No One Can Ever Love You “Enough” They Just Can’t
That was my ex-husband’s answer to what went wrong in our marriage. He thought I could “love him enough” for him to feel loved.
He said that to me in 2010 and it’s a lesson that still keeps giving.
I leave in three days to go back to France. I’ve been stateside, re-establishing a home base here to be closer to my newest family addition and those I love. It has taken a lot. And I makes perfect sense when I settle into my Human Design, that I underestimated what I could do and overestimated my ability to do it all. Setting up house again, almost from scratch, an international move that brought a good bit of furniture, but not all the little things needed to actually live somewhere.
There were a lot of lessons to be learned.
Some were beautiful. Some were challenging, some even painful. Some were surprising. I discovered support and generosity in places I didn’t expect.
I also uncovered hidden expectations – mine – that shook me to the core and created the perfect storm for disappointment, self doubt and regret.
I’ve released and regrouped and reshuffled and been more honest than I’ve been in .. I don’t know.. LOL… maybe a lifetime. But learning to let go, releasing those you love from the unconscious expectation of loving you enough for you to feel loved is always a work in progress. Love is undefinable and never discussed. We say, “I love you,” yes, but it’s often used as a shield or even an apology when we fear the “love” is unhappy with us.
Bottom line – we hide in our shadows for fear of not being loved.
We all hide. We all fear the vulnerability of truth. We all put forth our shiniest armor, our prettiest pose, our kindest face, to deflect our fear.
And, this is what I most want you to take to heart…
That story we tell ourselves is much bigger than the things we are afraid of.
No one can ever love you enough, if you don’t love yourself that much. If you aren’t prepared to come out of hiding and be truly, authentically you - and love yourself for it - no one else will.
Remember, everything we do is because of a way we want to feel or avoid feeling. The solution is to stop comparing yourself to what you think you are supposed to be – and shine in your own light of exactly who you are.
Here’s how you do that…
Stop disliking parts of yourself. Stop beating yourself up with ugly language that you would never say to someone you cared about. Just stop. Go cold turkey…
Think about it this way – if someone rejects you because you are being authentic, is that who you want to spend your one wild and precious life with; a person who wants you to be something else? NO!
So stop.
I’ve been sharing this same message for my eight years– the only path to love is self-awareness and acceptance.
Practice those things over spending time and energy trying to figure him out, or asking disempowering questions like – what’s wrong with me, when will things get better, why do I keep doing this, why do I always end up in unhappy relationships… etc… etc.. etc..
Release those questions.
Here are four ways to do that:
If you are ready to spend more of your life feeling joyful and at ease, join us in the Unbuttoned Membership for support. Get to know you. That’s what we do.. we practice getting to know who we are, how we show up and how to turn that into what we want and who we want to be.
Book Club - May is a very exciting month. We are looking at Self Worth – the key to love. Brené Brown talks about it in the book we are covering in Book Club (it’s free by the way and yes, you can still join us. We won’t finish until mid-June, so jump into the FB group and know there is plenty of time to catch up.)
We are also experiencing some exciting transits this month that may have a profound energetic pull on you. You can read more about those here (link to a blog about May transit dates – and these need to be published on the website under a new category – Living in the Flow by Design)
And.. you can also begin with this eye-opening exercise I use with my clients:
Fill in the blanks below with all the things you want from a connected, passionate relationship..
In a perfect world, my lover would ________________________________. He would understand____________________________ about me. But if he didn’t, I would not fear sharing my need for ______________________.
He would__________________________________________me. I would feel this from him because he would show me by _________________________________. I would never doubt he was there for there for me because__________________________________. And when I looked at him I would feel _________________________.
I would practice awareness, collecting evidence of the things he did to show me ________________________________
Once you fill this out with all the things you secretly long for “him” to do to – replace him with you…
For example:
If you want your partner/lover to be kind and thoughtful, to notice the small ways you care for him, are you kind and thoughtful to yourself? Do you take time to rest, keep a journal,
learn more about you on a regular basis?
Are you investing in YOU.. (time, energy, resources?) Do you have close friends, belong to a group ? Are you in our Unbuttoned Membership, or something similar where other women care enough about you to tell you the truth?
Do you collect evidence of your progress. There will always things we want to improve – and – do you see the many small ways that you’ve shifted, grown, shown up, gotten back up and dusted yourself off after a disappointment or setback?
Self Worth is the key to receiving and giving love. No one else can give you that. But you don’t need them to.
Share what comes up for you.. I’d love to hear!