Long Term (Serious) Relationship Goals

Be Valued

Being Valued & Having Personal Values In Relationships: Your Value Is As Good As How You Treat You (Part 1)

They say that you can tell a lot about someone by the company they keep, but this belief is often misplaced. We look at someone and when they say that they've had girlfriends/a wife, go to church, are a cop, seemingly have friends, and can be the life and soul at a party, that it must mean that they're a great catch. It's a bit like – well if they have people around them that like them or have been involved with other people, it makes them desirable. This is the dating equivalent of 'social proof'.

Ever wondered why so many women get involved with attached men? They take the fact that the man is attached as literal, social proof, that he is capable of being in a relationship and capable of commitment, forgetting that the act of cheating itself is indicative of a lack of commitment and poor relationship values.

When we find ourselves with someone who seems 'good on paper, not so great in the flesh', we wonder where we've gone wrong. We wonder why we see such a different side to them. We wonder how they can be nice to others but not nice to us, or why they have loved others, but not us. We wonder why they haven't left yet, or have left, but are no more committed to you than they've been with others.

This confusion about why someone doesn't want us/love us, ties in with the mistake of having conflicting ideas about value.

'I'm a person of value that deserves to be treated well – why isn't he treating me in this way?'

'Why her and not me? What does he see in her when I'm the right person for him? Why can't he see it?'

'I'm a good woman. Why doesn't he value me? Why is he throwing away my love?'

You see the thing about value, is that it's very much driven by you, so in actual fact, you can tell a lot about how much someone values themselves by the company that you keep (or chase).

If you claim to be someone of great value and then you hang with someone who treats you like low value goods and stick around to try to get them to see and treat you like higher value goods (i.e. teach them to learn to value you), it's you who is changing your value, not them.

Your value is as good as how you treat yourself, the company you keep, the beliefs you hold, and the life you lead.

If you don't treat yourself with love, care, trust, and respect, you hang out with people who in turn don't treat you in this way, plus you continue to hold negative beliefs about yourself, love, and relationships, you will not only conduct your life accordingly and slot into the merry-go-round that is the self-fulfilling prophecy, but you will diminish your own value. You also need to get rid of the piece of paper and opt for substance in the flesh...

Hard as it may be to hear for some, part of the reason why we get involved with people who offer the least likely possibility of giving the very things that we profess to want and who require radical change, is that aside from having commitment issues, poor love habits, and dealing with an element of inadvertent sabotage, it's also about inflating our own value .

Have low self esteem —> Attach yourself to someone who will need to make you the exception to their track record of not being a good relationship partner —> Invest yourself in this limited relationship and attempt to get a return on investment —> Hope that if you eventually get him to change and see you in the way that you want to be seen and valued that this will give you an enormous boost, and make you a valuable, validated person = value inflated.

It's also: Have low self-esteem —> Choose dodgy partner —> You initially feel better about yourself as you're distracted by their problems and apparent lack of greatness = false value.