My Personal Love Lessons

Recently I was thinking about how much romantic relationships have taught me. I had many difficult moments. Sometimes the same scenario repeated itself over and over again. I did not understand that the reason this was happening was that I was not getting the lesson. I even lost my faith in God for a while. But I finally figured out that life was giving me an opportunity to choose again.

The following are my personal life lessons when it comes to romantic relationships. Review your relationship patterns and see if maybe you have the same lessons to learn as I did.

• Prince Charming is not coming to rescue you. The fairy tales, media, movies, magazines, and culture make us believe that without a man we will not be happy and that we can't live a great life until prince Charming comes and rescues us. I got a major wake up call after a series of prince Charmings who turned into frogs. I was forced to take a lot of time alone and finally see that I could lead a happy life without a man. Plus the kind of man that I want to attract is not looking for someone to rescue.
• Assert your needs and feelings no matter what. We are taught as little girls to be pleasing and not make any waves. We are told that we need to give..give...give..give, give...give...give.. and never ask for our needs to be met. So women end up compromising themselves in order to keep a relationship. Many men know that most women are too afraid to leave. Some women cling to a man even when he is emotionally, mentally, or physically abusive.
• Honor, love and respect yourself. Some men are like little boys, they are always testing women to see how far they could go. Unfortunately most women let them go way too far. Low energy men need to be retrained to respect, love and honor women. But for that to happen we need to honor, love and respect ourselves. We teach men how to treat us. Let's start teaching them the right way.
• Your self-esteem is not dependent on anyone or anything. If a man leaves your life it does not mean that you are less of a person. In my experience it has always been a good thing that the person left my life because it led me to be free to meet someone much better. Just make sure you get the lesson and heal first so that you do not get the same type of guy (or the same one) again. You will be hurting your self-esteem thinking there is something wrong with you. It's not you, it's him. You just need to do what you got to do to stop attracting him.
• It is better for you to be alone than to be with someone who treats you poorly. You deserve better than a man who is selfish, abusive, chemically addicted, emotionally unavailable, etc. Or even if he simply does not get how fabulous you are. If a man does not see you as a beautiful goddess and cherishes you as one, then he does not deserve you.
• You can't fit a square peg into a round hole. Sometimes women are much less picky when it comes to men than men are with women. I can't tell you how many men I dated who thought they were God's gift to women. The reason for this is because women act like men are everything. Even when a man has serious character flaws. Or he conflicts with her values, interest, and beliefs. Women still compromise themselves to make things work. Don't do this. Don't compromise on the big things that should not be compromised, you will enventually regret it.
• Trust your intuition no matter what. There are many low energy people out there. They tell you what you want to hear for many self serving reasons. It's not always their intention to mislead you, but they get all caught up in infatuation. Once infatuation is over they can't deliver. So learn to trust your intuition.
• Have your own life. As women we tend to revolve our life around men. We drop everything for men, sometimes even our good friends. Men rarely change their life and schedules so drastically even when they develop feelings for a woman. Be more like a man in that you ensure that you don't give up the things in your life that keep you feeling good about you. Especially do not drop your friends.
• You can't change a man, you could only change yourself. We focus so much on fixing men when they do not want to nor do they think there is anyhing to fix. The worse part is that we are so busy trying to change them that we neglect our own life. So if you are with someone and think that as soon as you can you are changing this and that, forget it. You are wasting time and energy. Just start all over with someone who already has those qualities.
• I recommend that you find someone who wants to grow with you. I recently met a happy couple who has been married for fifty-four years. I asked the husband what was the secret. He told me that when him and his wife were dating for eight months, he asked her to marry him, but only if they both worked on growing together. They are an inspiration to me and many others. I know that their children have followed their footsteps. I met one of their daughters who has been married for many years as well. Someone who does not know them would probably assume they were newlyweds because they are so into each other.