The Reason You Still Can't Believe It's Not You

I've been having some deep discussions on my calls lately, around the underlying subject of our longings for unconditional love.

Leftover from our childhoods, from a place most of us have never connected to the present, until we realize something must be amiss for us to keep attracting and choosing the men that we do. The irony is that while we long for unconditional love with every part of our heart and soul, we look for it precisely from the ones completely incapable of giving us that kind of love.

Why do we do this?

It makes no sense to our logical minds, but the pull is so strong (and entirely subconscious) to extract this kind of love from someone who cannot give it to us because he never received enough of any kind of love to have a place of overflow within himself that it could even come from.

Why the pull? It's because it's so familiar.

It's once again someone with so much potential because they give us glimpses of that soft part within them. We take that and run with it because even just the feeling of the possiblity of that potential lights us up to the possibility of what might be. This time might be different. This time. The promise of which is so familiar.

The people in our lives did the same thing. They were our mothers or fathers or other caregivers. They were supposed to love us, they were supposed to love their children unconditionally.

And if it only showed up in our patterns with our boyfriends, that string of men who let us down despite all their potential, it was enough to set us on this path, too.

It's so familiar. It's so comfortable. Even as it never gets us closer to real love.

What it does do, though, is confirm our story.

There's something for you here even as you're reading these words today.

See, the story you've been telling yourself has never really been your story. This need for you to prove something, to be something more than you are, to be enough for someone to love you this way, is just that - a story you were told. A story you bought into. A story that seemed like the only way.

You didn't know. You couldn't know at the time.

You are loved, Beautiful. You were always loved. By the ones capable of giving the love you sought, even if you didn't know them yet. Even if you still haven't met them now. That doesn't change how much you're still going to be loved.

You just didn't known it was your birthright instead of something conditional you had to work for instead of being loved just as you are. That was the story they told you! It doesn't matter if it was explicitly stated or not; you, with your beautiful, sensitive soul. You sensed it. You pieced it together. You knew.

That's why you measured your ability to be loved - your worth - by the very ones so completely incapable of loving you because they only knew the conditional kind of love themselves.

It wasn't you! It was never you. It was them.

Wrong people. Wrong ones.

And of course they couldn't tell you. You, with so much love to give. You come alive loving someone like you do! You shine showing the very men who allow you (and only you) to catch that tiniest of openings to see that it's exactly this kind of love they long for, too.

You connect there. That's why there's this incredible connection. Oh the possibilities.

If it only it were real. Or more accurately, if only they were willing to make it real. To put in the real work. Not on the relationship - but on themselves. To be able to even sustain the kind of relationship they know (yes, they know!) is possible with you.

To admit they can't do it, to tell you their truth, they would lose being so loved by you!

So what do you do with this? You make an edit to this all too familiar story that's in desperate need of an update. There was nothing you could have done to make them love you. Nothing!

Reframe the old story you've been telling yourself. Change the old tapes. They were wrong but no one told you. You know they couldn't have! Too much was at stake.

And this is why you still can't believe it's not you.

Love,

Jane

Are you seeing this yet? Starting to? I'd love to hear from you. Send me an email or respond in the comments below. If there's one thing almost every one of us can relate to, it's working for love. What we're really doing is working to prove our worth. Someone set it up this way for you. The question is ... why? And has it served you?