importance of self-love and letting go

[kittycat95]

I read this on baggage reclaim, a great website I recommend. A lot of this really resonates with me:

 

We choose men that reflect the things that we believe about ourselves, love, and relationships, and if we are carrying a lot of negativity, we’ll find ourselves with the very type of men that we profess to want to avoid. The classic example of this is being afraid of abandonment and then finding yourself with partners who disappear on you or who keep abandoning the relationship and are completely disloyal.

 

The danger in having a lack of self-love is that if we seek validation in others, when we are alone, we’ll panic, and quickly try to go back to the original source for some familiarity.

 

If you’ve kept going back to a relationship, you don’t know how to, are afraid of, and are unprepared to deal with loss. In fact, you may be hypersensitive to loss, and rather than actually work your way through it, you just avoid going the whole hog of feeling the loss.

 

Avoidance of feeling the pain and professing fear of it, is about dodging the full extent of your feelings about the loss, abandonment, and any perceived rejection.

 

Hard as it may be for you to hear, the fact that you avoid feeling out something to the fullest extent, doesn’t change the reality. The relationship is still over, you still need to grieve it, and you’ll still feel rejected. The difference is you’re prolonging your own agony and suspending yourself in limbo. This is why you’ll end up being stuck in an illusion being completely distanced from the reality. You won’t see the real him and he’ll be able to recognise this because you need to live a lie so that the reality doesn’t pierce it.

 

Burying your feelings as a coping mechanism is basically shutting down. You may have numbed the pain but it will play its way out through your health, mental, and emotional state with the potential to affect how you cope with stress, family, work, and general life. It’ll feel like swimming through quicksand.”

[radrluv72]

Interesting reading. At the age of 38, I'm definitely in a place in my existence where I can tell people proudly, that I am who I am, I own who I am, and I make no apologies for it. And trust me, it took me a hell of a long time to get there. I don't know how it is for men, but for women it just seems so much harder. And even when you get there, there's two things that happen: you can either get slapped with the label of being an over-assertive bitch, or men don't feel as needed as they want to be and shy away from being in a relationship with you.

 

You definitely attract what you put out. Years ago when I had no clue who I was or what I wanted out of life, the men I chose to be with were just as clueless. The result was my being in a few unhealthy, uneven relationships. I deliberately stopped dating for a long time because I knew I had to have the time to figure out what it is that I wanted, needed & deserved...I also needed to learn to love myself because I was worthy of real love.

[Sugarkane]

Interesting read as always. I haven't read that particular article on tehre before. It is helpful to know where you're going wrong, but what can you do to consciencely change it?

[RuinedLife]

I read this on baggage reclaim, a great website I recommend. A lot of this really resonates with me:

 

We choose men that reflect the things that we believe about ourselves, love, and relationships, and if we are carrying a lot of negativity, we’ll find ourselves with the very type of men that we profess to want to avoid. The classic example of this is being afraid of abandonment and then finding yourself with partners who disappear on you or who keep abandoning the relationship and are completely disloyal.

 

The danger in having a lack of self-love is that if we seek validation in others, when we are alone, we’ll panic, and quickly try to go back to the original source for some familiarity.

 

If you’ve kept going back to a relationship, you don’t know how to, are afraid of, and are unprepared to deal with loss. In fact, you may be hypersensitive to loss, and rather than actually work your way through it, you just avoid going the whole hog of feeling the loss.

 

Avoidance of feeling the pain and professing fear of it, is about dodging the full extent of your feelings about the loss, abandonment, and any perceived rejection.

 

Hard as it may be for you to hear, the fact that you avoid feeling out something to the fullest extent, doesn’t change the reality. The relationship is still over, you still need to grieve it, and you’ll still feel rejected. The difference is you’re prolonging your own agony and suspending yourself in limbo. This is why you’ll end up being stuck in an illusion being completely distanced from the reality. You won’t see the real him and he’ll be able to recognise this because you need to live a lie so that the reality doesn’t pierce it.

 

Burying your feelings as a coping mechanism is basically shutting down. You may have numbed the pain but it will play its way out through your health, mental, and emotional state with the potential to affect how you cope with stress, family, work, and general life. It’ll feel like swimming through quicksand.”

 

Oh yes I can totally relate to ALL of this!! Describes my reaction to feelings of loss and rejection perfectly!

[reimeivn]

That makes a lot of sense. When I know what I want to do in my life, and how I am going to get it, my ex shut down. He hated the fact that I share that with him, he hated the fact that I found him a job, but he himself never be able to find one. How can he find one if he doenst know what he can do, and what he would like to do? If he gives up at everything how can he knows if he can do anything. He doesnt know any of that about himself. Clueless.

 

So when I have the future set up, he gets scared. Understandable huh? What if its not what he wants? He doesnt know what he wants right now, doesnt mean that he will find out by the time we need to do all that for the future.