Finding your YOU that leads to TWO
The more single women I work with the more I’m convinced that beauty, intelligence, success, wealth, and attractiveness do not correlate with an increased ability to attract the right Mr. Right. For every woman who may seem to have it all (or at least have something that we think we're missing that we need to attract a man) the story they tell in reality is one that is all too similar to the rest of us.Continue Reading
We hear it all the time: be your best self! But what does that really mean? How do we be our best selves? We may spend a small fortune on a new wardrobe of all of the latest trendy styles, buy a membership to the best fitness club, or get a sporty new car. But we still feel the same. We might have changed some things but we don’t feel any different. We’re still our same old selves. So why don’t we feel any different? Because that’s not what it’s about.Continue Reading
Don't let the memory of your ex be the "third wheel" in your new relationship.
This is the seventh post in our series 8 Signs You Aren't Ready for a Relationship.
We all have unpacked emotional baggage from our past relationships, and it's difficult, if not impossible, to completely get rid of it; that's just being human. But if you find yourself still pining for, very angry with, or otherwise consumed with emotion over your ex, you need to get past it before you'll be able to be in a new healthy relationship.
It's totally normal to take time to heal from a major heartbreak, and the greater the love there once was, the longer it takes. Make sure that you are treating yourself right by giving yourself that time.
If you're not sure that you're over your ex, ask yourself the following questions and be completely honest with your answers (after all, you're the only one that will hear them):
Do you find yourself wanting to call (or actually calling) your ex just to see how he's doing?
When you see your ex out at a social event, do you find yourself drawn towards him and wanting to flirt with him?
When you're out with others, including on a date, do you often find yourself talking about your ex, either in a good or bad way?
Do you find that you are still feeling emotionally fragile from your breakup?
Are you still angry or do you still cry when you think about how you were treated or how you were rejected?
Are you going out of your way to remain "friends" with your ex in order to maintain contact with him?
If you answered yes to any of these, as difficult as it may be, you need to make a clean break from your ex and let your heart heal so that you'll be able to move on to the relationship that you are meant to have.
I remember it all too well. Even though all of the advice I was reading said the same thing: don’t get into a new relationship until you’re over the last one; avoid the rebound; take your time to get over the one you’re getting over; it didn't matter. I just wanted the pain of the heartbreak to go away, and it seemed like the only thing that could make me feel any better was finding someone else to replace the last one, as quickly as possible.
And so each time it would end, sometimes even before it actually ended (but I could see that the end was coming), I would put all my effort into meeting someone else who could get my mind off of it and make the pain and hurt go away. Then I could tell myself (and maybe even tell my ex if I was really feeling hurt) that it didn't matter because there was already someone else. Somehow I felt like that would validate me, my worth, and show him just how insane he was for letting me go, because, see! Someone else wants me!
Of course the problem was that the replacement guy wasn't really the guy I wanted to be with. The guy I wanted to be with was the guy that broke my heart. So instead of taking my mind off of the sadness and heartbreak of the relationship that had ended, the new guy just made me think about all of the things that I missed about my ex.
When the new guy failed to measure up to what I felt the other one was, it would just confirm to me that I really had missed out and messed up a relationship that, at least in my mind, could have been the one. But of course the truth was that the previous relationship wasn't really all that, and I was just romanticizing the good times (as often happens when we feel something has been taken from us) and only remembering the positives in an idealistic way. (Yes, I'm very guilty of being idealistic, as my husband gently reminds me of even now when I was going on and on about how wonderful my childhood home was. That is, until we recently visited there and I found it was not quite what I remembered!)
Eventually I’d see that the new guy wasn’t what I really wanted either, and that would bring an end to something that really should never have started in the first place. And then I would be all alone once again, feeling even worse than before, particularly if I had broken the new guy's heart in the process.
I finally got it, that this wasn’t working. This was no way to live. I wish I could say I figured it out early on, but I didn’t. So take comfort if you’re still stuck in that place of looking for a rebound relationship to feel better. It takes a while to learn new healthy behaviors, especially when it’s been a routine temporary bandage to help quell the pain that only another woman with a breaking heart can know. So don’t beat yourself up, but do your best to change this unhealthy behavior.
So what do you do?
Just know that if you're trying to get your ex out of your head, make a clean break from him. If you can't completely break from him, for example if you work together, then set boundaries so that you are only interacting with him on a level that's as limited as possible. Then focus on your own needs until you feel that you're: a.) Not wanting to get back together with him and b.) You're no longer angry about what happened.
Take a break from any kind of relationship or dating until you get to this point. It usually helps to realize that the fact that the relationship ended means that it was not the right relationship for you to be in, and it means that you saved yourself greater heartache down the road.
Of course if you meet a guy during this time that has real potential, and you find that he not only takes your mind off of your ex but he completely makes you forget about your ex or even makes you happy that the relationship ended, then by all means go for it! Just make sure that you're starting the relationship for the right reasons, and that you're not getting into it to try to forget about your ex, because it just doesn't work that way.
Next post in this series: Stop Trying To Be Something You're Not?
If any of these sound familiar, it's time to re-think your situation.
We've all been there – in that relationship that your friends, family, coworkers, even that cashier at the grocery store have been wondering why you’re still in.
Sure, it started out great, with all of the thrill and fireworks of new and exciting love.
He chased you, won your heart, and told you everything you wanted to hear. He made you feel so beautiful, so alive, so wanted.Continue Reading
If you feel like you’ve been working so hard to meet the right guy, you’ve tried everything from night clubs to dating clubs to speed dating, well I’ve got some good news for you: It’s time for a break. It’s time to realize that you don’t need a man to define your life! You don’t need a man to have a world to fit into. In fact, it’s the opposite – your life is exactly that – yours.
I know you’ve heard this before, but it’s time to really get it. As much as we may know in our hearts that we’ve been going down the wrong path, attracting the types of guys that just aren’t able to give us what we’re looking for, we still find ourselves rejecting the guys who are actually healthy and ready for a relationship in favor of the excitement and drama of the roller-coaster ride Mr. Wrong takes us on.
So why don’t we stop this self-destructive behavior?
Well, the truth is that it’s a lot easier to keep doing the same thing over and over again than to stop and take a good hard look at ourselves, and do the work to figure out what’s motivating us to keep repeating these same patterns over and over again.Continue Reading
Have you ever had a song, one that you haven’t heard in years, just start playing in your head? It happened to me the other day, and I realized I was actually singing it softly to myself.
It was a song that used to be one of my favorites back in my single days, and it had been my mantra many times after a devastating break up. I’d long since forgotten it, but at the time, I would belt out the lyrics at the top of my lungs (often with tears rolling down my face) whenever I was driving and it came on the radio. It just described me and my love situation over and over again.
The song was Insensitive
You may not know the song, since she was a Canadian singer (it may just have been popular in Canada at the time), but the line that really got me was “I thought that you might have some advice to give, on how to be insensitive”.
So I found myself singing it out loud once again, only this time it was very different. Now I really get what I just didn’t get back then. That there wasn’t anything wrong with me.
I wasn’t too sensitive, and I certainly didn’t need a lesson in being insensitive. It was that he wasn’t sensitive enough to be with me! Or, to put it a different way, I just needed to be with someone who was sensitive to my needs, and if the guy I was with wasn’t, then he wasn’t the right guy for me.
But I didn’t get that at the time. Or even for a long time after. I just thought I was too soft, and I needed to toughen up. That I needed to be different than I was.
Of course, while I’m sure that Jann Arden wasn’t really looking to become insensitive, unfortunately for so many of us, this is exactly what happens. After one too many heartbreaks, we become cynical, insensitive, even bitter. And our hearts get hardened.
It starts off innocently enough. We meet a guy, the sparks start flying, and before we know it, we’re in way over our heads. Who can resist that kind of chemistry? The next thing we know, we can’t think of anything but him; he’s everything we've ever wanted in a guy. But the truth is, we’re so attracted to the idea of him that we haven’t had a chance to get to know the actual him!
You know what I’m talking about. He’s got that way about him; we can’t quite describe it, but it’s something about the way he carries himself, the ways he exudes that confidence, that charisma, that magnetism that draws us to him and makes us feel so special just because we're with him. We feel worthy. Chosen.
And we’re finally able to prove to everyone (and to ourselves) that we really matter. That we really can get someone to love us. That we’re loveable.
He tells us everything we want to hear. He takes us places we’ve never been before. It’s exciting.
But then, after a while, we find that we’re left a little wanting when we’re with him. We’re not sure what’s going on, wondering where things are going, feeling a bit insecure. We just haven’t connected the dots to see that it’s because we’re drifting far from our true selves again. For a guy. Again.
But we keep our head in the clouds and we don’t see anything, except that this guy has made us feel alive like we’ve never felt before, and we’re just not ready to give that up yet. We just want to keep believing that this time it will turn out differently.
Until it finally comes crashing down around us and we find ourselves back in the land of reality checks where we’re forced to acknowledge the truth, what it really was (and wasn’t), and how it really was the same thing all over again.
And that’s when it happens.
It hurts so bad that you resolve to never let yourself feel that strongly ever again. That fragile, blown glass heart of yours that’s been shattered and pieced back together again too many times starts to become harder. Tougher.
But there’s good news.
This time, there’s one thing that’s different. You’ve got me. I’m here.
And I’m here to tell you what I was fortunate enough to have some very special people tell me right when I needed to hear it the most; the words that saved my own fragile heart from becoming hardened:
There’s nothing wrong with you.
Nothing. Nada.
Sweet, tender, soft, loving, sensitive you.
He just wasn’t the right guy for you. He’s not a bad guy but he’s not the one for you. No matter how much you wanted him to be. He’s not.
All those feelings you had, all those wonderful times you shared, they were real. To you. And maybe to him, too. But the reality is, he didn’t have it in him to give you the respect, the attention, the sensitivity, the love that you truly deserve! The stuff that real, loving, equal relationships are made of. And it doesn’t matter why. It doesn’t matter what is or isn’t going on for him. It won’t change a thing.
So after you’ve had your cry, called your friends whose silence or comments only make you feel worse, spent your days in bed not wanting to get out, played every one of your favorite break up songs, and gone over every possible scenario of what happened and how you could have done things differently to keep the relationship going, it’s time to hear what I've got to say.
You are beautiful, you are worthy of true love, and you are wonderful.
And you aren’t too sensitive.
Please don’t ever become hard. Please don’t ever become bitter. And please don’t ever become insensitive.
That’s no way to live. For anyone. And especially not for you.
So embrace your sensitive you. Embrace your tender, soft heart that just wants to love someone and be loved back. Embrace that sweet romantic self that, however naïve it may seem, just wants to believe in true love. In what he said. In what he told you. In how you thought it was between the two of you.
Because when you love like that, it can hurt. There might be heartbreak. But that’s the kind of love that reminds you you’re truly alive.
You feel, deeply. You sense, wholly. You believe, completely.
And don’t change a thing about those qualities. Because you will meet that guy who’s been looking for a sweet, tender, soft, loving, sensitive woman like you his whole life, too, and those beautiful qualities you hold will not be lost on him, but will be cherished as the gifts of love they truly are when they're shared with the right person.
And I can guarantee he won’t have anything to teach you about being insensitive.
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