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Why We Allow Ourselves To Be Treated Like Shit

Why We Allow Ourselves To Be Treated Like Shit

Do you ever feel disrespected, disregarded or unappreciated, like your partner takes you for granted or doesn’t even care? Perhaps they talk down to you, belittle you, or walk all over you. 

Maybe you’re in an abusive relationship?

Does this have you feeling scared, resenting, or blaming them and making them the problem? 

“He’s doing this!” “She’s not doing that!” And on and on…

It makes sense. If I’m in a relationship with you, and you treat me poorly, my first knee-jerk response is to make you the problem. “You are doing this to me.” Grrrr.

No human likes getting treated badly, so I hear you.

However, when you’re struggling in your relationship complaining and blaming will only get you where you are currently getting–nowhere.

Pointing the finger at him or her and looking outside of yourself keeps you stuck in the victim seat and I’m pretty sure you don’t want to stay stuck there. 

There is another way…

One of the first tools you learn here at the Relationship School® is personal responsibility where you look in the mirror to own and understand your part in the dynamic.

Because when you take responsibility for your situation, you can actually do something about it, which is the only way to get empowered. If I make you the problem (outside of my control), I can’t.

Try this instead:

And if you look hard and long enough, you’ll see the root of the issue lies in your self-worth. 

That’s right, YOUR low self-worth is at the core of this painful dynamic.

If you want to get out of a relationship where you feel as though you are treated poorly, you have to be willing to value yourself more.

It’s not an easy fix. It takes effort. Most people would rather try and change the other person. “Hey, stop treating me like shit.” And that is a good boundary to set. However, if their behavior continues to be mean and you keep staying, you are dealing with a self-worth issue.

Remember, you’ve attracted this person to learn something. And that something is likely how to value and respect yourself. 

Do some digging here. Find out where you don’t feel valued or are hard on yourself. Discover where do you feel unworthy, and get to know where that lives in you.

Your self-worth will determine your relationship fate… and by being disrespected, you are being challenged to invest in yourself. Right now.

Why would you expect another person to value you, when you are not willing to value yourself?

This is why people stay in hurtful relationships where they allow themselves to be treated badly. They keep wanting it from the outside first. Understandable, but it never works.

Make a choice. Do you want to keep doing this?

This is your opportunity to value yourself way more than you already do.

As you learn to value and respect yourself more, you get stronger and will no longer tolerate relationships where people are hurtful towards you. This doesn’t mean you won’t feel hurt at times or get hurt. It means you won’t allow yourself to be treated poorly. You’ll know the difference.

It starts with you, and it ends with you. That is personal responsibility!

And hey, we all have self-worth issues. You’re not alone. It’s normal. But don’t be another stuck victim. Take action now. You’re bigger and better than this!

Trust me, as you improve your self-worth you can have what’s possible: a great relationship with yourself – and with another!

Want to go further? At The Relationship School® we have a whole class dedicated to self-worth (so powerful!) and the steps to help you address your own self-worth issues.

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Photo credit: Ben White, Unsplash

You might also like this: How Do You Measure Your Self-Worth?

Lame Advice: Be Happy With Yourself First, Before A Relationship

Lame Advice: Be Happy With Yourself First, Before A Relationship

You’ve heard it over and over, again and again: 

“You have to love yourself before someone else will love you…” or 

“Only when you can fully accept yourself will another person be able to…” or 

“After I’m happy with myself, then I’ll be ready for a romantic relationship…”

And it’s simply NOT true! In fact, it’s total bullshit. Here’s why:

You can watch the full video here and listen to the podcast. to find out more.

While it’s important to like who we are, so that others can like us, it’s unrealistic to love ourselves in order for another person to love us.

In fact, we humans only learn how to like or love ourselves through relationship. A baby doesn’t come into the world loving itself. It learns and becomes a self through attachment with another human being. 

So, reaching the mountain top of self-love is a fantasy! This common new age myth will set you up to be forever single because you’re a work in progress for the rest of your life. There is no summit to self-love. Self-love is an evolving process for the rest of your life. How? Because anytime you are triggered by another human being, that is the exact spot you are not loving yourself. That’s why you’re so triggered! 

Everyone has challenges with self-love – everyone. And anyone who doesn’t or says they don’t is likely fooling themselves, in denial, or unconscious to this reality. Relationships actually help you see where you lack self-love so that you can work on it. That’s part of the whole idea and the point.

So the person who you choose to be in an intimate, loving relationship with actually shows you (indirectly of course) how to love yourself – reflecting the places you can’t clearly see. 

The “love yourself first” message is a setup, even though it’s been perpetuated in new age psychology circles for years. It (falsely) suggests that there’s a finish line or some attainable goal you have to meet before you’re worthy to receive love – or be in a relationship – and that once you reach that goal, or get in that relationship, you’re done. Nothing could be farther from the truth. You do not need to reach a certain point before deserving to be loved or cared for. Every version and part of you deserves to be loved.

If we all waited until we felt proficient at self-love or being “happy” before entering into a romantic relationship, we’d be alone forever. Because everyone has wounds and disowned parts that they’re never going to be totally okay with, and it’s actually through relationship where another person loving you can be a huge boon to revealing and healing those parts.

Relationship actually moves self-love faster along its path because it confronts the places you don’t love yourself or care about yourself or doubt yourself or have disowned in yourself.

This is not to say that you don’t want to address your issues or the stuff that comes up around self-worth BEFORE you get into a new relationship. By all means, attend to those places in yourself. As long as you remember that self-love is a continuum not a fixed state. It’s totally natural that sometimes you will feel more lovable than others or more challenged than others. So you can relax, knowing that it’s a journey and a practice, learning to ride the waves as they come, and eventually embrace the vast ocean that is you.

So please, don’t subscribe to this tired advice of getting to “happy” before being in a relationship. You’re worthy of love right now.

 

Learn more about how relationships really work by joining The Relationship School’s® next Deep Psychology of Intimate Relationships class, and send an email to [email protected] to schedule time to talk with one of our Student Growth Liaisons. Classes start soon! OR just download our Relationship Scorecard and see how well, or poorly, you do relationship. 

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Photo credit: Ashim D’Silva, Unsplash

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