May 9th, 2008 by Cindy
New Recipes Community! Come Join!
http://www.lilaguide.com/Groups/recipes
This is a new community, new group, new message board.. for recipes! It’s a place to meet new mommy friends, find and share recipes, and even share your opinion on products and places. Way cool!!
So come on and join, share your favorite yummies, and spread the word!
Dec 12th, 2007 by Cindy
Oct 25th, 2007 by Cindy
You didn’t think it’d end up this way on your wedding day.
You can save your marriage … but maybe you don’t know where to start. If that’s you, than this could be the most important book you ever read. For people who want to save their marriage but don’t know where to start…. If you want to avoid divorce and have a happy marriage again, this guide is for you.
You could cut the tension in your home with a knife. You love your spouse, and they love you. You’ve been married for years, and at one time happily. But now it’s just a memory; and you can’t believe this is happening to YOU.
How did it happen? Where did your marriage skid off course? More importantly, can your relationship ever be restored to the way it was on your honeymoon?
What if you just gave up? Say you went forward with a divorce. Is that really what you want? What if you could save your marriage when you…
* Wash away the negative thoughts that are chipping away at your relationship.
* Follow the unwritten 2nd contract of marriage that successful couples do.
* Restart the conversation that has stalled behind hurt feelings.
* And more relationship saving strategies that have proven to bring couples back together!
If you didn’t act to save your marriage, could you ever forgive yourself?
If you’re ready to save your marriage, click here and learn how now… before it’s too late.
Toxic relationships are a fact of life for many people, men and women alive, both young and older. Often family and friends can see the effects in the relationship but the one living in it cannot or will not. Some want someone to ‘love’ them so badly they think most any type of attention is love and fail to see that they are in a toxic relationship, one that may not necessarily be abusive, but one that is dragging them down and is not healthy.
One of the first steps to healing is to admit there is a problem. There is always a chance and hope that the spouse will change, but the reality is that change is unlikely for someone who only knows how to hurt another person. It can be said that some spouses do not realize what they are doing, and they can be helped. It can also be said that some know exactly what they are doing, leaving getting out of the relationship as the only healthy solution.
A spouse that loves you is not going to spend their time tearing you down, making you look foolish, talking down to you, or saying hurtful and derogatory things. Rather the one that loves you will want to be near you, they uplift you and encourage you, and they never seek to hurt you or make you sad.
Signs that you might be in a bad relationship:
* You and your spouse spend the evening with another couple. Your spouse goes out of his way to make jokes most of the evening, using you as the main target in all of them. When back home, he says he is sorry, yet this isn’t the first time he has done this.
* You make it a point to have dinner ready and waiting when your husband comes home from work. He never misses an opportunity to tell you what’s ‘wrong’ with the meal. When the two of you visit his mother’s home and there’s a meal served, he always tells her what a delicious meal she served.
* You work hard to provide for your family. Sometimes that means working overtime and not being able to spend as much time as you would like to with your spouse. Your wife constantly nags you that you work too much. In front of mutual friends, she makes comments to them about how you don’t ‘really’ love her, criticizing how you dress, going on about how you love your job more than her, making it a point to make you look bad every chance she gets.
* You’ve gained some weight and are working on losing it. Rather than be supportive and encourage you, your spouse tells you how fat you look and makes wise cracks in public about your appearance. She tells you that she won’t make love to you until you lose weight, in front of mutual friends.
* Your spouse makes it a regular habit to check your cell phone to see who you have called and who has called you. He checks your email, opens your mail before you are allowed to see it, goes through your purse when you are sleeping.
* Your spouse makes it a point to bring up things that will make you cry, knowing that saying certain things will hurt you.
* You work at saving money and planning for a vacation with your wife. You’ve had the time off planned for six months in advance and she has known the dates for the vacation all along. Two days before you are to be off to take the long planned trip, she announces she is going to the beach with friends during the vacation time. You’re not invited.
* You sit down to talk with your spouse about how you feel about certain things, being open and honest, pouring out your very soul and heart to them. Your spouse laughs at you at almost every comment you make, demeans you, and blames you for their bad behavior. Instead of listening to you, the spouse makes a joke of your feelings.
Perhaps the most hurtful thing about a toxic relationship is the fact that this is the person that is supposed to love you and care for you, but instead they seek to hurt you and cause you emotional distress and pain.
A person in a toxic relationship might have a difficult time letting go of it. Sometimes they feel as that there is no one else for them, thinking that they aren’t good enough for someone that will truly love them and care for them. Often a person caught in a bad relationship stays because even though it is a terrible relationship, their spouse has convinced them that no one else could possibly want them.
This cycle of thinking has to be broken. There is hope and there is healing. In order to obtain the happiness that is waiting, the person living in this type of relationship must make the decision to get out of it. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. There is hope.
A healthy relationship can be obtained once the person in the bad relationship recognizes the need for a better life and gets out of the abusive relationship. The first step in healing is removing yourself from the relationship.
A loving relationship allows no room for toxic behavior. In a healthy relationship, a spouse listens to the other. The spouse doesn’t seek to hurt you, to make fun of you, to use you as the joke of the party. The spouse in a healthy relationship wants to be with you, doesn’t check up on you all the time, doesn’t use any excuse to make you look bad, doesn’t seek to embarrass you in front of family and friends, doesn’t try to control you.
A healthy relationship finds a couple who are happy with each other and understand each other, who know the other isn’t perfect but accepts and loves the person as they are. They don’t seek to change each other, they stand with each other through anything and everything, and the only tears they want to cause the other are tears are happiness.
Oct 19th, 2007 by Cindy
There is a wonderful and adorable creation known as Man. There’s even a 50/50 chance that you are one of these men. Down through the ages, Man has sought to know more about Woman, how she thinks, what makes her tick, what she wants, and how to satisfy her. While there has been some success among the male persuasion in identifying what females want, there are still a significant amount of men who are at a total loss on just what a woman wants.
While these relationship tips cannot possibly speak for all of the female persuasion, they might possibly speak for at least 99.99% of all womankind, or perhaps one.
Most women, if given a choice, would much prefer hugs and snuggling over making love. This isn’t to say we don’t enjoy sex or want it, but most of us actually prefer the romance that comes with cuddling on the sofa and watching a nice movie with our man. We love it when we can give hugs and kisses and it just be because we want to hug and kiss our man, and not necessarily be doing it because we want sex. The sex act is great, but it’s second fiddle when it comes to what we really want, which is just spending quality time with you. And while admittedly we don’t generally care much for the manly action movies, we watch them with you because we love to see how excited they make you. The same goes for a football game.
Women love it when her man thinks of her in ways that don’t involve hopping into bed or spending money on material things. Women like the idea that their man is thinking of them. Little notes left for us, an email to say hi, or a message left on the answering machine are sweet and thoughtful ways to show you care while telling your woman you’re thinking about her. Again, this isn’t to say we don’t enjoy making love to you, this just shows us that you see more to us than a body.
The Toilet Seat dilemma has been raging since the invention of the toilet seat lid. Throughout the history of the toilet seat lid, women and men have fought over up or down. The truth is most women don’t really care if it’s up or down, they just argue with the man over it, so that they can give in, to make the man feel as though he has won the Toilet Seat battle. Women love their men so much that they want the man to feel that the Toilet Seat is their victory, so we let you keep it up so that you don’t have to reach down and pick it up when using it, thereby showing our love for you by reducing the amount of work you must do to use the bathroom.
We love the idea of being around our man all the time, as much as possible. But because we know that, as females, we tend to nag, we know you want your space so we give it to you. But we do it in subtle ways so as not to make it obvious that we know you want your space. So we ask you to do things like take out the trash or mow the grass or go to the store for us. This works great for the women because something gets done that needs doing and we show our love for you yet again by giving you space and time away from us.
Women love it when you want to cook for us. What woman would turn that down? But as much as we love the idea of our man cooking, we really prefer that you don’t attempt this at home unless you are trained. We are just as happy with take out, delivery, or roughing it for a weekend on the lake and living off the fish you catch and clean and fry.
Females are not the least bit upset when her man is driving and gets lost. Well, most are not, but of course there is always the wild woman exception. Women though, do tend to get a bit peeved when her man insists that he isn’t lost and refuses to ask for help or directions from anyone, and when he insists that the map is wrong and he is right. While most men are surely not this way, there’s always a chance that a stray man might happen upon this tip and need to be reassured that it’s okay to ask for directions and help when lost, and okay to actually admit that he is indeed lost.
The one main thing that women want men to know is that when she is in labor and having a baby, it’s never okay for the man to tell the woman that he understands her pain and suffering while she is pushing that baby out of a place that surely was never intended for such a thing to pass through. The closest a man can ever come to knowing that a woman is going through is to swallow a grapefruit and then attempt to wee wee this grapefruit out of his body, all the while his woman at his side holding his hand and telling him what a good job he is doing and how she understands his pain.
Men should always bring his PMSing woman chocolate. While it’s a great thought when she is PMSing, keeping her stocked with chocolate shows just how much you care, even more.
Letting the woman you love know how much you care is really a simple matter. It’s not about saying you love her all the time. It’s the little things like accepting her for herself, letting her know she is pretty even when she thinks she isn’t, talking to her and telling her how you feel, being there for her when she needs someone to lean on, letting her hold you up when you need someone to lean on, and just treating her and loving her the way you want her to treat you and love you.
Oct 19th, 2007 by Cindy
Low self esteem isn’t a rare thing among the human population. A surprisingly high number of people suffer from low self esteem. Often a person who has a low self esteem doesn’t love themselves, making the feelings even worse.
Low self esteem stems from a variety of issues. A person might have been ridiculed often as a child by their parents. Perhaps the person has felt that no one really understands them. Maybe the person was made fun of by other children over something like a speech problem. Whatever the cause, low self esteem can cause the person suffering from it to not only not love themselves but to feel like they aren’t good enough, that they don’t count, or that no one really loves them.
Sometimes, though not always, the person with low self esteem will lash out at others in a vain attempt to try to make themselves feel better or to raise themselves up. They feel the need to try to make another person feel as bad or as low as they feel in order to try and make themselves feel better. This attempt seldom works however, because they have failed to address the issue or issues that have them feeling so low to begin with. Attempting to bring another person down not only fails in bringing the other person down, it only makes the one suffering from the low self esteem feel worse and want to lash out even more.. They continue to seek a way to make someone else feel bad so that they don’t feel bad.
And the cycle continues because they are still suffering from low self esteem and they still don’t love themselves. There is an alarming number of people that even resort to cutting themselves in an attempt to feel better about themselves, seeking some measure of control over something they cannot control. But the cutting doesn’t make anything better, because again, the issues causing the low self esteem have not been faced or addressed.
Building your self esteem and learning to love yourself isn’t all that difficult, but it does take effort on your part. Start by realizing that no amount of downing another person will resolve whatever issues are plaguing you. To try and berate others doesn’t hurt anyone but you. It only keeps you in the cycle of low self esteem and prevents you from healing and loving yourself.
There will always be negative people with negative behaviors, and chances are they will project that negative energy onto you. A person with low self esteem will often take to heart anything negative thrown at them, and sink even lower. Rather than allow someone to make you feel bad over their bad behavior, consider the source that the bad behavior is coming from. Are their negative actions towards you really about you at all? Or are the negative actions simply a projection of their own feelings of low self worth? When you determine that it’s not even about you, but rather about them, then you can easily deflect the issue and not allow it to bring you down.
Begin each day by thinking of one thing that you really like about yourself. This can be your hair, your compassion for others, your ability to make others smile, or that you make a great pot of chicken and dumplings. As you do this each day and discover things about yourself that you like, you will begin to feel better about yourself, and your self esteem level will rise. And before you know it, you will find that you actually not only like yourself, but you love yourself too.
Enlist the help of those that love you to help build your self confidence. Those that know you best and care for you are the ones that can help you see how special you truly are. Remember that someone who really knows you has most likely seen you at your worst and they didn’t leave. These are the ones that can help you to build your self esteem.
When your mind has been conditioned to believe that you are no good, that you have no value, that you are worthless, then you will believe these things about yourself. A child who is told enough times that they are stupid will eventually believe that they are indeed stupid. Their low self esteem will carry into adulthood.
You can rebuild your self esteem by reversing the effect. If you tell yourself long enough that you are of value, that you do matter, that you do count, that you are indeed a beautiful person, that you are important, then eventually you will believe this to be true. Your self esteem level will rise, you will find yourself loving you.
Replacing the negative and bad thoughts with good and positive thoughts will soon leave no place for the negativity. Some people might need to constantly work at keeping their self esteem level at a high level. For others, once the issues are worked through that brought your self esteem down, you have it made.
Building your self esteem up will not only make you a happier person and give you peace, it will improve your relationships with others. It will also allow you to better see people who seek to only to bring you down by trying to berate you so that you can eschew from those types of people.
Whatever the issues that causes a person to feel so low, there is a way out. Facing whatever caused you to feel this way opens the door to healing. Knowing that words do not make you who you are, that another’s opinion of you doesn’t make you who you are, and that those who care are right there with you can help you to have high self esteem. Love yourself, you’re unique!
Oct 17th, 2007 by Cindy
Liz Claiborne Inc. is offering free handbooks on the topic of love is not abuse. Available titles are:
You can order your free love is not abuse handbooks by clicking here.
Oct 12th, 2007 by Cindy
Hi and welcome to Better Marriages. As you can see, our blog is new. We’ll get adding new material and updating the blog daily.
We’ll be adding a lot of sections, such as advice, questions and answers, quick tips, how to help, and loads more.
Please keep checking back for new tips, ideas, and resources to help build stronger and more loving marriages.
Oct 12th, 2007 by Cindy
Forgiving ourselves isn’t always an easy thing to do. We have regrets, feelings of guilt, wishing or thinking we should have done this or that differently. Sometimes we think that if we had acted differently or made another choice, that somehow situations might have turned out better. Sometimes that’s true, but nothing can change the past. We have to learn to forgive ourselves for things we can’t change or undo, whether it’s for intentional actions or otherwise.
One of the hardest things to forgive ourselves for is the feelings of guilt over what might have been or could have been. Often we think that if we had done so and so differently, that perhaps the outcome would be different. And while often it’s possible there could have been another outcome, more often than not the outcome would have been the same. But even if it wouldn’t have been the same, we can’t change the past. So why do we beat ourselves up over things that can’t be undone? Why do we allow ourselves to experience such guilt over things? And most of all, how do we forgive ourselves for what our minds perceive as unforgivable?
The first step to forgiving ourselves is to realize that whatever we did or didn’t do can’t be changed. It doesn’t matter if the thing we are having guilty feelings over is something we actually did or something we think we could have done differently. Hanging onto feelings of guilt won’t change the past. Holding onto guilt over something will not undo the past or things that happened. It’s time to let it go, to move on, and to live again.
Some people find it difficult to leave the past in the past. They need something physical to get rid of or throw away, and memories simply are not physical. One idea is to make the thoughts and memories physical, giving something tangible to throw away, and in a way this shows that ’something’ was gotten rid of. But how do we make thoughts and memories tangible?
Get a small box, such as a shoe box. Make sure it has a top or can be closed and sealed. For every bad thought, for every feeling of guilt or feeling or what you feel you cannot be forgiven for, write it down on a piece of paper. Put the paper in the box. Once you are finished, close and seal the box. All the guilty feelings you carried in your heart are now in the box, out of your heart, no longer able to burden you down with feelings of being unforgivable.
What you now do with the box is up to you. You can choose to hold onto those feelings, leaving the option to reopen the box and letting the guilt out and back into your heart. Or you can choose to throw out the box, throwing away all of the guilt that you carried. Some people actually bury the box, laying to rest the past and all the hurts. Some throw it out with the trash, tossing out all of the bad. And some keep the box, reopening it and allowing all the guilt to come back inside of them to live again.
We don’t have to live with guilt. We can control our own thoughts and actions. We choose to do this or that. But we cannot control the choices that others make or the things they do. We can choose to live with guilt, never forgiving ourselves, or we can choose to move on, admitting that we are just human and that sometimes humans do fail and do mess up.
Forgiving yourself, letting go of the guilt, it won’t change the past. But it can change your future.
Oct 12th, 2007 by Cindy
It happens far too often. Words can deal a fatal blow to a relationship. People say mean and hurtful things, sometimes intentionally, to hurt the person they love the most. Once the words are out, it’s impossible to take them back. The pain and hurt is usually entirely too clear in the eyes of the person who was hurt.
Hurting words can come from spouses, best friends, coworkers, siblings, parents, etc. No matter who it is that hurts us, the fact is words can sting with a vengeance. Rather than hold on to something that’s done and can’t be changed, if we choose to let it go, chances are the relationship will heal and flourish.
Sometimes the hurt is so deep and remains embedded deeply within the heart of the person who was hurt, and they walk away from the relationship. Too often pride stands in between the person who did the hurting and the person who was hurt. Instead of trying to make amends and healing the relationship, pride takes over on both sides, and a once loving relationship is nothing but a memory. It doesn’t have to be that way.
When someone has hurt us, it’s all too easy to just throw our hands up and walk away from it all. That’s the easy way out, but it’s also the losing way. You and the person that hurt you both lose out because you lose each other. But if we stop and ask ourselves why the person said hurtful things to us to start with, it could help the situation immensely.
Sometimes, though not always, a person will say something that hurts because they are stressed out or going through really rough times. They use us as bouncing board, someone to vent their frustrations out. But rather than vent what’s really going on, the stress comes out as hurtful words to us.
No doubt we have all done this to someone we love and had it done to us. The difference is in how we handle it. Do we choose to see the hurtful words for what they most likely are, stress and frustration at something in life, or do we take it personal (which it probably isn’t at all) and get angry and upset and just walk away.
If we walk away, we lose out on a wonderful relationship. Just because someone gets upset and stressed and says something that hurts us is not a reason to end a relationship, but sadly that’s what happens too often.
We can choose to leave the past in the past, knowing that the past can’t be changed or undone, and put our pride on the back shelf, and we can start fresh. To do this, it’s vital that a person understand that we all make mistakes and that no matter what someone has said or done, they simply cannot change the past. No amount of regret will undo something that was done or said. If we choose to hold onto a past hurt, we are the ones that are hurting ourselves. The person who said something or did something that hurt us is not hurting us.
When we choose to hold onto hurt, we took over the role as the one doing the hurting. When we choose to allow pride to keep us from reaching out to the other party, we are the one who is hurting ourself. We don’t have to let the past, that cannot be changed, to rule our present.
Sometimes a person has a hard time letting go and starting over because it seems that letting something go would somehow diminish the hurt that was said or done. But letting go of the past and beginning again isn’t diminishing anything nor taking away the fact that hurt was caused. It simply is forgiving, moving on, and living and loving again. To hold onto the hurt is to deprive yourself and someone else of a beautiful relationship.
Hurtful words can cut deep. But the deepest cut isn’t really the hurtful words at all, but rather the lost relationship and love if the two parties involved don’t put the past to rest and begin fresh.
Oct 12th, 2007 by Cindy
A man walks into a store, searching for a gift at the last minute for his wife for their anniversary. He browses for an hour, attempting to find just the right gift, yet leaves the store empty handed, unable to make a decision on what to purchase. The man arrives home, steamed and angry that he does not have his wife a gift, and today is their first anniversary.
When he walks into the house, his wife greets him with a hug, and asks how his day went. He immediately goes on the defensive, saying if his wife had not kept him out with friends over the weekend or insisted they go to dinner the evening before, he would have had time to shop for an anniversary gift for her. He talks to her in an angry and harsh tone, insisting that it is her fault he did not get her a gift.
As the wife grows more upset at her husband’s behavior, informing him he had an entire year to find a gift, not just a couple hours after work on their anniversary, and that rather wait until the last minute, he could have made an attempt any time in the last week, month, etc. She gets angry and says ugly words to him, then gets upset that she said such hurtful words, and blames him for upsetting her and causing her to curse and lose control.
These two people are not alone in the way they act, feel, or behave. They are both playing the Blame Game, a game many people unfortunately play. Some realize they are playing, and some simply have no idea.
How do we respond when people blame us for their bad behavior? How do we stop playing the Blame Game? The first step is the need to recognize the behavior and why these actions are occurring.
Let’s take the couple mentioned above, beginning with the wife. It’s understandable that she would become upset over her husband being upset, and more so that she would be at his blaming her for what he didn’t do. But why would she blame him when she lost control and said things that she should not have said? He didn’t cause her to say those words. She wanted to blame him for her losing control. The simple fact is she lost control on her own. Instead of accepting responsibility for her lack of control, she chose to blame him.
And now for the husband’s part in the issue. Why did he chose to get upset and blame her because he waited too long and couldn’t find her a gift for their anniversary? Was it really her fault? Why couldn’t he just be honest and say he waited and didn’t find something rather than blaming her?
Unfortunately, some people make it a habit to behave badly and then place the blame for that bad behavior on another person. In their mind, it gives them an excuse to continue to behave in an unacceptable way. As long as they don’t accept responsibility for their bad behavior, they think they don’t have to admit to how they behave and therefore think they don’t have to change. Instead of just saying they messed up, they blame another person for how they act or talk.
A classic example… Fred greets a customer in his place of employment. The customer is in a grouchy mood. As Fred cheerfully tries to help the customer, his nice mood quickly turns sour as the customer talks in a mean tone to him repeatedly. Instead of maintaining his cool, Fred ends up speaking to the customer in the same mean manner that the customer is speaking to him. After the customer leaves, Fred is upset at himself for acting that way, but blames it on the customer.
When another person talks badly to us or behaves badly towards us, it’s often difficult to maintain our cool, to not get upset at them. And when they blame us for their actions or behaviors, it’s very difficult to maintain control and not fall into the Blame Game trap. It’s important to remember that when someone starts pointing fingers for their behavior, that doesn’t mean that we have to do the same thing.
The easiest way to be healed of this dreadful disease is to simply start taking responsibility for our own actions. When we mess up, look in the mirror and blame the one looking back at us rather than blame someone else who never made us do or not do something. And when someone does blame us, don’t fall into the same trap and act as they are acting.
No one makes us behave badly. No one makes us talk in a mean manner to another person. No one makes us treat another person badly. When we fail to treat a person with love and compassion, we have only one person to blame… that human in the mirror peering back at us.
Oct 12th, 2007 by Cindy
If you don’t like the person you are, chances are high that any relationship you are in or get into will fail. In order for a relationship to flourish and to grow, a person needs not not only like themselves but also to love who they are. Loving yourself is paramount to having a successful and loving relationship.
The divorce rate today is higher than at any other time in history. People marry for the wrong reasons, they marry the wrong person, and more so, they marry too soon. Not only do they not know they person they marry, they often don’t know themselves or even like who they are as a person.
Many divorces occur because incompatibility. But how can a couple become so incompatible when they loved each enough to marry? How could a marriage that started out with such love, and perhaps still have the love, go so wrong? How can two people who perhaps still are so much for each other end up not liking each other or themselves?
Often the problem lies in an area that’s least expected, with ourselves. We simply don’t like who we are and we strive to become who the spouse wants us to be, rather than just to be ourselves. This can be manifested in several ways. Women get breast enhancements, even though they are beautiful as they are. Men take pills to to enlarge parts that are absolutely fine as is. Another man gives up his particular favorite pastime and does only what the spouse likes to do. One woman goes and buys herself an entire new wardrobe of clothing trying to look sexier for her husband. Still another spouse gives up their entire existence and becomes a virtual clone of their spouse, trying to be exactly like them in an effort to feel more wanted and loved. Another woman wants to control everything her husband does, telling him how to act, think, dress, work, who his friends are, etc. All of these relationships are doomed because the people in them simply do not love themselves.
Before embarking on a relationship, we need to learn to love ourself first. Self love doesn’t mean that we love ourself over another. It means we love and accept ourself as we are. It means we don’t change who we are, our very identity, in order to please another. It means we work to grow and if something in us needs changing, we work to change that something, not for another person but to better ourselves.
To be truly happy in a relationship with another person, we have to be happy with who we are as a person. We can’t not like ourself and expect to be happy. We can’t be at odds with ourself and who we are and be happy. We can’t pretend to be something or someone we are not and be truly happy or love ourself. We can’t be happy and at peace if we are living in the past and not accepting ourselves as we are. But when one has had a troubled past, how can they learn to love who they are and find that happiness?
The answer is learning to let go. Letting go of what we cannot change or undo is a first step in releasing the past to be just that, the past. No matter what happened, what you did, what someone else did, it’s all gone. Instead of punishing yourself for what can never be changed or relived, allow yourself to forgive and move on with life. Punishing yourself by denying yourself happiness and love won’t change anything that’s already happened.
We have all done things and had things done to us that hurt. Sometimes we won’t allow ourselves to be happy or to love ourselves because we think that in loving ourselves or being happy, it diminishes what we did or what was done to us. We think that we deserve to be unhappy or feel unloved and unwanted. We have the mindset that whatever happened in the past is reason for us to keep our present and future miserable, thinking that’s payment for a past we can’t change. Nothing can be further from the truth!
Not allowing yourself to be happy or love yourself as you are is not hurting someone from the past, but it is hurting you and probably someone that cares deeply for you. Punishing yourself for something that’s gone isn’t the answer. Letting go, forgiving, moving on, learning to really like yourself, and being happy with the one that truly cares for you just as you are, that’s where it’s at. Remember that a person who truly cares for you won’t ever hold the past against you, and you shouldn’t hold it against yourself either.
Now is the time to start loving yourself. Focus on what YOU like about yourself, not what anyone else thinks. Remember that in learning to love yourself, you aren’t out to please the rest of the world, just yourself. If you find something that you don’t like about yourself, work on changing that. But only do it for you! Allow yourself to be yourself! Don’t try to be someone you’re not or something you’re not. Be happy with how you look, how you think, how you feel, how you love, how you believe, etc. Realize that you are a beautiful person and allow yourself to see that beauty in yourself.
When you feel you are ready for a relationship again, don’t go for someone who wants to change you. Don’t go for someone who makes you feel that you aren’t good enough as you are. Don’t get involved with a person that won’t allow you to be yourself. Don’t go for someone whose idea of love is for you to lose your identity in order to make them happy. Go for the person that accepts you for you, all of you, as you are. Go for the one that makes you feel like you can be yourself, that isn’t out to change you, that loves you exactly as you are, that listens to you, that understands you, that wants you for you, not some fantasy they want to fulfill.
In learning to love yourself, you have to see and believe that you are loved as you are, that you are wanted as you are, that you are beautiful as you are, and most of all that someone is wanting someone just like you. When you realize that you are indeed lovable as you are and you love yourself, that feeling will carry over into your relationship. The confidence you have in yourself will enable you to love the other person as they are and to accept them as they are, making for a relationship that will go the distance and withstand the storms that come in life.
