How do we attract unhealthy, incomplete, disrespectful men? What signal are we sending them to let them know we are their unhealthy match?

There’s the obvious answer- we too are incomplete and lack full respect for ourselves. But, there’s more to this than the obvious. In the past, I have said that these unhealthy relationships serve a purpose- they educate us about who we truly are, and push us to keep trying to honor ourselves. A relationship, good or bad, is never about the other person, it is about who am I now in relation to this situation, can I now make better choices for myself, how can I honor my self and my inner voice more?

We attract unhealthy relationships when we are disconnected from our true self, and when we are using another person as a substitute for finding happiness within. We all know people who cannot be happy or complete, unless the other completes them or unless the other strives to make them happy. Those relationships are obviously doomed. But sometimes, we aren’t conscious that we lack a connection to our true self. It isn’t obvious that we are not devoted to our self, until the other person triggers us to make a choice that dishonors us, and honors him (or her) instead. That moment when we choose the other over our inner truth, or over our true self, is the moment we have dishonored the Goddess within. That is exactly when we fall off our pedestal and become a slave to  the relationship.

This is why it is extremely important to always be working on ourselves. There is never really a time when we are finished, when we have shaped ourselves into an ideal self, and can rest knowing that we are now ready for our perfect counterpart. None of us ever reach perfection nor completion. The world is constantly changing, so are life’s circumstances, and the minute we stop working on ourselves someone comes along to show us how we are slacking.

Often women stop working on their inner self, when there is a new relationship to focus on. Somehow, this relationship becomes a goal, and they shift focus from within to another person. But, by shifting our energy from ourselves to someone else, we send a signal to the other person that we are emotionally ready to give, give, give attention. We are demonstrating that he has all our attention, that he is more important than our connection to ourselves, we pour our energy into him or chasing the relationship, long before he has proven himself as worthy. This is the signal an unhealthy man needs from a woman- I will give you, I will honor you, I will earn you, I will chase you, you are more important to me than my self-respect. Her shift in focus from herself to him is that signal, “I am your toxic match”. He is looking for energy, and she is up and ready to pour it into him.

When you are disconnected from your inner goddess, and you are out there dating and relating, you are only going to attract those harsh lessons and relationships that are meant to guide you back to yourself. Have you noticed that after every crash and burn relationship, after the pain has subsided, there is always that period of rediscovery, realignment, reconnecting to the self? For some women it is very brief, they feel empowered finding new meaning to life, and then they question their singleness and start chasing relationships again. And for other women, they relish that heightened connection, and seek more time with themselves because there is power in that realignment with the self.

Those bad relationships are not going to last, they are just indicators that you have to get back into yourself and keep learning. These relationships are showing you that you are neglecting yourself. You have transferred your power to the relationship. You have dishonored yourself. Keep learning girl.

When you refuse to protect your energy, to make yourself important, when you refuse to choose your honor, when you refuse to focus on your health and your self-respect, the world will push you around to show you exactly where your weaknesses lie. Bad men don’t eat good girls for lunch, men have very little power compared to wise women and Goddesses. Women who refuse to make their inner self a top priority are like a ball being kicked around a soccer field. Their focus is on who is pushing them around now, instead of who is on the inside.

Why was my divorce such a powerful experience? Because it forced me back to myself. In my marriage, I was more respectful of my ex than I was of myself, I was more giving to him than to me, and the relationship was a priority. After separation, I became my top priority and started giving myself everything I always wanted. I started to make all my own wishes come true. I became a hedonist, I started to enjoy life like never before. And once I started honoring myself, and get comfortable with being selfish, I started to feel very powerful.

What are some signs that you might be disconnected from yourself?  You know something is imbalanced when there is no peace within you without a relationship, or if you are in one, managing the relationship is more important than managing your inner self. Somehow you believe that if you negotiate, communicate, acquiesce, compromise more, you will feel better within the relationship. You won’t, you will only feel more peaceful if you realign with yourself. Another sign is that you are obsessing over a man or a relationship. An obsession is an addiction. An addiction is a deep focus on something outside yourself. When you feel hungry for a man or a relationship it is because there is an emptiness within.

These bad connections with men, family and friends, are simply your indicators that something is wrong within you. These bad connections are not meant to stay in your life, so please don’t focus on keeping them. Instead, look for repeating patters, what toxic situations these people keep bringing to your doorstep, then understand that what needs to change is you and your way of dealing with them. If you constantly keep dealing with selfish people’s demands by sacrificing yourself for their benefit, and waiting for a reward of loyalty or commitment, you are the problem. Stop sacrificing yourself for other people.

You will continue to attract unhealthy people and unsatisfying relationships as long as you refuse to fix yourself. And you will see results and soon as you figure out that you should be choosing you.

I used to be a very bad communicator, I worried that I would hurt people’s feelings, disappoint them, be accused of being mean, so I rarely stood up for myself and expressed my true feelings, instead I bottled them up inside. That turned me into a pressure cooker of anxiety and panic attacks, which would often explode in uncontrollable anger and truly inflict pain on people. I couldn’t effectively communicate to tell them how their behavior was dishonoring me, so I would wait until the explosion shattered them to pieces, then feel bad that I inflicted more pain than necessary. The more I bottled up my feelings and refused to speak my truth, the more I kept attracting people who made me angry but also triggered me into keeping my mouth shut.

I recently traveled with a person who was an energy vampire. At first she was nice, but after a while I noticed that she was making attempts to manipulate me into giving her sympathy, when that didn’t work, she tried kissing my ass, when that didn’t work she pulled stunts to get attention, etc. Finally she asked, what will it take for me to earn your friendship? Don’t you feel sorry for me? I said openly and honestly “No, I will not be your friend. I see that you are unhealthy, and I don’t want to be sucked into a relationship with you”.  I didn’t feel guilty for finally speaking my truth, and choosing to honor myself than coddle her feelings. This is how I chose myself. It felt really good to speak clearly, inoffensively and close that door firmly.

I noticed that once I started communicating more directly and more honestly with people, they started to respect me and my time more. The more you honor yourself, the more others will honor you, and the more those pesky relationships will become a thing of the past.

Once you start to bypass those difficult and uncomfortable relationships, you start to see through people because once upon a time you were just like them.  They are an old lesson learned, you don’t need to stick your finger into their toxic soup to know their acid burns.

However, if you are finding yourself sucked into bad connections over and over again, then the pull is simply a lesson left unlearned. Your umbilical cord to that toxic situation was never cut, that’s why you feel that relationship so deeply, so strongly, it is like you are drawn to it like a moth to a flame. This is why people go through multiple marriages repeating the same cycle over and over again, they are with a different partner in that same exact pattern. They don’t see how they have laid out the pattern themselves. These cycles never end until you roll up your sleeves and start to do the work on your inner self, not on external relationships.

Unfortunately, effective change usually happens when people are worn out, they are tired and have given up. What happens when they give up trying to fix bad people, and bad relationships? There’s nothing left to focus on outside themselves, so they go within, often against their own will. They fall into depression, they become disenchanted with relationships, they face their inner demons, they have nothing left to face but their inner self.

Hindus and Buddhists believe that depression serves a deep spiritual purpose. It is a lifelong habit of refusing to address the self, triggered by an event or incident that sends us into an deep abyss, a darkness that we have to walk through until we shed the ego, face our inner demons, find acceptance, find peace. It is a natural part of life, but also the most painful period anyone could experience facing themselves. Only the strong survive, and only those who have done the inner work will see the light at the end of the tunnel. Those who walk out of that darkness (without drugs, having worked on themselves) feel more powerful than ever, when they finally surface. They have found their true self and accepted it, flaws and all. There is no more powerful experience than facing your true self, realizing who you were meant to be all along.

Having been through it, and having found my way out of that darkness all by myself, I can truly say that I am grateful for the experience, and that I am much more powerful as a result. I will write about it more later, it has taken me a couple of years to truly process that period and see how it shaped me.

But, if you are wondering what signal you are sending to unhealthy men that attracts them to you, it is your easy shift in focus away from yourself into them. Women are trained to give energy to everybody on demand. We pay attention to whoever is trying to get our attention, good or bad. We pay attention and give energy to men, even when we have no personal interest in that man.  If your energy flows to any random man simply because he is asking for it, you have a problem staying focused on yourself.

If I can get you to drop working on yourself, compromise your beliefs, and start paying attention to me just by offering you dinner or a drink, you’re too easy. You just dropped yourself in exchange for a date. Work on yourself. A date should be of no value at all, what is of true value is a man who has done as much inner work on himself and evolved as far as you have. The only way you can recognize him is to always be aware of yourself. When your focus is on your energy, you will easily spot people who are a match to your energy. When your focus is on your peace, you will easily notice whether his inner peace matches your own. You won’t fall so easily for a mere distraction, you will know when the offer is real.

S