And why relationships do not make you happy.
I have probably been on more first dates than you have had hot dinners.
I was single for over a decade and I learnt a lot – mostly about myself.
But it took me a long time of repeating the same mistakes before I eventually took notice of what was going wrong. And what was going wrong, quite literally, was not me.
I changed myself every which way I could to fit into what I thought would be desirable or chosen. Because we are socialised to believe that being chosen for a relationship is a marker of worth and value. I turned up, sharpened up, dressed up, starved myself, presented, represented and reframed myself a thousand different ways in order to be the person someone wanted to be with. course they never did. I never heard it from any of them, but I suspect what they saw was a liquid version of a human willing to pour themselves into someone else in order to be liked. Sounds attractive, doesn't it?
People always used to tell me I would find someone when I stopped looking (useful folks, thanks). think what they meant was when I stopped trying so hard.
When I finally gave up on relationships and realised love probably wasn't going to find I realised love with something I was going to have to be for myself. And when I started behaving like that. Suddenly it was like a magnet.
Why? I hated this advice was it was so intangible. “Stop looking for the only thing you really want in life and it will find you.” Well, thanks Wizard of Oz. But not actually very tangible. What I needed was more like an instruction manual in stopping seeking validation outside of myself.
I found that instruction manual with my coach. The work I did there was so transformative that I trained myself in this work myself. And this is now what I teach.
If you are exhausted of looking for love in all the wrong places, I can teach you where to find it.