Finding your YOU that leads to TWO
One of our magnificent readers Liz, is feeling utterly powerless...
Hi Jane! First of all, I LOVE your site. Thanks for always being honest, helpful, and down to earth.
Given that, I'm hoping you can help me here.
I want SO badly to be that happy, independent, empowered single woman. I should be happy - I have my dream career, a social life, close friends and family, and my own hobbies.Continue Reading
Here's an email from one of our beautiful readers who is afraid that she may have made a mistake by holding him off for too long.
Jane -
I love reading all of your articles and have been incorporating them into my most recent situations, including one in particular.
I started dating someone about three or four months ago, and at the time, was really busy and focusing on myself while getting over someone else, which obviously made him like me more.
He would ask me out on dates and I had to cancel a couple of times. I only went out on one or two dates with him up until about a month ago when we started seeing each other more. He initiated this with his kind words, asking me to hang out with him before I completely slipped from his mind.
He even met some of my friends and gave us free tickets to a sporting event and sat with us. He had pursued me for so long, and still kept persistent even after I had put him off.
I realized that I should not have put him off for so long, but it seemed all was going well and I could tell from his behavior and even the way he looked at me, that he really liked me. My girl friends even discussed how into me he seemed.Continue Reading
So many of us struggle with the basics.
We get so caught up in the complicated aspects of our relationships that we think are the problem, that we miss the simple truths that underlie so many of our core beliefs.
These are the beliefs that keep us staying so stuck, and settling for so few crumbs.
We live like this because it's all we've ever known - or it's all we ever saw modeled for us, and we miss the fact that changing these beliefs, these ingrained habits that have become so much a part of who we are, begins the shift that changes everything.
So, starting right now, let's start making these changes.
No more chasing after someone.
No more believing he’s the only one.
No more selling yourself … to anyone.
No more waiting around for his call or text… you’re a woman with a life, not a lady-in-waiting.
No more sleeping with someone who can’t make his mind up about you.
No more focusing on someone else’s needs more than your own.
No more kidding yourself about why he won’t commit; if he won’t commit, either accept it and know what you’re signing yourself up for, or move on.
No more hanging on to someone who isn’t hanging on to you.
No more investing in a relationship where you’re the only one doing the investing.
No more waiting to be chosen; you’re doing the choosing.
No more beating yourself up for what you didn’t know, didn’t see, didn’t get, or didn’t see coming.
No more focusing on the past; right now is where your life is at.
No more living in the life-depleting should; you did the best you could with what you knew at the time!
No more hating your body, your skin, your hair, your nose, your ears. You are beautiful just as you are.
No more looking to others to complete you.
No more living your life vicariously through others; it’s time for your life to be everything you want it to be.
No more giving your power away to everyone else.
No more thinking that everyone else has something you don’t.
No more putting anyone on a pedestal.
No more pretending.
No more crying over someone who doesn’t deserve you and wasn’t compatible with you to begin with.
No more making someone your world.
No more bending and pretzeling to please someone else. It doesn’t work and hurts you more than you know.
No more saying you can’t do this.
No more excuses why everyone can do this except you.
You can do it.
But only if you really want to.
And only if you choose to.
If you’re done with what you’ve been doing and you’re ready for something different, this is where it stops. With you. With a word. With a commitment … to you.
Here's to the new you!
How about you - what are you going to say no more to? Tell us in the comments!
We're always hoping for the classic story of 'boy meets girl, boy chases girl, girl lets him catch her, and they live happily ever after.'
But real life never seems to follow that story line.
Sure, it starts out that way.
He’s chasing us, we’re being chased, just like boys chase girls in elementary school, and it’s fun! It’s exciting. We feel desired and wanted and worthy and that makes us feel like we've got it going on.
We’re being chosen. Someone’s picked us.
Then all of a sudden, something changes.
He’s got us and he can clearly see we’re hooked. But instead of the ending that was supposed to be, it’s turned into something else.
Suddenly, everything changes.The conquest is over. He’s chosen us and we've accepted and now we've followed what we've been led to believe is what dating and commitment is all about.
We’re ready for that next step. But he isn't.Continue Reading
Somewhere along the way, in between all those times you thought it was the real thing, where you believed that love could conquer all, where you gave away your beautiful heart and soul to someone who you believed would eventually come around and make a commitment to you, you've come to believe that there’s only one possible explanation for your fate: you’re a victim.
I know it seems so much easier. Blaming your fate on everything else, telling yourself your sad story over and over again. It can even seem romantic in a strange sort of way.
Waiting to be rescued and believing in that fairy tale can keep you living like this for a long, long time. It can keep you from living at all for a long, long time.
And while this might seem like an accurate assessment, and you hold onto it even tighter whenever someone starts to question it, what happens when you believe something like this, my beautiful friend, is that you do yourself an even greater injustice.
You sentence yourself to this story and you put yourself in a very closed box.
This isn't your story. This isn't your fate.
You’re no damsel in distress, my beautiful friend. You’re not a tragic heroine in an epic fairy tale. You’re not a lady in waiting.
It might make for a great romantic story and give you something to keep holding onto, but it’s not your story.
Somewhere along the way we got lost. We forgot that we are doing the choosing. We forgot that we don't need to prove anything to anyone. We forgot that we have a say. We forgot that we can set our own boundaries and our own terms for our relationships and we can refuse to settle for any treatment that doesn't honor and respect the beautiful women we are. We forgot these truths.
You don’t need to be rescued.
We've all, at one time or another, chosen men who we've believed in but turned out to be something different than we thought they were. We've all gotten caught up in the belief that love conquers all. We've all wanted to believe that it does. It might seem so much easier to give our power away like this, to put this all on something else so that we don’t have to take the blame. But in the process of doing this, something else happens.
You see, my beautiful friend, what happens when you believe this, when you believe that you're a victim, when you put it on all bad luck, or a curse, or fate, or whatever other story you've been telling yourself for so long, you also deprive yourself of the choice you have to take your power back and create a life of your own choosing.
I know it’s hard not to defend your right to keep thinking like this. Of why you know this is true and that no one understands this. Of why your situation is different. And that’s OK if that’s where you’re at right now. It’s enough to simply entertain this thought, to hear an idea like this that might give you something to think about today or another day.
Because when you catch a glimpse of what your life could be like, when you sense that slight glimmer of hope that there might be a different way, this thought - this little nudge - will always still be right here waiting for you.
No matter who you are, what your past has been like, what kind of situation you are in right now, you can choose what you are going to do next. You can choose your own path forward. You can choose to change your circumstances, starting right now.
You are doing the choosing.
One of our beautiful readers, Anna, is feeling hurt and confused, and is wondering if it's time for her to move on - here's her story and my thoughts:
Hello, thank you for reading my letter.
I'm 46 years old, fit, attractive mum and works full time. I've been dating a 55 year old man for almost 3 years. His children are grown up and all moved out and I still have a 16 year old daughter at home. He is a truck driver and begins work at 3 am and returns home at 3 pm. I work regular hours.
We do not live together and I don't let him stay over because we've never discussed a future together, he's always treated our situation as a day by day thing. I don't want a man to stay over unless I'm in a proper committed relationship and I have my daughter to consider and set an example to, my opinion anyway!
He is a kind man but he's never really there for me in times of need, if there's a problem where I need male help, it's not him! Due to his job, he tells me he's often tired and needs to catch up with rest in the weekends.
We have never been away in a weekend or holiday, he may come for dinner to my place through the week but it's like eat and run. Come the weekend and we may just go out for dinner on a Saturday night.
His family always come first, if they need money, he just hands it out so easily but he appears very tight with his money when it comes to me but I've never asked him for money even though at times I struggle being a single mum.
Our sex life is amazing but that's seems to be the only thing that's great.
I try to discuss a future with him but he doesn't really get involved in the conversation and never expresses where he wants to see this situation of ours going.
I express my feelings and thoughts to him, I raise having a holiday together, I talk about living together, I tell him how I feel but I'm just don't seem to be getting anywhere with him? I get so frustrated at times that I feel like I'm wasting my time and just settling for a dating pattern only!
We've broken up a couple of times but then he calls me and tells me he loves me and wants me but then things go back to exactly the same old situation, there's no progress or change. I feel I've opened my life to him but I feel he has his family on one side and me on the other, sometimes I feel he doesn't really care about me and that I'm just a habit to him?
I don't know what to make of it but my family sees I'm not really happy and feel I can do better but I feel so attached to him and it's hard to let go. I haven't spoken to him in 3 weeks now due to another one of those little break ups again as I told him not to contact me unless he's genuinely serious about having a proper committed relationship with me.
I'm so much hurting and confused but I'm trying hard to keep busy and not think about him too much but up till now, I've heard nothing from him, should I just let go and move on?
Thanks Anna
Dear Anna,
It's always in that space you give someone that you find out what you really mean to them. It sounds like he's perfectly content with the way things are - all on his terms. So you have to decide whether he's worth it.
If he is, if being with him on his clear terms that he's made clear to you by the way he behaves with you and by the way he treats you, is better than being alone or without him, then that's the choice you make. If it's not, if he's not worth it, if you have different terms and they're not compatible, then make that choice.
You're always the one doing the choosing, my beautiful friend; even if it doesn't feel like it sometimes. You can't make anyone love you, you can't change anyone or make anyone change or see things your way. It always comes down to two people and whether or not you're both on the same page and want the same thing with each other. And then if you're both willing to do whatever it takes to make that happen.
He may say he loves you and wants you back when you're broken up, but what does that really mean to him? Is it enough for him to come far enough your way? Of course he misses what he has with you. He's so lucky to be with someone like you!
We sell ourselves short all too often for so many different reasons based on where we're at, what we're afraid of, or what we feel we need from someone else and can't live without or give ourselves. And we can be pretty convincing to ourselves of why we should put up with more than what we know in our hearts we should.
You're worth the whole package, Anna, but we all have our reasons and our motivations and why we choose what and who we do is a very personal thing.
Choose you first and foremost, and then make the decision that gives you the greatest amount of peace and calm, and leaves you with the least amount of regrets. You are so right; you have a beautiful daughter to set an example for; she will learn to be strong and know her worth from you.
Love,
Jane
What do you think? Is it time for Anna to let go and move on? Tell us your thoughts here in the comments!
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