Welcome back; I am so glad you decided to drop in again for another installment of my self-care journey. If you’re new here, welcome to this safe space where we are learning to love ourselves in healthy ways. Have you ever found yourself giving away more than you are receiving and consistently asking for something you know you’re not going to get? Yeah, me too, we’ve all been there.

Whether intentional or not, we train our minds to believe certain things. I don’t know about you, but my self-talk hasn’t been the healthiest. So, how do I mentally prepare myself for a healthy relationship and not question it or sabotage when all of my self-talk begins and ends with me being critical of myself because of so many failed attempts at love? My answer is to give myself permission to forgive my mistakes, poor judgment choices, and hurtful behavior that I inflicted on myself. I recognize that unlearning habits that did not serve me in ways I needed them to take time. It is a natural human desire to want to be loved and cared for but when those wants cause me to compromise my sense of self and self-worth then those desires have to be re-evaluated because I have to make the choice to consistently love me and know myself so that I am always choosing myself instead of sacrificing myself when it comes to love.

I was chatting with a friend recently who said to me that her idea of self-love is knowing when to walk away from something that is not serving her in the ways that she needs. This got me thinking of how often I have stayed in situations longer than I should have or went back to something because I romanticized the good times so much that the reasons for ending things were forgotten. We can all recount a memory of an ex that we’ve most likely idealized to the point we made our time with them seem more appealing than it really was. Those special moments from the past make it easier to love someone when they’re not there to disappoint you than when they are beside you to give you yet another reason to want to end things or distance yourself from them. Sometimes you romanticize the good times with your current partner when things are not in a good place to try to “keep the peace” or avoid problems by not saying what you want and need.

This stems from years of people-pleasing, as well as abandonment issues coupled with not wanting to feel like a burden on other people. Unfortunately, people-pleasing turns into trying to love someone into loving me or seeing how much I have to offer; then, before I know it, I’m not getting any of my needs met or not to the degree that I am meeting the other persons. The reality of people-pleasing is that if only one person is working to meet the needs of the relationship then it’s not a relationship. And trying to get someone to love the idea of you is not only draining but it keeps you from allowing someone to love the real you and not some performative version of yourself that you most likely can’t keep up. The first step to letting go of unhealthy relationships is letting go of the ideas, self-talk, and habits that allow you to accept less than what you want and deserve.

Check out my latest episode of The View From Here, where I chat with Amber about ways she is letting go of Of Unhealthy Relationships and choosing herself on her love journey.