Learn These 5 Essential Love Lessons — So Love Can Finally Find You
You deserve it all.
AlessandroBiascioli / shutterstock.com There are a few lessons women must learn about love but ones many of us tend to ignore, at our own peril.
We fall in love and break up, then fall in love and break up — over and over — and we never seem to learn the why and how of it all. As a result, we are doomed to repeat history and risk ending up alone!
Love is so complicated. We believe that someday our prince will come and sweep us off our feet and that we will live happily ever after. We think that the relationships we see on TV and in movies are real. We believe that if we just act like Cinderella or Rose Dawson we will find our Prince or our Jack!
Unfortunately, most relationships don’t evolve the way they do on screen. And yet we hold on, believing that, if we just keep doing the things we have always done, our soulmate will appear and we will live happily ever after.
Here are 5 key lessons women must learn about love before they can truly find it
1. Sex does not equal love.
There isn’t a single woman I know who hasn’t, at some point in her life, had sex with a man because she wanted him to love her.
And, almost without exception, in spite of what we see in movies — where people fall into bed right away and then fall madly in love — it just doesn’t work.
Men want sex. But for many men sex does not equal love. It might not even equal like. Sex is sex.
For women, sex is different. Sex brings about an emotional connection, the emotional connection that women crave. As a result, women believe that if she has sex with a man not only will she be giving him what he wants but she will also establish an emotional connection with him and that he will love her.
Does it work that way? Usually no.
I have a client who recently told me that it was time to have sex with a guy because they had been spending a lot of time together and she felt that she owed him. So, she did. And what happened — he moved on!
The best reason to have sex with a guy is because you want to. Beyond that there are no guarantees.
This is a very important lesson that women must learn about love before it's too late!
2. If he is not in touch, he isn’t interested.
How many times have we sat by our phones and waited, watching the screen for that text alert. Or turned on our phone after a movie, desperately hoping that there will be a message from the guy we like.
And how many times have we been disappointed?
Something that you must know about love is that a guy who isn’t communicating with you, isn’t interested. Period. You can tell yourself that he is busy, or that he is out of range or that he is sleeping but if he regularly goes dark on you, to reappear with excuses, then he isn’t interested.
Guys are hunters. It’s in their nature. And if they want to communicate with you, or be with you, they will move heaven and earth to do so. And if they don’t, they won’t.
Also, those guys who disappear and then reappear, they are most likely reappearing because they are bored or horny. Sitting in front of a game or in a taxi and flipping through their phone. Don’t let them fool you or suck you back in.
Are you constantly making excuses for why guys don’t stay in touch? Do you believe that they are ‘scared of their feelings for you’ or working too hard or sleeping after a hard day. Are you ignoring that feeling in your gut, theone that knows that none of those things are true?
If yes, learn this lesson women must learn and move on! Find someone who wants to be in touch with you!
3. Clinging will only push him away.
Really the worst thing that a woman can do is get clingy with her man.
We get clingy for a variety of reasons: jealousy, insecurity, fear of the unknown, possessiveness. All of these are feelings can exist for a reason but if they manifest themselves with clinginess you will drive your man away.
Why? Because no one likes to be clung too, especially men but women too. It makes us feel like we are responsible for another person's actions and feelings. It makes us feel like we have lost our freedom. It is exhausting is we have to process our emotions over and over in an effort to ease the clinginess.
Clinginess is not a good thing, for either parties.
It is important to know who you are in a relationship. Be yourself. Be honest. Be secure in his feelings for you. If you can’t, then you need to address it head on, in a measured, temperate way. Not by getting clingy.
If you get clingy your man will disappear. He may return if you can resolve your issues and no longer be clingy but he will disappear again if it resumes. This time for good.
So, do some work on yourself. Make sure you are going into a relationship confident with yourself and knowing that you will be okay if it doesn’t work out. Not easy, I know, but possible.
4. If you don't like you, it will make it harder for him to like you.
So many of us go into relationships like hunks of clay, waiting to be molded into whatever shape is necessary to make a relationship work. We don’t know who we are outside of a relationship and we feel that only by connecting with another person will we know who we are.
It doesn't work this way.
It is important to know who you are in this world, especially as you go into a relationship. If you know who you are, what your beliefs and values are, what is important to you in every aspect of your life, what you can and can’t live without, then you will be the kind of person that someone falls in love with. You will exude self-confidence and you will attract someone you deserve.
If, conversely, you wait until you find a guy to figure out who you are or, even worse, change yourself for a guy, then you will end up unhappy and alone. Being anything other than yourself is a lie and lies just aren’t sustainable. And a woman who is lying to herself will only attract guys who will lie to her.
So, know who you are in this world and find the guy you deserve.
5. If you break up, you will still be OK.
This is something that many of us simply do not believe. We believe that under no circumstances will we be okay alone. The world is a place for couples and being single just isn’t acceptable.
I am here to tell you, as someone who spent five years alone, that being alone is not only fine but awesome. Being alone means that you get to rise and sleep when you want, never watch any sports program that you don’t want to watch, never have to clean around the base of the toilet or pick up laundry off the floor.
You can travel where you want and with whom you want. You can spend your money as you see fit. You are in charge of your own universe.
Don’t get me wrong. I know that being with someone else is a wonderful thing. But being with someone because you don’t think you can be alone is not a wonderful thing. Being in a relationship with someone who doesn’t love, respect and cherish you is not better than being alone.
When you are with someone who doesn’t love, cherish and respect you then your life is full of angst, the moment to moment ups and downs of being at the mercy of someone else’s whims. This will cause you pain every day.
Wouldn’t it just be better to be alone, watching Bridgerton and having a glass of wine?
There are many lessons women must learn about love before it’s too late, lessons that many women ignore.
If you are reading this article, I am guessing that you might be one of them?
We all make mistakes in the search for love. We want it so badly that we are willing to do anything, to compromise everything, to have it. And we tend to do the same things over and over and never learn.
One of the things that you must know about love is that it's never too late to find it. Be who you are, do things because you want to do them, don’t compromise your self-worth, don’t let yourself be lied to. Be the strong woman you know that you are and attract the love that you deserve.
You can do it. I know you can.
Mitzi Bockmann is a certified life and love coach. She helps clients find —and keep — love in this crazy world. For more insights, visit her website.