Break Emotional Unavailability, Embrace Loving Relationships, Grow Self-Esteem

It’s OK to receive – you don’t always have to be the giver

By Reading Time: 4 Minutes

Have you ever had someone do something for you or give you something only to wind up feeling as if you owe them? Rather than receiving and saying thank you, your mind is lurching into IOU territory, triggering the likes of overwhelm, guilt, panic, discomfort and resignation. Yes, all of that from receiving something!

Even if you want to feel grateful, it’s tricky given those uncomfortable feelings. In these moments you forget that it’s just a gift, that it’s just an act. That’s not to take away from what the person is being/doing, but it’s just not that loaded. Or at least it doesn’t have to be.

Genuine giving doesn’t come with strings attached. It also comes preloaded with the option to say no.

 

WHY ARE YOU UNCOMFORTABLE BEING THE RECIPIENT?

When you feel uncomfortable about receiving, check yourself.

  • Is it that you don’t feel worthy enough?
  • Are you weary in advance because you feel as if you have equal or exceed their efforts?
  • Do you feel trapped by the possibility of what their giving might signify for you in the future?
  • Is it that you know that you don’t owe them but that based on previous experience, you sense an agenda?
  • Are you afraid of looking like a ‘user’?

I’m not worthy enough.
I don’t deserve this.
I don’t want to have to give back.
I’m screwed.
I’m a bad person.

There’s vulnerability not just in giving but also in receiving.

On giving and receiving. Person making notes in their notebook. Photo by Calum MacAulay on Unsplash

ARE YOU BEING TRANSACTIONAL?

When you struggle to be a ‘good receiver’, a part of you is thinking, I will open myself up to disappointment. You’re also making everything transactional. Giving and receiving becomes fraught because it’s about who owes what and obligation. You give, not because you want to but because it’s what you think is expected of you. Of course, it’s going to be angst-laden. You’ll be afraid of going into ‘debt’ and of looking like a ‘bad’ person.

It might be that you feel safer being busy doing instead of being busy being.

You might feel very uncomfortable about asking for or accepting help but be the Energiser Bunny of helping others.

 

A relationship based on the roles of giver and taker is always imbalanced and unhealthy. If you’re always the giver, what does that always make the other party in the relationship? It means that consciously or not, you will choose people and situations that allow you to maintain that role even if it’s not in the best interests of you or the relationship. You’ve then set you up to feel taken advantage of. Keep in mind also that regardless of whether or not someone is actually a ‘taker’ and taking advantage, being entrenched in the role of ‘giver’ means you will view things through that lens and feel valued (or undervalued) on that basis.

If you’re the only one who gets to do the ‘giving’, it’s not giving; it’s control.

When you’re in control, you don’t have to feel as much as you would in being vulnerable. You can manage risks.

When someone is shady, it’s understandable to feel wary of their motives. This is why creating healthy boundaries is critical because you learn where to invest your good qualities and energies. Create boundaries instead of building walls. Giving but not receiving is a wall that defends against you being hurt in a similar way to the past. It interferes not just with trusting you and others but also growing as a person as you run the risk of continuing a cycle of neglect or deprivation. Boundaries show forgiveness of you for your past, allowing you to enjoy mutually fulfilling, trusting relationships instead of being on guard and cutting out everything.

This is the time to ask the perfect question for any situation that triggers you into responding based on pattern: What’s the baggage behind it?

  • Where did you learn to feel like this?
  • Is it similar to a past situation?
  • Does what they’re doing or how you’re feeling remind you of someone else?

Asking these questions helps you to understand the emotional charge you are carrying about giving and receiving. You will gain insight into what you associate with these so that you know what is coming up for you each time. In understanding what you’re trying to protect you from and what you still unwittingly (or consciously) feel hurt about, you can address the source of your pain with self-compassion.

Did you identify with any of the statements like ‘I’m not worthy enough’, ‘I don’t deserve this’, ‘I’m a bad person’? Acknowledging these feelings and compassionately interrogating their origins and validity, helps you to get grounded. Sometimes simply asking, ‘Why not?’ brings those hidden reasons up to the service. You can differentiate between past and present, the person in front of you and for instance, a parent. You also gain the opportunity to recognise that you can’t give what you don’t receive, so allowing you to receive allows you to advance the intimacy of your relationships.

And remember: when someone gives you something whether it’s a physical gift, a compliment, their time, etc., rather than spinning out about how to repay the transaction or deflecting, for example, the praise, just say thank you. This stops you from living in the past, assuming that people have ulterior motives and from going into autopilot behaviour and thinking. You stop giving away your power and draining your bandwidth.

In doing so, you will be in a position to break the cycle and receive the love, care, trust and respect you desire and deserve, not just from others but also from you.

Your thoughts?

Power Struggles: Who’s really ‘winning’ here?

By Reading Time: 6 Minutes

image
One of the very real concerns that we have once the honeymoon phase begins to fade or we abruptly come face to face with real life and normality where we discover that the other party isn’t “perfect” or that we have to learn how to communicate, be vulnerable and deal with life’s inevitables (conflict, criticism, disappointment and receiving no), is worrying about whether this person is going to be able to do things in the way that we need, want and expect. There can also be this fear that they might expect us to do things ‘their way’. We might wonder, What if I have to be vulnerable by being open to allowing this person to get to know me (and me them) and in essence, showing up in this relationship? This all feels a bit too risky. It feels like unknown territory and on some level, we fear that if we don’t ‘manage’ things that we will be opening ourselves up to being someone or doing something that reminds us of a painful part of our past that we don’t want to go back to. If we are very reliant on being in control, even if it’s pseudo control, we will enter into what boils down to a power struggle where it becomes about one of us conceding to the other.

We know that not only do we not want to go ‘back there’ but that we’re also afraid of stepping outside of our comfort zone by engaging with the person from a place of vulnerability and building a relationship. Compromise? Pah! What if I compromise and they’re screwing me over or they screw me over at some other point?

The funny thing is that we try to act all cool in the honeymoon period but once things start getting real, which can be signaled by us feeling afraid of normality or things developing, we start to clamp down and dig our heels in. I know I’ve been all nice and non-confrontational but you do know that you need to do things in the way that I expect (even though I might not directly express it) because this is how I feel safe and validated, right?

What if ‘their way’, i.e. outside of our comfort zone, rules and predictions, will hurt us?

What we need to acknowledge when we get into a fight for supremacy is that that’s not a relationship; that’s all ego. We’re fighting for that person to have our needs met while at the same time being resistant to doing things ‘their way’ because if we are entirely honest with ourselves, we see ‘their way’ whether it is an accurate assessment or not, as being reflective of the behaviour of someone from our past, likely a parent/caregiver, or a sibling, bully, or someone else who did not meet our needs. Our perception of ‘their way’ may be based on conscious or subconscious recognition that we are engaging with our ‘type’ and/or that we are recreating a pattern of a situation in attempt to be right this time.

We want to right the wrongs of the past.

Being passive and a pleaser can make you a sitting duck for unavailable relationships

By Reading Time: 4 Minutes

You get to have a say in any relationship you're involved in. Steer clear of anyone who shows or tells you otherwise

Sound familiar?

These are all examples of passive and people pleasing behaviour that make you ripe for not only being involved in unavailable relationships where the other party is the emotionally unavailable driver to your passenger self, doing everything on their terms, blowing hot and cold, managing down your expectations etc., but it can also place you with controlling partners who will happily leverage your eagerness to please, your unwillingness to step up for you and your reliance on being directed.

Do you want to be in a battle or a relationship?

By Reading Time: 2 Minutes

 

Some people just aren't ready for you or what a relationship entails. No amount of 'pleasing', twisting, morphing, blending, nor discussing to the nth degree, begging, pleading, cajoling, negotiating, and even guilting, is going to change that. That's not a relationship; that's a battle.

Some people just aren’t ready for you or what a relationship entails. I’m not talking about some wishy-washy affair or one where it’s imbalanced due to one party sacrificing themselves to maintain the status quo. No, I’m talking about a mutual, copiloted partnership. Not perfection, not questioning the hell out of each other or yourselves, not lather, rinse, repeat cycle of chaos, but instead coming together because you know who you are and that you can survive and thrive on your own and that together, you enhance what’s already there and have a great time together, as well as dealing with not so smooth times instead of being divided by them.

Some people just aren’t ready for you or what a relationship entails. No amount of ‘pleasing’, twisting, morphing, blending, nor discussing to the nth degree, begging, pleading, cajoling, negotiating, and even guilting, is going to change that. That’s not a relationship; that’s a battle.

If you’ll give a ‘discount’ or remove what may be perceived as the cumbersome ‘options’ such as being truly intimate and committed, or just having basic care, trust, and respect, that person who you’re effectively ‘battling with’, will be ‘in’, as in, ‘in’ as long as they have the option to be half out and to do things on their terms. If you’ll discount your boundaries, needs, feelings etc, they’ll be OK with that because they’ll get to remain in their comfort zone. If you’re willing to do a little or a lot of the effort, great, and if you’ll pump them up, even better. You end up giving away so much of you that you may feel compelled to fight solely on the basis that if you were to ‘win’, you could restore your sense of self. Instead, you are likely to end up losing even more because in getting sidetracked, the battle takes you further away from who you are but also takes you further away from the very things that you may profess to want. So many people tell me that they want mutual love, care, trust, and respect along with stability and a sense of direction and yet, they’re in chaos due to fighting a prolonged and sustained battle that if only their ego wasn’t so heavily involved, they would have stepped away long before.

What are you fighting for? It may seem as if you’re fighting for love or for the relationship, but should a relationship be a battle? Where do you draw the line? It ends up being a battle for power and supremacy of terms because it really becomes about fighting and competing, which becomes about winning and losing, and ultimately this doesn’t leave room for a mutually fulfilling copiloted relationship.

When we mistake battling for loving, what we don’t always admit is that aside from wanting to win back some credibility with ourselves, that we also continue because we’re driven to want to control the uncontrollable–we want to be in control of the outcome and we mistake the outcome as ‘being able to control the other party’, when actually we can change the outcome by changing our path and changing the definition of that outcome.  Our participation in this battle can be used as a turning point that jolts us into addressing our relationship with us and our love habits.

Are you wanting to engage in a sustained and prolonged fight, or do you want to love and be loved? Choose wisely and act accordingly.

Your thoughts?

Be careful of getting carried away with trying to get your own way

By Reading Time: 3 Minutes

two people having a tug of war over a relationship

Sometimes we’re so focused on how we see things, what we want, being right and basically having our own way, that we might forget that this is all well and good if we’re on our own but not so good if there’s another person involved. We stop caring about whether what we want is the other person’s agenda (which would make it a joint agenda) and even though it might feel like what we’re doing is for the ‘greater good’ of the relationship – ‘We’ll both be so much better and happy if I get things to go my way’ – ultimately us both not being on the same page and working together contributes to the overall poor health of the very thing that we want – the relationship.

If it feels like you’re battling with somebody for a relationship, if it feels like you’re a bailiff trying to collect enough goods to the value of the ‘relationship debt’ that you think you’re owed due to the costs that you feel that you’ve expended, and if it basically amounts to you trying to get your way over this person, halt.

Not only is this unhealthy but it’s very solo-minded which runs counter to the very thing you’ve become blinded about in trying to achieve it – the relationship. If it’s not a mutual relationship where you have two people stepping up of their own free will with responsibility, accountability, shared values, mutual love, care, trust and respect plus the landmarks including intimacy and consistency, that’s a code red alert.

If you imagine starting your own business with the purpose of achieving certain goals and the employee or partner you’re working with, after a promising start or plenty of talk, doesn’t deliver on their intentions or predictions. At this point you might try to troubleshoot the issue together which might pave the way to open communication, understanding your respective commitments and having a clearer idea of each others needs, expectations and wishes and how that fits with what what you want.

Why Unhealthy Relationships Are The Equivalent Of A Power Struggle

By Reading Time: 5 Minutes

are your relationships a power struggle?

Listening to a reader explain their tumultuous involvement with their on again/off again boyfriend recently, I was struck by the obvious power struggle that they both seem oblivious to. It’s like each one keeps returning, or leaving, or promising and then passive aggressively undermining it, or having the ‘last word’ because they want to have power over the other person and how the relationship proceeds or ends. This isn’t a mutual relationship with love, care, trust, respect and shared values – this is two people playing to ‘win’, only they seem to have missed the memo that a relationship is about two people copiloting with a joint agenda not fighting for supremacy.

The ‘driver’ (there is always a more powerful party in unhealthy relationships that’s struggling with a ‘passenger’) wants things on their terms so not only do they want to do the relationship their way, but if they feel like it, they’re going to hang around like something rotting in your life until they see fit to be ‘done’ or you remove their seeming power over you by opting out. The passenger thinks that the way to get the relationship they want is to become the driver or make the driver less powerful or to get the driver to let them share the ‘wheel’. Not gonna happen.

If your relationship is unhealthy and you keep going back or seem hell-bent on ‘proving’ something or even disproving it, you are being sidetracked by your ego that has embarked on a power struggle.

Love is not about having power over people, nor is it about giving over your personal power like some sort of shady dowry in exchange for the love, validation and identity that you need, nor is it about having a relationship on ‘your terms’. If you were in a truly mutually respectful relationship where you are both in reality, you’d have both gone through the discovery phase of dating, moved on into a relationship and organically come together to work on your relationship and the direction.

You are mistaking love for power and so relationships become about you gaining power from someone or having the power to influence and change them, or feeling that because things haven’t gone your way that the only way that you can feel ‘whole’ again or proceed is if you forcibly or passive aggressively grab your power back from them.

You may even want the person and the relationship to be your ‘power supply’, breathing life into you and giving you an identity. These are things that you should have and keep before and during a relationship. In fact, you may have convinced yourself that it all went wrong when you stopped being in control of the relationship possibly due to ‘one false move’.

What’s Your Hook? Understanding What Will Stop You From Letting Go Of a Relationship…Or Draw You To It

By Reading Time: 7 Minutes

skitched-20100921-215731.jpgI listen to people talk about their relationships a lot, and whether they’re waxing lyrical about how great the other person is and signposting conversations with ‘key selling points’ about them, or lamenting the loss of a relationship, they all have ‘hooks’ that form the basis of what ties them to the person and their perception of the relationship.

Much like how we use our beliefs to basically create a ‘story’ of why we are and are not capable of something, the purpose of ‘hooks’ are to act as conscious and subconscious ‘stories’ that we tell ourselves as to why we are with someone, why we think we feel so much for someone, and why we struggle to let go of the relationship.

These ‘hooks’ are what you will cling to as reasons to:
1) feel attracted to them,
2) justify your emotional and sexual investment in them,
3) to put them on a pedestal,
4) make excuses for them,
5) yo-yo back and forth when you struggle to let the relationship go…even when you should.

I’m always fascinated by descriptions (also excuses) that, for instance, readers give of their Mr Unavailables and assclowns. They talk about how powerful they are, good looking, great in bed, good at their job, authoritative, spontaneous, shares the same interests, liked by everyone, goes to church, kind to old ladies, loves animals, runs their own company, has a few kids, tall, sexy, enigmatic, has a heap of problems, misunderstood, and yada, yada, yada. I immediately get a sense of what hooks these people into their relationships, and I can assure you, it’s rarely anything to do with shared values, the meat of healthy, sustainable relationships.

Hooks will become your ‘blind spots’ because they affect your ability to see the person in their entirety because you instead, allow these hooks to carry so much weight that they distort your perception of the relationship, them and even you.

They will cause you to verbally and mentally say ‘But….’

But he’s so busy at work.
But he’s got a lot of issues he needs to deal with.
But he’s so good looking….so no wonder he struggles to commit himself to me.
But she’s been hurt before.
But she’s so beautiful.
But he’s so amazing in bed and I’ve never had that connection with someone else.
But he ‘gets’ me.

While the ‘hooks’ are true to an extent, they’re often exaggerated either in terms of the ‘greatness’ of the hook (But he’s such a Good Man) or the relative importance to the relationship (He’s so powerful) and some of them, when put to the test are misplaced assumptions that don’t hold up to the harsh realities.

Get Out of Stuck! Getting Your Power Back In & Out of Relationships (Part 2)

By Reading Time: 5 Minutes

womans face in the darkFollowing on from part one, here are some more key lessons on grabbing back your power

If you are reliant on external factors (ie someone else) to make change for you to feel happier and get what you want, you will feel helpless and powerless because you’re trapped in the inertia of watching for something to happen for a feeling to kick in, instead of making things happen yourself. It’s also indicative of issues with co-dependency which doesn’t leave much room for feeling empowered.

Every single one of you has inner strength that you can draw on – you just need to use it. When I finally had my ‘enough’ moment, I found strengths within me that I didn’t know I had but had always possessed. I couldn’t bear to wait around for the penny to drop, for someone to ‘do the right thing’. My own penny needed to drop and i needed to do the right thing. I didn’t think I could survive and then when I considered the alternative, I knew I had to try.

Don’t ask ‘Where do I find that power?’ It’s there – you ‘activate’ it by using it. Have some boundaries, learn to say no, exercise your judgement, trust your own gut, pay attention to red flags, walk away even though it hurts because you’re acting in your own best interests, tell yourself you can and will do better, don’t have sex to find out if someone really ‘wants’ you, encourage yourself even when you’re scared sh*tless, tell yourself you will survive, tell yourself you are strong, believe that if and when he calls or comes a knocking on your door you’ll be ready for him, believe that if you do see him, even if you quake inside, you’ll handle it. Tell yourself whatever you need to, but make it positive, and get on with it.

Power doesn’t come from thinking, or talking for that matter. I know of so many people that suffer with Women Who Talk and Think Too Much, they could probably power the world with their mental energy. Thing is, it’s all a bloody waste if all you ever do is sit around thinking and talking about things to the nth degree. Make a decision! Get up! Of course things are not changing when you’re sitting there hoping that a magical thought or that one tone or phrase that you haven’t hit upon yet will get the other person to finally ‘get it’. You need to ‘get it’.

If you’re waiting for all the answers, that comfort moment, that 100% outcome, you’re in for a long wait.

You have to take a leap of faith in relationships. You have to line up what you know based on recognising who you are, how you feel, whether you are acting with love, care, trust and respect to yourself, whether you’re getting that from someone else, if you have boundaries, values etc and you have to gauge whether there is enough there to proceed. People who are waiting for all the answers, whether it’s because you’re looking for just one more piece of information to prove he’s an *sshole, or one more piece of information to prove you can take him back, or one more piece of information to determine if you should stay, you’ll always find a reason to ask more questions and to look for more answers because you’re removing your own power by not trusting your judgement, assessing the situation and making a decision. I‘d feel pretty bloody powerless if I was waiting around for something that I didn’t even know what the hell it was.

Get Out of Stuck! Getting Back Power In & Out of Relationships (Part 1)

By Reading Time: 6 Minutes

woman jumping in freedomRight now, there are lot of women (and men) who feel powerless in their relationships or with dealing with an ex. In fact, I know of a number of people who feel powerless in life full stop. The other person (or people) are ‘all mighty’, ‘all powerful’ and you decide that they have the power to be and do a lot of things in the relationship, which automatically puts you in the position of being the ‘weak’ or ‘weaker’ party.

If you’ve been involved with people who are reliant on you having little or no boundaries, then you’ll know that the other party has appeared to hold ‘the powerbase’. I speak/correspond with women all the time who say stuff like ‘I don’t think I can be strong if he tries to come back’ or ‘I know that if he were to turn up right now, I’d be weak and we’d be back together in a flash’, ‘I feel bad about myself when I’m around him and I’m not sure I can handle him if we meet’ or ‘I feel helpless and I don’t know how to get it to stop’. I also hear from people who no matter what I or others say, they have an answer and an excuse for everything that gives them a reason to stay ‘weak’ and without power that they believe has been removed by ‘everyone else’ or ‘everything’.

If you put people on a pedestal, they’ll only look at you from above, which puts you below them.

If you think someone has all or most of the power, this means that you have none or little of the power.

Any excessive power that you perceive someone in a relationship to have, is power that, even if they have assumed it, you have also given it away and allowed them to continue to believe they have that power. Likewise, if you decide that life is conspiring to make make you powerless, it’s that belief that you have no power that is causing you to be powerless. It’s not the planets, it’s not other people, it’s not the fortune cookie, it’s not everything else. You’re not someone without power but you are someone who doesn’t seem to think they deserve their own power and like I talked about in my previous posts on understanding why people don’t see their qualities and characteristics accurately in relationships, choosing limited relationships, gives you limited experiences, gives you limited results.

If you choose limited partners that give limited relationships that cause you to give a limited contribution, you’ll also have limited power.

Someone can only have power over you that you’ve given away.

You have it, you might as well use it.

Imagine that you have your power and your self-esteem in a valuable looking box. Inside the box is your values, your sense of self, your boundaries and of course your power, amongst other things. You could keep it close to you, but when you have low self-esteem and you’re looking for love in all the wrong places, you don’t feel like you have enough or any of those things in the box. Even if you did have them at one point, you didn’t value them, so you put them out of the box.

Now you walk around through life with your hands outstretched with the box in your hand, trying to offload it. The bloody things like a hot potato! It’s like you don’t want the responsibility of yourself, of trusting your own judgement etc, so every time you meet someone who reflects your beliefs and creates the familiar feeling of your pattern, you can hardly wait to hand the box over. ‘Here!’ and you thrust it at them.

Knowing When To Work at Your Relationship Part One

By Reading Time: 6 Minutes

man digging signIn talking to people from all walks of life about relationships, it becomes apparent that often, people can be at opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to the whole concept of ‘working’ at your relationship.

At one end, you have people who think that a relationship is doomed if it has to be ‘worked’ at along with the misguided expectation that relationships that are ‘right’ should be easy and not have conflict. Then at the other end, you have sacrificial lambs who don’t recognise that not all relationships should or can be ‘worked’ at. The latter types of people continue to work at their relationship even though it flatlined long ago – I call it flogging that proverbial donkey till it collapses.

Nonetheless, relationships do require ‘work’, although not the type of work that a lot of people in dubious relationships indulge in; the key is recognising when you should work at your relationship.

If you have love habits that negatively impact on your relationship and you’ve lacked self-awareness around these, you can see how somebody else can be unaware of how counterproductive their own habits are.

A few months back, I wrote about understanding why some relationships don’t work out and this is a key part in recognising where the opportunity to work at the relationship presents itself:

“Relationships don’t always work out because we don’t always behave in the most beneficial way for the relationship. We can meet people who are actually potentially ‘right’ for us…and then screw it up. It’s often unintentional and in some cases, it can effectively be sabotage when you engage in behaviour that brings about a self-fulfilling prophecy that let’s you keep believing the worst. This is a potentially right person but unfortunately the wrong behaviours.

And then…a lot of relationships don’t work out because you’re with the wrong person. Period. It wouldn’t matter if you ran through fire, acted perfect, gave them everything they want, and cartwheeled around naked; the person is wrong for you. It’s likely to be a mix of boundary crossing, blatant red flags, a fundamental inability to meet each other’s needs (or you meet theirs but they don’t meet yours…), a lack of shared values, and being uncommitted, or being committed for the wrong reasons. You’re fundamentally incompatible.”

If you’re considering working at your relationship, you need to be in the first camp – potentially ‘right’ for one another but engaging in behaviour that is detracting from the relationship.

If you’re in the camp where you’re fundamentally incompatible, if you continue to work at the relationship, you’ll end up emotionally bankrupt and the relationship equivalent of negative equity. Not all relationships are destined for greatness. To continue will cost you a lot in time, energy, and emotions, as well as your sense of self with potential impacts to work, family, friendships, health, and even your finances.

Now before I continue, the whole ‘potentially’ right for each other thing isn’t about you seeing potential where there is no potential. It’s not about projecting your vision of things and building a relationship based on illusions because this relationship has little or no foundations and isn’t real.

Relationships require two committed parties with both of their feet in with both people prepared to work at the relationship, with reasonable foundations, and four feet firmly rooted in reality.

If one or both of you are in lala land and cannot be real, the relationship is doomed because you’re not equitable partners, you’re not in the same relationship, and you’re not working at the same relationship.

It’s also important to be under no illusions because it means that in choosing to not only be in the relationship but also to continue working at it, you’ll both be able to understand why you may have faltered and learn to overcome and work through issues.

Lovenomics: Managing Your Desire to Be the Exception in Relationships Part One

By Reading Time: 5 Minutes

I’ve finally gotten around to reading Superfreakonomics, the follow-up to the bestselling Freakonomics. Pitched as a “rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything”, authors Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner are deliciously clever and funny, exploring everything from why sumo wrestlers and teachers are the most likely to cheat, to the economics of prostitution and how they cash in on seasonal increases in demand such as July 4th, much like department store Santa’s rake in the cash in November and December.

Anyway… there is this brilliant paragraph where they explain how they deal with questions of being the exception to the rule that really gets to the heart of why I try to empower people about relationships:

“But while there are exceptions to every rule, it’s also good to know the rule. In a complex world where people can be atypical in an infinite number of ways, there is great value in discovering the baseline. And knowing what happens on average is a good place to start. By so doing, we insulate ourselves from the tendency to build our thinking – our daily decisions, our laws, our governance – on exceptions and anomalies rather than on reality.“

Here on Baggage Reclaim I’m always emphasising reality because so many people get lost in illusions and create reasons for themselves to be the exception, even though the basis for believing their situation to be the exception may be skewed. Particularly with Mr Unavailables (emotionally unavailable men) and assclowns, holding onto relationships with them is about wishing, willing, waiting, and hoping, that you are the exception.

I wrote a little about our desire to be the exception in my recent post on Forget Mr Good Enough, Mr Perfect, and the Fairy Tale – “It’s the desire for the ‘happy ending’ that lets so many of us try to extract relationships from assclowns and Mr Unavailables. We hope our tale will be different. We want to be the exception.”

Somewhere along the way, the lines have become more than a little blurred.
When the frog turned into a prince, it was about looking beyond the superficial.
In the modern-day fairy tale, this message has been lost and instead we are ignoring fundamental characteristics and behaviour that will make it very difficult, if nigh on impossible, for us to forge a healthy relationship.
The frog has become symbolic of taking a man, any man, and no matter how badly he behaves, believing with all of our hearts, minds, and souls, that in there, lies a prince.
After all, one day, our prince will come, won’t he?”

One of the most common things that gets said to me by readers is that they cannot believe how similar people’s stories are and how dysfunctional behaviours can be broken down so clearly. Many people find Baggage Reclaim while looking for answers to a problem that they believe to be ‘unique’. Many readers felt alone until they started reading posts that got to the heart of the problem.

By talking about stuff like boundaries, passive aggression, The Status Quo, how we become the pursuer, blowing hot and cold, how to spot emotionally unavailable men, the powerbase, being the girl that cried wolf, the guy that cries crocodile tears, the terms and conditions of relationships, knowing when to fold in bad relationships, return on emotional investment and much more; these act as a baseline for understanding what is highly likely to result in relationships – the love ecomomics or ‘lovenomics’.

Many of us have got caught up in believing “exceptions and anomalies” in the form of stories we heard about that woman who stuck by the side of her Mr Unavailable/assclown and eventually, he saw the light. Eventually could be 5,10,15, or 35 years but this is normally ignored. I also hear about that one woman who slept with someone else’s husband and he left the wife to be with her.

I’ve received a lot of emails from women saying ‘but what if he changes?’ and after the Sex and the City movie came out, my inbox became cluttered with emails basically saying that Mr Big and Carrie getting married shows how Mr Unavailables can change. These are the other types of ‘stories’ – fairy tales based on romantic comedies, actual fairy tales, celebrities, and even royalty – Prince Charles marrying Camilla Parker Bowles must surely be one of the most famous Other Women being a so-called ‘exception’.

Baggage Reclaim is about my perceptions of relationships and the love habits and behaviours that many of us have that are in actual fact counterproductive to 1) personal happiness 2) reasonable levels of self-esteem, and 3) having a decent, healthy relationship.

The love economics or ‘lovenomics’ of engaging in behaviours such as:

indicate that the very likely, almost definite result is a relationship that will deplete your self-esteem and cause little happiness with a lot of pain.

When you carry negative beliefs about love, relationships, and yourself, you inadvertently ending up choosing partners and relationships that reflect these things, not challenge them.

When you have little or no boundaries in relationships, you open yourself up to, at best, being taken advantage of and, at worst, being abused. It’s like wearing a sign saying ‘Kick me, disrespect me, do as you please. I’ll still be here’. We all need limits otherwise we have no opt-out point.

Having little or no foundations as a basis for a relationship means that you love and trust blindly and choose to stay in a relationship for illusionary reasons. You love, and choose to love and stay before you actually have evidence that suggests that you should.

By contradicting words by having inconsistent actions, it shows that neither has any real meaning. When we listen to words and ignore real actions, we dine off illusions.

Betting on potential means that you ignore someone’s consistent behaviour and decide you know better and don’t adjust your ‘vision’ and ‘expectations’ to something more realistic because it doesn’t suit your agenda.

Overthinking and over-discussing to the point of not actually doing anything means that you render yourself immobile by stalling on making a decision and taking action.

Loving people unconditionally even when they have little or no love, care, trust, and respect for you means that you love without any care for yourself in the hope it’ll be reciprocated.

Projecting our vision of things and sticking with it even when we have real evidence contradicting our views means that we have ‘fake’ relationships

Expecting things from people that we either are not ourselves or should be providing for ourselves, means we create unrealistic expectations and set ourselves up to fail at relationships.

Accepting lies, ridiculous statements, and outrageous behaviour means you invite illusions into your life, live in denial, and don’t value honesty.

Placing everything on one person and making getting a relationship a vocation totally distorts your perspective where you will opt for any relationship rather than not be in one. You’ll try to ‘make’ every relationship work.

We have to start examining our desire to be the exception because when we choose someone whose ‘rule’ is to behave in ways that detract from you and are counterproductive to forging a decent relationship, it’s quite a damaging gamble to place on yourself.

Back in part Two.

Your thoughts? How long are you prepared to wait to be the ‘exception’ to someone’s ‘rule’ of not treating you and the relationship with love, care, trust, and respect?

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