Does this sound familiar to you?

”If he would just change this _______(fill in the blank) and be more ______(fill in the blank) then I could be happy.”

Here’s an example:

“I lost some weight hoping you’d be more attracted to me. If you could have just seen all the effort I was making and responded to me, then I’d feel good. Since you didn’t, I stopped making the effort now and gained all my weight back.” 

In my experience, whether this thought is conscious or not, everyone has found themselves feeling like this at least once.

The trouble with this kind of thinking is that it takes you out of your power and puts it into the hands of someone else. You are literally giving your power away. 

Even though it’s to someone special that you’ve chosen to share yourself with, it is still disempowering when feeling good about YOU is dependent on SOMEONE ELSE feeling good about you AND expressing it in a certain way.

It also keeps you stuck.

Stuck waiting for someone else to show up in the exact way you want and for something outside of yourself to happen so that you can feel good. It keeps you on hold, and it does something else too…

It puts pressure on your partner and the relationship.

Pressure creates tension. Since, as humans, we’re designed to move towards pleasure, it’s very common for our partner to pull away from us to relieve this sense of pressure. 

In the end, it just ends up creating more disconnection with your partner. 

It’s sneaky to spot. 

Even strong, empowered women fall into this trap without knowing it. We crave acceptance from our partners because feeling heard and being seen is a normal desire for all human beings. It’s a necessary ingredient in creating emotional safety together. 

So, it’s all about walking that fine line between feeling seen and secure in your relationship without relying so heavily on that affirmation that we give our power away. 

How can we tell where that fine line is? If you don’t feel good about yourself UNLESS your partner does? It’s the ‘precondition’ that he must validate you. The healthy version looks like this… “Wow, I’m so proud of myself for accomplishing a,b,c…and the icing on the cake is that my partner ALSO notices and is proud of me. If he doesn’t notice, it doesn’t take me off my game. I’m not making it mean anything negative about myself.”  

So, why do we believe the change needs to happen from the outside, from our partner, in order to feel confident and secure in ourselves?

We are disconnected from ourselves AND we may have been taught that praising ourselves is selfish, self centered or some kind of story like that. That we are not ‘good girls’ if we are self empowering. Somewhere along the line, we adopted a story about ourselves that is simply not true. If someone else tells us it’s not true, it somehow makes it ok to not believe it. 

This is where the re-parenting needs to start and the healing begins. We can reprogram our old, outdated beliefs and stories we carry about ourselves. In fact, this is the KEY to taking your power back, healing yourself and even creating a stronger and healthier US. 

Relationship dynamics are synergistic so working on YOU can make a big difference on ‘US’. 

When one person in the dynamic shifts, the other responds to that shift. We are doing this anyway on a subconscious level. We are prey to old programming that will never lead us to where we want to go or what we want to create. In that way, until we choose a different path, our relationship is essentially in autopilot with a drunk pilot at the helm. 

So, why not become conscious and break out of outdated habits faster and enjoy a deeper connection with each other that is more secure and trusting?

One of you needs to break the cycle. If you’re just trying passive ways to get his attention and HOPING that he gets the message all the while, the only thing you see happening is that more and more resentment is building. You need to STOP this vicious cycle and take your power back.

After all, what we really want deep down is healthy love and that requires a different strategy. 

That requires that we move away from a co-dependent (and mostly subconscious) strategy towards developing an interdependent strategy. That’s the shift we need to make. It does take courageous self-honesty and radical responsibility, but the results are well worth it!

Imagine living from more empowering self beliefs? Imagine not being dependent on your partner to feel great about yourself? This magically takes the pressure off your relationship and brings you closer together. 

Pressure creates tension. Self-assuredness creates connection, trust, and emotional safety. That equals healthy relating and conscious connection, which is what we’re all seeking at the core. 

Sincerely,

Josephine Carmela

P.S. If this resonated with you and you’re wondering where to start to shift toward connection, trust, and emotional safety, I invite you to learn more about my Live your Best Love Program. It’s designed to deepen your relationship with your partner starting with healing & deepening your relationship with yourself.

If you recognize that this area of your life needs some attention and you don’t know where or how to begin, and you’d like to show up more secure in your relationship,  contact me and we can see if this program feels like a good fit for you.