Don’t Make Someone the Sole Source of Your Happiness or Your Reason for Being: You Can Be Happy Without Them

by NML on September 7, 2010

woman leaping in happiness

When I was around 21, I went out with a guy who was about eight years older and was probably my first proper experience of a Mr Unavailable with dashes of assclownary. My friends and family couldn’t stand him as he was very arrogant, used to make far too many wisecracks about threesome’s with my friends, and his family told lies on me and even made ‘borderline’ racist comments. The relationship lasted a couple of years but I broke it off about a year in, because I couldn’t take anymore and it was also difficult to go out with someone who people couldn’t stand. Of course the various rejections that I felt as a result of being involved with him meant that even though he was the source of my misery, he also appeared to be the source of my happiness and I convinced myself I couldn’t be happy without him in my life. So I went back, albeit I was very distant probably as some sort of protective measure and I eventually finished it…and moved on to an actual assclown.

A few years later and a few assclowns and Mr Unavailables along, I was engaged (I know I fit much drama into my twenties) to someone with at the very least narcissistic tendencies. I became a shadow of my former self, literally apologising for my existence, which no doubt only fuelled the disrespect. I often wonder what made me accept a proposal from someone who I knew was no good for me, and I realise it’s because I had such low self-esteem that I felt that when someone says that they want to go out with me, that they fancy me, or that they want to marry me, I should say yes. Even if the rest of me said no… He broke up with me a few months before I actually ended it and I convinced myself I couldn’t be happy without him and fought for the relationship. It was only once we got back together that I realised that I’d never been happy with him in the first place for me to have something to miss.

After I ended things with him, I vowed to be single and independent and then ‘somehow’ found myself being the other woman. Combined with the fact that I became very ill during this time, this relationship nearly brought me to my knees and was a serious lesson in self-loathing. I broke it off with him so many times, made ultimatums, screamed, shouted, whimpered, simpered, played nice, played it cool, and essentially kept going back because I couldn’t imagine me happy without him in my life.

These are just three examples – there are others – of where I have felt that my happiness, my reason for living and being was tied to someone, who quite frankly in retrospect I couldn’t give a monkey’s about now and who my life moved on without.

Your happiness is not dependent on someone else.
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Are You Painting Yourself Into a Corner? When Your Beliefs Remove Your Options

by NML on September 6, 2010

skitched-20100906-201028.jpg

Over the weekend I released my new workbook Get Out of Stuck, my guide to helping you kick relationship insanity and transform your beliefs. I wrote it for a hell of a lot of reasons but not least because at the heart of most issues, especially the ones we’re ‘stuck’ in, are your beliefs and potentially your boundaries. Over this past week, I spoke with and corresponded with a few readers and there was something that became apparent:

They were painting themselves into a corner. By damning themselves whatever they did, they ended up in ‘no mans land’.

The most common example of this is where you don’t feel that you can trust them but you don’t feel that you can trust yourself either, so you essentially end up miserable and immobile. When they tell you something, you don’t believe them and whatever you’re afraid of and whatever negative beliefs you have about yourself, you align this opportunity for distrust with those beliefs. It then becomes ‘I’m not good enough to be told the truth’;'They’re going to leave me’;'He’s found someone better than me and he just doesn’t know how to tell me straight’;'I knew they were cheating on me’ or whatever it is that’s swirling around in your mind.

The trouble is that when you have these fears, any time anything remotely plays to those fears, your mind will whirr into overdrive. Somewhere in your mind it says ‘OK, is this where I’m going to get it confirmed that I am X’?

So let’s imagine that you have the belief ‘I am not good enough’.

When your partner says that he wants to take things slower because he has some problems that he has to attend to before he can be serious about the relationship, your spidey senses will go into overdrive and your ‘fear bells’ will start ringing.

What he’s saying could be true or it could be a slow fade to make their way out of the relationship. You’re going to be far more inclined to believe it is the latter if you have been habitually involved with people who don’t know how to be direct and take the easy way out.

If you don’t think you’re good enough and you take what he’s saying as the truth, you’ll say ‘I’m not good enough to hold onto him and if I was, he wouldn’t need to take a break while he sorted out his problems because he’d want to hold on to me and sort out of his problems.

If you don’t think you’re good enough and you decide that he’s lying, you’ll decide that it confirms that you’re not good enough. ‘He doesn’t want to be with me and he lied to me about what he really wants because I’m not good enough. If I was good enough, he wouldn’t be asking for space’.

Whether it’s the truth or a lie, the one thing that remains consistent is the negative belief.

This is painting yourself into a corner, putting yourself between a rock and a hard place, and getting yourself stuck. You’ve created a situation where it doesn’t matter whether it’s a truth or a lie, they’re still telling you the same thing.

Now if you’re in a situation where no matter what happens, you’re going to believe the worst about yourself, it stands to reason that the only way you’re going to get out of stuck, is to address the root belief, why you have it, and transform your outlook and beliefs so that you don’t paint yourself into a corner with your thought process.

Don’t believe how easy it is to paint yourself into a corner. Watch it in action.

Eg. I think sex is really important. Why? Because it connects two people and it shows how much they love one another. However, I’m cautious of having sex because I’m afraid that they won’t like my body or that I’ll be vulnerable. I’m afraid they’ll discover I’m not good enough. If I don’t have sex, I wonder what’s wrong with me and why I’m not good enough. Painting herself into a corner.

Eg. He told me that he really wants to make this work and that he’s crazy about me. I know I should be happy – I’m worried though because I don’t know how to trust that this is real. What if he sees that I have flaws? Note that if he said that he wasn’t ready for a relationship, she would think that it was because she has flaws that make it difficult for him to want to be with her. Painting herself into a corner.

This is exactly how someone on the receiving end can feel that they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Likewise, this is exactly how you get stuck. You’re removing your options.

When you paint yourself into a corner, get stuck and remove your own options, there isn’t an outcome where you can even be moderately happy because your negative belief(s) mean that each situation creates the same feeling within you. This is why some people are bewildered as to why they are not happy when for all intents and purposes they should be – because they don’t believe they’re good enough and they don’t trust whatever good is happening.

If you think something about yourself or something that leaves you with no room for a positive outcome that leaves you in peace, something is very wrong. This is why it’s important to address your beliefs so that you can not only open up your options but you can take a leap of faith on yourself and believe in you and the possibilities instead of believing the worst.

Your thoughts?

You can download your free copy of Get Out of Stuck – find out more details. You can also check out the rest of my ebooks including Mr Unavailable & The Fallback Girl , the No Contact Rule and more in my bookshop..

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Download Get Out of Stuck: A guide to transforming your beliefs – Oh and happy 5th birthday Baggage Reclaim!

by NML on September 4, 2010

Get Out of Stuck - A guide to transforming your beliefs

Jaysus, I’m knackered but one of the projects I have been working on this summer is finished – drum roll – Get Out of Stuck is my guide to getting out of relationship insanity, carrying the same beliefs, baggage, attitudes and choosing same person, different package and then expecting different results. I want to help you transform your beliefs and basically, get out of stuck.

This month, Baggage Reclaim is five, yes five years old and I’ve been on quite a journey since I first started this blog when I myself was unravelling my own beliefs and experiencing major epiphanies about my love habits and interactions. I really didn’t like myself that much and I was desperate to be loved but at the same time I was scared sh*tless that they’d discover my flaws. I had a lot of stuff rattling around in my head but truth be told, when I stopped believing even just one of those beliefs, it started to call others into question. I want you to tackle your beliefs and call yours into question too.

Now…as it is Baggage Reclaim’s 5th birthday, all you have to do to get your copy is sign up to the get out of stuck mail. Aside from getting your copy, you’ll also get updates about new worksheets and get invited to participate in online clinics, attend seminars, plus tips etc.

To get your copy and sign up:

Note – I don’t share your email address with anybody.

Let me know how you get on with Get Out of Stuck. I will be tweaking it and creating new worksheets and there will be a site set up for it.

I will be announcing the first online clinic in the next day or so. Basically, I will be letting a certain number of people submit up to 3 beliefs to get a summary feedback via email. It will also help to create more worksheets in the future and provide more live examples.

In the meantime, let me know how you’re doing!

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Why Doesn’t My Emotionally Unavailable Guy/Assclown See a Committed Relationship With Me?

by NML on September 1, 2010

love heart

Yesterday I wrote a post on the subject of ‘why doesn’t he envision a committed relationship with me?’ which tackles the part of the issue that you can tackle – you. Towards the end of the post I highlighted how if someone doesn’t want commitment, you could be the most perfect person on earth and it won’t make a difference. This is particularly true of habitually emotionally unavailable people and assclowns.

My post yesterday was about healthy, positive commitment where you are with someone who genuinely has the potential to commit and where you are not being personally secure, what it is that can send out the wrong messages. I know because I have been that person.

What that post wasn’t about was emotionally unavailable men or assclowns, which although it might seem that they fill up the planet – they don’t.

There are people who potentially because of prior experiences that they have had in a relationship find themselves not being so personally secure and even though they are in a relatively healthy relationship, they end up doing things that are counterproductive. Just as much as I hear from men and women who are involved with emotionally unavailable people and assclowns, I equally hear from people who aren’t or who may not be and they want help. Just like when I’ve written about dating, or starting new relationships, knowing when to work at your relationship, and understanding the questions that you need to be able to answer for yourself, I can write about healthy relationships or where people are doing stuff that is counterproductive to their success!

With that in mind, I wanted to specifically address why a Mr (or Miss) Unavailable or an assclown doesn’t see a committed relationship, which is entirely different to someone with relatively healthy relationship habits that is genuinely looking to seek commitment.

The reason why Mr Unavailables and assclowns don’t see a committed relationship with you is because they don’t see a committed relationship with anyone or at least not the type of commitment that you’re looking for – healthy, positive commitment.

Obviously if you have unhealthy ideas about commitment, you’ll meet your match with these guys, but that’s a different matter!

Mr Unavailables cannot commit to an outcome.

They can’t commit to being with you and they can’t commit to not being with you so they they flip flap around you, messing up your life, getting an ego stroke, shag, a shoulder to lean on and anything else they can get while they’re at it. All the while, they have no genuine intention of committing and in fact look for every excuse under the sun to avoid commitment.

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Why Doesn’t He Envision a Committed Relationship With Me?

by NML on August 31, 2010

A frequent question I’m asked is a variation of ‘Why doesn’t he envision a committed relationship with me?’ .There are all sorts of factors that can cause someone to be afraid of commitment but if you want to tackle the part of the situation that you can control, you need to realise how people see commitment.

As I’ve explained before when talking about values, people work out who you are and who you are likely to be, based on who you consistently are now, hence if you want to come across in a particular way, it’s important to live it now as opposed to bargaining and saying stuff like ‘Well I will be more relaxed and secure when he does X,Y, Z’.

When people make a positive decision to commit, it’s because based on what they see in front of them and what they are experiencing, they can correlate that to future experiences, feel good about it, and feel positive about the idea of being committed.

I make a point of saying a positive decision to commit, because a decision to commit based on illusions, coercion etc is not a positive one – it’s a one way ticket to Doomsville.

A positive decision to commit originates in a relationship with mutual love, care, trust, and respect that feels good to both parties and is based in reality. A committed relationship requires two people with both sets of feet in with both parties actually being in and working at the same relationship.

When your partner looks at you and the relationship without illusions, if the messages that they get convey that this is a relationship that is emotionally demanding, high drama, and basically more than they’re willing to be expected, wanted, or needed from, on some level they receive a signal that you are not the one that they are going to commit to.

This is why it is important to have an honest conversation with yourself, discover your boundaries and values and live authentically because if you do and you start engaging in healthy relationships, who you are now will make a very attractive prospect for a committed future with someone who wants to commit and shares similar values. Note that I say someone who wants to commit because this is very different to someone who has no genuine desire to commit – you could be The Most Perfect Person on Earth and it won’t make a difference.

Aside from having the basics like boundaries, an awareness of your values, and seeking mutual love, care, trust, and respect in your relationships, personal security is what conveys a message about the confidence you have in yourself and also what you are likely to need emotionally out of the relationship.

Personal security means having a reasonable level of self-esteem and your own life, desires, and interests – being your authentic self.

People who lack personal security are (often inadvertently) emotionally demanding because they derive their sense of security from the comfort of having a relationship and a significant other and the level of validation that they are experiencing in the relationship.

The more validation they seek, the more emotionally demanding they’ll be, but also the more insecure they’ll be because as you’ll already know, if you are always seeking validation from others rather than doing a lot of validation yourself, it snowballs and you are never happy.

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