should I work at my relationship Archives - Baggage Reclaim by Natalie Lue

How Do You Know If You Should Keep Working At A Struggling Or Even Flatlining Relationship?

June 20, 2012 By NATALIE Reading Time: 5 Minutes

Knowing when to work at a relationship is a bit of minefield. Should you stay? Should you go? If you stay, should you just wait to see if things get better in time? Should you try to get your partner to change? Should you keep talking about the issues in the hope that it triggers understanding, remorse, resolve to change, and subsequent action? Should you stay because it’s better than going back out there and starting over? Isn’t something better than nothing even if something brings your self-esteem to the floor? How do you know when to work at your relationship?

The decision is driven by a variety of motivations, with some of these actually being smokescreens for fear, plus you’d be surprised at how many people want to work at a relationship that they know on a fundamental level is actually not right for them, whether it’s down to conflicting values (incompatible), conflicting behaviours (eventually incompatible if not resolved), or unhealthy behaviour that’s staying unhealthy (still incompatible).

You might, for instance, decide to stay because you reason that you’ve been there for X years so it’s too late to turn back now – the whole not wanting to lose your ‘investment’.
You might decide to stay because you remember how things used to be and even if that time was a long time ago, you want to try to get it back.
You might decide to stay because something happened that dealt a blow to the other party which changed their behaviour. It hasn’t always been this way and there was a time when you had a pretty healthy relationship.
You might decide to stay because you realise that you’ve accepted something for so long (being casual, putting up with abuse, repeated cheating) that to leave would be like “Oh my God, I put up with [insert whatever it is) for X years!” and you don’t want to face that outside of the relationship and may even wonder who will want you now.
You may feel like you’re dependent on them and to start over would create, for example, an emotional and financial hole. Particularly if you feel like you’re “too old” to start over, staying will seem attractive.
You might stay because you love them even if you don’t love your relationship and how your life is very much.
You might stay because you think that this is all that you’re worth.
You may have children together and worry about what leaving may do, or be afraid of being just like your own parents.
You may be afraid of ‘failure’ and feel like not continuing to work at it is an indelible black mark against you.

How do you know when to work at your relationship? When both parties are willing to work together and when you’re willing to also address any issues you may personally have.

Working at your relationship involves working together to find a solution you can both positively live with – compromise. If your solution involves you losing yourself, that’s not compromise – it’s loss. ‘Work’ is also not waiting for the other person to change…

When They Come Back Claiming That They’ve Changed…But Have They?

November 2, 2011 By NATALIE Reading Time: 5 Minutes

Picture this (adopts Sophia from Golden Girls voice), Dublin, 2000. It’s a few days before Christmas and I’m making my way to the arrivals hall with all of my baggage (literally and figuratively…) after getting off a flight from Miami. My parents thought I was just coming home for Christmas in between semesters, but I was actually moving back and getting myself as far away as possible from what I’d slowly come to realise was an abusive relationship creeping up on me.

My relief at being home quickly dissipated when within minutes of arriving, my mother told me that my ex had been in touch with her, apologising, saying how mean I’d been to him, how much he’d changed (oxymoron right there), and that he wanted to get back together with me. I felt panic grip my insides and the dark cloud I thought I’d left behind me in Fort Lauderdale was back.

Hours later he showed up in an ill fitting leather jacket, with a large bunch of flowers, and an overwhelming need to win me over. In theory you’d like to believe you’d be happy when your ex ‘comes crawling back’ after treating you badly and he was ticking boxes with flowers, apologies and engagement references, but I just couldn’t muster up happiness. Instead I felt afraid. He apologised repeatedly but really it meant “Hurry the eff up and accept my apologies so that I can stop feeling out of control.” He pitched me a life where I could have a “little car” and a “little job” and go and do a “little course”, and we could be so happy together.

But do you know what was odd though? During that visit and over the course of five weeks when he pursued me and harangued me about taking him back until I stopped sleeping, he was never once able to tell or consistently show me exactly what was different. Oh he felt bad that I had felt bad about him treating me bad, but in truth he was a Future Faking wrong footed man.

“How do I know if they’ve changed?” is a question I’ve been asked thousands of times. Too Good To Be True Exes will have you saying “They say they’ll even go to counselling” or “They say they’ll never hurt me again and that things are going to be different this time”.

When someone comes back to you claiming that they’ve changed, that they’ve missed you, are sorry, full of regret, that they’re never going to do or be whatever again and yada yada yada, they should be able to tell you what is different.

What is different in their thinking and actions now that they’re saying that they’ve changed and want to get back together? What problems have they identified that they’ve addressed that can have them claiming they’ve changed?

Behind Every Excuse is the Real Reason

September 23, 2011 By NATALIE Reading Time: 5 Minutes

One of the things that I’ve recognised as a differentiator between healthy and unhealthy relationships is the presence of excuses, whether it’s yours and/or theirs. In the worst of situations where you may be denying, rationalising, and minimising, you may even be making excuses for their excuses which only goes to show how poor the original excuse was.

Just like how on the other side of a jumped boundary lies disrespect, on the other side of an excuse often not only lies at least some element of disrespect but also the real reason.

An excuse is a reason that is given to justify an offence or fault but its primary purpose is to lessen responsibility by getting you to overlook, excuse, or even forgive off the back of it. This of course is rather tricky because when there’s excuses it means that any commitment is being lessened, which means everything else tied to it becomes pretty flimsy. You may also be overlooking things that are busting up your boundaries.

People often get ‘reasons’ and ‘excuses’ mixed up because there appears to be some crossover. Excuses allow people to remain in their uncomfortable comfort zone, dodge conflict by avoiding honesty both with others and themselves, dodge accountability, and cast themselves in a better light.

Saying “The dog ate my homework” gives the impression that you’ve been a victim of misfortune and avoids conflict whereas saying “I couldn’t be arsed to do my homework” or “I forgot” makes you look lazy and lacking in conscientiousness.

Likewise saying “I’ve been really busy” gives the impression that you’re so busy (ya know busier than a world leader) that you haven’t had the time to contact or see them whereas saying “I’m not interested / am half-hearted / have been trying to get back with my ex” will not only have you in the position of saying something that most people squirm at and possibly inviting ‘conflict’, but if you’re the type of person that likes to hedge your bets, you may want to keep them as a rainy day option. If anything you’re hoping they’ll take the hint and do your job for you and at the worst of things, you may be hoping the excuse allows you to avail of their ‘usefulness’.

Stripping The Excuse Out of The Excuses in Dating & Relationships

July 6, 2010 By NATALIE Reading Time: 3 Minutes

Each day on the Baggage Reclaim Facebook Page, I share little snippets of my insights about relationships and after I was tweeted by @AngieMaggieB saying “I may have heard every excuse in the book this week…and then made every excuse for all those excuses.” which inspired me to respond on Twitter and Facebook with:

“Don’t make excuses for other people’s behaviour as you’re assuming you know better because you don’t want to hear the truth. Accept what they have done or said because you can decide if you want to stay or go under real circumstances & reasons. If you’re making excuses for their excuses it means the original excuses were crap.”

Imagine you could strip out all of the excuses and put it in plain English in as short a description as possible: What are they doing?

I remember my relationship with the Mr Unavailable that triggered my epiphany and all I did was make excuses.

For example…with excuses:

My ex only called towards the weekend and wanted to meet/stay over when he had a guys night out in London that same weekend. His work seemed very busy, he was trying to sort out his living arrangements, and I figured he was trying to ‘optimise’ his time by lining up all of his activities.

I also figured he wanted to take things slow. He was half hearted, stopped making an effort, and was worried about his ex discovering that we were dating. I focused on the latter information and decided that it was worries about her that were causing him to behave as he did towards me.

He was fresh out of a relationship, had baggage, and was keen to keep things light. I reasoned that these were near irrelevant because if being fresh out of a relationship mattered or his baggage, he wouldn’t have pursued me…

Call this giving someone way too much credit for their empathy or level of responsibility towards someone.

For example…without excuses:

My ex only called towards the weekend and wanted to meet/stay over when he had a guys night out in London that same weekend – I was a convenient stop off point, not important enough to have plans made with, and great parking…

I also figured he wanted to take things slow. Unless going slowly involves grinding to a halt and moving into reverse, his behaviour showed that our relationship wasn’t going anywhere because he didn’t want it go anywhere that had him ‘too’ committed.

He was half hearted, stopped making an effort, and was worried about his ex discovering that we were dating. So really, we weren’t dating. If we were – it’s a secret that I wasn’t in on…

He was fresh out of a relationship, had baggage, and was keen to keep things light, because he didn’t want anything heavy – we were casual.

The moment I stopped making excuses was the moment I saw what had been in front of my eyes and under my nose if only I’d cared to acknowledge it.

Try it out. Strip out the excuses from their excuses or just strip out all of the excuses and ask yourself what you’re left with and whether you like it. Keep in mind that if you have to make excuses in the first place, it’s likely that you are making an exception to and turning a blind eye to stuff that, under ordinary circumstances, you shouldn’t be.

Think of it as an experiment – spend a week not making excuses. No If’s, But’s, Maybe’s, What if’s, and Say It Isn’t So moments. Think of it as giving yourself your relationship straight, with no chaser – what does it taste like?

Your thoughts?

Recognising That Being Intelligent Is Not the Same As Being Relationship Smart

July 2, 2010 By NATALIE Reading Time: 4 Minutes

One of the most infuriating things about realising that you have been involved with someone where the signs were there that there were issues, red flags, or that the relationship couldn’t work is feeling like you dropped the ball. You wonder how a woman who considers herself intelligent and may have one or several degrees, or run a successful business, or be doing very well on her chosen career path, or be a good judge of character with ‘other people’, can be caught out by a man or ‘love’.

You think to yourself ‘There’s no way in hell I’d put up with this crap from friends, family, or colleagues!’ and then muse that men and love are ‘different’.

You think ‘I’m in charge of people at work and so organised and in control of other areas of my life – why the hell can’t I get it together with my private life?’ And then muse that it’s because it’s love why it’s not in control.

Here’s the thing: Being intelligent is not the same as emotional intelligence or being relationship smart. The fact that you are intelligent only means a lot to the context of a relationship if you actually apply some of these skills to your relationships.

The reason why the disconnect can exist between general intelligence and relationships is because we make up different rules for relationships, we think ‘love’ requires exceptions to what we’d do under ordinary circumstances, and we don’t live congruent with our values across all areas of our lives.

That and there are plenty of people who are very intelligent or even moderately intelligent but they don’t have common sense…. If you’ve seen people who seem super clever but do the oddest things that defy logic at times – that’s how a lot of people are about their relationships. In fact, lots of people believe that love doesn’t need logic.

What you’ll realise as you shed old habits is that actually, if you do have values and boundaries, love will follow logic and not have you sacking off yourself or doing crazy stuff to maintain ‘the dream’. And I should add, it’s not just women who experience this – I spoke to a man recently whose whole distrust of himself and women is based on the fact that he made exceptions for someone who betrayed and made a fool out of him.

“I credit myself with a lot more intelligence and yet, I discovered that she was unbelievably sneaky and it galls me. Even when I was finding out about her schemes, I wanted to see the best in her.”

So what does this guy do now? He thinks he’s taking the intelligent approach by not only being risk averse but by setting ‘little tests’ for the women to see if they’ll get shady on him and nip the bait. Sadly, if you feel the need to set tests, you’re already in No Mans Trust Land, which isn’t that clever really as you’re creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If tomorrow, you make an error at work or drop something at home – the likelihood is that you’re not going to decide to never ever do that work task again or go in the house/do the same thing. Common sense and your own smarts suggests that you learn from the mistake and adapt what you did to minimise the possibility or outright avoid the mistake happening again.

Being relationship smart means that at times you’ll make mistakes and errors in judgement and you may do stuff that is counterproductive to your own relationship success, but in having a level of awareness and consciousness about yourself and your interactions, you adapt your behaviour and learn from it rather than repeating it and hoping it’ll work itself out without you getting uncomfortable.

Being smart at anything means that you have to get uncomfortable.

What do you need to be relationship smart?

1. Self-love and a reasonable level of self-esteem.

Recognise that true unconditional love starts with yourself and you cannot love or be loved, if you don’t like and love you.

2. Boundaries – knowing your limits.

Recognise that all relationships require boundaries and that we ourselves require limits, which in itself protects us from dangerous situations.

3. Awareness of the importance of values and your beliefs.

Recognise that you need to know who you are and what you need to live authentically but you also need to be understand your beliefs because what we believe is reflected in our actions which inadvertently impacts on living with our values.

4. Communication but also a willingness to recognise that we don’t all communicate in the same way.

Recognise that while you need to be willing to communicate, that you also need to recognise when you need to tell your message differently to make it clearer.

5. Eyes and ears open – not illusions or hearing but not listening.

Recognise that there is very little that we can do in life with our eyes and ears closed – when we do, we live unconsciously sleep walking through life waking up in bad situations.

6. Action and application – willingness to get out of being stuck rather than engage in relationship insanity.

Recognise that not only do actions speak louder than words but that we must not rely on others to change for our happiness and be willing to adapt and apply ourselves.

7. Ability to emotionally connect (real intimacy) combined with empathy.

Recognise that real intimacy and real connections come with opening ourselves up emotionally, not withholding ourselves and that we also need to be able to place ourselves in others shoes, but without getting lost in them or trying to wear them.

8. Acceptance that conflict can and will arise.

Recognise that it’s wholly unrealistic to avoid conflict as you will habitually compromise yourself and your values – NO is not a dirty word.

9. A reasonable level of trust both in yourself and in others.

Recognise that you need to have a core baseline of trust and you use signals learned from listening and watching to increase or decrease trust and make assessments of the situation – that’s trusting yourself and having faith in how others will act, but adjusting when they don’t match up.

10. Respect, for others but also for yourself.

Recognise that if you don’t respect yourself you will invite disrespect but that also through remembering the importance of respect, you will accept people as they are and respect their differences, even if it signals the end.

Apply these life skills that can actually be quickly learned and you can change yourself and your experiences. I will be writing some more posts on being relationship smart. Any questions…drop them in the comment box or use the contact page.

Your thoughts?

Life Lessons: The Danger of Making Assumptions About People and Relationships

June 29, 2010 By NATALIE Reading Time: 6 Minutes

Over the past few days, a variety of things have had one particular word on my lips – assumptions. I’ve written before about the danger of holding assumptions that don’t have a basis especially when they haven’t actually got anything to do with the actual person, which you then in turn continue to base your perceptions and actions on, even when there is evidence that doesn’t support your assumptions.

The key times when I see assumptions creating issues is when:

We love and trust blindly based on assumptions which don’t hold true but we continue to ignore anyway as we prefer the illusion of the assumption.

We assume that someone who we feel attracted to possesses the values, qualities, and characteristics that some ‘we’ want to love should possess. We think ‘Wow I love that we can climb mountains, play football, and listen to John Mayer together’ and assume that makes you life partners even though it turns out, you don’t have shared values.

We look at people or a situation and make assumptions about it, not stopping to sanity check our perception.

A particular example of this is being with a guy and assuming that he’s a pillar of the community, liked by everyone and it’s just you that he’s a jackass with. But I’ve found on a number of occasions that much like how we apply a rosy glow and put people on pedestals, we apply it about their social standing too, possibly because we believe them to possess qualities or attributes that we think make likeable and popular people. What we may not realise is that sometimes these people are tolerated or maybe even liked, but not to the extent that we believe.

We make assumptions about how we think, feel, and act and assume that our partners think, feel, and act in the same way.

For example, people often say to me that they know that they wouldn’t do something so they assumed that their partners wouldn’t and even when they discovered that they did do what they thought they wouldn’t, refused to accept it. Instead, they became boggled by it or even denying it.

We assume that when we communicate something that the meaning is loud and clear and that everything we intended comes through.

In your mind, it makes sense and you hear you loud and clear. However, often, it can be that you’re speaking Chinese, they’re speaking French but you both don’t realise it and continue to assume that the other party is understanding you and become frustrated when they don’t. You’re assuming your communication style is understood or that it is even shared.

Everything In Relationships is Contextual: Ask Yourself What Does This Mean To Me or Our Relationship?

June 28, 2010 By NATALIE Reading Time: 4 Minutes

Over the past few days I’ve written about the importance of sexual values in relationships and when I explained about the questions you need to ask yourself before having sex, which are variations of the questions you need to ask yourself about your relationship in the wider sense, two of these questions served to remind me how easy it is for people to forget that everything in relationships is contextual:

Even if we are not ‘in love’ or have not said the ‘L word’, is there mutual care, trust, and respect?

Do I like how he/she treats others?

There were emails and comments that basically went along the lines of ‘He was really nice to every Tom, Dick, and Harry except for me’ as if this invalidates the notion of asking this question in the first place. But if you’re homing in on how they treat others and not how they treat others and you and whether there’s a disparity between the two, you’re missing the point.

Everything is contextual in relationships so anything that you think about someone needs to be related back to the context of you and the relationship.

The reason why I stress asking yourself about how you’re treated and how others are treated is for the very reason that we are inclined as humans that even when we are not personally experiencing something ourselves, to be riddled with self-doubt if we believe that someone else is. – What’s wrong with me?

There is no point in going on about how he’s kind to kids and animals if he is unkind to you. Are you feeling the milk and honey of his kindness?

There’s no point in going on about how everybody likes him if at the end of the day, he treats you with a lack of care, trust, and respect, never mind love. Do you like him? Does he like you? Do these wonderful characteristics filter their way to your relationship?

There’s no point in saying how he helps the old lady down the street – who cares? Yes it’s nice but you’d be surprise how helpful even the most depraved of people can be when they want to kid themselves for a few minutes! What does the fact that he’s kind to someone else mean to you and your relationship?

It’s great that he goes to church, is a pillar of the community, and claims to be a man of God but is he living congruent with his values? Or are you getting a Jeckyll and Hyde experience?

Knowing When To Work At Your Relationship P2: Questions to Ask Yourself & Key Signs

March 31, 2010 By NATALIE Reading Time: 5 Minutes

In part one I explained how the opportunity to work at your relationship can really only exist, if you’re two people who are potentially right for each other but engaging in behaviours that are counterproductive to the success of the relationship. You both need to be coming from an honest, illusion free place otherwise your efforts will be futile because you won’t both be working at the same relationship.

So where do you start?

Be accountable for where you are in relationships and adapt your own love habits, because by changing you, it changes the people you attract, the people you’re attracted to, and who you’ll pursue a relationship with, plus if you’re in a relationship, you’ll change the relationship you’re in.

Before you make the decision to work at your relationship ask yourself:

1) Do I have healthy boundaries in this relationship? Or has this relationship been operating because I have little or no boundaries? If it’s the latter, you have a lot of work to do personally, never mind in the relationship. You need to consistently show that you’re now living by your boundaries but you may also meet resistance now that you’re treating yourself with love, care, trust, and respect, because the other person may be happy with the way things are.

2) Are there any major red flags in this relationship? If you are dealing with someone who is abusive, or has an addiction, narcissist, etc, you’re trying to make a relationship with someone who actually has bigger issues to deal with. Unless you knew this person prior to the existence of this red flag and they are fully aware and ready to resolve the issue, you are actually engaging in fixing/healing/helping which is a sign of a very unhealthy relationship. Also read my post on how to spot emotionally unavailable men and why relationships don’t always work out.

3) Are you projecting? It is important to ensure that you are not cloaking someone else with your visions and feelings. What you think, feel, want, and see, is not what they think, feel, want, and see. A mistake that many people make is getting lost in their feelings and assuming that because they appear to feel a lot and want the relationship that the other party should too. You are two individuals. Clear the illusions and work out what the real deal is.

4) Are you with a same person, different package? If you have a negative relationship pattern, you’re likely to be going out with variations of the same person. Even though this person seems ‘different’, you may be engaging in relationship insanity – making the same choices, choosing the same types of people, having the same pattern, and expecting different results.

Knowing When To Work at Your Relationship Part One

March 29, 2010 By NATALIE Reading Time: 6 Minutes

In 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.

Return On Investment in Relationships

November 14, 2007 By NATALIE Reading Time: 3 Minutes

Relationships are about give and take. I don’t expect anyone to stand there taking scores because this in itself creates a negative atmosphere for a relationship, however, in healthy relationships there is an overall healthy balance of give and take without having to kill yourselves getting that balance and there is certainly no need for lots of drama to achieve this. Sometimes you’ll need them more and they provide a rock of support and at other times, you’ll need them. Sometimes you’ll both have to struggle together and get through it, but the point is that you’re together, with the foundation of a healthy relationship and the common goal of sticking together.

Relationships that have negative foundations, almost always generate negative equity. You will end up walking away with less than you started because as long as you engage in unhealthy relationships that erode your self esteem, reduce your trust, and keep you further away from relationships, you are losing out.

Return On Investment (ROI) within relationships refers to the ratio of what you’ve gained or lost against what you invested into the relationship. This is not about financial or material gain or loss. This is about The Three Es: Emotion, Esteem, and Energy. If you’re not generating a return on investment and at the very least breaking even, the balance of negativity is way out of whack and you are effectively throwing The Three Es at a bad investment that is not going to generate a return.

It’s very difficult for you to take the relationship out of negative equity – that rather uncomfortable place where your investment is now worth less than what it was when you started. You’ll effectively have to continue to pay out emotionally even though there is a deficit and this can be soul-destroying. If the market (your relationship) continues to decline, it can be very difficult to pull yourself out of the relationship black hole because you will struggle to know who you are or what you are personally worth, particularly because if you date emotionally unavailable people, you tend to derive your worth from them and whether you deem your interactions with them as a success or a failure.

With emotion it’s all about how you feel when you’re with them. If you end up feeling negative about yourself or you generally end up expending a lot of negative emotion, you’re doing structural damage and sending the value of your investment plummeting.

If your self-esteem ends up taking a knock or becoming non-existent, no matter what you (or they do for that matter) it could take YEARS before your investment manages to break even, nevermind actually generate a return.

We all need energy for our relationships. There are a lot of people with the misguided idea that relationships ‘happen’ but you both have to work at the relationship and no matter how much energy you invest into the relationship, if they don’t want to make the investment work, it becomes like trying to ride a bike with one peddle.

Breaking even gives you the bare minimum and that just tells you that you’re both doing just enough to keep things ticking over but neither of you are excelling. Either that or one of you is but the others input is so crap that it pulls the investment back to break even point.

This is not about clinical and saying “You owe me” but it is about being savvy enough to recognise when you are investing yourself and The Three E’s into something or someone that isn’t worthy of you. I recognise that sometimes we just want to have fun or don’t want to think too much about the future, but there are many women out there today who started out doing stuff just for the hell of it, just for the experience, and just to have fun, and somewhere along the line it took its toll and they don’t know who they are anymore and they have become very numb and engaging in dangerous relationships. Positive investment does bear fruit!

Oh and be careful of investing in a Fixer Upper as it is likely that it will be another woman who will bear the fruit of your labour!