I don’t want to love again. How do I focus on myself?

The way to focus that love back on yourself and give love back to yourself is to make better choices going forward.

You chose men that were the wrong choice for you.
And you didn’t know, so you had those experiences and you learned.

You gave love and empathy to those men and it didn’t result in you getting that love back.
Again, you needed to learn this lesson.

Yes, you were disappointed that things didn’t turn out how you wanted or expected.
But the truth is, there was a lesson you hadn’t learned yet that you needed to learn.

The question now is: Have you learned the lesson?

If your reaction is that you’re so afraid of relationships you want to avoid them and love yourself, then I don’t think you have.

You could, but you haven’t yet.

You’re running from the lesson. You’re avoiding facing the fullness of the truth.

When you see the truth, it’s not going to feel like life-shattering disappointment. It will feel more like, “Wow, I was looking at this all wrong! I can’t believe it…”

See, we can get stuck in suffering when we have a vision of how we wanted life to work out and then it didn’t work out that way.

I’m not saying don’t have goals or dreams or aims.

I am saying that sometimes we form our dreams when we are the least informed!

At the most basic level, you want a loving relationship.

You want that, there’s nothing wrong with wanting that and it’s something possible for you to have.

BUT…

It doesn’t matter how much you want it.
It doesn’t matter how much love you’re giving.
It doesn’t matter how much you stress over it.

… if you’re choosing the wrong men or have the wrong approach.

It’s helpful to understand that our culture has lost virtually all wisdom of what creates a good loving relationship.

There are men out there who want a loving relationship.

But when a man thinks about having a loving relationship, he looks at it as an enhancement to his life and to his ability to live out his purpose.

So these men are watching women that demonstrate they’d be a great partner in their life’s journey.

They see that having this woman as their partner would help them reach heights they never could on their own because she brings something out of them. She brings out their best.

Now on the woman’s side, I know it can feel like you’re accomplishing something if you just “love him enough”.

But that’s not what makes a man see potential in you as a life partner.

He might appreciate the love. He might even feel guilty that you are aiming so much love at him while he doesn’t feel the same.

But aiming love at a man isn’t what gets felt as love by him.
In fact, it gets felt as desperation.

To him it feels like you want love so badly from him that you’ll pour all your energy into obsessing over him and trying to please him in hopes that it will result in him feeling the same way back.

You can’t grovel your way into a man’s heart.

You inspire a man’s love by inspiring him.

Having the aim to bring out his best does…
Having the aim to help him access the “winner” inside of himself does…
Understanding him so deeply that you can remind him who he is when he’s spiraling downward does…

Those are the ways that a man feels your presence as love in a way that makes him love you back.

He can’t help but want more of what you bring him.

Here’s a major (and counterintuitive) piece to understanding this puzzle:

When you aim to be in a partnership where your purpose is to help him bring out his best, that’s when everything changes.

Specifically: If you’re willing to walk away from a relationship if you can’t bring out his best (or he refuses to step up to his best or he’s unwilling to even expose this side to you), that’s actually a required ingredient for him to love you!

In other words, he needs to trust that you will fulfill this role of helping him bring out his best so much that you’re willing to walk away from the relationship if the relationship doesn’t have this kind of dynamic.

You have to require that the relationship has this aspect because this is where his love button is!

You can’t be in a relationship if you can’t push his love button. He won’t experience love for you and you’ll feel that you’re not receiving love from him!

Succinctly, he needs to trust that you’ll be in his corner when he’s at his weakest and lowest points.

If you’re afraid of “losing his love” or walking away, then he knows you won’t be there to give him what he needs when it’s most important.

But if your highest aim in the relationship is to inspire him and show him the way back to being his best, then you will become the most important person in his world… irreplaceable.

That’s why you have to require this aspect of a relationship… if you have it, there’s a flow of him feeling love for you, you feeling that love from him and returning that love through your intelligent feminine support.

Your ability to INSPIRE a man is directly proportional to your ability to make a man fall in love with you.

Now…

This isn’t a magic wand.

You still need to select a man that’s open enough to discuss his actual real life with you.

And real life is where his fear, failures, frustrations are.
Real life is where his aspirations, dreams, sense of meaning and sense of purpose are.

And these are where he’s most vulnerable, so a man isn’t going to reveal his true vulnerabilities to you right away.

And if he sees behaviors or traits in you that show you wouldn’t be good to bring up vulnerabilities around.

He’ll never open this side of himself. You’ll never see it!

So that’s why the world of dating and relationships can be so confusing for women… the very first thread to pull on will never get offered if he doesn’t think you can handle it or understand it.

He’ll still smile, flirt, banter, say sweet things, do the right behaviors and, of course, have ongoing sex with you…

But you’ll be interacting with his mask. You’ll never once touch his heart, where his life is actually happening.

This is why it’s so important to understand that the real “game” has nothing to do with charming first dates, “chemistry”, how soon you have sex, etc.

It’s about inspiration and partnership.

You learned what didn’t work.

Don’t give up. Forgive yourself. Forgiving yourself is loving yourself.

Then let go of what didn’t work. Let go of how you used to approach things. Let go of your vision of how things should have gone.

That’s loving yourself. Letting go of what doesn’t work is loving yourself.

This touched on a lot, but I hope it’s helpful.

• This reply was modified 2 years ago by Eric Charles.

“But I have seen some men themselves don’t have answers to these questions regarding their fears, winning etc.lol.”

True. I’m glad you said this because this is worth clarifying here.

I’m not saying to openly discuss these things as topics.

Rather, know that this is where his heart is. Know that this is how he experiences the world, where his attention is and what makes-or-breaks his experience of life.

On the surface, you won’t talk about any of this head on. But you will listen for it and you will know what he’s really talking about when he’s opening up.

Ideally, you want to be a woman who knows this but never discusses it explicitly with him.

An interesting example here is how male friends will fall in love with their female friends. The female friend has open discussions with him about life and he feels safe to express his real experience.

He doesn’t necessarily express the fullest, deepest version of his truth, but he shares enough for her to see how he’s struggling with it emotionally and offers support.

Suddenly, he starts catching feelings for her. She “gets him”.

So there’s a clue in those instances and it’s not that he’s desperate or couldn’t get other women. It’s that there’s a real connection that men feel when they feel safe enough to talk to a woman on that level.

“And get uncomfortable if you try to know them this way.”

Yes, you can discover a lot of this information in a curious, fun and playful way. But again, I have to emphasize that learning this information through observation and indirect conversation is best.

Don’t go for it head on. Some things he will volunteer if he feels you’re a safe person to express himself to. Other things you’ll read between the lines.

“But I guess that’s the takeaway from here. Date men who are open to discussing these with you.”

Yes, and this is a gradual process. You can’t rush it and frankly there’s no reason to rush it. The process is the essence of the relationship!

If a man is willfully intent on hiding his life from you and blocking any discussion about any detail of his life, daily experience or journey towards what he wants, then that’s not great.

In the beginning a guy might deflect those topics because he doesn’t know you well enough yet or wants to keep things light and flirtatious. There’s nothing wrong with that in the beginning.

But if you sense after ongoing interactions that he 100% refuses to let any discussion touch on his actual life, then that’s a red flag.