Are You Outsourcing Self-Love?

I was listening to a podcast the other day and the guest said something that caught my attention. She said she realized that she was trying to outsource the job of loving and taking care of herself. Wow did this resonate with me and at that moment, I swear to you, the visions of all the women I’ve worked with over the years flashed by my eyes all day long.

Then I saw the cycle as I’d never seen it before. It’s the cycle I’ve hopped on and off of for years, and lately, it’s the cycle I’ve coached clients through more times than I can count. I call it The Cycle of Self-Betrayal. I know—it doesn’t sound like much fun but hear me out. If you struggle with maintaining healthy, well-balanced, fulfilling relationships, this is for you. I’m going to run you through my personal cycles below so you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Here’s how the cycle goes: 

Incomplete us wants to feel complete —> We find a partner that is complete in the areas we are not —> We’re happy because we think we’re now complete —> The other person fails us because, you know, it’s not their job to make us complete but we don’t know that, or we don’t accept it —> The relationship ends and we feel angry and devastated —> We have story after story of betrayal because they had the audacity not to fulfill our needs —> Repeat 

I’m about to tell you something that you already know but I’ll bet you don’t actually apply it in your relationships:

It’s no one’s job but your own to fulfill your needs, make you happy, and take care of yourself.

Does that mean you don’t need support, love, and to be uplifted when things get rough? Absolutely not. But here is something you need to hear:

The worst damage you will inflict on the ones you love will be during the times in your life when you’re failing to take care of yourself.

When cruising at full speed in my self-care, I’m filled up, joyful, compassionate, patient, wise, thoughtful, and can hold space for others who need me. When I’m depleted and not in a good place, I’m self-centered, manipulative, short-tempered, dismissive, emotionally detached, and, frankly, toxic to those around me. 

Don’t get confused here; I’m not talking about a mood. We all have good and bad days. 

I’m talking about a long-term pattern on replay that leaves you and everyone around you in a pile of shrapnel because you can’t get your emotional, mental, and physical shit together and, because of this, you attract equally toxic partners that don’t have their shit together because anyone that has their shit together will recognize you don’t and run for the hills. 

Rather than learning how to heal yourself, you continue in and out of relationships, completely oblivious that they fail because you set them up for failure by believing it’s your mate’s responsibility to fill your emotional voids. Or, you stay in an unhealthy, unfulfilling relationship because you believe this is as good as it gets and you’ve bought into the whole “death do us part even if we’re both miserable and completely unsatisfied”. 

Either way, while you’re thinking you’re simply made for bad relationships and retelling all your war stories about those who are to blame for all of your battle wounds, the reality is that your scars were caused by you and will never be healed by anyone but you.

Take a moment and think about your past relationships, and perhaps your current relationship. If any of the above sounds like you, I’ll bet you can find a pattern of behaviors that seems to follow you in each of them. Here’s the tricky part: those patterns will be dressed up differently for each relationship but they’re the same pattern. You’ll probably be able to identify the patterns by completing this statement:

“I always seem to attract a partner that ___________________.”

Let me give you an example by sharing mine with you.

I always seem to attract needy partners who become too attached, have money but are cheap or are completely financially unstable, want to control me in one way or another, and strongly desire a partner who has pleasant physical attributes and remains in the category of traditional beauty standards (i.e thin and pretty by social standards, not mine). 

Let’s break that down.

I am dismissive avoidant and this one tiny, little term has helped me identify my repeating patterns that have helped to obliterate my previous romantic relationships. Note that I said “helped”. My lovers have their own baggage and their own patterns so I’m not saying I’m the main force in each demise, but I certainly played my own forceful part.

For those of you who don’t know what dismissive avoidant is:

“Dismissive avoidant is a type of attachment style characterized by a tendency to emotionally distance oneself from others, often due to a fear of intimacy or vulnerability. People with this style may downplay the importance of close relationships and prefer independence, often avoiding emotional closeness or relying on others.”

So, for the Needy Partners Who Become Too Attached Pattern, think of me like a human cat:

“Love me. Show me attention. You’re too clingy, leave me alone.”

“Aren’t I beautiful and seductive? What are you looking at?? Yes—I put on weight. Fuck off if you don’t like it. But you’re OK with it, right??” 

“I love it when I feel protected by you. Wait—are you trying to tell me what to do?? You cannot control me. I’m an independent, self-sufficient woman. I don’t need you. Remember that.”

“What do you mean I’m not vulnerable with you?? I almost teared up that time when we were talking about cutting ice cream out of our diet. I mean, I think I almost teared up. Come to think of it, wasn’t that when that bug flew in my eye? That still counts.”

“We have now spent three days in a row together. I’ll see you next month.”

Yup. There you have it. Now, of course, there is so much other really good, juicy, delicious love going on and this is a humorous rendition of the truth, but I think you get what I’m saying here. I attract anxious attachment-style men (i.e. clingy and insecure). So, how do I remedy this? Well, first is to accept my attachment style and see it in plain view. Check. Second, get therapy to pull it all apart and heal. Check, check.

Notice I didn’t say, “Three, start dating men who can get on board with who I am, as I am, and are perfectly fine with the continuous bouts of whiplash caused by my toxic whims.”

Moving onto My Toxic Financial Pattern…

I wasn’t raised in a prosperous family, shall we say. Financial struggles were a constant part of my childhood and I saw my mother worry every day about money. Though it instilled a badass work ethic, it wreaked havoc on a healthy abundance mindset. I have been working for what feels like a lifetime on my scarcity mindset and it’s creaking along but let’s just say there’s still work to do. In the meantime, my partners tend to wreak their own havoc in this area and though it’s clearly necessary so that I can continue learning this lesson, it’s driving me bonkers.

As you read above, I either attract men with money who treat it as if it’s a scarce and desperately limited possession or very generous men who, because of their generosity and lack of money-management know-how, have none. Either way, it always ends up being a major bone of contention in my relationships. 

When I was outsourcing self-love, I blamed the men with money for being cheap and controlling with no sense of spontaneity, adventure, or romance. At the same time, I blamed men in my life with no money and bad financial habits for being immature, unstable, and financially toxic.

Does this mean that these men are financially healthy with their given choices of how to manage their money? Not necessarily. But I can tell you that it has nothing to do with me, other than the fact that I have to deal with my own financial mental crap, not theirs. So now, I’m digging deep with my lovely therapist to dive into the foundation I built in my youth and scoop out the nasty bits and replace them with healthy bits.

While I absolutely want a mate that is financially stable, I am the only one who can design my financial future and I prefer to do it healthily, thank you very much.

Now, let’s dive into my You Can’t Control Me Pattern.

I am a classic, card-carrying member of the Daddy Issues Club. I did not have a good father and was deeply affected by this growing up and way into my adulthood. Because of this, I attracted men who had father-like traits such as being protective, guiding, and controlling in different ways. In the beginning of relationships, I saw the little nibbles of controlling behavior as reassuring and loving. However, as that beast got fed more and more, those little nibbles turned into massive chomps out of my autonomy. The result was anywhere from trying to control the money I made or the food I put into my mouth to controlling what I wore out in public to passive-aggressive attempts to control my activities when out with friends, amongst other fun stuff. Sure, I can blame them for being patriarchal assholes…or I can admit to my own behavior that nurtured and grew that beast right alongside them.

Once I saw the pattern, I worked deep within myself to be my own protector. Looking back at all my fifty-one years, I’ve done a great job. In fact, I’ve done a far better job than anyone to which I had previously given that position and power. 

Of course, I want a mate that looks out for me as I would for him. However, I have no need for anyone to tell me what’s best for me in any given situation. Only I know that.

I saved the best for last, folks…my Self-Worth Pattern.

My main lesson in this life has been and still is about self-worth, or there lack of. I was the fourth child in an already unhappy marriage between my mother and father and though my mother loved me dearly, I wasn’t what you would call a welcome surprise. The best job I could fulfill in my childhood was to be out of sight and out of mind, and I failed at it miserably. Simply put, I grew up desperately wanting attention but usually only received it when I lit some kind of fire that needed putting out. I was also raised within the life-squeezing confines of social norms for girls and therefore understood that if I wanted attention, I could either keep lighting fires or become as tantalizing as my god-given traits would allow me. I chose both. I realized that if I kept burning shit down by getting into trouble, I got the immediate attention of my family. If I did my very best to stand out physically, I got the attention of men. Either way, I was getting attention but no one told me it was always the wrong kind. 

I haven’t had a relationship yet where I haven’t dieted at the very beginning to go down a dress size to feel more appealing to my potential life mate. This includes the time in my life when I was a natural size four (oh my gosh, how much I want to give that girl a hug and a sandwich). It also includes the very last relationship I was in. What my partner thinks about my physical beauty is so important to me that if I’m going through a “self-yuck” phase, I will sabotage our time together in a multitude of ways, all while expecting him to raise me up on high as the most beautiful woman in the whole entire world, just to make me feel better. Sounds exhausting for the poor guy, right? What a rotten job to have in a relationship!

I haven’t had a relationship yet where I don’t cause some kind of passive-aggressive drama in some kind of way to push distance between us when I feel as if we’re getting too close. Or, if I feel like he’s getting a little too comfortable and I’m not getting enough attention, I’ll cause drama to trigger some kind of fiery response of a romantic nature…if you catch my drift. ;-) What a catch I am, huh?? Again—simply exhausting.

It’s not just physical beauty that I struggled with, it’s also been success, money, and intelligence. If I have an interesting career that makes a lot of money, and a few degrees to show you that I’m smart, then I’m worthy of your love. Never mind that I almost ground my career into the ground by making its impressive nature more important than my happiness. Never mind that the more money I made, the more miserable I was. Never mind that I never did use those damn degrees but they sure did cost me a shit-ton of money.

All of this began to come to a head about six and a half years ago but it’s not hard to identify that the roots were planted way before that. It’s my foremost struggle and pattern in this life so it makes sense that it’s going to take this whole life to evolve and transform it. It’s not easy, folks, but holy shit is it fascinating! So much so that I’ve dedicated my life not just to my pattern, but to shedding light on the pattern for those women who struggle with the same thing…which is a lot of women. Like, a lot.

My mission is to fill myself up with so much love and compassion for myself that I have a bountiful to give to everyone else. I want to be so strong in my worth that it sparks the same in others. A recognition of sorts. Or, perhaps, a domino effect.

The deep love, compassion, and worth in me bows to the same in you, and when you recognize your own spark, it can’t help but spark another in someone else. Doesn’t that sound magical?

That’s an in-house job, friends, and one I’m learning I’m really good at.

If you want to be good at it too, reach out. Not only do I specialize in self-worth coaching and photography, but I wrote a book about it too, which you can buy here.

Stop handing such a delicate thing as your life’s joy over to others and return it to the only person it has ever belonged to. —> This is your sign.