Do you push good men away? Do you attract emotionally unavailable men? Do you continue to have less than satisfying relationships with men? Do you attract men who are “not ready to commit”?
Are you just confused and frustrated with being single and not being able to sustain a long term relationship?
Table of Contents
Our mind is a powerful thing. Everything you see in existence started in someone’s mind as an idea. And the relationship you have (or not have), also started in the mind.
A relationship doesn’t happen outside of you
It’s important to remember, a relationship doesn’t happen outside of you. It is created from within your mind as an idea, a desire, a want, and as it developed, so the relationship developed within your mind. The quality of the relationship you have are the collection of thoughts you have about your relationship, and that can only exist from within you.
Now, this doesn’t mean we “blame” ourselves and beat ourselves up if we notice we’re not attracting the right man. I don’t want you to seek more “evidence” for why it may be “your fault” you’re not having the relationship you want.
When we find a great guy, we tend to believe we got “lucky” and when we attract the wrong guy, we tend to blame ourselves and believe we must be doing something wrong. I want you to consider a third option:
- We create our own luck OR we can stack the odds in our favour to make it more likely to attract Mr Right.
- We can reinvent our own relationship experience (no matter the experience you have), by strengthening the relationship you have with YOURSELF right now.
If you think about it, the concept of dating, the concept of committed relationships and the concept of marriage were all created by someone’s mind, and that idea spread like wildfire in society as other people agreed with this idea and jumped onboard.
Dating and relationships as we know it is a mental and social construct.
No one need to date, no one need to have monogamous, committed relationships, no one need to get married.
A lot of women get stressed thinking they’re somehow “not doing it right”, “not good enough” based on what society says is “normal” and “acceptable”. But society created these rules under the assumption that “rules” would make people happy and “rules” created the structure for making our life better.
In this article I want to focus on the most important person in the room, YOU, and your mental and emotional well-being in relation to your dating journey and your goal of achieving the relationship you want. I’m going to assume this is important to you, and worthy of your time.
This is for you if:
- You want a committed relationship and don’t have one
- Currently single and dating
- You prioritise self-care: your mental and emotional well-being
You will discover:
- How to understand yourself
- Why you have the relationships that you do
- How to figure out “what it is you really want”
- Why you’re really dissatisfied in your relationship
- How to strengthen your relationship with yourself
You’re the determining factor of what a relationship is, what it should look like, and what you want it to be. And you can change the rules at any time. There are no “rules” to the rules (lol).
What you consider to be a romantic, committed, monogamous relationship, is whatever your mind wants it to be.
You may want to be in a mutual agreement with your partner about what a relationship should look like – and it’s recommended that you are in agreement about that.
I want to make a note that, just because two people agree to be in a committed relationship, doesn’t mean they are following the same rules of what that relationship should look like for them.
First let’s talk about why it’s important to know “you can and are creating a relationship with your mind”. (It’s not just luck nor is it “your fault”).
1. The only reason you want a relationship in the first place is because you believe it will be make you “happy”/“happier” or “fulfilled” in some way.
All of these emotions are created from your mind. For example, you believing a great and wonderful man makes you happy, comes from the thoughts you think about him.
A man is neutral. He’s neither good or bad, good-looking or ugly, successful or a failure, until your mind believes a certain quality about him, and that’s what makes you feel great (or not) around him. So your opinion about a man is always subjective and your unique personal opinion.
That is an important distinction.
Your thoughts/opinions about him create the feelings within you, and a relationship is formed once you believe you are in a relationship.
2. You’re creating your relationship right now, but that doesn’t mean it’s a “fulfilling relationship”.
Don’t misunderstand me.
You are creating a relationship right now, but it may not be the kind of relationship you want.
And that’s ok.
Just because it’s not the relationship you WANT it to be, doesn’t mean it’s not the one you should be having. Often our greatest teachers come in the form of “not getting what we want”.
We must start here.
We must start by taking ownership of the fact that our mind is the only place a relationship can exist, and we can definitely manage our mind. And if we can manage our mind, we can manage a relationship. We can choose to feel better about the current relationship we have.
We may not be able to control all the thoughts that enter our head, but we can definitely manage them. We can choose what we believe, what we want to believe and what we want to stop believing. We can choose different set of rules for our relationship. We can choose to stop believing the thoughts that doesn’t serve us.
We can manage our mind and give us back the power and authority we want in our life.
A lot of women feel discouraged and disgruntled by dating because they’re not managing their mind. They are allowing their mind to go on autopilot, like a toddler with a knife, unsupervised, allowing their mind to think whatever thinks, and then they end up feeling frustrated, angry and discouraged by how unhappy they feel.
One woman told me she was aware that she had a fear of being cheated on, and this fear led her to push good men away, break up decent relationships, and sabotage good things before they would get “bad”. She knew she was the one doing it, but she couldn’t stop it.
Another woman said she felt anxious when a man didn’t respond back right away, and this led her to act demanding, controlling with a man. She felt so ashamed of this behaviour, she ended up blocking his number and deleting him from her phone. Again, she didn’t know how to stop it, other than to cut him off.
Maybe you don’t know what is wrong, but you keep attracting emotionally unavailable men, and the relationship always fizzles out after a few months, or men go back to ex-girlfriends, marry other women, or decide ultimately they weren’t ready and can’t be in a relationship with you after all.
The variety of different situationships, relationship circumstances can be vast and numerous as there are stars in the sky.
The bottom line is if you’re feeling dissatisfied in your relationship with men, it’s because you have a mismanaged mind. You don’t understand yourself yet, you have a mind that is like a 2 year old, reacting and responding to the environment on a whim, based on instinct, without much supervision or analysis. You’re still in the infancy stage of development.
And it’s a great place to start.
In order to create a more fulfilling relationship, you want to start with where you are right now.
Step 1 – Why You Do What You Do And Have The Relationships You Have.
Self-awareness is the first step. Start by paying attention to your relationship patterns.
In order to understand your pattern, you need to know that every action you take, is driven by an EMOTION in your body.
Everything you do is driven by a feeling in your body. So feelings drive all of your actions. But what creates those feelings?
It’s your thoughts.
Your thoughts create your feelings and your feelings drive your actions.
This is a game changer. When I discovered this, it kind of blew my mind. I mean, I knew this but didn’t really “know” it until it was told to me this way. But think about it, the reason you do anything is because you’re either motivated to do it or motivated NOT to do it. And it is always driven by a feeling.
In relationships, the 3 most important emotions to pay attention to are: excitement, anxiety and fear.
These 3 emotions drive most of our “unwanted” actions in a relationship.
A relationship develops as you take some form of action in it. We’re either pushing someone away, reaching out to someone or being angry at someone. These actions contribute to the ebbs and flows of a relationship.
Most dating advice focuses on the “action” piece. BUT, what is the most important thing is your THOUGHTS and FEELINGS that are driving all the actions in your relationship.
Your thoughts will drive all the emotions you experience in a relationship. And emotions/feelings are the HEART of any relationship. Without the good feelings you expect to have, you’re probably not going to stay in a relationship.
You may credit your man for your happy/excited feelings, but it’s actually your thoughts that is generating the excitement.
You may also credit him for your anxiety and fear, but again, it’s actually your thoughts generating those emotions.
That doesn’t mean you should “ignore them”, quite the contrary, what you want to do is understand where your thoughts come from and use them as a starting point to “further investigate”.
Ask yourself: is there a problem? What do I think is the problem? And only then, can we start to solve the problem.
Step 2 – Notice What You’re Thinking & What Is The Problem?
Do you actually have a problem? What is the problem? That is where you want to start.
A lot of women want to blame men and say there are not enough good men out there. But is that actually a problem?
Maybe the problem is you expecting to find the “right man” after only going on a handful of dates. Maybe the problem is you thinking a man should be respectful when he’s not. Maybe the problem is you believe things should be happening faster and it’s not.
What exactly are you expecting to happen? What are the dating rules or conditions you’ve created that is not being met?
What assumption have you made about dating and/or men that keeps falling short? Are you only focused on what he wants? Or what you want?
Having too many assumptions about men is the fastest way to get frustrated in dating.
And the best thing you can do is to minimise and keep your assumptions and expectations in check.
Notice how often you take action from assumptions without any real evidence.
You want to pay attention to:
- Thoughts about him
- Thoughts about yourself
- Thoughts about the relationship
Generally speaking, if you have mostly positive thoughts about your relationship, you have a good relationship. If you have mostly negative thoughts about your relationship, you have a troubled relationship.
Similarly, the most common emotions you experience clue you into the kind of thoughts you’re thinking.
If you find yourself feeling uncertain, doubtful, anxious, depressed, they give you an indicator of the emotional health of your relationship. The more toxic emotions are actually: hopelessness and indifference.
The lack of “caring” about what someone does is the biggest sign of a relationship coming to an end.
This is good to know.
There is always a valid reason you’re thinking and feeling a certain way. And you want to get to know yourself, and understand why you’re thinking and feeling the way you do.
Another thing to notice is: are you more concerned with what HE thinks and feels in a relationship? Making them “more valid” than what you think and feel?
Women often forget that they can’t actually access a man’s thoughts or feelings, but it doesn’t stop them from spending a lot of time wondering about what a man is thinking or feeling. The truth is what you think a man is thinking or feeling is actually what YOU are thinking and feeling. You can never know what a man is thinking or feeling because you’re not in his head.
You are in YOUR head, and you’re in YOUR body, so even if you think you’re being in his head, you’re actually in yours.
Remember that.
Your thoughts about his thoughts are just your thoughts.
Let’s talk about the different type of thinking that we do:
Overthinking
Overthinking is a form of creative thinking that turns small things into big things. It’s generally a lot of brain chatter over doing something, not doing something or what it means when he does that. It’s going through the “what ifs”, “maybe it means this, maybe it means that”, “if I do this then he’ll this, but if I don’t do this he might think that”. It’s playing out different ‘what if’ scenarios and predictions, and generating a certain “emotion” along with it.
Notice it’s just a lot of NOISE going on in your head. And not a lot of action.
Overthinking feels useful because it seems like we’re preventing ourselves from “making the wrong move” and scaring him away. What we’re actually doing is creating stress, anxiety and doubt within the relationship (within us) and a lot of our mental energy are used up that way.
I did a lot of this when dating.
I’d write a text, delete it, re-write it, then change my mind. Or I’ll spend days analysing the last message he sent me and wonder if he is into me or not into me and what I should do about it, what I should think about it.
There’s a lot of brain chatter going on, and a lot of sitting there staring blankly into space. There was not a lot of real conversation happening between me and the man in question.
In other words, I had a lot of assumptions about what was going on and I was not communicating and verifying those assumptions with him.
In reality, he existed 99% in my mind, occupying a lot of my mental space and time. I spent very little time actually talking to him and having a real back and forth conversation.
Questioning
When reality doesn’t quite “match up” with what we think it should be, we start to do a lot of questioning about him and the relationship. Is he into us? Is he the right one for us? Would a relationship really work? Should we invest so much time into him?
We have a “manual”, a set of instructions, for how men should behave and how we should behave when courting each other.
You have a set of rules for how he “should” act:
- If he liked you
- If he’s into you
- If he’s invested in you
- If he saw a future with you
- If he is trustworthy or not
- How you would like him to be vs how he actually is etc.
All of these “shoulds” are just rules your brain has made up.
Your friends and family may all “agree” with your rules, but they are still rules, they are arbitrary, and the large pool of men “out there” do not know what your rules are. They are simply “guessing”, and you are simply “guessing” what their rules are for you.
Questioning is also deciding you’ll do something, then changing your mind, deciding this means that, and then changing your mind. It never seems to end.
Questioning often turns into asking your friends, family, anyone and everyone what their opinion are about “what you should do”. All of this just adds to the noise and keeps you spinning in confusion.
Questioning can also keep you confused and feeling doubtful. As long as you are confused, you don’t have to decide anything, you don’t have to do anything, you don’t have to be uncomfortable, you don’t have to try something new and different.
You don’t have to risk moving the needle forward in your relationship and potentially “break” something, especially if there’s nothing wrong to begin with. And when I mean there’s nothing wrong, I mean you think HE thinks there’s nothing wrong.
I think it’s fascinating how women prioritise what a man thinks about her and the relationship over what SHE thinks about him and the relationship.
If you consider that a relationship can only exist in your mind, then what you think he thinks IS your thoughts about the relationship.
I’ve had women tell me even when their man reassures them nothing is wrong, they still don’t believe him.
A man could apologise and reassure you, but you may still question him and doubt whether he’s telling the truth.
If you find yourself questioning, answer your own questions. Don’t allow your brain to just spin out on autopilot and continue to create feelings of doubt and confusion.
Problem solving
Problem solving often looks like trying to control what you think he thinks of you OR trying to prevent circumstances from happening.
For example:
- Trying to be the best girlfriend you can (whatever that looks like for you)
- Trying to prevent yourself thinking or doing anything that you believe may lead to emotional pain.
- Mentally preparing for a break up & distancing yourself
- Talking about issues in an effort to solve them
- Doing anything someone else has suggested that “seemed” to have worked for them, in an effort to solve the problem.
You may find yourself seeking and researching books, blog articles, YouTube videos, experts in an effort to find solutions to “fix your relationship issue”. Often that looks like changing your actions (what you do and say) around him, so he would change.
But the only reason you want him to change is so you can change your thoughts into more positive ones, so you can feel better.
Again, this goes back to having a manual for him. If you think he should be acting a certain way, and he’s not, your brain will make that a problem.
You may also have a manual for yourself. You may believe in order to be the best girlfriend, there’s a list of things you should do, and a list of things you shouldn’t do.
If you spend a great deal of time getting him and/or yourself to follow your manual, you will probably be exhausted!
It’s exhausting getting someone else to act the way you want them to act all the time AND it’s exhausting getting yourself to act the way you want you to act all the time.
Does it work? I often find problem solving doesn’t create emotional safety, security and peacefulness in my relationship. It just leaves me frustrated when the issue comes back again or there’s more problems to solve. And feeling like I need to be constantly putting out fires in order to be “happy”.
Self-blaming/self-judgment
When you’re taking a break from blaming him, you’ll probably switch to blaming yourself and thinking YOU are the problem.
When we self-blame and self-judge we turn our manual for him into the manual we have for us.
Thoughts like:
Good girls should do this. Good girls shouldn’t do that.
It’s my fault he did that. If only I hadn’t of done that then he wouldn’t have done this.
- Girls shouldn’t chase men.
- Girls shouldn’t act demanding.
- Girls should be cool with whatever he says.
- I’m not good enough. I need to do more, be more.
And then punishing yourself when you don’t act the way you THINK you should. Or blaming yourself when you don’t achieve the desired result/response from a man, as if you had any control over his actions or response.
Your form of self-punishment may be to disappear for a while, to hide at home and watch tv all day, to apology to him, to act overly nice and compromising, to chase after him, to allow him to overstep your boundaries or to break all of your own rules because you feel guilty.
What is your flavour of self-punishment?
The biggest take away from noticing your thoughts is, does it actually HELP? Does it do anything for you? Is it effective? Or does it just perpetuate negative emotions and negative thinking? Does it just make you feel worse about yourself?
Daily Habit – The Thought Download
A great daily habit to get into is to start a Thought Journal. I do mine on the computer, but I also have a physical notepad that I write my thoughts into.
I start by doing a Thought Download. I write all of my thoughts down that is circling in my head. They are often negative and discouraging. You want to write your thoughts down so they are out of your head, tangible and outside of you for you to look at.
This exercise alone, when done regularly, will bring so much awareness to your mind. You will be able to see exactly how your thoughts contribute to the creation of your relationship as they develop in front of you. And you will grow SO much from that awareness.
I still have my notes from when I was dating and I have gone back and looked at those so many times. They have been extremely helpful for me in my dating and relationship journey.
Instead of studying other experts, study YOURSELF. You are the most fascinating person in the world, and personal transformation must start with you and where you are right now.
Step 3 – Notice How You FEEL
Women are often aware of what they’re thinking and doing, but very little awareness of how they’re feeling.
This is a problem.
Feelings are everything. It’s the reason you pursue a relationship. It’s the reason you reach out to talk to him, or respond to a message, or say Yes to a date. Or you decide whether a relationship is “worth it” or not. All the actions you take are often driven by an emotion.
Unfortunately, most women drown out their feelings with their thoughts, the type of thoughts I listed above.
When there are so much noise happening in your brain, it’s hard to access what you’re feeling, and most professional women are completely disconnected from their emotions.
The consequence of not accessing your feeling is – unpredictable and devastating results in dating.
One of your most POWERFUL weapons in dating is your natural feminine intuition.
As a woman, you were born with this gift to read people on a gut level. Your instinct alerts you to:
- Whether a man is a good man or not
- Whether you can trust him
- Whether you are emotionally and physically attracted to him
- Whether you have long term compatibility
- Whether he is TRULY into you (and not just pretending to be).
- Whether he is a narcissist
- Whether he has malicious intentions
- Whether he is “cheating” on you or going behind your back
- What you should “do” in just about any relationship situation
As you can see, when you are disconnected from your emotions, you lose ALL OF THE ABOVE ABILITIES.
I used to call this “being discerning”, this is just about listening to your natural intuition.
You don’t need to study dating and relationship books. You don’t need 20 signs a man is a narcissist, you don’t need signs you’re a rebound and he could be cheating on you.
You simply need access to your natural feminine intuition, because that is one of the most powerful tools in your toolbox.
I strongly believe this is a SKILL you need to tap back into and develop within yourself. No dating book is going to help you do that.
So here’s how you can start tapping back into your emotions.
Place your hand on your chest or belly as a signal you want to tap into your BODY.
Then ask yourself on a daily and regular basis: “How do I feel right now?”
So many times I’ll ask a client “how do you feel” and I’ll receive an intellectual response like: “I feel like I don’t trust him.” Just so you know, I don’t trust him is not an emotion. That is a sentence in your head. You’re having a THOUGHT (even if you attach the words “I feel” to the start of the sentence.
Emotions need to be FELT in the body, and then you try to go to the nearest WORD to describe it. A one word emotion could be: sad, happy, confident, worried, anxious.
This will take practice, and it IS a skill.
Don’t be alarmed if you find yourself thinking: “I don’t know how I feel. What is she talking about? I don’t feel anything.”
That is usually where most women start.
It simply means you’re not used to feeling your feelings. Like I said, this is a skill you need to practice.
The more you check in with yourself, the more aware you become of your emotions, the easier you can access them. And you will need to access it a lot in dating.
In dating, especially in the early days, you have nothing really to go off of except your natural intuition. You don’t want to trust what men say at face value. It’s unwise to do so because it’s easy for men to lie, and the reality is, a lot of men do, especially on dating apps.
Once you develop the skill of accessing your emotions, you want to access it often: when you’re talking to men, check in with your body, what are you sensing about this man? Is anything feeling off? How do you feel about his interest level?
While we’re on the subject of intuition, I want to make a distinction here.
What is intuition and what is just negative thinking. Sometimes women get their wires crossed. When you’re having a negative thought, you may feel a negative emotion. And some women mistake that to be their “intuition” – when really they’re just having a negative thought about the situation.
This is NOT intuition.
Intuition feels calm, it doesn’t feel like it’s in a hurry, the message comes through in a calm voice. It’s not screaming at you or alerting you as if it’s “urgent” that you need to act “right away”.
If it’s a negative emotion, one you’re trying to get away from, that can often come with a feeling of urgency. You’ll feel like you’re in a hurry to take action, to quickly break up with someone, or to tell someone something, or to “do something”. You may also feel that once you do whatever you’re urged to do, there’s a sense of relief afterwards.
It could also just be fear of being left.
That is you trying to resist and get away from an emotion.
Intuition is just a deep knowing, and it often comes from deep in my belly that something “feels” off. It’s more quiet, and if there’s a lot of mental noise going on, we often drown it out and it gets lost in the noise.
I also need to say that intuition is just a SIGNAL for you to investigate further. If you find yourself thinking the signal is telling you a very specific message, like “this must mean he’s the one for me”, or “this must mean he’s going to break up with me”, that is probably not intuition. That is you having a positive or negative thought.
Anything “specific” like that is just a thought you’re thinking, whether it’s “intuition” can only be known through further investigation. That may mean to ask more specific questions, get more information from him OR to simply decide there has been no evidence of wrong-doing, therefore there’s no need to be “on alert” until there is evidence of wrong-doing.
Step 4 – A Relationship Exists Only In The Present Moment
Whether you are interacting directly with your man OR you are having thoughts about him, these can only happen in the PRESENT moment.
And even though this seems like one of those “obviously, duh” moments, you’ll be surprised how often women forget this.
Here’s what I mean.
How often do you think about what you’re going to do or say to a man in some future moment? How often do you try to predict where things will go with a man you’re dating? How often do you worry about whether a man will leave you or not in the future? Or how often do you get excited about a possible future with a man you’re dating?
Thinking in probabilities, catastrophizing about the future, making projections/predictions about the future based on something that happened, wishing and hoping a man will change, fantasising about a possible future based on potential – these are all thoughts that take you OUT of the present moment.
Now, here’s the trippy thing about this.
All of these thinking patterns are about the FUTURE or the PAST, but they are happening in the present moment. And when you think these thoughts, you create the experience of the relationship you have. That may be a positive experience or it may be a negative experience depending on what you’re thinking about.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t be thinking negative thoughts though. Sometimes you WANT to be thinking negative thoughts, sometimes these thoughts alert you to “red flags” and incompatibilities you should pay attention to. But you can only assess it properly if you’re staying in the present moment and paying attention to how you feel moment to moment with the man in front of you.
Because a relationship can only happen in the present moment, without realising it you end up creating the relationship you end up having based on the “thoughts” you’re unintentionally choosing to think.
Your brain will trick you into thinking it doesn’t matter because HE isn’t privy to these thoughts and what you’re feeling, but it DOES matter. Your emotional experience of your relationship matters. You’re in the relationship. You matter.
The only reason you’re seeking a relationship is because of how you believe it will make you feel.
The irony here is when you’re disconnected from your feelings, and you’re checked out thinking about the future or the past instead of the present moment, you’re NOT in touch with how you really feel with the person in front of you, nor are you paying attention to WHO he’s showing you to be and accepting the reality of the relationship you have.
It’s time to get back to the basics.
To the facts.
Stop thinking of how he made you feel 3 months ago, or what he was like when he first met you.
Stop thinking of how great he COULD be.
Stop thinking he’ll change in the future and you’ll finally get the relationship you want.
Stop thinking once XYZ happens in the future, then he’ll be the person you know he could be.
Who is he showing you to be TODAY?
How do you feel around him TODAY?
And keep checking in with how you feel in the present moment around him. Notice when your brain wants to be future focused or past focused.
Practice pulling yourself into the present moment, notice what your brain is doing, notice how you’re feeling, notice the kind of relationship experience you’re creating for yourself.
And get curious about that.
If you often think in probabilities, or worry about the future, or have fear of a man abandoning you/leaving you, ask yourself why? What is the worst that can happen? What do you believe about your ability to handle the worst that can happen?
If you believe you’re protecting yourself, how so? A lot of us think we’re protecting ourselves from future heartbreak, or from a devastating circumstance. But how exactly are you preventing yourself from that future heartbreak or circumstance from happening?
If you sense a red flag and something being “off”, why then would you want to stay in the relationship? Do you have self-doubt about whether you can “trust” yourself?
What are you believing is in control of you, and what are you believing you have control to “change”?
Does worrying about the future REALLY protect you in any way? Does it prevent men from doing what they do?
Does it make a break up any less painful?
A lot of women believe thinking detaching thoughts about a man they care about will “protect” them from future pain, but what they’re doing is rehearsing and creating the break up in their mind over and over, as if that will make the real thing easier.
It doesn’t by the way. Your brain knows the difference between a REAL circumstantial break up and your own created “fantasy break ups”, they both suck, one just sucks more than the other.
Step 5 – What Do You REALLY Want?
Dating is a journey of self-discovery. The more clear you are on what you want, what you don’t want, and what your dealbreakers/non-negotiattbles are, the faster you’ll find yourself in the relationship of your dreams.
In truth, this is not an easy question to answer. The act of having relationships with different men, helps you further tweak and refine what it is you want and what it is you don’t want – but I think often, women don’t want to hear that, they want that relationship on the first try.
But are you willing to try for as long as it takes to have the relationship you want?
Are you willing to do it again and again, with the goal of tweaking and refining your process until you achieve what you want?
This isn’t about seeking the grass being greener somewhere else. It’s giving your all to a relationship, and from KNOWING you gave the relationship your all, being willing to accept when it’s clearly “not working”. That takes courageous. That takes truly understanding dating IS self-discovery, and NOT about achieving some end-goal.
Oftentimes you’ll only know what you want by having experiences and discovering what you DON’T want in the process.
After each break up I had, I would go back through my evaluation process and refine it some more. I’d make a note of what I didn’t like and what I wanted next time in a man, or I’d also make a note of what I didn’t like within myself and who I wanted to be next time.
To be able to do this kind of evaluation, you should have fully processed your last break up and approach this evaluation from a clean and calm place.
It’s NOT a time to beat yourself up.
The easiest time to do this exercise is when you’re completely single and you’re not emotionally invested in anyone. For me, I always do it when there’s no one in the picture at all, and I can look at my future relationship from a place of possibility – from a place of ANYTHING is possible.
Sometimes if you’re in a really low, negative place, or you’re already seeing someone, your brain can easily block you. I’ve found you need the emotional freedom to allow yourself to go all out for “what you REALLY want” vs “what you think you can get”.
If you’re afraid you may not get what you want, your brain may block you completely. That’s when you’ll find yourself saying, “I don’t know what I want.”
That is ALWAYS a lie. But depending on the emotional state you’re in, it can feel very true. So if that’s where you’re at right now, that’s ok. Just notice if you’re feeling dissatisfied with where you are right now.
Notice if you’re resistant to doing this exercise. That’s ok. Resistance is telling you you’re not quite ready yet. Wait until you are ready and then come back to tackle this.
When you’re feeling ready, download my Dream Man exercise, this exercise will help you gain clarity over what it is you want from your relationship and get very very detailed about the specifics.
The more clear you are, the better your result of finding & having your dream relationship will be.
Take as much time as you need to do this exercise!
Putting it all together
How “fulfilling” a relationship is depends on the culmination of your thoughts (moment to moment) about your relationship, your man and yourself. Each moment that hasn’t yet been created is another opportunity to “rewrite” the relationship and put it on a different trajectory.
The building blocks of that “moment” comes down to your thoughts about yourself, your relationship and men.
And sometimes you WANT to be negative, sometimes you want to entertain the “worst case scenario”, sometimes that IS the right thing to do.
Just do it intentionally. Know what you’re thinking and why.
If you allow your brain to go on autopilot, it will most likely default to the most “common” and most “practiced” thoughts you think. And often you’ll need to adopt new thoughts and beliefs in order to create the fulfilling relationship you want.
If you keep trying and failing, you may need to investigate your relationship beliefs: the set of rules and ideas you’ve collected about men, relationships and yourself over the years and look at how they are working together to “create” the relationship you’re currently experiencing.
I hope this article has brought you awareness of what you’re thinking, the quality of your thoughts and how you feel in your relationship. Self-awareness is the launching pad for change.
You can’t get to where you want to be unless you know where you’re starting from.
You can create the relationship you want, but it must start with YOU.