The 5 things I put off for far too long that kept me from attracting a good guy
If you are currently not happy with your relationships OR you’re currently not happy because you can’t FIND a great relationship, then this is for you.
You may not be ready to hear or accept what I’m about to tell you, but I encourage you to read it anyway. There WILL come a day where you’re going to be like ‘damn, she was right!’
I’ve had just such a moment.
When I look back at my journey, I can clearly see 5 things that I put off for a really long time that had I embraced earlier, would have helped me reach my relationship goal SO. MUCH. FASTER.
So if you feel like you’re just spinning your wheels and wasting a lot of time, read on.
Those 5 things I wish I’d embraced soon are:
1. Taking personal responsibility
2. Healing AND integrating the deeper issues
3. Allowing myself to be open and vulnerable
4. Receiving help and support
5. Being seen
I’m going to fully dive into each one in its own separate email so I don’t overwhelm you with too much content.
Even if you are currently in a relationship, I think you’ll get something out of this series, especially if that relationship isn’t exactly where you want it to be right now.
So I’ll get on with it…
Taking Personal Responsibility
I won’t get into my full story in this article, but here are the highlights that I think are pertinent.
My dating history started at age 15. Very first boyfriend turned out to be a narcissistic psychopath. Time with him in my life was some of the worst of my life.
It got better from there as far as no more narcs. But the rest were some shade of emotionally unavailable.
A cycle on repeat
The cycle on repeat was to meet someone, have great chemistry, find out pretty quickly he just wants a casual thing, I spend the next 2 years trying to convince him I’m a great catch.
OR he does want a relationship but it stays pretty shallow and only progresses when I threaten to leave; until I finally do when I realize we’ve hit his progress limit. This usually takes an average of 4 years PER relationship.
There was just always a step they didn’t want to go beyond – but I did.
Was I marriage material?
I was feeling like there was something wrong with me. Something that I couldn’t see but potential mates could.
My view at the time was all the ‘good’ ones were taken and they weren’t choosing me.
It was a very helpless feeling. I felt sorry for myself quite a bit.
I remember complaining about this to a very good male friend at work and he surprised me with his practical response.
He said ‘Well, seems to me you’re the common denominator here. Maybe you should go talk to a professional about it.’
Not gonna lie, that response really pissed me off!
It wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I was looking for sympathy, for validation. And he gave me none of that.
He gave me what I needed to hear, except I was far too stubborn to take it in at the time.
Unfortunately, all I heard was ‘You’re broken, there is something wrong with you, go find someone who can help you fix it.’
Nope! Was FAR too proud to do that!
Unfortunately, it would be another 5 or so years before I realized he was right.
(If you’re keeping track…yes there was A LOT of time I wasted….)
Yep it was me…but not in the way I thought
Up until then I had been very disempowered around my relationships. I was being very passive and allowing and accepting what came my way thinking it was the best I could do.
I wasn’t learning anything from those relationships because I was thinking that the problem was everyone else’s and not mine.
So why would I look for a lesson?
Perpetuating the cycle
No, the only lessons I was taking away from these relationships was to keep my cards close to the vest and only play my hand when I was sure to win the round.
It made me approach relationships by trying to remain an ‘I’, an individual, instead of creating a ‘we’; which doesn’t work so well. That just creates a relationship with very little depth.
Which kept perpetuating the same cycle over and over again. For 20 years.
Yep, I left myself out of the equation for 20 years and chose instead to believe that my situation was simply ‘bad luck’.
The shift
This didn’t shift for me until I became so desperate that I turned to a psychic medium for help.
If she saw my ‘issue’ she didn’t come out and say it (which was smart as I was NOT open to hearing I was the cause of all my problems, LOL).
She instead gave me a book recommendation.
It was a Law of Attraction book. But it wasn’t one written from a super ‘woo’ point of view.
It was very practical and I couldn’t put it down.
The book helped me to see the role I had been playing in this energetic cycle. And that the only way to shift it was to take 100% responsibility for it.
The power of intention
Up until then, I hadn’t understood how the energy of intention worked.
I hadn’t understood that you need to be as intentional about dating as you are about anything else.
The book however, didn’t put all of the pieces together for me. I still didn’t understand fully why I kept being attracted to these emotionally unavailable types.
But it did get me out of victim mode where I was stuck blaming and defending – and into proactive mode where I was using intention to harness the power of creation.
It was the first step toward completely changing my life. Simply realizing that I was the only one who could change it.
It sounds so simple, but I was stuck for SO LONG. And you may be too!
How this applies to you: If you’re stuck in the same dating patterns, likely you have just accepted it as ‘bad luck’, or that there aren’t any good ones out there. Unfortunately this kind of thinking leaves YOUR power (and fate) in the hands of others.
Taking responsibility and being willing to take a look at how you might be creating these results WILL break the spell, I promise you.
Healing & Integrating Deeper Issues
Once I had accepted that my repeating relationship cycles were of my own making, the quest then became to figure out how exactly that was the case.
At first, I thought it was going to be enough just to throw all my energy into manifesting the relationship I wanted.
I did all the manifesting things:
- got clear on what I wanted and why
- got clear on my values
- made time every day to visualize the relationship and how I would feel when I’m in it
- made room in my life for a partner
- got out of my comfort zone and did a lot more things I would not normally do
And it worked, pretty quickly.
About 6 weeks later, a complete stranger walked up to me at an event and as we got to chatting she said she had someone she wanted to introduce me to.
It ended up being the man who would become my husband.
Sunshine & rainbows it was not
I wish I could tell you it was love at first sight. It was most definitely not. I wasn’t attracted to him right away.
And I almost didn’t give it a chance because of that.
What I didn’t know at the time, was that any healing I had done from my past had not been fully integrated.
I was still operating from those subconscious energy patterns.
This is the shit that nobody tells you about and I’m going to be honest, if someone had, I’d probably not have believed them.
But…I’ve already done so much healing work!
Remember, I thought I was healed up!
What I didn’t know about healing back then that I do now, is that there are many, many layers to healing. It’s not a one and done proposition.
It’s actually never done.
Then once you heal, you have to integrate what you healed by putting your new way of being into practice.
You need the practice in order for the new way of being to become your preferred/comfortable way of being.
If you don’t, the old way will take over, because it’s still what is most comfortable.
And that was exactly what was going on with me when I met my husband.
This time it was different
He didn’t give me scraps of love.
He didn’t make me work for it.
He wasn’t guarded.
He was consistent, open and honest.
And therefore, I didn’t trust it (even though that’s what I said I wanted). But because I’d never had that before, it was uncomfortable. And I wanted to push it away.
My old pattern was to chase, to keep making offers of love, to try to ‘heal’ the other person with my love and patience.
This guy didn’t need healing. I didn’t have to chase.
I simply had to receive.
And it was uncomfortable.
Full awareness is healing
Things didn’t change until I developed full awareness of this pattern.
Here was this guy that seemed to be everything I had just spent the prior months asking the Universe for and I was rejecting it.
Why? If it’s what I said I wanted?
Then I decided to give it a chance. To remain OPEN & CURIOUS.
I decided to simply get to know this person.
Once the initial discomfort passed, THEN the attraction came in.
Patterns are energetic
What I want to tell you that nobody told me back then, is that your relationship patterns will in some way mirror the energetic pattern you had with your family of origin.
For me, my parent’s love was not perceived by me to be consistent. I felt like I got scraps. I felt I had to work hard at being the ‘good girl’ in order to get it.
And that unresolved energy pattern carried over into my adult relationships as I tried to work it out and heal it with each one.
How this applies to you: it’s why you are attracted to the people you are. It isn’t ‘bad luck’, you aren’t doomed, or broken. You simply have some unhealed shit to take care of.
When you take the personal responsibility to actively heal your old stuff, it can have profound repercussions in your relationships and it can serve as a catalyst for your partner to do the same.
Allowing Myself to be Open & Vulnerable
I touched on this one a bit already.
My old pattern was to maintain a wall between me and others and to simply endure.
By ‘endure’ I mean keep my true feelings close and ignore my own needs. I simply focused on the needs of my partner instead. Hoping that one day he’d just magically be willing to give me everything I wanted if I just loved him enough.
Until then, I’d be here, behind this wall, patiently waiting….
Meanwhile, all that frustration would build up and be released in acts of passive/aggression.
That’s what happens when you keep your heart closed and don’t allow yourself to be vulnerable.
You become miserable. You’re the one who pays for it, not him.
So the shift I had to make quickly when I met my husband was to keep my heart open and to be willing to share my true feelings.
Healed people operate differently
For a man like him was not going to put up for long with my resistance or any passive/aggressiveness.
His openness and honesty required it be met with equal openness and honesty.
It wasn’t quite so scary this time because I had figured out in a previous relationship, that when you are vulnerable and you honor your true desires, you are free.
I’ll explain what I mean.
Taking a stand for ME
About a year prior, I had been casually seeing someone for quite a while. He was seeing others too.
I really liked him and was hoping he would make it official with me at some point. I was willing to wait.
One night I decided I’d had enough pain. If he didn’t want to see me seriously, then I’d rather just be done with it.
So while he was over for dinner at my house, I worked up the nerve to be open and vulnerable. I told him what I wanted and how I felt.
He said no. Didn’t even give me a real explanation.
I was crushed. But I felt something shift.
I wish I could say I kicked him out that night. I didn’t.
But the relationship sure lost its shine. I was pretty much ‘meh’ about it from then on and did end up having a last straw moment where I ended it for good.
Not once was I sorry I worked up the courage to have that conversation that night.
Freedom
It was absolutely instrumental in helping me to be free emotionally from a relationship that was not serving me.
Here are the implications of this for you: If you find there is an imbalance of power in your relationship and you are always waiting on someone else to ‘come around’ or meet your needs in some way, it’s totally because you aren’t being open and vulnerable enough to share what’s truly on your heart.
You may be scared of rejection, as I was that night. And I was rejected! But that rejection was so needed as a wake up call for me. Rejection can actually serve you, if you let it.
If you are single and dating, starting out a relationship with an open heart and being completely honest with your true self and feelings will serve to attract others who will also show up that way.
This is the hallmark of healed people. Be on the lookout for it!
Healed people don’t play games.
Receiving Help & Support
Ok sisters, raise your hands if you have trouble asking for and actually receiving help and support!
Yes, my hand is raised as well.
This is a growth edge for me.
I thought I didn’t need anyone!
I used to consider it a source of pride to not need anyone.
Besides, I don’t want to burden anyone else with my problems. Nobody else is going to want to help me.
Turns out, that was my trauma talking.
I had tired, strapped, single people as parents. They didn’t have the energy for anything extra. So every time I asked for something I wanted or needed, they made me feel really bad about asking.
Especially if it costs any money!
So I stopped asking and I found other ways to get my needs met or I went without.
This pattern was so ingrained I chose my future occupation mostly on the criteria that I would make enough money to never have to rely on others (my parents) again.
Receiving is UNCOMFORTABLE
Whenever anyone would give me help/support, it would make me feel so uncomfortable to receive it and feel like I ‘owe’ that person now.
I did NOT want to be beholden to anyone.
But I had to start to shift the way I looked at help/support when I saw that it was causing issues in my relationship.
While dating Jeff, I realized that some people actually LIKE doing things for others. It’s how they express their LOVE.
Yea, it kind of blew my mind.
There are people out there that enjoy helping others. And don’t need/want/expect anything in return for it.
That forced me to examine my own pattern with giving.
The currency of giving
Was I being just as self-less when I gave or was I doing it as good will to be able to call in a favor later like it was some kind of currency?
Yep, I viewed help/support as currency. If I hadn’t put it in the bank then I sure as hell was not going to call in a favor and put somebody else out or worse, owe them later.
Jeff, my husband, and his family taught me that help/support was not something you earn. It was not currency.
It’s simply something you do when you express love for someone else. No strings attached.
So by extension, my issues with giving/receiving help and support are actually issues with giving and receiving love.
It gets easier with practice
I’m still working on the receiving part and being able to do it without guilt or shame.
It’s still hard to ask, but at least I ask now. And in sitting with the discomfort it brings, it has lessened.
How this helps your relationships: Are you and your loved ones looking at giving/receiving help and support as currency? If you are, then likely there are unspoken rules around giving and receiving love. Probably a lot of shame around it too.
When you can get to the bottom of those and both of you can remain open and vulnerable while you explore this, it’s going to inject a new energy into your relationship.
How this applies to you: If you are single and dating, examine your own beliefs around giving and receiving help, support & love.
Why is there shame?
What is the discomfort you feel?
What would you like to believe about it?
Then go practice giving help without strings and especially, practice asking for and receiving it from others.
Giving love is something most of us can do fairly easily.
It’s the receiving part that a lot of us struggle with. The deeper you can receive love, the deeper and more connected your relationships will be.
Being Seen
This one is important because it’s how you meet people!
But being seen can trigger all kinds of self-doubt and uncomfortable feelings.
It can also trigger all kinds of fears such as rejection, not being good enough and fear of judgment.
There can be so much packed into the simple act of getting yourself out of your house and into the presence of others.
Can I be invisible, please?
Growing up, if you would have asked me what superpower I wanted to have, I’d have told you invisibility at will.
There were SO MANY times growing up that I had wished to simply disappear.
It seemed that whenever anyone else paid a little too much attention to me, there was always some sort of abuse that would follow.
So I made it my job to fly under the radar and not shine brighter than anyone else.
Be plain, be boring, be the doormat, don’t make eye contact, don’t have opinions, no boundaries.
I had a lot of healing to do. Much of it I had taken care of by my early 20’s. But I still felt uncomfortable with attention.
Whenever I would go out with friends to a club, hoping to meet a cute guy, I’d come home disappointed because nobody approached me.
I thought I just wasn’t attractive enough.
Turns out, it was my body language!
I wasn’t inviting attention because I was trying to be invisible.
Internal safety heals
It took me quite a while to become comfortable enough in my own skin to be seen.
I had to help my inner little girl realize that it’s safe now to be seen. That I wasn’t going to let pedophiles or bullies hurt her anymore.
That I was going to protect her where others had failed.
If I hadn’t healed this, I would not have been able to be out in public, alone, where others could approach me and offer to introduce me to someone I might like.
It would have been a LOT harder for the Universe to bring to me the partner that I was asking for if I spent all my time alone at home.
How this will help your relationships: If you have trouble being seen and don’t really have many friends or interests of your own, likely you put all your eggs in one basket and expect your significant other to be everything you need. That causes a lot of friction on both sides when your partner isn’t able to do that.
If you are single and dating: this one should be obvious – the more you get out and be seen, the more people you will meet (of both sexes).
Which is a great thing!
You could meet your next partner as a result of one of your new friends.
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In this article I talked about some really big shifts I had to make in order to bust out of old relationship patterns that weren’t serving me.
If you saw yourself in any of that and wondered what it would take for you to make those kinds of changes too, then I think we need to talk. I help others do what I did for myself (but MUCH faster).
Want to know more? Let’s chat, it’s free. On our call, I’ll help you become aware of your exact energy patterns and we’ll discuss ways you can start to shift those.
Schedule your free call today!
