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The Best Way to Build Confidence

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A woman is dancing in the rain because of her confidence.
This one simple change will dramatically boost your confidence!

If it seems to you like everyone else has it all together, knowing just what to do to have a healthy relationship and making it look so easy in the process, while you're struggling along, feeling like there's something wrong with you, well, you're not alone.

I used to feel that way, too.  There always seemed to be someone who did relationships better than I did.

While I was constantly trying to figure someone out, trying to be the perfect girlfriend, figuring out whether I should try to give him some more space or show him just how excited I was about him, there was always someone I knew who had that amazing confidence about them and their particular relationship.

Just confidently being in it, seeing where it went and not putting all their focus and time and energy in it, just being normal about it.

And oh how I would envy her. I wanted to be that nonchalant, too.Continue Reading

The Truth About Healthy Relationships

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We're going to look at the truth about healthy relationships. You need to first forget everything you think a relationship is all about and what it feels like because your relationship gauge is up when it’s supposed to be down. A beautiful but sad woman is sitting on the floor contemplating her relationship.It's been so long since you've had anything resembling a healthy relationship, you don't even know what one looks like. Until now. It's time to start at the beginning, forgetting everything you think a relationship is all about and what it feels like because right now your relationship gauge is pointing up when it’s supposed to be pointing down. It's not working, and we're going to fix it. It’s OK. It’s not your fault. We’re going to help you get your relationship gauge fixed so that you can recognize a real, authentic, healthy relationship in the future when it's pointing you in the opposite direction.

It all begins with forgetting everything we think we know about relationships. Now, here’s the part we want to learn for the first time. Like learning to read or write, we’re learning together how to have a healthy relationship that makes us (get this part) H-A-P-P-Y. Yes! Happy! Remember that? Remember what that felt like when you actually felt happy? In a relationship?

It's quite possible you might never have known what it’s really like to feel happy in a relationship. Because the happy I’m talking about here isn't the kind where when he finally shows up at your door or calls after you've had a search party out looking for him and made calls to the local hospitals and the morgue – not that kind. That’s the kind where we've been so low in the gutter, completely devoid of any trace of our self-esteem, that by the time we see him alive we’re feeling so relieved he’s still choosing us that we think we're happy.

But really;  is that happiness? Are you really happy in this relationship or is it just that you’re unhappy so much of the time that when anything happens remotely resembling a man caring about us, or at least still choosing to be with us, we feel the opposite of what we usually feel like, so we honestly think we’re happy?

I know. This is tough. I understand all too well. It’s not easy peeling back some of the layers of the feelings and coping behaviors we've had for so long (read: denial) to reveal the truth. I really do get that. It’s not easy to admit to ourselves that this relationship just might not be the equivalent of what happiness is all about (even though everyone else around us may be pointing this out). I know firsthand that denial can run pretty deep when we’re talking about having to do something about this relationship we’re so desperately believing we can change by just being good enough, beautiful enough, smart enough, clever enough, sexy enough, enough, enough, enough!

Do you get that? I know that’s tough to hear, but, my beautiful dear friends, it’s the truth!  This is not how it’s supposed to be!  We are not supposed to be in relationships with guys who treat us in such ways that we lose our entire equilibrium of which end is up. It's really not supposed to be this way! Do you see that, even a little? It’s OK if you don’t. Just know we’re going to get you there together.

Here's a hint: Separate date nights are not the way the weekends are supposed to go. People in healthy authentic relationships actually want to be together. They just genuinely like being together, so it happens. They don’t have rigid rules about how or when or where it can happen. It just does.  It’s not supposed to be complicated. Getting together is not complicated when you’re in a real relationship with a real guy who really likes being with you and you really like being with him. Mutual. Together. Easy.  Those are the words you’re looking for.

It feels effortless, easy, not complicated. Not filled with dramatic highs and lows and fighting and making up and more fighting and making up and more drama and more fighting and more anxiety and more drama … do you see a theme here? That’s not how it’s supposed to be even if to you right now that feels like someone cares about you. That’s not what all that means.  I’m going to tell you what it really means. Read this slowly. It means your guy is unhealthy, the relationship’s unhealthy, and there’s no way you can be healthy if you’re with the unhealthy guy in the unhealthy relationship.  Do you see that at all? It’s like simple math. 2+2=4, not 3 or 5 or some other number. You can’t have an unhealthy guy and an unhealthy relationship and have a healthy you.

But if you're in this so deep that you’re not ready to consider the reality of that yet, that’s OK. We’re going to get you there, but it takes time. But please hear me when I tell you that one day you really will look back on this and be so glad you listened to that little voice that’s so soft and hard to hear right now, saying it really is time to let go, you can do this, you can (gulp) be on your own. I know, I used to gulp too. What? ME? Leave HIM? Like right NOW? Before I've given him his 1001 chance to see just how wonderful I am and how much he needs to change and start treating me right because I really am all that?

The part where you really start to believe this comes next. After you open your eyes to the reality of what is going on here. Shifts in seeing always happen in baby steps. Not overnight.  Just hold that thought for a minute and listen to what you're hearing here. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to be with someone who thinks the world of you just because you’re you. Not because of anything you feel like you have to do.

You see, that’s the whole point.  If you’re in a healthy relationship, you don’t have to do or be anything except be yourself. And do what your real self does. It’s not about pleasing anybody or doing what you know they’d like you to be or do, it’s about a real give and take. The real thing where you share the real you and he shares the real him.

Equally.

Stop Trying To Be Something You're Not!

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Don't hide your true personality
Don't hide your true personality

Bending and twisting yourself like a pretzel to fit what you think the person you're attracted to wants might get him interested, but here's why he won't stick around for long.

This is the eighth and final post in our series 8 Signs You Aren’t Ready for a Relationship.

If you often find that you're trying to change something about yourself thinking it will make you more attractive to the guy you just met, or just started dating, then you are, like I was, lacking in self-esteem and confidence. Don't be too hard on yourself, this is very common but it means that you need to work on finding and loving the real you before trying to love someone else.

This was my dating pitfall: I used to think it was all about showing a guy that I really was all that.  I felt that I had to show him just how wonderful I was, and make him realize that I was everything he had ever wanted in a woman.  And I mistakenly thought that I could do that by loving everything that he loved, by wanting to do everything that he wanted to do, and by showing him just how much we had in common (even when we really didn’t.)

What I didn’t realize back then was that it all just set the stage for a relationship that wasn’t authentic, wasn’t truly honest, and wasn’t about two real people bringing their own true selves into the relationship.  I also didn't understand that any potential the relationship might have had would come to a striking halt because I wasn’t being true to myself.  Ironically, it was the exact opposite of what I was hoping to get – a real relationship.

It was a pattern I repeated over and over again, and I just couldn't figure out how he could be so interested in the beginning and then suddenly not interested at all. What I didn’t understand then that I finally understood much later was that I was just fluff.  I was only giving him that part of me that I thought was what he wanted, what I thought that most guys wanted.  But the problem was that I really didn’t know how to be anything else after that.  I was so intent on being the perfect package, that I wasn’t my own person.  I was just a mirror of him.

While that might work in the beginning, and get him interested, it doesn't last because any true relationship requires both give and take. Both partners have to complement the other in order for each, and the relationship, to grow.

One of my favorite books from my dating years that helped me to understand this problem and to work through it was Marianne Williamson's A Woman's Worth. The copyright on it is 1993, making it now considered a classic, but her words are just as true today as they ever were. I still have my dog-eared copy with its yellowing, note-riddled pages on my bookshelf.

I think this excerpt makes the point very well:

"There is a difference between getting a partner and attracting a partner. Getting implies that our hooks work; attracting means that our light is bright and appears like a beacon to one who is meant to see it. When we try to get a partner, we increase our chances of getting the wrong one. Yes, we can hook one perhaps, but a hook in him is a hook in us. We either end up neurotically obsessed, or he figures out it's a hook and does his own casting off. When we attract love by an  intensified connection to the spirit inside, we take responsibility for the energy around us, harmonizing it in such a way that those who come forward – who we sense are meant to be with us – connect with us out of similarly pure intent."

Her words woke me up to the reality that by trying to be something I wasn't, trying to be something that I thought these guys wanted that I didn't have naturally, something that I'd have to fake, that this trying was exactly what was causing me to continue to have failing relationships! And this realization created such a calming, peaceful, zen-like feeling that washed over me, and for the first time in my dating life I felt like I could just relax. Stop trying so hard. Just be. Live. Love life.

It was then that I finally realized that I could just be the person I wanted to be, without worrying that I wasn't hip enough or wasn't into things that guys might like. It didn't matter. I would just be who I was, and do what I loved doing, and I trusted that there would be someone out there who would love me for everything that I really was (or at least love most of me, and tolerate the rest.)

So if you find yourself like I was, trying hard to get a guy to like you, trying to be what you think he wants, just stop. Breathe. Relax. Stop trying so hard. And then be yourself. If you don't know who she is, then go find her – that's what I had to do. It's understandable, after trying to be someone different for so long, probably even someone different for each guy, that you don't even know the real you anymore.

Spend some time getting to know that gorgeous, wonderful woman that is you. Let your light shine for the world to see, and let your light be a beacon so that equally gorgeous, wonderful guy can find you in this crazy ocean fog of modern life. You won't know what he looks like, in fact he might be completely different, physically, from what you expected, but you'll know him when you meet him.

And he'll know you because of your beautiful, bright, shining light.

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About Jane Garapick

Hi, I'm Jane Garapick. I'm here to provide inspiration, support and empowerment on the journey to true love. I know what it’s like to have a broken heart, a broken dream, and a broken you. And I know for a fact, that your dreams can still come true! Read more...
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