Secrets About Men Every Woman Should Know. Barbara Angelis De

THEMSELVES IN RELATIONSHIPS

      Perhaps this question seems unnecessary to you. As a friend of mine put it, “Darling, sacrifice is my middle name!” There are several reasons women sacrifice themselves so readily with men.

      

Men expect us to put ourselves second. They’ve been trained for thousands of years to think of women as second-class citizens, as less important. After all, we live in a world where, in many countries, women still have to walk behind their man on the street as a sign of subservience. Is it any wonder, then, that men expect us to be the one to sacrifice?

      

We’ve been trained as women to put ourselves second. Many of us watched our mothers and grandmothers sacrifice their talents, interests, dreams and careers in order to be a support system for our fathers. We’ve been taught that putting ourselves first is “selfish.”

      

We glamorize sacrifice as some kind of achievement, rather than going out and making our real dreams come true. It’s so much easier, and less personally challenging, to say: “Well, I would have gotten my degree and become an attorney, but I wanted to be there for Henry when he was in law school, so I decided to make the sacrifice.”

      THE RESULTS OF SACRIFICING FOR LOVE

      When you sacrifice for love and put yourself second in a relationship, you believe inside that your man will end up loving you more. This may or may not happen. But what will happen is:

       WHEN YOU SACRIFICE WHO YOU ARE IN ORDER TO BE LOVED MORE BY SOMEONE ELSE, YOU END UP LOVING YOURSELF LESS

       Each time you give up an interest, a friend, or a dream in the hope of winning a man’s love, you give away a piece of yourself. The more you sacrifice, the less of yourself remains, until one day you wake up and you feel empty. There is nothing of you left. You’ve cut it all away to become more acceptable, and in the process you’ve lost your essence, the soul of your womanhood.

      This loss is almost always followed by anger or depression. You feel so much resentment toward yourself for what you have done, and an enormous loss of your self-respect and self-esteem. And you feel resentment towards the man you sacrificed for who, more times than not, didn’t end up loving you the way you wanted to be loved anyway.

      THE SOLUTION: HOW TO STOP SACRIFICING YOURSELF IN RELATIONSHIPS

      1. Make a list of all the ways you have sacrificed for love in every relationship you’ve ever been in. This is NOT a fun exercise to do, but I highly recommend it as a powerful technique for getting you motivated and disgusted enough so that you will stop putting yourself second once and for all.

      2. Make a list of people, interests, activities, and beliefs that are important to you. This will help you remember who you are and what you care about. It will be a lot more difficult for you to convince yourself that you really do enjoy dirt-bike racing, or fishing, or stamp collecting, or whatever the next man you meet is into.

      3. Make a commitment to your own dreams, so you can become full in yourself, rather than an empty “emotional chameleon,” waiting to be filled up by a man. The more complete and whole you are as a woman, the less likely it is that you will walk into a relationship desperate for validation and therefore a likely candidate for sacrifice. In the final chapter of the book, I’ll give you some suggestions for becoming the powerful woman you know you can be.

      MISTAKE 3

      Women Fall in Love with a Man’s Potential

      Do you pride yourself on your ability to “bring out the best in a man”?

      Have you ever told yourself that, with “a little time and work,” the man you love will become just what you want him to be?

      Have you ever felt that the reason your man hasn’t become as successful as he wants to be is that he hasn’t had anyone to “really love and support him” – that is, until you came along?

      I don’t know about you, but these questions look painfully familiar to me. Until recently, I made a profession out of Mistake #3 – falling in love with a man’s potential. I was an expert at finding men in need, and focusing much of my time and energy on “helping” them, “fixing” them. Sometimes my efforts were successful, and the man would become successful. Sometimes my efforts failed. But every time, the same thing occurred in my life: I got to avoid my own career, my own dreams by attempting to rescue someone else.

      For as long as I can remember, I’d always chosen men who needed fixing in a particular area of their life. Some needed to be emotionally opened up. Some needed to heal the pain of a difficult childhood. Some needed to stop procrastinating, get organized, and use their talents to make money. Some needed to improve their speaking ability or writing skills, or learn how to dress correctly, or how to be an attentive lover. So, I would come to the rescue. I would offer them direction and advice to sort out their confusion. I would give them my love, my money, my energy, and my advice. My friends and family would express their disapproval and tell me I was wasting my time, but that didn’t stop me. And even if the men didn’t seem to be improving, or didn’t appear to want my help, I wouldn’t give up. After all, I’d made a commitment.

      Looking back, I realize that each time, I wasn’t really in a relationship – I was working on a project. And I wasn’t involved with a man – I was dedicated to a cause.

       I WASN’T IN LOVE WITH THE MAN AS HE ACTUALLY WAS – I WAS IN LOVE WITH HIS POTENTIAL

      After many years of frustration, heartache, and disappointment, I woke up one day and realized that I was in my early thirties, and still hadn’t accomplished my own career goals.

      That’s when I said to myself, “Barbara, if you’d put even half the amount of energy, creativity, and commitment into your own goals and your own life that you’ve put into helping men unfold their potential, there’s no telling how successful and fulfilled you could become? “And that’s what I did, and you’re experiencing part of the result right now as you read this book.

      HOW WE FALL IN LOVE WITH A MAN’S POTENTIAL

       1. We go on “emotional rescue missions,” finding men who aren’t willing to help themselves, and attempt to “save” them.

      Allison, a 32-year-old real-estate salesperson, came to me for career counseling. The more we talked, the more apparent it became that her problem wasn’t with her real-estate job, but with her other full-time “job” – taking care of Harry. Allison had been living with Harry, a 37-year-old actor, for three years. “I love Harry so much,” she explained. “He had a really rough childhood, and a first marriage that was just awful, so when I met him, he was very insecure and abusive to himself. He’s a good actor, he really is, but he’s had a hard time finding work. He used to do a lot of cocaine and smoke cigarettes. I got him to stop, so that’s been good. Now I’m working with him on setting well-defined goals and sticking to a schedule. I’m sure you probably think I’m crazy for being with him, but I just know that he could be really successful, I can feel it.”

      Allison believed in Harry more than he believed in himself. She loved the potential in him, not the man he was living as from day to day. In some part of Allison’s mind, she’d decided that she would be successful when Harry got his life together. So no matter how well she did in her own career, she felt like a failure as long as Harry wasn’t progressing according to her plan.

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