you allow through to you. Sometimes those opportunities are intertwined.