Do you find yourself compromising who you are for someone you ‘love’?
I’m going to speak DIRECTLY from my heart here….because we women really need to get out of pain and get with it!
If you answered ‘yes’, then my second question is why? Do you think you can change him so that you no longer have to compromise being who you are? OK, if that’s the case, then why were you attracted to him in the first place? Surely it’s not your job to change anyone – is this not a purely selfish act that can make only you feel good? After all, who made ‘you’ right and ‘him’ wrong?
Really think about this for a second…. Will he ever really feel good about himself within the relationship, or will he ever feel good enough for you if you spend your life trying to change him? How would you feel being with a man who constantly made you feel not good enough by trying to change and fix you? Does this not make you feel awful, useless and literally not good enough? Arghhhh! Personally, I’d be asking why on earth he wasn’t with someone more like the person he was trying to change you into….
So, if you’re compromising who you are, then again, why? Let’s look at this from another perspective. If you’re keeping up an act of trying to be who you think he wants you to be, then who is he really in the relationship with? You’re likely to feel permanently exhausted and very resentful for not feeling that you’re allowed to be yourself? So let’s get this right…. you’re being fake, then resenting him for it….. because you think this is what he wants….. and you’d rather be in a painful, fake relationship than no relationship at all… and all because that occasional feeling of love between the bouts of pain is so pleasurable…. arrrrggghhhhh!
How utterly exhausting for everyone…..not least of all, you…..
So, how about this instead? You just be yourself (and love who you are!) and allow him to be himself (and love him for it!)… and accept that if neither of you can feel this way in a relationship, then it simply isn’t right for either of you anyway. So wouldn’t you be better moving on rather than trying to change who you are for the sake of being in a relationship? But no, we cling on for dear life hoping and praying that someday he’ll change (and he may be doing exactly the same with you!)…
It’s all so painful isn’t it? So why do we always associate love with pain?
It’s not always easy to accept that we often love our partners far too much in our relationships. We’ve all heard the songs like ‘I can’t live, if living is without you’. OK, well, if you say so, but WOW, how much pain is that! I hear this pain in most love songs nowadays and quite frankly, it’s totally debilitating to listen to, never mind to live out in real life…
True love is not meant to be associated with pain – it’s easy and comfortable to be yourself in a truly loving relationship – you are never second best, nor do you have to fight to be loved, nor do you ever wonder if you’re loved, nor do you ever feel out of love with yourself, or feel like you have to explain yourself away or put your own needs last. In a loving relationship with a man, believe it or not, your job is to love YOURSELF! …. the missing bits, or pain, in our relationships tend to appear when we don’t love ourselves enough, and this attracts exactly the kind of men who will hurt us or want to fix us. In not loving ourselves enough, we actually teach any prospective partner that we need and want to be fixed, and then we spend our lives wondering why we keep attracting exactly the same kind of partners over and over again….. and the answer is, because they are generally the kind of man who will be attracted to us in the first place! Bah humbug!
I know so many people who want to attract a wonderful, loving partner into their lives, and yet they don’t love themselves. But here’s the thing – a person who loves themselves at a 10 will gain absolutely no satisfaction from being with someone who needs fixing – they will want to be with a partner who also loves themselves at a 10.
And ladies, I’m not talking about becoming a completely selfish monster here – all relationships are about understanding, compromise and giving from both sides…. but think about this for a second…. why do most women I know think that loving themselves last and putting their own needs behind everyone else’s is a good and selfless thing to do? Speaking my complete truth here with regard to ALL relationships, not just intimate ones, personally I find it exhausting to be around people who care only about my needs rather than their own and who slave after me as if I can’t take care of myself. It’s really exhausting – there are no other words for it. On the other hand, I adore being in the company of people who love and respect themselves – I know they will always speak their truth with me, always state their preferences, there is no false behaviour – it is a pleasure to be with them. I know they are happy to begin with, that it’s not my responsibility to make them that way, and I know exactly where I stand with them. Always!
So, let’s have a look at your beliefs…. Do you expect to get hurt in your next relationship? Do men always let you down? They really are all useless, aren’t they!! In our line of work as relationship coaches, we hear this every day. Unfortunately, if this is your belief, then this is exactly what your experience of men and relationships will be – I’d even go so far as to say that it will be impossible for you to accept a man who will not hurt you, because YOU will reject him, you really will. Acccepting that kind of love will not fit in with your beliefs about you – this is a fact! To you, he will appear boring because he is not hurting you – there is no pain and no challenge. Sound at all familiar?
A man will only treat you according to how you teach him he can…. if you do not love yourself 10 out of 10 (and many women I know only love themselves at around a 4 or less)… then they need the man to ‘fill them up to a 10′ in order to experience love…. this is why the ‘infatuation’ stages of first falling in love are so mind-blowing, because we feel like a 10 for the first time in a long while, and it feels wonderful!! It becomes an addiction…
This creates so many problems. Firstly, what a burden to place on him! He becomes responsible for YOUR happiness! When did he ever agree to taking that challenge on board? If you have problems loving yourself, then how on earth do you expect him to love you more than you can? You don’t come with a set of rules and instructions. So if you don’t love yourself, know your own needs and are able to fill them, then how can you expect him to, AND make him totally responsible for it? This is tantamount to suffocation… it really is….
In doing this, you’re also always living the entire experience of your relationship in fear – because what happens if and when he doesn’t fill you up to 10? Those arguments really rip you apart, don’t they….?
Not only that, but to him, you’ll always come across as needy, because you’re always relying on him to make you feel good, worthy and loved rather than taking responsibility for that yourself… so your fear will come through very subconsciously in many of your actions, and certainly in terms of trusting him and in believing he loves you. Just think about it for a second – if you’re expecting to get hurt because all men are awful, then you will seek evidence for it everywhere, because if you don’t love you, then you’ll automatically have difficulty believing that he can – you simply can’t understand what on earth he’s actually in love with! So, will you ever REALLY trust him?
And of course, if the relationship ends…. bang! We hit 4 again, or even way below, and it feels utterly terrible – like the world has ended, like we can’t go on, even worse than we felt before he came into our life! And then of course we listen to those love songs that reaffirm how utterly worthless we are without him, causing so much pain……all because we placed so much meaning and expectation on that ‘feeling’ of being filled to a 10…. AND because we took no responsibility for creating it within ourselves…
Is the vicious circle becoming clear?….
It gets worse!
We then really, really begin to believe that we’re not worthy of love because everyone we meet treats us this way, and then…. (yes, there’s even more!)…. we take all this baggage into our next relationship with us (it accumulates!) along with an even stronger belief that all men are bad and will hurt us….
Now of course you know that you literally create your life through your beliefs and expectations. No? Gosh! I thought everyone knew that!
Believe it or not, a person who truly loves themselves at a full blown 10 is unlikely to feel the initial stages of ‘infatuation’ that most people go through when entering into a new relationship (well, certainly not to the same degree)….. simply because they feel this way about themselves most of the time (nice thought huh?) So it’s nothing new for them to experience love, they are not surprised that someone else can love them, they do not place responsibility for their happiness in the other person’s hands, because quite simply, they create this for themselves….
So, instead of going into a new relationship filled with immense grattitude that at least someone likes them…. they concentrate on how the relationship works for them, how real they can be within it, and how good it feels… because they know that being happy and single is better than being in a relationship that’s wrong. In this way, the craving for the feeling of love does not form into an addiction.
This kind of relationship is easy…. it feels easy, it happens naturally, it’s not challenging…. it just slips into place….. perfectly! No drama, no hurt, no pain, no neediness…. No changing each other, just a beautiful, pure acceptance and love of who the other person is… (and yes, he may well come across as boring compared to what you’re used to… what an incredible catch 22!)….
When a woman loves a man too much by either trying to fix him, change him, allowing him to fix or change her, by putting her own needs and happiness last and certainly after his…. then she is teaching him not to value her…. full stop!…. it isn’t even all his fault that he treats her that way, because this is what she teaches him is acceptable because it’s how she treats herself…..(it’s so important to really understand that no one can love you more than you love yourself)….
Only YOU can change this, but you have to fall in love with yourself first.
- You have to love, know and value who you are to take that ‘whole’ person into the relationship – YOU!
- You have to know your own needs, then communicate them to him so that he can share in fulfilling them. (PS. he’s not psychic!) A man will love fulfilling his woman’s needs, because it will make him feel fantastic as a guy. After all, men love being with a happy woman, and if they know they make you happy, then they will be drawn to you like a bee to honey and will want to make you even happier – quite the opposite of how he’s likely to feel if you’re telling him how broken he is by trying to fix him huh!
- You have to completely believe that you are worth loving, but YOU HAVE TO KNOW AND BELIEVE THAT BEFORE YOU CAN EXPECT ANY MAN TO…..
If your man doesn’t feel good about himself, what do you generally do? Do you join him there, worry about him and then spend the day walking on egg-shells? Do you spend your time giving him false compliments in an attempt to buff him up so that he feels better about himself? Ask yourself – is this not actually manipulation, similar to emotional blackmail? Anything that isn’t ‘real’ which is said or done in order to make your partner behave differently is actually manipulation. In doing this, you’re effectively telling him that you feel he’s broken, or not capable of taking responsibility for his own emotions and well-being….
I always hated it when Andy used to walk on egg-shells around me if I was having a bad day… and I hated it even more if he used to join me in my ‘bad’ mood, taking it personally if I felt this way – this made it so much harder for me to come out of, plus it also used to make me feel guilty and responsible for putting him there too!…..arrrghhhh! Sometimes all I wanted was to have an ‘off’ day without affecting anyone else!
Then I realised that if he chose to join me in my mood, it was actually nothing to do with me, it was in fact his choice… so, I’d concentrate only on my own happiness and well-being, and like a weight was lifted, magic and miracles began to happen. Now if I go into a bad mood, he simply lets me get on with it and it lasts minutes – no longer does he join me there or feel responsible for me! YAY.. FREEDOM!!!….I now find myself in great energy a vast majority of the time – we both do – because we allow each other to ‘be’…and it feels GREAT! It took some practise though – when you’re living and working together 24/7 then you absolutely have to understand how successful relationships work and take responsibility for your own emotions, or you’d end up wanting to throttle each other!
I realised that if I was happy and took care of loving myself, and Andy did exactly the same, then it gave us both permission to be ourselves. If he wakes up in a bad mood nowadays, I just let him know that I love him, that I’m here if he needs me (he really loves that, because it gives him so much space)… and I just ‘let him be’ whilst I get on with creating my own happiness…. Phew! What an incredible relief for both of us….
So, after really ‘getting it’ and truly living it…. there is no pretending, no falseness, no attachment, no neediness, no resentment, no drama, no challenge, no mistrust, no fixing, no acting….. just two people being exactly who they are, and loving ‘being it’ together… all the while, being each other’s greatest teachers in self and life…. and bringing out the very best in the other…. Now THAT’S what a relationship is meant to be like!……
And all because two people love themselves…. as well as each other….
- Andy and Di through their journey together
We are going to show you how to love yourself and why where there is fear, love is not and where there is love, there is no fear.
Now we want to make this easily affordable to you. Whether you are new to personal development easily and affordably available, or seeking ongoing support for your journey, this unique holistic approach will provide great insights and progression.
Personal development or Authentic Transformation is a journey – not everyone is at the same point in their journey, not everyone is ready for some of the more advanced concepts… until they have grasped the fundamentals…
Obviously we firmly believe that it does and experience this every day in our lives. Yet, we know it is a contentious subject and not everyone believes it can or does work for them. These very beliefs are in fact the crux of the issue, for what you believe has a huge hand in creating your experience of reality.
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