“I think the problem is that we depend on our loves to love us the way we should love ourselves.” Unknown
You blame your ex.
You believe your ex may have been the devil incarnate.
You believe your ex ruined your life and treated you worse than the worst person you’ve met today.
Why couldn’t they have loved you the way you wanted to be loved!?!
Isn’t that a partner’s job?
To love you unconditionally, without judgment and without hurting you?
Is that so much to ask?
Not really, except it wasn’t your ex who did you like this for you to blame your ex.
It wasn’t your ex who treated you badly first.
It wasn’t your ex who loved you badly first.
It’s easy to blame everything on your ex and consider him to be the bogeyman.
However, more likely than not, it wasn’t your ex who did you wrong.
Let’s go back in time.
When I was growing up, the people who mistreated me more than I could have imagined were my parents.
I doubt they did this maliciously or intentionally but without question, the way my parents spoke to me, punished me and disciplined me had a lot to do with how I turned out.
Now, before you jump ahead here, the point of this story isn’t to blame our parents, as much as we’d like to do that.
Our parents and families set the standard of what love looks like but…they royally screwed it up for many of us.
Your parents create the terrible soil for you to grow in:
- Your parents likely spoke badly to you.
- They criticized you unfairly and held you to impossible standards.
- They likely insulted your intelligence
- Made you feel unworthy
- They must have sinned in a previous life to have given life to you (hey Indian parents!).
If it wasn’t your parents, it was your family.
If it wasn’t your family, other influences in your life made you treat yourself badly.
So, you inherited this problem that showed up later in your marriage and your spouse didn’t help with it.
They just made it worse.
Remember, your ex is the mirror.
If you showed up with low self-worth, your ex amplified it.
If you showed up with low self-esteem, your spouse took advantage of it.
If you showed up with self-loathing, you felt worse when your spouse pushed your buttons.
The problem stemmed from the conditions you grew up in and the people who were supposed to have loved you right.
But the solution is up to you to find.
How sad and tragic that we have to fix the way other people hurt us?
What’s up with that?
Our partners were our mirrors, showing us just how much we didn’t love ourselves.
They were not the cause so why blame your ex?
Now it’s our job to figure this out.
How do we forgive the people who hurt us and forgive the people who didn’t love us like we were supposed to have been loved?
How do we then learn to love ourselves the way we want to be loved?
Blaming your ex and others for not loving us correctly is easy. Taking responsibility for our healing and our loving is hard.
Yet this is without question the hardest work that we have to do, especially coming back from a breakup or divorce.
The greatest factor in changing the way we look at ourselves, treat ourselves and deal with ourselves is how much we care for and love ourselves.
I’ve discovered that all our interpersonal successes, all our emotional and physical successes, all our achievements and worldly successes come down to this one thing.
So, let’s stop putting the responsibility squarely on our exes.
Don’t blame your ex. Let’s not blame your family either. They carried their own wounds and hurts from generations before.
Let’s find a way to accept and love ourselves.
Do you still blame your ex for the way they treated you? Are you angry at those people who didn’t love you like they were supposed to?
Hit reply and let me know. If you’re not on the email list, please get on it.
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