Here's a letter from our reader, Ria, that really summarizes one of the questions we all seem to ask ourselves at one point or another (and some of us, myself included, too many times): How can I make him love me?
Her email:
We are almost going to breakup. How can I make him realize that I was the one he wants to be with and he loves? We've been together for 11 months.
My Response:
Dear Ria,
Yours is just one of hundreds of letters I receive from women asking essentially the same thing. While your words may be different, and your situations unique, what you are asking is really the same thing.
How can I make him see that I’m the one for him?
How can I convince him that he should want to be with me?
How can I prove to him that he should choose me?
We think it’s simply a matter of knowing the right words or actions – some elusive secret – to making him see what we know is best for the two of us, and suddenly everything will be so much better and we can move on to our happily ever after!
It’s what we've been brought up with – the fairy tale.
It’s what we've been told is how we prove our worthiness – by “getting” a man to fall madly in love with us. After all, isn't that our role as a woman? – we ask.
It’s what we've been trying to do ever since our first love didn't quite work out as planned - that first one with our father.
It’s what our culture, the media, the popular dating resources - and the people in our lives who keep asking us why we’re still single and why we can’t get a man? - are all expecting of us.
And yet this isn't the way love is. This isn't the way it happens. This has everything to do with control and manipulation and nothing to do with love in the truest sense of the word.
And so any formula, or secret, or rules of doing this and doing that to “make” someone love you and want to be with you, isn't going to bring you the kind of real love you’re looking for.
In fact, the opposite is true.
When we pretend to be something we’re not, when we follow a script instead of being ourselves, when we put all our time and energy into playing god and pretending that we know best for ourselves much less someone else, we take all the love out of something that we’re trying to put into it in the first place!
If someone is right for you, Ria, this is exactly how you’ll know. He’ll be on your page, he’ll want the same thing you want, he’ll be willing to do whatever it takes to make that happen. You won’t be the only one who wants this to work; so will he! You can’t do this alone; it has to come from him as much as you.
This is how you know!
It’s his lack of commitment that tells you what page he’s on and that’s it’s not the one you’re on.
It’s his lack of commitment that shows you clearly that he can’t do this, that he’s not what you imagined him to be in your own mind, that spells it out so clearly that your best response is to stop hanging on so tightly to someone who can’t give you what you want from him.
It’s his lack of commitment that saves you from anymore heartbreak from any greater investment of your beautiful heart and soul than you already have in him.
It’s the only way so many of us will ever see this for ourselves; because it comes from him, not us. We can’t see it for ourselves, and yet it’s the universe, God or whatever we call it looking out for us and showing us something in the only way we’ll see in the only form we’ll believe.
He’s not the one for you!
I know you want to believe you know better. I know how much you believe he’s the one. But if he were, you wouldn't be asking these questions. You would simply know. Because if he were, he would be there. You wouldn't have to make him see. You wouldn't have to make him be. He would see - and be - all on his own. He would see of his own accord. He would choose to be with you because he would want to be with you!
All of this fighting and struggling and trying to control him and the situation? Don’t fight it. Accept it. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain when you remember you don’t ever want to be with someone who doesn't want to be with you.
And if he gets there? Don’t hold your breath; keep on living your own life and focusing on you and the ones who want to be with you. If he does, you’ll be the first to know.
Love,
Jane
Recent Comments