1. You put your ex on a pedestal .
After a breakup, we tend to look at our exes as
perfect. We look past the issues that caused the
breakup and remember only the good parts of
a relationship. Even worse, we don’t see our
own contributions to how the relationship
failed.
This rose-colored glasses viewpoint can have a
detrimental effect on future relationships for a
number of reasons:
You think, “No one will ever be like
him.” You compare future romantic
interests to the good parts of your
past relationship. As a result, you
search for and find all the flaws in
the new guy, and talk yourself out of
discovering someone new.
No self-reflection or transition past
the relationship. By mentally staying
in a past relationship, you limit
yourself for the future. You
subconsciously stay stagnant in the
hopes that he might return and
you’ll be back together.
You think, “He’s nothing like my first
love.” Even established relationships
can be affected by an ex long past. If
you still hold a candle for a first love,
instead of investing in your present
with a current partner, you can
sabotage your relationship. You’ll
struggle with unnecessary
arguments, tension and disconnection because you’ll keep
your current partner at arm’s length
emotionally.
2. You make the relationship work … all by yourself.
Too many women get stuck in thinking that the
relationship needs them to make it work. You
may get treated well, but your partner isn’t
actively investing — he’s just doing the bare
minimum to keep the relationship going. This
causes you to wonder what you’re doing
wrong.
Most often, this situation is the result of having
your self-esteem locked up in that relationship.
You think that if you do more, your partner will
come around and love you. Then, you will
finally be worthy of love. This is a self-esteem
trap, and it leads to clinginess, insecurity and
(in extreme cases) love addiction.
A relationship takes two people. If one is gun-
shy — or not on the same page emotionally —
there will be a disconnection, which can lead to
this kind of cat-and-mouse game. You need to
have a firm grasp on your values and your
identity as a woman. If you don’t know how to be happy with yourself, you won’t know how to
be happy in a relationship.
3. You have a vendetta against all men.
With the anger that can accompany some
breakups — or if you’ve had a number of bad
relationships in a row — you might try to
convince yourself that all men are bad. With
that mentality, you won’t need to invest, trust
or develop an intimate relationship with anyone
again.
But it’s not healthy and it doesn’t acknowledge
that relationships are made up of two people.
Even if he was the worst guy possible, you had
your own contributions to what made the
relationship fail (even if your only
“contributions” were that you ignored red flags,
stayed too long or allowed yourself to be in a
disconnected relationship).
For those women who have been in multiple
bad relationships, they think they’ve had five
bad relationships in a row. But in reality,
they’ve had one bad relationship five times. My
advice: Get out of the pattern. Get into you.
Change your environment and you’ll change
your selection process.
Other women fool themselves and embrace
bitterness with statements like, “There’s no
such thing as love. I just want to be single.” But
what many are truly saying is, “I’ve been hurt
and I’m not willing to put myself out there to
be hurt again.” What they need to realize is that
not everyone is the same. All relationships are different. Love is great, but they have to love and trust themselves before someone else can.
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