Do you ever wonder if you are you settling for way less than you deserve? Or do you know it in your bones but cant bring yourself to admit it?
I have a friend and bless his heart for all intents and purposes he is a good guy but when it comes to dating women he has the tendency to take advantage of a good thing when he’s got it. Seeing things from his side of the fence has opened my eyes to how much women will put up with when they don’t realize they deserve and can have so much better in a partner.
When I see the women he dates collectively I see a common theme; They are so insecure and so they think he is the best they will get and in turn they put up with his less than stellar bs over and over again.
Let me be clear for his sake, he is a Great person, just boyfriend wise he has some stepping up to do.
Do you know what I see in these women? I see my self, my old self. My self that would make excuses and exceptions. My self that was living in my head and believing in the awful things people had said to me over the years about what I did and did not deserve. My beliefs I created from what I saw in the world around me.
On the flip side what I see in him is a very insecure guy with a big heart who is afraid to love and so he finds his strength in the weakness of others. It works both ways and two insecure people is a recipe for disaster but inevitably it is usually the recipe that is mixed up the most since like attracts like. It is hard for a very insecure person to be with someone who is really secure and vice versa.
Conversely, having insecurities does not always mean we date assholes or men who are emotionally or physically unavailable. Your insecurities may have you dating the best guy on earth, but whom you are lacking a real intimate, spiritual or intellectual connection with. So many people stay with someone they feel comfortable with because they fear, again, that they can do no better and that this is the best there is.
NO.
Here’s the good news ladies.
The strong, capable, deserving, whole, healed, loving being you are is not who is dating these men.
Your insecure ego that keeps telling you that you are not enough, that you wont find better, that he can change, that you deserve this and only this, that he needs you, that there is worse out there , that there is no better out there, that you can’t possibly dream bigger because fairy tales are a hoax- that is who is dating these men and that is not real.
If you want real, true, lasting love you will not find it from a place of insecurity.
You have to get real with yourself. You have to ask. “Who am I?” and define your values and dedicate your life to them. You have to dig into those limiting beliefs that have been bestowed upon you and you have to uproot them and change them.
You have to get secure in exactly who you are as you are right now and let go of anything that is not your truest, most authentic self.
It seems scary, you will have to let people go. You will find yourself attracted to a completely different type of man, one who honours, values and respects you because that is what you deserve and that alone can be scary. It is unfamiliar, out of your comfort zone. But it is where the magic is. There is no magic and excitement in settling for people who treat you like shit just to appease their own insecurities, which in turn only fuel yours.
If you have been afraid to dream bigger, to want more, to upgrade then now is the time!
You can’t make someone love you, but you can put the effort it takes to try back into loving yourself.
I will admit there is something romantic, beautiful and exciting about finally winning over the heart of someone you once didn’t stand a chance with. There are times when this works out well for all involved, but most of the time it leaves one- or both feeling defeated, unworthy, inadequate and heartbroken. Some people are just not meant to love us the way we deserve but it doesn’t mean we aren’t deserving it just means they are not our people.
When you try for something so hard that doesn’t show many signs of ever working you not only lose the relationship itself when it ends but you lose the feeling of victory for the effort it took to gain it in the first place. This alone is tough to come back from.
This doesn’t mean never try for something or don’t give the best you have. There is a difference between trying to make someone love you and just showing someone what is so lovable about you. If you have to put everything you have into convincing someone you’re worth it, you’re lovable and deserving then chances are if they don’t see it they most likely never fully will and you’ll spend a life time of energy keeping them convinced. This is also extremely unattractive and will more than likely push people further from you than draw them in.
You teach people how to treat you and if you show them that they can expect you are ALWAYS at your best, that you’ll bend over backwards for them, that you’ll never say no, you’re always available then that is what they’ll learn to expect and when the reality of life hits you may just find yourself alone to deal with the tough stuff because they didn’t sign up for that. They signed up, if at all, for being bent over backwards for, worshipped and adored and won’t take any less and while we could all use much of this in our life, there must be a healthy balance.
You do not need to convince someone to love you. You cannot make someone see what they don’t already see and why the hell would you want to? Love doesn’t have to be hard and exhausting and heartbreaking every other week. In fact it absolutely should not be. Sure there will be ups and downs in relationships but most important is to know without a doubt that you won’t be riding alone when the going gets tough.
Use the energy it takes to show someone else you’re worth it to love on yourself. Show yourself the love, devotion and worship you are so willing to give to someone else and surely someone will come along and love you just as you want and deserve because you will have taught them how by the example of how you treat yourself.
Often we hold on to people not so much because of who they are, but because of who we are when we are with them;
certain people have a way of bringing out a long forgotten, buried or untapped side of us. The universe makes no mistakes in putting the people on our path that are necessary for our evolution. Some come for a long time and some only come for a short but otherwise meaningful time and either way they are both important. But if we are so attached to only one outcome then we might just miss the lesson altogether, suffer and find that the same lesson reappears ending in heartache once again until we finally learn what it is we are meant to know.
If you are anything like I was then you prefer to learn the hard way. The drawn out, recurring scene with different people type of hard way. I have since learned that resisting the reality of situations that are not serving my highest good is just prolonging the inevitable and keeping me stuck in a place that never feels good and so letting go when the lesson is complete is my new way of doing things, so much more time and heartache is saved this way.
Years ago, in a somewhat whirlwind time in my life, I met someone whom I fell for instantaneously – even if I avoided admitting it for the first couple of hours. I was dangerously drawn to him like a moth to a flame, he was so wild and free, a quality I admired and wanted to embody. But it didn’t feel so dangerous because he seemed to feel the same way, at first.
He brought out my wild, carefree, reckless abandon side. A side that made me feel like a teenager again, a side I liked perhaps because my teenage years were rather rocky and this felt like a do-over. He made me feel loved and wanted and he amplified my unconditional love side as he was wrong for me in almost every way possible yet my heart and my gut said otherwise. For the first time in a really long time I had no reservations, no fears and no doubts, something I had been missing for so long. He broke down walls I spent years building and even decorating and that made me even more vulnerable and simultaneously attracted to him. We talked about a future, we were hardly living in the moment and yet every moment felt like the best moment of my life, at that point.
We didn’t last long at all, weeks really, we crashed and it crushed me for quite some time (an entire year to be exact). I could not for the life of me figure out where I went wrong, how I fell for someone so completely wrong for me, how I was so blind, how he could walk away so easily and why, if he made me feel so alive in every way, did we have to die.
It has taken me years to navigate my way around these questions, not only about that particular event but about choices we make and feelings we feel about certain people in general, a quest I am sure will never quite end as human behaviour in relationships is the most fascinating to follow.
I spent the years following that fall on a long spiritual journey within to walk my way to these answers and truly understand them entirely. I learned what I wanted and no longer wanted. I knew now how I wanted to feel – alive, excited, ready and I learned that even if one flame dies it does not mean that another flame cannot be sparked again. In fact, when someone lights a flame within us that has been out for quite some time, it is nothing if not a reminder that the possibility of igniting that flame again does exist and it can keep being re-lit until someone comes along who is ready and willing to keep feeding it oxygen.
I learned how little I had been valuing myself, how I had reacted in the days and months following the demise of that relationship and how little I had shown myself respect, compassion and forgiveness. I realized what a terrible match we were but that it was so necessary to see where I was under valuing myself, in a big way and who and what really deserved my energy and attention.
I realized that to feel that “aliveness” again I would have to embark on journey’s that fed my soul instead of waiting for someone else to come along and do it for me.
People come along to be mirrors for us, to show us what is possible for ourselves as we see it and admire it in them, attaching to the person them self is rather unhealthy, instead we are better off to see what it is we love & admire in them and start to uncover those qualities in ourselves. In doing so we then become whole and no longer feel the need for a partner, at which time we can be fully open and energetically attractive to the right person for us, whom we can enjoy without expectations.
It is a blessing to meet these people who bring out a side in us we haven’t seen yet or that has been buried inside of us for many years as they come to uncover a layer that we no longer need to keep on. If these people cannot stay in our lives because they are not the best match for us it does not mean they were not necessary. We are best to express our gratitude for the lesson and the expansion and allow them, and us to move forward with this new found layer of us, that is particularly awesome!
Have you held onto someone because of how they made you feel, or act even if they weren’t right for you in so many other ways?
Comment below or send me an email with your own insight: info@janineaf.com ♥
Music is the #1 thing that got me through so many heartbreaks. As a poet and a writer words are medicine to me. I would open the browser on my phone while I was at work when my heart was aching and google song lyrics just to help me feel better, and it worked.
Somewhere someone out there has been through exactly what you are currently going through and they put their feelings into words likely for their own therapy but inadvertently to help you too!
When I used to go through a breakup my go to songs usually went from super sad songs that I would just curl up in a ball and cry to, to angry songs to uplifting, powerful songs that made me feel like a breakup bad-ass.
When we go through a breakup we are experiencing a loss, a loss of a future we envisioned, a loss of a partner and at one time best-friend and a loss of the normal life we were just living. Grieving is a very natural part of the breakup process and while like all grief there is no time limit on how long you can feel it for it is equally important to keep moving forward in life even if it is little tiny baby steps.
Having a kick-ass playlist to get you through these tiny steps can make it that much more easier and bearable!
Here are 5 of my fave songs to add to that list that go from heart felt and slow to kick-ass empowering. ♥
I hope these songs brought a little peace to your heart and some movement into your body.
Remember that even if it feels like it right now, you are not alone. If you need to chat hit me up with an email: info@janineaf.com and for more soulful support come on over and join the Heartbreak to Healing: Love Liberation Queens .
When a relationship ends it is not unusual to spend a lot of time going over the details in our minds, with our closest friends or even with the person we were just in the relationship with trying to get answers as to what went wrong, how we thought it was so right and why, for goodness sake if we loved each other, are we leaving each other? It can be so difficult to understand why if two people love each other that the relationship would have to end. When our hearts are broken it is in our nature to start to recall only the good times, the moments that made us happy. Our hearts are longing for this connection again and looking for any way to cling to hope and help us feel better if only for a moment. We dismiss the reality of how bad it truly was, we forget the fights, the arguments, how disrespected we were, we forgive the cheating, the abuse, the lies, the shortcomings because we know they didn’t mean to, we know they want to be better and do better, we know they love us but just have a hard time showing it sometimes.
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