This could be ruining your love life
WHAT COULD BE RUINING YOUR LOVE LIFE IS PERFECTIONISM.
Now, perfectionism is actually hurting us in so many ways and in so many areas of our life, but I want to really focus on how much it hurts your love life.
In my program The Path to Love Module 4 is Forgiveness and Compassion. I got it really, really quickly on my journey to love how much perfectionism was killing me and knew this was an essential step for anyone looking for love.
Perfectionism actually prevents us from finding and experiencing true love. Here’s how:
If we are trying to be “perfect”, we aren’t being who we are. We are being who we THINK others want us to be. The biggest problem with trying to be perfect is that you’re not being yourself so even IF a guy ends up liking you, he doesn’t like the REAL you. It would take a LOT of work to keep up an image and that’s not at all what love intends for you. We are doing this in order to get love when it fact we receive everything BUT love.
Perfectionism is a self-destructive belief system that fuels these two primary thoughts:
1. If I look perfect, act perfect, and live perfect I’ll be loved
and
2. If I look perfect, act perfect and live perfect I won’t have to feel painful feelings
Imagining that we have to behave a certain way in order to be loved is an old, old feeling. Many of you who have been following me know that we can’t escape our childhood and my work focuses primarily on healing patterns from childhood that are affecting how we love as adults. We DO have to take a look at what our survival behaviors were in childhood, see how they worked for us and how they are NOT working now. That’s where forgiveness comes in. Instead of beating ourselves up for trying to be perfect, can we see how they were HABITS of behavior for us? The goal is to bring consciousness to our behavior now – see if how we are behaving now is bringing us closer to what we want or further away. Trying to be perfect is absolutely bringing you FURTHER AWAY from having the relationship you want.
RIGHT NOW AFFIRM: TODAY I EMBRACE WHO I AM AND I AM ENOUGH. I DON’T NEED EVERY GUY TO LIKE ME, I’M LOOKING FOR THE RIGHT GUY TO LIKE ME. THE RIGHT PARTNER FOR ME IS THE ONE WHO LOVES THE REAL ME. I LOVE WHO I AM NOW.
Bad news: pain is a part of life.
It’s not ALL there is, not at all, but it IS a part of life. Our courage to love is directly related to our capacity to handle difficult feelings. The MOST important thing a woman can learn how to do is self soothe. The worst of relationships is when two people try and find someone who can take away their pain. Do you know this pattern? Usually when I wanted someone to take my pain away in a relationship, I ended up feeling MORE pain in the relationship. At least, that was my experience with my ex. It takes courage to say “Pain is a part of life. I trust myself to handle difficult feelings.” Brene Brown says, we can’t selectively numb. If we don’t want to feel pain, we also don’t want to feel joy/love. We can’t have both. To the extent that I am willing to face hard things, I’ll be able to experience beautiful things. Be willing to believe that you deserve ecstatic love, and that a true love partner shows up for you during both the magical times and the messy times. When you accept that pain is a part of life, you’ll be able to accept everything a relationship brings. It’s not rainbows/butterflies all the time.
Here’s the thing, if we are hard on ourselves, we’ll be hard on our partners. We can’t escape that. What we do internally is what we do externally. If we try to perfect ourselves, we are going to try to perfect our partners. How does this look? If you’re dating and you’re looking for perfection, there’s a chance you’ve been single for a long, long, long time. Of course you’re not doing this consciously, but this looks like not being able to put your finger on why someone “just isn’t right” after one or two dates. You have trouble seeing what’s wonderful about men and are quick to see what they aren’t doing the way you want them too. You’re really judgmental about men and constantly analyzing their behavior.
If we are perfectionists, we are always looking for what we think SHOULD be there versus what IS. SO MANY WOMEN are out there trying to perfect their man and then they wonder why their man doesn’t stay.
True love is acceptance and appreciation. You don’t love someone if you want to change them. You have to be willing to give people a chance.
It’s funny, Andrew says this over and over again “We are perfectly imperfect for each other.” He even commented recently on a Facebook post of mine about exactly this. We were both in ownership of who we were on the day we met and still today, we own who we are. We don’t pretend. We are messy and passionate and sensitive and wild and confident and peaceful and sometimes very crazy. We choose each other. We never ask the other to be different.