I know this about you – you take personal responsibility really seriously. As a matter of fact, that’s probably one of the items on your Uniquely Essential Qualities List (UEQ’s).
There’s just so far you can evolve yourself on your own and if you’re stuck you need to move your skills from theory into practice. As with driving, there’s a time to move from the learner’s manual to the highway. If you want to uplevel your relationships, you need other persons to play with – dates, and eventually, a partner.
Jerry Maguire might have said, “You complete me” but in real life relationships, people don’t meld into each other. What we do is meld our two selves into one partnership while keeping our personal identities intact. Think about that. If you’ve never liked the idea of losing yourself or becoming a different person for love – you’re doing it right!
So, how do you know what part is your responsibility? Once you figure it out, give yourself the gift of knowing what to do about it!
1) How does this apply to me?
I take it to the extreme sometimes, but you have to learn to embrace the question.
If a man is not seeming to be in integrity, how can I see places where I’m not in integrity? If he is not standing up for all his principles, where am I not standing up for all my principles?
Do you continually meet men who do not want to commit to you? And do you believe that ‘men don’t want to commit?’ Where in your life are you not committing and following through? I know you don’t believe me, but this is exactly what’s happening.
This is what it means when we say we attract who we are.
2) How am I impeding my own love?
Demanding certainty is keeping you from going all in on the dating process. And not going all in on dating is what’s keeping you from meeting the man who will one day be your rightest love match.
Here’s the way this may play out – you engage with very few men via messaging, deciding early on in the interactions none of them is right for you. Or, you have a bunch of short phone or video chats or go on a bunch of first dates, and decide none of them is right for you. Deciding is the way you create certainty, because even though you’re not getting what you say you want – a relationship that grows into marriage – at least you know what you’ll get – you get to be certain that the budding relationship will end and that you will remain alone. In other words, you get to feel comfort in the familiar.
You must allow yourself to feel the discomfort of not knowing whether or not he’s the one, or if he thinks you’re the one for him, or as I prefer to call it – you must develop a willingness to wonder.
3) What’s really stopping me from finding my true love?
Have you had experiences with men who turned out to be very different from who you thought they were? If so, maybe you think not knowing how to trust men is what really scares you about dating. If you have you may believe that you can’t ever trust any man again, and that this decision will keep you safe.
But here’s the real truth that I don’t hear a lot of people talking about – this decision never to trust a man again won’t keep you safe, it will only keep you separate, and the person you need to learn to trust is yourself.
I’ll beat the drum again for loving yourself, because when you truly love yourself you evolve to trust yourself. The reason you have to trust yourself is when you don’t, you second guess absolutely everything you do and it holds you back, it keeps you stuck, from moving forward into the relationship you want.
Trust you will see what you need to see, know what you need to know, choose and take action to care for yourself and your most precious relationship – the one you have with yourself.
Once you can trust yourself to take care of your needs you’ll know how, when and if to trust other people – men included.
This is how you learn to not simply live at the effect of the world, this is how you become responsible for your results in your entire life.