I recognised recently that while of course the world has changed over the past seven years, what’s really changed in my life is that I look at things differently, namely me. Many of the people who were in my life back then are still in my life now, my parents are still crackerjacks, my childhood and my past are still the same, but I’ve evolved while still remaining me.

I look at the same things differently – I don’t put me at the centre of them.

It’s wonderful to observe and participate without making myself responsible for things that are outside of my control. I’m free and I appreciate it every day because it’s not too long ago that I felt burdened and if anything, I used to view myself with disdain and at times even contempt.

My daughter’s love the story A Squash and a Squeeze by Julia Donaldson, a tale of a woman who feels that her home is too small – “a squash and a squeeze”. She vents her frustrations to a “wise old man” who one by one sends in a procession of different farm animals that cause the house to be overcrowded and chaotic. “It was teeny for one, and it’s weeny for five” she laments, and then he suggests that she take them all out, to which she protests that she’ll be back where she started. Of course after she’s sent each animal packing, she appreciates the space and calm and eventually she’s back to the house she always had, only appreciating and valuing it.

This is what low self-esteem and not treating you with love, care, trust, and respect looks like – not appreciating who you are and not recognising that you’re good enough, and instead letting in a steady procession of people and experiences that bust your windows, vandalise, take advantage or even abuse, and ultimately end up leaving you feeling crowded out of yourself. When you let someone take over the controls of your life because you’ve designated them as ‘experts’ on you, it’s actually like looking in on yourself and wondering who the frick you are. When you think stuff like “I can’t believe this is who I’ve become” while watching yourself be that very person like an out of body experience, you know it’s gone too far and it’s time to press your eject button.

There is a temptation when you’re not happy inside, to find external solutions in the form of people, things, or even substances.

You think it’ll make you feel better and they often do, certainly in the short-term, but underneath it all, you still feel unhappy and often have to go to greater and greater lengths to feel good. That and you end up feeling crap for doing these things, so it just gets heaped onto your already overstuffed case full of guilt, shame, blame, rumination and the whole kit and kaboodle, which means you then want to get to escape it, which means you end up looking to those ‘solutions’ again. And round and round you go.

When a relationship that’s working against you ends, if you’re not yet at that point of recognising how much you need to love and care for yourself, when you get rid of the unruly folk in your house, you may feel resentful. “Why did I have to do the right thing and tell them to take a run and jump? Yes I did feel like crap but now they’re not here and I’m still left with this house [you] that I don’t like. I need a better and bigger house, or at least find me someone who I can hitch my wagon to and they can act like a big extension….”

Only you’re not likely to ask a wise old man – more like some fool off the street that smells an opportunity in your lack of self-care.

Relationships serve to teach you about yourself and they will keep serving you up the same lesson until you heed and apply it. Until you’re ready to see the same thing (you) differently, you’ll be having a “squash and a squeeze” or may even be near choking in your own home.

I spent most of my life from a very young age thinking about my inadequacies, thinking about a ‘feeling’ and then chasing it. I wanted to feel accepted, content, liked, loved, cared for, trusted, respected, appreciated, valued, worthy, attractive inside and out, hopeful, positive, and whole. I wanted to laugh without reserve, smile and have it meet my eyes (something I didn’t start doing until my late twenties), not be driven by fear, and essentially have someone think that actually, I’m some kinda special.

Well after going out on a search that culminated in me feeling the opposite of any of these things, I came back to base and it turned out, that after spending so much of my energy chasing these feelings, I was capable of creating these off my own steam.

It was me that needed to accept me, to feel content, to like, love, care for, trust, respect, appreciate, value and ultimately consider me worthwhile.

I’d had one hell of a house party with some rather shady guests that I thought would make my dreams come true. Putting them out, setting boundaries with myself and others which fixed my broken windows, meant that I could look at the person I’ve walked around with all this time and suddenly see her with fresh eyes.

Now look, there’s nothing wrong with wanting love, a relationship, and all of the attendant joys, but if you want them, recognise that certainly for a healthy relationship that isn’t going to leave you analysing the crap out of yourself and others, or feeling “not good enough” because of behaviour that detracts, self-esteem comes as part of the package deal. End of.

Stop fighting it, stop shortcutting it because you can try every other which way at it but ultimately the only way that you’re going to feel all of these things and appreciate them in someone else chipping them into a relationship, is to feel these things independently within yourself.

Love doesn’t just happen – we all have to put some effort into taking care of ourselves and if it’s not your natural disposition, initially you will have to work harder than others at it and face some uncomfortable stuff. But beyond it, is the love that’s there anyway. You just need to look at you differently and choose you day after day after day.

It’s good work and a worthwhile investment. Can you honestly, hand on heart with no equivocations, say that you like, love, care, trust, respect, appreciate, and value you? If you answer yes, do you have a life that by and large reflects this?

If you think someone else is going to come along and give you ‘everything’, it’s just too much to leave to chance, too much power to give away, and too much to expect from someone else, especially when you’re not doing it yourself. Show up loved, loving and equal.

Love from a positive place that’s rooted in you instead of ‘loving’ with a view to filling you up and making you whole.

Loving words that can come with a relationship, need the feelings of love and the communication of it through action. Love never involves settling for crumbs – along with seeing you differently, let crumbs be crumbs and stop selling you short.

Are you ready to look at you differently? Take the focus off ‘them’ and positively bring it back to you.

Oh and happy Valentine’s Day from me to you, love Nat xxx

Don’t forget to check out previous V-day posts.

Your thoughts?

Check out my book and ebook Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl in my bookshop.

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Love is a wonderful thing…when you’re experiencing it. I believed that I’d loved several times prior to this relationship and it’s only through introspection and looking at a relationship with mutual love, care, trust, and respect versus a relationship with drama, pain, ambiguity, all my old love habits and low self-esteem that I realise that I hadn’t really experienced love before.

One of the biggest lessons learned is that love doesn’t hurt. Being in a shady relationship hurts, doing things that bust up your boundaries hurts, as does engaging in stuff that goes against values you profess to have or that has you feeling embarrassed and humiliated.

But genuine, healthy love itself doesn’t hurt you – it’s the stuff you (or they) do that does.

I used to believe that if I truly loved somebody worthy of being loved in a healthy relationship that I would be hurt, hence why it was easier to back three-legged horses as I knew it wasn’t going to work out so it was ‘safe hurt’.

Love requires vulnerability. Within a relationship, if you’re both putting yourselves into it and aren’t throwing up walls that impede intimacy, that vulnerability that so many of us fear, is a shared experience.

Love really isn’t all that dramatic. Being raised in a drama filled household means I used to be a real drama seeker and thought that the highs and lows signalled passion, excitement and chemistry. Actually, it signified pain and unhealthy relationships.

Love doesn’t make you do crazy stuff – drama does.

Love is steady and growing. I take as much pleasure in the normal, run of the mill days where we’re bumbling through life, as I do some of the days where there is a heady rush, or an extra sense of intimacy. There’s as much intimacy in sharing your life with someone and being able to co-exist and share your deepest thoughts, to laugh about something and nothing, to sit quietly side by side immersed in your own stuff but still connected, to go to sleep listening to them breathing (or snoring), and to partake in some of the rituals of your life, you know those many little habits that gradually form over time that are particular to your relationship.

Life isn’t a fairy tale. We’re not Vivian in Pretty Woman or a princess/prince in one of our childhood stories. This is real life, not a Mills and Boon novel or romantic comedy. Love isn’t about busting up a load of obstacles and finally getting together in the last couple of chapters or the last ten minutes of the film.

Love is not about getting someone to make you the exception to the norm, especially if the norm is not such a healthy way of conducting themselves for a relationship.

Don’t take love for granted. To love and be loved isn’t to be dismissed. I receive thousands of emails and comments each year from people who really want this and yeah, they might have been looking for love in the wrong places, but they do in essence want love. I equally receive thousands of mails each year from people who are actually in a loving relationship or have a wealth of wonderful things going on in their lives, but they’re killing it with their own stuff and not appreciating themselves or what they have.

If you have met someone and you love them and they love you, stop killing it with second guessing and looking for drama – embrace it! Enjoy it! Don’t suck the life out of it by being distrusting and waiting for the bad shoe to drop.

Equally, don’t disregard those around you and devalue yourself or them because you are not currently in the relationship you would like to be.

Love starts with you first and foremost, and genuine, fulfilling, happy love doesn’t exist when you don’t like and love yourself. I’m not saying you can’t experience any love without your self-esteem but you’ll be like a balloon with a tiny hole with the air slowly going out of it – deflated. They’ll try to blow more air into it (love), but you won’t be able to get it before some more slips out through the hole.

I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there’s no way in hell I would have embraced my relationship if I hadn’t learned to love myself and actually believe in love and more importantly my worthiness for a relationship.

Love yourself unconditionally before you start loving others unconditionally and without limits – boundaries. When you truly like and love you, period, nothing and nobody can come along and change how you feel about you. You can live your life being personally secure.

Love is supposed to enrich your soul and your life – a life that should already have people and things that you can derive pleasure and love from. Don’t make one person, one thing even, the sole source of your happiness and love.

‘Love’ can be a very easy word to bandy about but it takes thoughts connected with actions connected with words, consistently for true meaning.

Love needs commitment, at the very least being able to commit to feeling out your feelings. If you shut it down before it can really blossom, you’re limiting yourself which creates limited, often painful relationships.

Sometimes I think we’ve stopped believing in love in a healthy guise. Believe it. Embrace it. The moment that you stop believing that love is out there for you, is the moment you give up on yourself. Love doesn’t just happen – even if you bump into The Most Perfect Person On Earth, you still need to work at it.

Happy Valentine’s day. Exhale, embrace, enjoy and if you’re finding it tough today, remember this day shall pass and don’t get hijacked by your feelings.

Love Natalie/NML x

Your thoughts?

Check out my ebooks the No Contact Rule and Mr Unavailable & The Fallback Girl and more in my bookshop.

Image via SXC

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