We know how this works.
No matter how we come to it we’ve already got our answer.
I can’t become this confident, beautiful, radiant woman UNTIL he picks me.
I can’t prove I’m worthy UNTIL he validates me.
I can’t become that woman I know I’ve got the potential to become UNTIL he elevates me.
But this is where we’ve got it so backwards.
He can’t commit to something he can’t see. He can’t commit to something he doesn’t even know he’s attracted to himself. He can only commit to something he can see.
Until he can see you, he can’t commit to you.
Stay with me here.
Is this about him seeing you? Or about you showing yourself so he can see you?
It’s both.
You see, if you’re constantly giving him mixed messages because you’re not yet sure yourself of who you are and what you’re all about and where your boundaries lie, then he can’t respect those boundaries. He can’t decide how he feels about you because you keep moving them.
And it’s more than boundaries.
If one minute you’re telling him one thing, and the next you’re contradicting yourself by what you’re showing him, he’s not going to know who he’s getting or what you require of him. But show him consistency in where you draw your line in the sand, show him what you absolutely refuse to back down on and what you’ve got some wiggle room with, and he’ll learn well who and what you are.
But what if you don’t know? What if you’re so flexible it actually does change from day to day? What if you only know how to be what someone else wants you to be?
What if this is all new to you and you’re overwhelmed at even the idea of knowing where you begin and someone else ends and what is reasonable to expect of someone? What if you don’t know what is reasonable for someone to expect of you?
Then find out! Come on a journey with me to that place deep inside you where the real you lies. Where the you begins, where the you is contained who knows what you can live with, who knows what you can’t, who doesn’t pretend and will never lie to yourself about what you really do know.
He can’t see you until you can see yourself, Beautiful. That’s the first part.
The next part – whether he’s capable of seeing you - is up to him. But there’s no way of getting to that second part if you don’t have the first, the part that you have all the control in the world over. What you show up with. That’s the beauty of you. That’s all you!
And if he can’t see you, if he isn’t capable of seeing you no matter how much you know yourself, know matter how much you show up with knowing exactly who you are, exactly what you have to offer, exactly what you bring to this world, and he STILL doesn’t give you that commitment you’re looking for, that’s your answer.
He’s not the one for you.
Is it really that simple? It never feels that simple.
And what we feel, we feel deeply. It feels so much more complicated than that. It feels like it takes more than knowing one’s own boundaries and limits and lines in the sand.
Yes, there’s more. Because there’s always more when we’re involved. If it were just that simple, we wouldn’t be who we are.
But when we stop for a moment and see this piece, we allow ourselves to look at something different from where we’ve been looking before. And it’s right there, in a different mindset, in a different place, with a different focus – regardless of how fleeting it may be – that we shift and grow and change with a level of awareness we didn’t have before.
Stay with me here. Stay curious. Stay with any new way of seeing for yourself that feels different, even if different feels uncomfortable.
What if it really did come down to this? To you gaining your clarity. To you seeing yourself with the power to influence this man. To change this guy you can’t get off your mind, no matter how hard you try.
You shift something, something else will follow suit. Forget all the overwhelming possibilities that leave you filled with uncertainty and indecision. Pick one thing to get clear on. Just one.
And tell me what it is - what it needs to be – right here in the comments.
Clarity. It’s how we see. It’s how he sees.
I've been with a guy I genuinely love for about 8 months. A few months ago, we went away on a weekend trip, got into a fight, and I told him I didn't think we were working out. I immediately regretted it and told him I was sorry and didn't mean it, and after some anger and discussion that night and the next morning, he agreed that we would stay together. We've had some great times since then (I had my anti-anxiety meds adjusted after that and it made a HUGE difference) but he's never been quite the same in terms of expressing love and talking about the future together. Last night I asked him point-blank if he loves me, and he immediately responded that he doesn't think he's let himself get over me breaking up with him and doesn't know if he sees a future together, even though he loves spending time with me and is satisfied with what we have right now. I told him that I love him but I want to be in love with someone who is in love with me in return and who DOES see a future together. He says he wants to be together... I said that I think he should take a week or so to think it over and decide if he can move past the "break-up" (it seriously lasted less than 12 hours and we were still physically together and talking the entire time) and open himself up emotionally, because if not, I need to move on and find someone I can have a future with.
All of this is to say: it doesn't matter if someone calls himself your boyfriend, takes you out on nice dates, stays in cuddling with you-- on some level, if someone isn't emotionally available, you can tell. I'm grateful that he was honest about how he's feeling and now I'm prepared to either walk away or have a deeper, more emotionally engaged relationship. I'm clear on the fact that I deserve a chance at that.
Hi Jane,
I think you're absolutely correct here on this point. For both people, at the start, you can't read anything into either person's actions or words. I think that is the first thing we are ALL guilt of when getting to know somebody that we really like and think in our heads "Ah, this could be the ONE." I know I was guilt of this.
But as things went along, I would push a little bit more, finding out where Nancy's limits were. So the first thing I wanted was to see more of her, and it started simply enough with seeing one weekend for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. When Monday came around, she told me that we'd seen each other already for three days in a row and that was enough of that (not in a mean spirited way mind you, but letting me know that she needed her own space too). And from there as we spent more and more time together and did more and more things that people when they want to be with one another in a relationship, those boundaries were clearly set in place until such that we reached the point of being in an exclusive relationship and are those thing that were at first "boundaries" just became part of the relationship, if that makes any sense. But they do help to define the parameters of what will become a relationship if both people will respect them and just let things go their own way because as more and more of these so-called "boundaries" are formed, so goes the growth or one person will leave and you'll know it wasn't meant to be. One of the fondest "boundaries" for me was not to interrupt Nancy while she was getting made up in the bathroom before we went out. If I didn't like the amount of time it took her to get ready, I should not interrupt her routine as she put her make up and lipstick on and got her hair ready. Obviously, there is more to it than just that as you know, but this is just another abbreviated example of how "boundaries" just become part of a relationship and the more you have, well, to a certain extent, the better things are going, again, so long as both of you are happy with where things stand.
Thanks for adding to the conversation, Eric. These are great points you bring up here! And it's absolutely how we know if we're on the same page.
Reading your article was a personal breakthrough for me! I finally see the light. Each point makes perfect sense and provided a point of reference out of oblivion to my hiccups in dating. This was the missing piece.
You are truly gifted and in tune with what we need to have and maintain healthy yet rewarding relationships.
All that I can say is : Thank you ?
So glad this came through for you, Nicki. You're so welcome! And I should add, only from having to learn everything the hard way; we get bonus points for that. 🙂
Wow Jane I don't know where to start really, but your article resonates with me, I feel like I still have a long way to go when it comes to getting know who i am and what I really want in life as a whole, I am currently reading "Women who love too much" by Robin Norwood and I must say I see a lot of myself in some of the characters in the book, I see a little girl who grew up in a loveless family, I see a girl inside of me who grew up fixing things at home and now as an adult I still try and fix other people and always trying to be a hero and this always backfire because in return I expect people to treat me in a certain way or rather to reciprocate and I become disappointed when that doesn't happen.
I must say I've learned a lot and am still learning a lot about myself in this community, and from self help books as well. I must also say that the stories I learn from the women in your community and the support towards each other has made tremendous change in my life, I have grown so much and I am learning to be in touch with my emotions. Its been and still is a great journey to know that I am not alone in journey, relationships wise with a significant other I am not there yet, however developing a personal relationhip and loving myself has been a great gift that I could ever give to myself. I am still a work in progress..baby steps..
Thank you Jane and to the amazing Women in this community you have no idea of the role you play in our lives.
Sounds like you've learned a lot about yourself already, Lolly. "... in return I expect people to treat me in a certain way or rather to reciprocate and I become disappointed when that doesn't happen." - This is where I would place my focus if I were you. I spent so much of my single life looking for someone to love me unconditionally, only to discover I had a whole lot of conditions I was subconsciously placing on the very ones I was expecting unconditional love from for me!
Jane, now that you mention unconditional love... Is there such a thing? I don't think it is possible to love without conditions at all. The whole point of choosing someone to commit to is based on conditions. How does the unconditional piece fit here?
Go here, Angel, and you'll find so much. Is there such a thing as unconditional love? Or when we peel away the layers do we find something else in its place instead? You may find this post helpful as well.
Had to stretch to come up with something to get clear on. Suddenly it was absolutely clear what the one thing is:
This morning, I am not sure that I even want to be in a relationship.
Thinking back on the few relationships I have had in my life (including a marriage from age 26 to age 34 that was a mistake because I really wanted to be married to someone else and thought that no one except the man I married would marry me), it is becoming clear to me that although when I was younger, I didn't feel loveable, now that I feel loveable, I am not actively looking for a relationship.
Still, I want to continue learning about myself and learning what a healthy committed relationship would look like through participating in this conversation in this community. My question for myself now is:
Why am I so ambivalent about wanting to be in a relationship?
Aside from that question, my insight is that the men in my life may well have seen my ambivalence and been attracted to me because of their own ambivalence about relationships. Very likely I was attracted to their ambivalence.
ALL of my relationships have had their beginnings in the spring and have not lasted.
This spring I am grateful that I feel truly loveable for the first time in my life. I am 67 years old.
Maybe this is the spring where I begin a truly loving relationship with myself! Where I begin to be as honest as I can be with myself. Where I commit to relate to myself in a way that will allow me to begin the process of healing by exploring my lifelong ambivalence about an intimate relationship with anyone, including myself.
Thank you for this challenging question today, Jane!
I love the way you walked us through your process, Ella. I think a lot of us struggle with ambivalence. We know what we want, until we try to get there, and then we're back to the ambivalence. I think you're not the only one, and I also believe that it's more because of our cultural programming that we find ourselves here.
I love the way you walked us through your process, Ella. I think a lot of us struggle with ambivalence. We know what we want, until we try to get there, and then we're back to the ambivalence. I think you're not the only one, and I also believe that it's more because of our cultural programming than anything else that we find ourselves here.
This is a paradox. I don't really think there's ever an end to figuring out what I am about. I'm a box of contradictions, but I have the feeling everybody is. It's hard to be always sharp and consistent because we are depending on the circumstances. That's how flexible we truly are even when it doesn't seem like it. I only know in theory what I am about, but I still have the nagging doubts. For instance, I am fully against gender binary. It's just a no. I'm sick and tired of this idea of women this and men that. But it is also something ingrained and it won't show up 100% of the time. I'm sure I cannot catch every single inconsistency in my behavior and words and this philosophy.
When I think of myself, besides the full blown negatives, e.g. hot-headed, transparent especially when I'm just not having it, outspoken and opinionated on the one hand, but weak, anxious, and insecure or naive on the other, I don't know that I am one thing exactly. Everything seems somewhat fluid.
I think finding love should be independent on whether we know everything about ourselves. I agree that it helps a lot to examine ourselves, especially to break free of patterns that we're sick of, but where does it end? I don't think it ever does. I am sure I still don't know a whole lot of things about myself, but I would like to believe that it won't matter for someone to truly love me... I mean, if I ever manage to be that lucky.
You're exactly right, Angel. Everybody is. It's being true to the particular ones that matter for you and not compromising on them that raises the bar for someone truly worthy of you to live up to.