1. If you can’t date with self-esteem, boundaries, and values, don’t date until you can because not only will you feel fleeting highs and plenty of lows, but the absence of these things makes for damaging relationships. Give yourself a dating and sex hiatus and deal with these issues as you will be far more relationship ready when you do. You cannot short-cut to healthy relationships and self-esteem by just ‘bagging’ someone to do the job for you – you’ll find yourself with someone and still being unhappy.
2. There is no instant fix for your self-esteem. It’s doing lots of small stuff every day that builds your confidence. All of those little things add up and just like in relationships where we often treasure the small stuff that they do, it’s doing small, simple, sometimes hard to quantify stuff that makes a difference.
3. If you’ve been doing stuff in a similar way and generating limited results, it’s time to accept that for you to feel good, you’re going to have to make some changes. To continue the relationship or life insanity (doing the same things and expecting different results) will only diminish your self-esteem further.
4. You will build your self-esteem and confidence by acting with love, care, trust, and respect to yourself first and foremost. When you do this, you will recognise when others don’t and opt out.
5. If loving someone means that you can’t love you, always, without a doubt, choose you.
6. Don’t get into bargaining with yourself which is where you let fundamental stuff like boundaries and values slide in the name of getting the relationship you want. It’s a deal that will go sour and potentially leave you in ‘negative equity’.
7. If you don’t know how to make you feel good, how can you expect to find happiness in others? If you don’t know what makes you feel good outside of another person, it is time to start discovering this.
8. You have to take care of yourself every single day. Looking out for you is a job that you should not offload the responsibility of to someone else.
9. If you make someone or something the sole source of your happiness, you will feel unhappy if you don’t have that someone or something and feel dependent on them when you do.
10. We often think that out happiness lies in something external yet we don’t realise that we cannot enjoy these external things until we feel happy internally.
11. You are the only common denominator to your relationships and anything else where there is a pattern that you don’t like. People taking advantage of you? Stop giving so much and put some boundaries in. Involved with emotionally unavailable people? Address your own emotional unavailability. Keep getting with people who disappear and cater to your fear of being abandoned? Address your fears and beliefs about being abandoned so you don’t seek out fear reflections.
12. Address your beliefs about love, sex, and relationships one by one because if these are negative, they affect your mentality and the reflecting behaviour. What do you believe and why do you believe it? Is it an absolute truth? If it’s not the truth, this in itself makes it questionable and gives you room to believe something else. How is this belief playing out in your personal life? What can you do to change that belief?
13. Understand what’s really bugging you. It’s very easy to say ‘I’m very pissed off’ or ‘I’m very unhappy because he won’t commit’ but dig deeper and ask yourself what it is about the situation that is angering/frustrating/disappointing you and tackle it at that level because the top level is too broad.
14. Break down your frustration: ‘I’m really unhappy because he won’t commit. This makes me so angry because I have been trying so hard in this relationship and he doesn’t appreciate my efforts and I feel unlovable and unworthy.’ This person then learns that she is directly correlating his lack of commitment to her worth as a person but also learns that another reason she is getting angry is that she keeps doing the same thing and getting the same result and that to get to a happier her, she needs to accept that he is not going to commit in this way. This means she either needs to step back and validate her own sense of self-worth and have her own personal security that is not shaken by his actions. In doing this, he may become more receptive or by her being more secure, she may realise that she actually doesn’t want him.
15. A life lived in fear is a half life. While having a little fear about stuff is healthy and can motivate us, doing stuff primarily out of fear creates drama for ourselves and within our relationships and invites negative reflections of our fear into lives. Fear, as a Baggage Reclaim reader said many moons ago, is just a feeling.
16. One great way to improve your self-esteem is resisting the urge to take things that happen to Dynasty level with lots of drama and instead realising that we have a lot of control over how much we let stuff impact us. You can make, for example, the fact that your ex attempted to get in touch with you, as big or as small as you want it to be. If you opt for the former, you’ll let it derail you. If you opt for the latter, you’ll see it for what it is – a test to see if the door is open.
17. Break your routine. You don’t get happier doing the same thing over and over again.
18. Keep trying new things. Fear of change or meeting people can make this a little scary but staying at home wallowing or working yourself into the ground is a comfortable scary too. If you try something and you don’t like it try something else!
19. Immediate self-esteem comes from knowing not only what your boundaries are but by living them. Don’t make exceptions for boundary crossing behaviour. You’ll thank me for it when you have better self-esteem and improved relationships based on healthy, respectful common ground.
20. If you don’t know what your boundaries are, you shouldn’t be dating. Some is obvious and some is subtle but if you have no limits and you haven’t the vaguest idea, start with the stuff that in hindsight you recognise was unacceptable and inappropriate for a healthy relationship.
21. Listen to yourself as your body and your reactions tell you how you feel about the situation. Recognise when you feel anxious, afraid, wary, cautious, disappointed, quietly angry, reserved, happy, sad. If you ignore how you feel, you’re ignoring your self.
22. Listen to your gut. You 100% need this because it is a combination of your sense of self, boundaries and values at work. If you ignore it, it’s like saying ‘I don’t like and love myself enough to trust myself.
23. Learn to trust others. Don’t trust blindly but learn to have faith in other peoples actions by having a healthy level of trust as a base and adjusting your trust levels based on how they behave. If you refuse to trust others, what you’re really saying is that you don’t trust yourself to act in your best interests.
24. If you say YES all or most of the time, start injecting a few NO’s. You’ll soon learn that the sky doesn’t fall down and that when you do say yes, you feel good. Remember we teach people how to treat us and what to expect from us with boundaries, our personal electric fence. If they get used to expecting YES, they will expect a YES. If they learn that sometimes you will say NO, they’ll learn you are not a mug to be taken advantage of.
25. Give and do wholeheartedly. If you give with a view to receiving, there is an intrinsic value and expectation attached to the deed. It’s not wholehearted and you may have great expectations that you’re going to get disappointed about.
26. Sometimes it’s just good to do something, because. It’s nice to be charitable and generous although maybe leave out playing Florence Nightingale to the waifs and strays of the dating world. But doing small, kind deeds does help us feel good. I know that helping someone out on the street, or on this blog can bring a smile to my face.
27. Learn to validate yourself. While it’s natural to court some opinion in life, if you mainly rely on other people to help you make decisions or to tell you your value, or to derive your value from, you have a self-esteem that is at the mercy of other people’s opinions. You are more than capable of confirming your own value. If you know that something is wrong and that it has hurt you, you don’t need to devote your life’s energy to getting someone else to see it.
28. Recognise that you cannot truly love someone until you can love yourself unconditionally. This means that irrespective of what is taking place around you, that you like and love you regardless instead of internalising everything and allowing it to change how you see yourself.
29. Take care of your body and realise that you need to embrace you. If you don’t love your body you will abuse it and this affects you in your entirety. Do you have unrealistic expectations of you and your body? What can you find to like about you when you look in the mirror? If you said ‘Screw it! I’m gonna stop fighting me and take me as I am’, would it be so bad?
30. Stop being so hard on yourself. If we were half as hard on others as we are on ourselves we’d have more boundaries. You are human, you make mistakes and the best thing you can do instead of indulging in blame and shame is to learn and grow out of the experience.
31. Look at what you deem to be the markers of your success. Are they all rooted in one person or one thing? Is there room to include some other stuff? What can you do to make these things happen? What do you think is going to happen if you don’t achieve these goals? What about some other short and medium stuff in the meantime?
32. Sometimes the first time people realise they love themselves is when they opt out of a negative situation which although they hurt, it’s not as much as they would’ve hurt if they had continued.
33. Take a leap of faith on yourself and believe that it gets better than this.
34. Remember, you already know what can lie ahead of you by looking at your past and your pattern. This means that you have nothing to lose other than pride and holding onto the past if you determine to do things differently.
35. Take something deep rooted that affects your self-esteem and look at it in the present day with today’s eyes and perspective. What can you learn now? Can you see things differently and find a way to put it to rest or at least not to give it as much power or weight?
36. Write an unsent letter. Download my free workbook and guide.
37. Arrest your thoughts. One of my major self-esteem builders was interrupting my thoughts. Until I took the time to listen to myself, I had no idea how much negative garbage was going around in my head. Me imagining bad situations, another voice telling me something was my fault or that it was bound to go wrong for me – jaysus, no wonder I was quietly miserable! I started interrupting my thought process and challenging it, literally saying something else out loud. Annoying initially, it doesn’t last long because your confidence builds and you naturally develop a more positive voice as you train your mind that if it thinks negative stuff, you’re going to jump in there. I no longer have a negative voice as a constant companion dragging me down on my life journey.
38. Keep a feelings diary. Jot down how you feel using key adjectives and phrases to detect shifts in your moods and what causes them. Brilliantly useful, especially for understanding what sets you off or assessing how you feel about someone you’re dating. You can easily answer the questions of ‘Am I really that happy?’ or ‘Do I really feel good around this person or in this situation?’
39. Keep a note of what makes you feel uncomfortable and why. This will ensure that you don’t get selective memory about red flags that you may be tempted to tune out to have a happy illusion.
40. Do regular exercise. I admit that I can be dead lazy about this, but it will come as a surprise to many that at the time when I changed my life, I was pounding the treadmill for a few hours a week – I had previously only been in a gym a couple of times.
41. Dance around and sing on your own. Something else I did that is very funny but surprisingly therapeutic. Proud Mary is an instant mood lifter and shaking it out and singing like crazy.
42. Stay in on a ‘date night’ not because you have no date but because you can. Something else I did regularly, it taught me to love my own company after being scared of ‘missing out’. I almost started to love my alone time ‘too much’. It’s very empowering to say ‘Actually, I’ll pass on going out tonight’ and then putting your feet up and chilling out.
43. Tell people when you’re annoyed (if you tend to keep it to yourself). Simmering away may cause you to internalise the anger and direct it at yourself which can cause depression. You don’t have to tell them immediately if you feel you may erupt, but if you’re still brooding on it, rather than having an ongoing private dialogue where you’re essentially arguing with yourself and getting all righteous etc, just tell them you’re annoyed. Trust me, the sky will not fall down. Try not to be finger pointing and accusatory, and I have found that being specific really helps. ‘When I spoke to you on Tuesday, you said XYZ and I must admit that I was really taken aback that you would say something like that to me.’
44. Many people who have low self-esteem are often privately wondering what someone meant by something that was said or done. The reason why they’re wondering – because they didn’t ask. ‘What did you mean when you X?’ (be specific) can push the question over to them instead of trapping yourself in doubt. The other reason – because they didn’t like the answer that they got. Of course, you can always validate your own perception of things by using your values and knowledge of your boundaries.
45. It takes a lot more energy to resist something than it does to accept. Much of the angst in relationships and with ourselves is refusal to accept and when this happens but the truth remains the same, we become very unhappy. Accept the reality so that you’re in a position to do something instead of being trapped in the frustration of illusions and expectations.
46. You will be perpetually disappointed and frustrated with yourself and others if you don’t sanity check your expectations. Are you expecting in a vacuum? Make sure that what you expect from people is what they’re actually capable of being based on their consistent actions, not who you’d like them to be. Equally, communicate your expectations because you’ll know where you stand.
47. Making assumptions really will make an ass out of you. While you have to make some level of assumptions in life, you will find your self-esteem plummeting if you blindly assume and don’t adjust your assumptions to the actual person and situation.
48. Be accountable for your part in the problem. The most unhappy of people think everything is someone else’s fault. To assume that all of your unhappiness is the creation of ‘others’ is to assume that you have no part in creating your own happiness either.
49. What do you want to do, be, and achieve in the short, medium, and long-term. Our life is a work in progress. Having dreams as well as things to knock off the todo list and some challenging but obtainable stuff can be very empowering especially when you realise not only are you a person with plans but that you’ve got a focus. Writing mine down five years ago was an eye-opener – I realised I had things I wanted to do that had gone on the backburner while I pursued painful relationships!
50. Learn how to relax. Set aside time in your day and week to just relax. If you don’t know how to relax, it may be an idea to check out books or a class on meditation. For me, I know a quiet soak in the bath, losing myself in a book, sewing, or even getting out for a walk clears my head and winds me down.
51. If you have big goals, break them down into smaller chunks so that you know what you need to do to get there. This is confidence building because it can be daunting knowing what you want to do but not necessarily stating how.
52. Who can you be yourself with? It’s good to have at least one friend who accepts you as you are and who you can be honest with and not pretend that you’re fine when you’re not.
53. Assess your non-romantic relationships. I often find when speaking to people who are learning to love themselves and who have little or no boundaries in their relationships that they often have little boundaries with friends and find themselves experiencing conflict because of their own personal growth. It takes a while for people to adjust to the newly evolved you with boundaries. Keep loving yourself. Your genuine friends will gradually adjust and respect you, family with your best interests at heart that see that you still love them will also stop being threatened by it. Don’t expect everyone to move at your pace, but move nonetheless.
54. Be careful of seeing unattached events as being some sort of reflection on you as a person, a sign of unrealistic expectations. For example, someone said to me that she was unhappy because when her partner drinks and she’s not there and then she sees him, she feels he’s not being considerate of the relationship. It’s good to be conscientious of the relationship but it’s for instance, unrealistic to expect partners to spend their every waking moment thinking of what you would like. Someone else said she felt hurt that her partner went somewhere without her and questioned how much she was loved and loveable – again, giving too much attribution to external events.
55. Consider an alternative to your perception of things. While it’s understandable to take someone’s treatment of you personally and think ‘I’m not loveable otherwise he wouldn’t behave like that’ ask yourself ‘What is it about this person or what is happening in their lives that they feel the need to behave in this way?’
56. Harsh as it may sound, people who are genuine assclowns don’t choose just one person in the universe to be an assclown to. This means that while they’re still out of order for treating you poorly, instead of taking it to a micro level of there having to be something wrong with you, recognise that they are this person anyway.
57. If you know that the sky is blue and someone tells you that it’s purple, rather than lose your mind over the fact that they’re saying it’s purple and turning it into a vocation to prove it to them, recognise that the fact they don’t know the difference between right and wrong or can’t empathise or whatever it is, is a red flag.
58. Ask yourself: what can I personally do next time to help me handle this situation differently? when confronted with situations that cause you to feel unhappy and stressed out. This empowers you to know that you can do something differently next time rather than feel incompetent to deal with the person or situation. If you experience something several times, don’t render yourself hopeless – compose a different response for next time to bring about a different outcome and experience for yourself.
59. Limit phonecalls with people who are an emotional drain. Something I had to learn when I was in recovery from my illness and used to feel ill sometimes listening to people in my life who thought I was just there for them to say whatever the hell they felt like saying, was to keep phonecalls short. Of course I was going to feel like shit if I listened to diatribe for 25 minutes or even an hour! Suddenly, I was getting out of conversations in 15 minutes, then 10 minutes and under.
60. Don’t allow yourself to be a garbage receptacle for other people’s problems. While you can listen and empathise to a point, playing armchair psychologist to the detriment of yourself will wound your soul and deplete your own resources, especially if you have your own problems that have no voice. You are not there for people to empty their verbal diarrhea on!
61. Recognise when you have irrational ideas and beliefs about yourself and others because these will steal your wind and cause you to feel that the world let’s you down. What ‘must’ you or others be or do? It’s likely that some of these ideas are misplaced.
62. Do not belittle yourself, consciously or subconsciously. Vow that from here on in, it stops today. Find positive things to say no matter how small. It’s not about being happy sappy all the time, but belittling yourself is extremely destructive and you’re stealing your own power.
63. Accept that you cannot control everything especially people and things that are outside of your control. If you try to control everything, you don’t give others a chance to succeed or fail at stuff plus you make yourself at the centre of everything while at the same time feeling frustrated that others won’t do stuff. You may not realise it, but other people feel incompetent around people who have a tendency to want to control everything and they eventually give up. Let go. Tackle what is at the heart of your need to control – your beliefs – and adjust your perspective.
64. Sounds obvious but be yourself, as in your own authentic self. Copying others or trying to adapt, twist, bend, and shape shift to other people’s ways will have you becoming distanced from your values and being out of sync. That, and you’ll be lost.
65. Remember that there will be some values that you are striving towards so don’t bust your own proverbial balls if you fall short of your own expectations. Keep working towards them because the acts will ensure that you are being congruent with who you profess to be and where you want to be.
66. Accept that no matter how well you ‘get on’ with someone, a difference in values can make friendships and romantic relationships difficult when you hit differences and rocky patches. It helps to write down the specifics of why you are frustrated because you can see the difference in your beliefs and attitudes, which is your value system.
67. Recognise that some people are negative people and that they see the worst in things. This doesn’t mean that you have to see what they do and if they persist in being negative, avoid them or keep them at a distance as you don’t need their negativity clouding up your emotional space.
68. I cannot bang on enough about adapting your beliefs to positive ones because you will create your own self-fulfilling prophecy. We gravitate to situations and people that reflect what we believe – best you make it positive!
69. Understand that sexual communication is not emotional communication so don’t use sex as a way of creating intimacy and a connection with people who you don’t already have intimacy and a connection with. Sex is not love. Your self-esteem will get battered if you rely on sexual attention or dating attention to ‘top you up’, especially since often the people that will give this to you are fleeting.
70. Your self-confidence and self-esteem will improve when you act on your boundaries. This in turn actually validates your own baseline of appropriate behaviour, which validates your judgement and when you trust in the decision and realise that it was the right one, it feels good to have backed away from a ‘bad deal’.
71. Volunteer. Seriously. I would especially advise this if you have a tendency to use dating and friendships to flex your healing, helping, and fixing muscle. There is a more appropriate and rewarding outlet for this energy.
72. Everyone has strength’s and weaknesses. While you can work on ways to improve weaker areas, you also need to celebrate and embrace your strengths.
73. Discover your backbone or grow a fresh one. We all have inner strength, we just don’t always use it and assume helplessness which removes power, which makes us feel unhappy and incompetent at coping or making ourselves find a solution. Saying NO and opting out of situations while it will hurt short term, will pay off in the medium and long-term.
74. Having self-esteem means knowing that sometimes you’ll have to make difficult decisions in your own best interests, even when your heart and libido are telling you otherwise.
75. With self-esteem and unconditional love, you can have logic and a heart and won’t engage in doing illogical things that while they seem logical at the time, are not actually logical in the wider sense.
76. Don’t be a short-term thinker because you will do reactionary things that have far wider reaching consequences while if you are look at the big picture and have a more considered, conscious approach, you won’t do impulsive things that end up undermining your sense of self. You’ll know in the grander scheme of things, the act is not worth it.
77. Acknowledge that every thing in life is about choices and you’re making them even when you don’t always realise. Sometimes you will make the wrong choice but that’s OK, but accept that you are accountable for your good and bad choices and that you and only you are responsible for your decisions.
78. Don’t love and trust blindly as you have a responsibility to assess the risk of loving and trusting. If you do go through life with your eyes and ears open with your feet on the ground, you won’t gamble on people who have little or no hope of you realising a return on your emotional investment.
79. Make decisions. It’s shying away from them that will render you helpless.
80. Take action. Talking and thinking about stuff but not actually doing it is frustrating.
81. Keep it real and strip your life of illusions and denial because the existence of the latter don’t change the truth of things but they do open you up to more pain.
82. Be careful of taking on too much, in fact, internalising societal noise. Much of this noise is generated by people that don’t know you. Society whether that’s your peers or media loves telling you how to live your life, what you should look like, or who and what you should be. Filter and live your own life and make your own decisions based on your values.
83. Treat yourself well. My life turned around when I stopped putting my energies into maintaining men and barely there relationships and focused on maintaining myself.
84. Forgive yourself. I did it. Look, this isn’t Back To The Future or Quantum Leap, or a Cher song. We can’t turn back time or find a way! Yes I’ve gone out with my share of assclowns, made some horrible choices and put myself through some awful situations where I should have exercised judgement. You may have too. That doesn’t make you a bad person – it makes you human. If you don’t forgive yourself, you will not love or trust again, whether that is you or others. Give yourself permission to move on and live.
85. Go with your gut instinct even if it goes against your heart or libido. You’ll be right every time. The heart and vagina (or penis for that matter) don’t always know what is best for them.
86. Don’t make decisions based out of fear because they’ll be distorted decisions. What’s the alternative? Try that.
87. Understand whether a fear is an external or internal fear. Is what you’re feeling based on real external things that are happening, such as someone behaving in a way that exacerbates your fear? Or is it internal noise and you seeing your fear in everything? Or do both exist? This helps you to get perspective.
88. Sometimes it’s good to consider your proportional response. If you knew someone for a week or even a few weeks and it takes you months to get over them, this is a disproportionate response and you know you invested too much. When you know that something has dragged on, sometimes you need to grab you and give yourself a shake and force yourself to stop wallowing and to start being a part of life again.
89. Don’t place people on a pedestal – the only place to look at you from is above, which places you below and creates an uncomfortable balance that is difficult to recover from if it is not addressed very quickly. Nobody is ‘better’ than you. You bring as much to the table as they do. Don’t blow smoke up people’s bums.
90. Never allow yourself to believe that someone has all or most of the power because it immediately tells you that you have little or none of the power and you will feel helpless.
91. Someone can only have power over you that you’ve given away so snatch the power back to where it belongs.
92. Stop with the ‘Coulda, woulda, shoulda’ – it is what it is. You’re getting yourself trapped in the past. Let it go as you have a present and future to live and if you live in a what if mode, your present and future will become coulda, woulda, territory. What could you, or would you, or should you have done? Do it now! Apply your knowledge in the future.
93. Don’t pretend. You’ll get get trapped in your own very bad movie where you forget who the hell you are. What are you pretending about? Why? What do you think is going to happen? Is it happening? Do you feel good? How exactly are you going to keep up this pretence? Recognise that if you have to pretend, something isn’t right. Breathe out and be real and get into your own reality. I stopped pretending that dates were more wonderful than they were and saw them for who they were, but it also forced me to remember all of the times I had secretly heard the words ‘assclown’; ‘tosser’ or ‘jackass’ in my mind and then smiled sweetly at various boyfriends and reminded myself how lucky I was to be with them…
94. Since I became a mother and discovered some painful side effects of motherhood, I live by the IDGAF principle (I Don’t Give a F***) – I know I’m very naughty. But seriously, becoming a mum opened me up to people giving me unsolicited advice, the media telling me how to raise my child, what’s best for me, wrong for me, and some weird incidences with fellow mothers. After getting myself into a real tizz over a couple of situations I remembered who I am and what I value and who is most important to me, and I don’t court the opinions of those who I don’t value and I don’t internalise other people’s bullsh*t. A lot of stuff goes right over my head and I don’t take a hell of a lot of stuff personally. I suggest you don’t either otherwise you’ll be fighting the world.
95. Don’t bury stuff. If you do, you’ll become numb. Now if I want to cry, I cry. If I want to be angry, I’m angry but the key thing is that I recognise that my feelings have validity and importance. I’m not pretending for anyone and as a result, I know who I am instead of being a muddled up woman who isn’t sure how she feels about something or someone. If you want to cry, cry, if you are angry, be angry, but assign your own feelings validity and importance.
96. Loving and liking you will give you personal security that you cannot put a price on. Being personally secure is also very attractive to those who aspire to have a healthy relationship with you, plus when you are personally secure, it will not be in your best interests to chase after people who don’t reciprocate your commitment or interest.
97. Tune out the noise of what other people have told you who you are and you work out who you are. Some people are stuck in the past – don’t get stuck there with them. It can be convenient for people to see us in a particular way, even if it’s not the truth. It makes us more manageable. Live your life authentically and determine who you are – it’s not up to them.
98. Have an honest conversation with yourself and drag yourself into reality. Who are you? Who do you want to be? What do you need to do to get there? What can you learn from your previous experiences?
99. Let go of and grow up the child within you, otherwise you will approach emotional situations as if you are a child of a certain age that is likely tied to a specific period in your life. Nurture that child but get a rational adult perspective and give yourself some love and step into adulthood where you get to be in control of your own life.
100. Exhale, embrace, enjoy. Seriously, I stopped holding my breath a few years ago and I haven’t looked back. Don’t put yourself in limbo letting people and situations drag you down and getting your life stuck in the wrong gear. Breathe out, embrace who you are, warts and all, and enjoy you and life. You only get one and it’s too short for holding in your breath, living in fear, and waiting on other people to do the right thing. Do the right thing by you and let everything else follow.
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I cannot even start to tell Natalie how much I love her blog, FB, Book and everything else she has written.
My current situation has to do with a man I have been friends with for years. I even lived with him as friends. Then I started to fall for him. He had a history of short term relationship, but I thought since we were friends it would be different with us. It wasn’t as soon as I started to fall for him and had sex with him our relationship changed and he ran. I was crushed. I have a history of going for unavailable men and for some reason this time I realized that I did not have to continue down that road. Usually I would continue on with having sex with him just to hold on. Lowering my boundaries and my self-esteem and a part of me would die. But because of this blog and your absolute honest and perfect insight, I actually walked away from the sexual aspect and have been staying away from sex for 4 weeks. I really care about this man as a friend and wish we could have more because he is a good man. He does charity work and is an amazing father and he was honest about his being a commitment phoebe, and we have talked about it. I think he is still hung up on his ex-wife. I am not sure but I do know it is none-of-my business what his issue is. If he can’t have a REAL relationship with me, I have to let him go. It is hard and the no contact rule has not been totally set. I do run into him all the time just out of being friends with the same people… but the no sex rule!! I have been sticking to that part. And Ok a few saucy e-mails but I put an end to that recently too…. I am not sure if I we will ever be friends again, but I do know that I do not have to continue to do the same thing over and over again and I can say no, as hard as that is to do. I do hope maybe things will change but I am not holding my breath and keeping my options open. I know if I am around him too much I will not be able to open myself up to other opportunities….unfortunately, I am not totally there yet. A part of me does think that by sticking to the no sex rule he may come around. I know, I know… fantasy right, but at least my boundary has been set and if he can’t rise to my standards I will know he is not worth my sticking around. If he has to deal with his ex-wife issue that is something HE has to work on, and he knows it. But I have to work on me, and I will do that by using the suggestions you have given me Natalie as well as watching your little videos before I go to sleep instead of writing him an e-mail! Thanks again Natalie… I do not know you but boy do I ever love you! I am so, so grateful! You really do help so many with this.
I suggest you read Natalie’s article about remaining friends with the ex.
Good luck
@ Lisa
If he had an ex wife…. then he probably isn’t over her. Most of the times if an ex wife or an ex girlfriend is involved they never are. My ass clown narcissists ex talked so much and so bad about his ex wife and his ex girlfriend that the truth finally came out that he was the psychotic one. He was the one who was emotionally unavailable; not being able to committ to any women. I will be 5 months NC this month thanks to God and this site. Woo Hoo!!! He’s been calling me for the past two months and I haven’t answered not a single one of his calls and don’t ever intend to. The door is closed and that horrible story of what was and could have been between us is OVER!!! And you got to do more than just cut off sex for 4 weeks with this man cause if he’s not getting it from you he’s getting it from someone else. So it goes way beyond than just cutting off sex. Its a way of moving on with you and your life and preparing to receive the right mate. You need to cut off and close every door so that he doesn’t have an entry way back into your life and this can only happen if you are serious about moving on. 4 weeks NC is a great start but just make sure the door stays closed. Good luck.
Great advice as usual. Your articles always help me and I can think of a few people I need to show this to, it will change their lives!
Many thanks x
Thank you once again Natalie, today for this particularly inspiring blog.
I also love the e-courses, e-newsletters with this type of advice. Some are for free and have brightened up my day!!
Is this your new book? If not perhaps it could be – rather than ‘The Blue Book’ to cheer up yourself and others when you are feeling blue…
Natalie Lue’s ‘100 Tips & Thoughts for Better Self-Esteem’!
I’ll look out for it 🙂
NML- This entry helps a lot in moving on and rebuilding your life, problem is they (your articles) all are so damn insightful I’m running out of room on my fridge to post up anymore. They all have perfect relevance and help put words to the jumbled up thoughts in my head. After two months and one week of NC, I am starting to have “ahah!” moments about the things you say about moving on, and focusing less on looking back at his assclown behavior. I’m moving on one step at a time but am so relieved to be at least taking steps forward out of the muck.
#42 – stay home on date night because you can – touches on why to date. Too many times going on dates is due to social pressure, or TV advertising, or an assumption (#47) that going on dates will lead to a relationship.
Instead, consider what you want, and the kind of person you need at the end of the day – and screen out those without the character, morals, and interest that will be needed. Instead, figure out the inner values of those you contemplate dating, look for a match – and use those boundaries to keep you on track.
# 47 is sounding great to me. I have no desire to date. I am a huge walking red flag right now and even if I met a good guy I would surely scare him off. The idea of going out and trying to act normal with someone new when inside I am still trying to get some order over how I got myself into the last mess and how hard it was to get out is just putting to much pressure on yourself. I think the last thing women need to do is date someone new when they are still hurting and confused over the last assclown. It really just seems exhausting to me. Someday, yes but not out of the need to cover up the pain you are feeling. You see adds for eharmony or match.com and you do feel some pressure to not be alone.
I totally agree. Definitely not time to see someone else. For what it’s worth, I am giving myself another 2-10 months (it’s already been 2 months) before I seriously turn my hand to ‘dating’ again. I think this time is too valuable for me, to get over stuff, to process, and to redirection my life in a positive way without the influence or needs of another person. I’d rather take top dollar – my own happiness, on my own, and, hopefully, someone who is attracted to that, than take the prize now, which would be clouded in so much fear and reactivity that it would be a struggle. I am not even thinking about a relationship right now.
This could not be more timely Natalie! After a two month relationship which could have turned into something good had I not pushed him away with my own underlying fear of commitment/abandonment, I had a terrible weekend where I felt utterly down on myself. Going to the ‘safe place’ of wallowing and feeling that I am the world’s worst person was not where I wanted to be, as I believed I had moved on so much in the past six months after the last EUM.
I phoned a trusted friend who has been there for many years and we agreed that it is time I start addressing my childhood issues once and for all. I am terrified of what I’m going to face up to but I can’t pretend I can manage alone any more either. I’ve booked my first counselling session and I am steering clear of dating until I’m well and truly ready.
It’s tough getting to 33 and feeling like I’m still at square one but I can do this now or spend another 20 years in a vicious dating circle. I choose the first option!
You’re right Holly, it is never too late. I’m 45 and several N’s later … the last one should have had a Masters in NPD but I obviously wasn’t getting it so they sent in their best guy! I’ve got a great friend who sent me this link who knows the hard work I’m doing. Like you, I can’t avoid my own childhood issues any longer, and as painful as this part of my journey is I just know it has to be better than it has been.
I’m determined life’s going to be good … DAMN GOOD!
Thanks, Natalie! Perfect timing, as I had one of those groggy mornings, waking up to a bunch of flashbacks to the sh*tty things my ex-AC said in the break-up, and then this dull feeling of ‘not another day obsessing about this’. Anyway, I meditated, and then found your post!
#47, #57, and #100 really stood out: #47 is a big part of the reason I got into such an unequal, unsafe relationship (I really thought that he wanted as healthy, committed and involved relationship as I did, but with not much tangible evidence of that, beyond what he said while wooing me), #57 is a big part of the reason why I am taking so long to heal (still hurt and still, on some level, waiting for an apology from someone who was capable of being shamelessly cruel…and is always far more interested in his own pain so I am essentially waiting for someone who sees life in purple – ie through his own feelings only – to see it in blue – the effects of his behaviour on others) and then, #100 because that’s what ultimately boosts me up – that this has been an expensive life lesson, but one that also means that I can now really get on with being me, for me and according to my values and dreams, for the first time in my life, really. It’s a positive time.
Thanks again.
You are so smart, Nat! This is WONDERFUL!
thank you for what you do here, week in and week out:)
Girl, you are a genius!
Someone needs to tell Oprah about you!
Loved all 100 of them, they all made sense and gave me alot to think about but #100 is spot on…..”Exhale, embrace, enjoy” Life really is too short to go around feeling bad. We’re going to have bad experiences whether its in love, work, family or friends and it is our choice how we come to terms with what happens to us. We can’t control the outside influences but we can control how we react.
Yes its disheartening somedays especially when the person you love behaves/behaved so badly but after awhile there really is no other choice but to let it go and move on. I’ve stopped asking why did he leave and trying to analize every word he said because in the end I realized it makes no sense and never will.
He doesn’t owe me a relationship only on my terms and he has every right to leave and he did. And while he cheated, lied about it and treated me like dirt I no longer feel anything. I spent too long crying and feeling sick until one day I said enough, he wasn’t going to ruin my future, he wasn’t worth it.
Yes, time heals but its what you do with the time….
That’s really helpful to hear, MaryC, as I am in that transitional phase where I am doing a lot to move forward and stay positive, but still really having to fight against the urge to internalise his crap behaviour or make him know how crap it was. But there’s just no other way, really, than letting go, backing yourself, building confidence, and a combo of the three. I am so looking forward to the day when the thought of his lies, cruelty and cowardice doesn’t trigger much more than a roll of the eyes.
Natalie…
This is such good stuff. It’s funny…I saw my EUM today (he’s back in town after of leave of abs.) I thought about the “sizzle” and then I looked at my husband holding my hand as we were walking by him. I thought to myself “this man loves me,” and smiled. I’m glad I made the choice that I did. I chose a man, who at the end of the day, is of good character and will love, care, and respect me. Do I miss the “sizzle?” Eh, it was fleeting, and I’m much better of thinking with my head, rather than my libido. It was sex, NOT love. Thanks for all of your help. 🙂
Love,
R.
“25. Give and do wholeheartedly. If you give with a view to receiving, there is an intrinsic value and expectation attached to the deed. It’s not wholehearted and you may have great expectations that you’re going to get disappointed about.”
This confuses me. One the one hand I understand it when I think of it in relation to something like lending someone a dollar, or making someone breakfast, or something of the sort. But how about expectations in relation to relationships? At some point I read that loving someone doesn’t create an automatic IOU to love you back, however, if you ARE in a good relationship everything is expected to be reciprocal (love, respect, care, trust). So, on one hand there should be no expectations and on another there are absolutely supposed to be expectations–and expectations in relation to boundaries (if someone doesn’t respect my boundaries then they are breaking my expectations because I expect them to respect my boundaries). How do we interpret this?
Blah,
My interpretation is that things should come naturally, as this is what you both enjoy doing for one another. But, if you are doing things for the specific purpose of receiving something in return, you will set yourself up for disappointment. This applies to all area of life.
Thank you Natalie, for another great post. I needed to read this. In fact, I wish more of your blog focused on helping us, rathering than thinking about them – the assclowns and commitment phobes. We have all spent too much time on them and really need to be dealing with us, which is much scarier and harder. You and your blog are like a trusted friend that says the right thing at the right time – thanks for that. Self esteem is one of those things that sounds simple but is so hard – if you don’t have it (and I am working hard to get it back), it can feel impossible to rebuild but slowly, over time, it does start to come back. Getting out of bad relationships, closing the door and moving on is the first step – if it all continues to be about him and what he did, you will never get better. Once I started to believe in me again, like myself and set some boundaries, I saw him for what he was and didn’t want him anywhere near my life. It wasn’t a trick or temporary – it was just the quiet realization that I deserved better.
Debra,
Wise words!
These are great!! Positive. Thank you!! (-:
Thanks Sista Girl loved every one I feel pretty good as i have alot of these already but have more to work on especially the core beleifs will print this out and oh so happy I found this site and you need your own show you can take Dr. Lauras radio spot, LOL. Adaku……
#16 made me laugh and was perfect…as my ex (after 4 months NC) attempted to start a convo with me the other day and it shook me up a bit. ( i blew him off, btw.) It sort of left me rattled that he would disrespect my wishes to be left alone (i fb blocked him 4 months ago) and come over to chat me up as if nothing had happened, as if we were friendly acquaintances. And in a very condescending way..when i blew him off, he said i looked “flustered” . LOL! I said “No.” and that was it. I turned away, dismissing him. For four days the incident has bothered me. Then #16 put it in perspective. He was looking for an ego stroke , I didn’t give it to him, end of story. Time to forget about it and hopefully go another 4 months without seeing him lol
Also that one about “Arrest Your Thoughts”…i’m all about that lately. Stopping the negative inner voice, and the chatter in general. The Four Agreements by don Miguel Ruiz…in his book “The Book of Knowledge” ..advises to tell the inner voices “I don’t disbelieve you. But I don’t believe you either” when they talk. Works pretty well. I also just say “NO NOISE! NO NOISE!” and that shuts it up right quick. Much more peaceful, and i’m more aware and in the moment and less self-judging.
You have a lot of very good information in here. A couple that stand out for me is for about setting your boundaries. This goes for both men and women, although I see the problem more in women than men. I know women sometimes send to feel they have to take care of a man and his feelings (i.e. ego), but be true to yourself. If you feel your body telling you know then follow it. If it means telling a man you aren’t interested in something, even him, then tell him and be straight about it. A man with a fragile ego may come back at a woman harshly because he can’t handle the truth, but tough for him. If he is comfortable with himself then he will be fine and move on, but to give in is never a good thing.
In tip #95 I would just add that learning how to express your anger in healthy ways is key.
Thank you for sharing your wisdom with all of us!
I started a journey about two years ago, looking for a way to feel better about myself by improving myself after a very painful breakup, after a relationship that was very destructive.
When I started out, I used to wonder at the fact that, although I knew these attitudes were right and good (this post summarizes a lot of the BR-philosophy :)), they didn’t feel natural and I kept coming back to my old thoughts and actions (and inactions).
You are spot on with these 100 ideas. I read them now and they feel obvious, natural, and I feel proud of myself because I know I have put them into action, over and over again. I know I need to work on many of these some more… and it’s good to have a reminder, it’s really good that you have this blog. “Thank you” doesn’t begin to express my gratitude. God bless you Natalie 🙂
Loved this. I especially liked #55:
“55. Consider an alternative to your perception of things. While it’s understandable to take someone’s treatment of you personally and think ‘I’m not loveable otherwise he wouldn’t behave like that’ ask yourself ‘What is it about this person or what is happening in their lives that they feel the need to behave in this way?”
I have found this to be extremely helpful in my personal situation regarding the break up with my ex. Instead of focusing on how I could have changed things, or prevented what happened, I now focus on how to not take what happened “personally”. It has given me an understanding of this whole debacle that I couldn’t see at first through the heartbreak and emotional haze. I have to remember that my ex was in fact “broken” and that is not for me to fix… and now that I realize he is “broken” WHY would I even want someone like that in my life ? Makes it much easier to see why things couldn’t have worked out and how I am much better off out of the relationship.
Trying to interpret things differently and “outside the box” has also helped me realize that I don’t hate my ex, I just hate the way he behaved towards me.
Thanks Natalie for yet another great article!
Cheers,
TJ
@TJ
Exactly!!! You hate the way he behaved TOWARDS you because you know you are worth way better treatment cause you respect yourself and you do have self esteem :). I think alot of women get caught up in this idea that they lack self esteem and some how are unworthy, or caused the lousy way one behaved towards them. The fact is they didn’t treat us badly because we lack self-esteem, it’s because that’s just how they ARE. We did nothing to cause it -it’s not our fault. They behaved like this before us and they will behave like this after us. It sure is great and valuable lesson to learn. And we can carry that lesson into all our other relationships and it benefits us and takes away shame.
Bless you TJ!
I agree. We are not causing their bad behaviour. They were doing it before us and they will continue after we are gone.
But…. these EUMs don’t waste their time on a woman who wouldn’t waste her time on him!
These men don’t attempt to court a woman who looks like she will “expect too much” of him. They may dip their toe in the water but they make a hasty retreat if it doesn’t feel very “accommodating”.
These commitment phobic relationships only survive because the ‘passive’ partner (normally the woman) facilitates, sometimes even encourages, his crappy behaviour towards her. These relationships are only ever truly “over” when the passive partner ends it. The EUM would go on like this forever. Why would he not? He is getting everyhing he is looking for, hi needs are being met, with minimal effort on his part.
So while I agree that he is accountable for his own relationship behaviour, I also think that the woman is only accpeting of it becasue she has issues of her own that need o be addressed, and those issues most likely stem from a low sense of self-worth and some erroneous belief that in order to get the ‘man of our dreams’ it has to be one big struggle – we have to suffer to win – we set up the Cinderella story for ourselves. Our man has to be hard won or it cannot be “true love” – We have to “win” the “prize”, and we think their is no gain without pain.
All bollocks of course. I have friends who would not have put up with what I have accepted for five minutes never mind five years or more… and guess what? these friends are contentedly married to good men! Why them and not me, I have asked myself. And I think the answer is that they have a good sense of self-worth, they had the shitty boyfriends in the past and quickly realised these guys were not giving them what THEY want. The went for the guys that would. And got them.
I believe that poor self-esteem and warped ideas about what will make us happy is at the root of all of this.
I recommend Steven Carter’s books, i.e. “He’s Scared, She’s Scared”. I have searched the web and bookshops for material that addresses the issues discussed on this site, and this book is the most comprehensive, sensitive, well-written and accurate reading material out there at the moment. If you haven’t read it, you should.
xx
fearless
this is a superb comment that clearly describes a sad situation that some women find themselves in, a room in their head where the lights are off and the door is locked shut until they wake up.
great work and all the best to you and to all the women reading who are finding their way or are on their way through and onward!!!!!
@ Fearless
You hit the nail right on the head! There is so much truth in what you said about women who think this way. I know it’s true for me. Early in my life I was conditioned to think like this. I always seem to be attracted even more to a guy that I think I can “fix” and by showiing him how much I really love him it will prove to him that I am worthy (and better than any woman he’s ever been with or is with) he will be “healed” of all his “wounds” and not be afraid to love me (because I am so deserving of his love and trust) he can trust me because I won’t hurt him like the other women in his life have-I won’t leave him and I truly love him for who he is. And he will be so grateful that I have helped him finally be “free” of all his thoughts that hold him back from “surrendering to me” and be capable to fully love me and want to commit to me.
Amazing what we can make up in our own minds isn’t it? It’s like a fantasy for sure. Not realistic at all to think that I could control or change or heal anyones’ thoughts or damaged heart by loving them. People have to want to change when they recognize they need to because it’s holding them back from expierencing love and life fully and take the steps themselves. That’s a pretty tall order that takes a lot of work, we can support and encourage but we can’t “make”them do it. So, we need to find someone who is capable already to freely love in an honest and whole way- someone who is emotionally available (doesn’t have this type of baggage). We need to stop thinking we can “fix” these guys and make them love us. It’s just not healthy for anyone. We will always be disappointed in these types of relationships. They will never go anywhere -and they will always end. And harm our self- esteem in the process. So we need to get our heads outta the clouds and back into reality. And work on changing our unhealthy and destructive perceptions and behavior patterns about what love is and relationships. And pick better partners to begin with. Pick EU men instead. No more fixer uppers for me!
I’d like to add this:
It’s unrealistic for me to think:
1. I can “rescue” this man.
2. That he will then be so grateful to me that he will then return my love and be so grateful that he will commit to me full on and never want to leave my side thereafter.
It’s sorta like the lion with the thorn in his paw. If I remove that thorn for him he will so grateful to me for freeing him from his pain, he will love me forever because without me he would have continued to suffer and not have the chance to thrive.
Any thoughts ladies?
In my experiences of relationships – with friends, siblings and, to some degree, with partners – often the person who ‘saves’ ends up getting kicked to the curb once they’ve done their ‘saving’. The ‘saved’ feels at minimum ambivalence, but usually some resentment that this person, the ‘saviour’, knows their weaknesses and was so badly needed in order for them to grow. The saviour often seems like crutches, and once someone (the saved) can walk, they toss them aside pretty quickly, and the main sentiment towards their saviour is this enduring, bothersome guilt that they did so much for them. But love and levity don’t spring from guilt! They are new people know, they don’t want to be reminded of their limitations, they want to start afresh with their new sense of capability and possibility. Of course, old stuff comes up again, but there is usually only one person who really knows the lowest low of a person’s life, and if they’re relied on too much, they must go! (at least for some time when they can come back on equal footing…but they only usually come back when the damage done to the relationship is minor).
Thank you for your website, I really enjoy it and it reinforces those sporadic moments when I’m actually thinking healthily. But I finally read something that I disagreed strongly with: “And there’s no point doing the whole ‘But what if years go by?’ I am yet to come across one woman who can wholeheartedly say that she healed from her hurts, has a decent level of self-esteem, and couldn’t meet a man for years and years.”
Allow me to introduce myself. FIVE YEARS. And, no, there’s no comfort in that.
For me it’s two years. My last relationship was five years ago. It’s not years and years but I’m 45 and the pickings are slim and I only see them getting slimmer. There are more women than men, and men tend to go for younger women. You can’t argue with statistics!
I do feel sad that I missed out on my opportunity for a family and children but it’s still better than being stuck in a bad marriage/relationship.
Wow! This is the best list of tips I’ve ever seen! If we follow this list, we will take an honest look at our actions, take responsibility for our actions, and decide what we need to change. We will also take a good look at how other people’s actions are affecting us and respond accordingly. Thanks for the great advice!
This entire site and its owner is literally a gift from God. Thank you!
I disagree with #20. You can’t know what your boundaries are until you start dating. For example, if you have never dated a guy who reads Playboy, Hustler, et al, or subscribes to the Playboy channel on cable, you won’t know that you do or don’t have a boundary. In other words, you won’t know that it does or doesn’t bother you.
And if you have never dated an alcoholic, you won’t know that it does or doesn’t bother you.
And if you haven’t ever dated a passive aggressive guy, you won’t know that you can or can’t deal with it.
JJ2
“If you know that something is wrong and that it has hurt you, you don’t need to devote your life’s energy to getting someone else to see it.”
I have been really struggling of late and this sentence was what I needed to read. I have been “stuck” in the hurtful end of a relationship with an assclown I work with. I have grown much, thanks to this site, and am working on my self-esteem and identifying my beliefs, but I continue to butt up against the idea of NC with someone I have to work closely with. While I had given up on the relationship idea with him, I had held onto the hope that he would fight for the friendship, be willing to have the tough discussion and validate my feelings. I needed him to apologize and ackowledge that he hurt me. The sentence I quoted shows me I am wasting my energy. I know he hurt me. What the rest of the list shows is that I need to hold onto my boundaries, love myself and only invite into my life things that are positive and beneficial. While the NC feels a little childish and artificial, literally blanking someone who is in the room with me, it is all I can handle for now and it’s me that matters here. I had no boundaries with this man, which is how I ended up so hurt and disappointed. Until my self esteem and electric fence are solidly in place, I have to trust the process until I can trust myself. That means maintaining the silence, stop hurting myself by expecting him to change and validate me and to not give in to the temptation to create drama to get his attention. Thank you for this list – it has been a life saver.
@Tina- right with you on this one. I think you know that from my twitchy-eyed concerns about whether I should just call NC off and see if a mutual acknowledgment/peace-out session would work. NC feels, sometimes, excessive and petulant. But the fact is that I don’t entirely trust him, I am not convinced he actually wants to show me respect, care and honesty, and I don’t entirely trust my own motivations and ability to cope with any further rebukes and denials from him. So I think the lesson you’ve isolated here is probably the biggest lesson for me too, to back myself, to back my judgment, and to go through this WHOLE thing on my own, to the end. And, besides, you know what life is like…We’ll probably have an opportunity for some sort of conversation or indirect closure with them just at that point when we truly don’t want or need it. And, if it never comes, it will be such a great thing to know that we’ve backed ourselves on something that we know was NOT ON.
I have been in a very up and down relationship with a man for a few years now and after reading the articles on Mr Unavailables/assclowns I have recognised many things about my boyfriend that explains his self-centered and unreliable behaviour. I am now able to see his behaviour for what it is and make decisions on how to better look after myself. I really thought it was about me for a long time but now I know that unavailable/assclown men are just pains in the butt and not worth all the time and effort they require and I deserve better.
Wow! This is amaaazing. Your work is spectacular Natalie. I’m recommending this and the rest of your work to my clients. I’m a Dating and Relationship Coach for Women Over 40 and, as you know, low self esteem is the #1 challenge of 98% of them. I would love to connect with you.