By Javinne J. McCoy

When we keep cycling on the unavailable, unhealthy, and painful Relationship hamster wheel, it’s all too common to think we are under a cosmic curse or merely having a spell of bad luck.  We may feel powerless. We may begin to think that the universe is conspiring against us, as if there is a secret society of some sort that meets monthly at the Unhealthy Relationship Bohemian Grove , in order to put the magic voodoo on our ability to have mutual, healthy, intimate, and available loving relationships.

What we fail to realize is that we are creating our relationship experiences in order to match where we are at any given point in life (subconsciously or consciously).  

Often, we are on auto-pilot (read: destination pain) with our unhealthy patterns, thoughts, and behaviors. We knee jerk from relationship to relationship hoping for new relationship wine (healthy available love), but instead we are using old relationship wine bottles (same jacked up beliefs, same unhealthy behaviors, same unresolved issues) and somehow trying to force new wine into old relationship bottles.

 The net result is choosing the same broken down Oldsmobile of a man or woman, whom refuses to show up for a real, mutual, healthy and intimate, emotionally available relationship. We never get our Ferrari. We keep driving around in a broken down Oldsmobile, taking numerous road trips down the Unavailable and Unhealthy Relationship Expressway to pain.

Almost every weekend I play tennis at my tennis club (anyone who knows me knows tennis is my heart. I have been playing since 12 years old.  Also, I currently compete on the USTA men’s recreational Eastern League).  After a night of playing in our doubles tennis league, I stayed later, and took up some friendly competition with one of the coaches. He challenged me to play a full set of singles tennis with him (side note: a full set is equivalent to 6 full games-first player to 6 games wins and you have to win by 2 games. I prefer singles. I only play doubles to improve my singles game).

Anyway, he won, but the score was close. The score was a 7-5 victory for him. If you don’t know tennis, a score of 7-5 shows the match was super competitive and close. After the match ended, I shook his hand and said “I am really ready for this season. I am good now better….a totally different player….better than last year…better than ever.” He looked at me and said “I am glad you are finally able to say this.”

Now, for a long time, this particular coach had always told me that my player rating is closer to a 4.0 (college players start there rating at 5.0). However the part of me that always downplays everything, insisted that I am a 3.5-I never would consider the fact that I am closer to a 4.0 and good.

The point being?  He had always acknowledged my value, but I refused to accept it myself. I never adopted the posture of a 4.0 player- a more consistent type of player, a more tactical kind of player, a more powerful kind of tennis player. If I had,  I would have approached my matches last season form this angle and had a better shot at winning my playoff match.

It was at this moment that it hit me; you must always love you and acknowledge your value first before stepping into any relationship or life pursuit (sounds simple I know). I am not talking about pride, arrogance, and narcissistic B.S. I am talking about personal Real-T (truth) recognition that you have value, and deserve to be treated with care, kindness, and respect. This is essential to going to the next level in life and relationships. This is directly linked to self-esteem (how you feel, think, and behave about YOU).

You will notice in unavailable relationships, that you are NEVER treated the way you want to be treated. You feel gipped, cheated, tricked, used, abused, taken for granted etc.  You are never valued and cherished authentically by the unavailable person, and often, there will be one or more of the following shady relationship dynamics present:

a) exploitation of your vulnerabilities

b) power imbalances (they have the power, it isn’t shared)

c) your boundaries keep getting busted up royally (while there’s remain tight and intact),

d) their actions not matching words they profess (they do a lot of promising and hinting at the future but never deliver),

e) everything is on their terms

….and the list goes ON and ON and ON and ON and ON.

When we find ourselves in these shifty situations,  it’s often because we have failed to approach life, people, and situations loving ourselves, feeling good about ourselves, and knowing what we are worth. We are not taking full responsibility to set the bar at a deserving level and get honest about what we deserve (value and self-esteem), feeling overall “good” about ourselves (self-esteem),  and loving us (making a daily intentional decision to always act in our best interest, and in alignment with our core values, boundaries,  and needs).

Here are 10 thoughts on Loving You, Self-Esteem, and Value

1. Each relationship romp with an emotionally unavailable person is an opportunity for you to make peace with you, get clearer about what you want and don’t want, and for you to make the intention crystal clear, that You Do Deserve Better.

If you stay in a relationship that is dead as an animal carcass, you are communicating to the universe that This, Them, and it is As Good As It Gets. Send a different message. Send the message that you deserve better and EXIT!

2. Every time you bow out of an unavailable relationship and walk away, you are saying NO to them mistreating you, playing games with your heart, using you, exploiting you, and taking advantage of you.

You are now saying YES TO YOU!

3. Remember that if you genuinely felt good about you, you would have NEVER been dealing with them in the first place.

Work on feeling good about you, and the majority of these folk you are fretting about wouldn’t matter a lick of salt.

4. When someone mistreats you, it’s ABOUT THEM and their character. When you stay with them, it becomes ABOUT YOU and your unhealthy self-esteem. Heal your self-esteem (your feelings about you) and you will be treating you well. If someone comes along and doesn’t match, you will know what to do…….launch them right out your life!

5.  Make loving yourself a prerequisite always.

If you don’t love yourself, you don’t love yourself. When you try to love somebody else, they will be your reflection, not be capable of loving you, and give you what you already give you- No love.

6. Your validation of YOU must come first.

You validate you by feeling your feelings fully (without addictions or numbing), assessing your values, and acting accordingly, in your best interest, regardless of what he/she or they might say.

 7. You decide your value and worth.

Make sure your daily decisions are not communicating that you deserve less than and that you will willingly settle for lack, scarcity, and mediocrity in your life and relationships.  If you have a pattern of dealing with folk who you are trying to prove you are ‘good enough for’, maybe it’s time you come at it from a more realistic angle- you may just be too good for them.

8. Extracting love by force from reluctant and limited people only compounds issues of unhealthy self-esteem for YOU, but will make the people who mistreat you seem better than they really are, because by staying, you reinforce their self-delusions and ego.

Love doesn’t have to be that hard. Really! If someone requires you to work so hard for their love, their love is really not worth having. You will end up depleted with gray hair and they will end up with a Super-Sized Ego. Love is a give and take flow. Unavailable people TAKE TAKE TAKE.

9. Continuing to desire and pine over a person whom is emotionally unavailable, a narcissist, or a Jerk or a Jerkette, is actually safeguarding you from true intimacy and blocking your energy.

If you cling (for dear life with both hands) to what you can’t have, you can’t reach out and grab what you want, because your hands are already full-full of garbage. Let em’ go down the refuse shoot. No need to recycle.

10. Making a commitment to processing, acknowledging, and healing your childhood dysfunction and family of origin issues (i.e. unhealthy love templates, negative self-perceptions, self-destructive patterns and habits), is essential to loving you and not dismissing your feelings, thereby leading the way to loving you, and becoming emotionally available to YOU (if you do this wholeheartedly, you will seek out the same in others).

 Thoughts? Comments? Stories?  Do you have a topic or a question on emotionally unavailable relationships that you would like addressed on the L.A. Blog? Please feel free to or comment directly on a post that has inspired and empowered you or email: [email protected]

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