As I was going through an excerpt from Suzanne Lachmann's book titled "Me Before We", I came across something about how low self esteem can affect a relationship from the female angle.Enjoy and learn.
1. Bring the Bling: You feel wretched and fantasize that a knight in shining armor will take you out of your circumstances and make everything better.Why don't you work to make yourself better and bail yourself out of your wretchedness instead of waiting for a man to "save you".
2.Testing: How could he really love me? He doesn’t really love me, does he? Below the surface these insecurities guide your emotions and actions. You can’t believe you could be truly loved and so you test your partner every chance you get so that he can demonstrate his value (which you don’t believe or trust anyway).
3. Guarded: You may be hesitant and afraid of allowing yourself to love so that you either abandon your partner before you can be abandoned or you won't allow yourself to get fully into a relationship in the first place. Without trusting that maybe you won’t be betrayed, you are deeply afraid of exposing yourself to the possibility of being hurt.
4. Resilient: Despite circumstances that could contribute to low self-esteem, some women are just built to be resilient. They’re born that way or work really hard to acquire the ability – despite negative experiences – to engage in a positive, substantive relationship as they mature. Resilience enables women to be more measured in their approach to men, rather than hysterical about it.
5. Boy Crazy: With low self-esteem, it can seem as if nothing comes easily or
naturally to you. Instead, because you don’t see yourself as naturally
lovable, you feel like you have to fight and claw and strive for a mate.6. Seeking Financial Safety: Are you willing to surrender your hopes for an authentic connection with a partner to guarantee wealth and "financial safety"? This category manifests as the need to trap a mate with looks or sex or your other physical resources while hiding what you see as a shameful inner part of yourself.
7. Seeking Insecurity: Because you are familiar with situations that create low self-esteem – being left, being cheated on, etc. – you gravitate toward relationships in which you’re able to feel this familiar insecurity. When it’s not there, you may even create it.
8. Settlers: You’re willing to commit yourself to the person who expresses interest in you. You become much less discriminating about who you choose. You may even be willing to put up with behavior that doesn't satisfy you, because you feel lucky to have anyone at all, even though you are aware you are not happy.
9. Scared of Intimacy: You may get really scared as the relationship progresses because authentic connection feels so foreign and fake. Instead of allowing this connection, you may back away and become more distant emotionally and shut down sexually.
10. Disbelief: It can be hard to imagine and even harder to believe that you can create and sustain authentic connections. As a means of protecting yourself, you assume dishonesty even from an honest partner, which in turn sours the relationship as it goes on.
QUOTE FOR THE DAY: “How wrong is it for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself?” ― Anaïs Nin
