Before you read more into this post, let’s define successful.
I make it sound like failed relationships are successful – well, they absolutely can be. It really all depends on how you look at it, and how you define your worth. A woman with self worth will define leaving her cheating boyfriend as successful – for example. A woman with self worth also won’t stay in the wrong relationship for the sake of simply being in a relationship – I don’t know about you, but that sounds like success to me.
Basically, any successful (failed) relationship is one where you never lost sight of yourself. It’s any relationship where you didn’t allow it to compromise your worth.
Now getting to that point of success isn’t always easy – it isn’t meant to be.
I’ll never forget the first time I had my expectations shot to the floor from a guy after our first date. When I found out he didn’t have a car, I intentionally yet stupidly asked how he was going to pick me up for our second date. Without much of a thought, he called me “high maintenance“, and that was the end of that.
For about an hour I had to wonder if I really was being high maintenance. After all, to him I certainly was. But then I had a fit of rage because I knew I deserved better. If it meant to one person that I was high maintenance for wanting a gentlemen to court me, and pick me up on our date – then so be it – but I was not about to allow that to change me.
All I could think thereafter was, “good luck, man,” and “boy, am I better off.”
[Related Read: I’m Not High Maintenance – I Have High Standards In Relationships]
That’s when I knew what it meant to have a new found strength of self worth. It is a strength every woman needs to have in life, especially in dating, relationships and even marriage. Here’s why I’m going to preach this painstaking truth – the reasons why women with self worth have more successful relationships. If you’re having relationship troubles lately, this may pertain to you – through a life changing way to turn that around for a happier, healthier love life.
7 Reasons Why Women With Self Worth
Have Successful Relationships
They follow the 3-strikes-you’re-out rule
Yes. Just like baseball.
It’s the same fair game with people. Sure, “forgive and forget” – that motto only works on genuine human mistakes. When someone makes an honest mistake, you should learn the first time around. If not, it becomes deliberate.
Basically, if a guy has made you question your existence a third time – it’s time to move on.
A woman with self worth will forgive and forget, within reason. If you’re the “first strike you’re out” type – I advise taking a good look in the mirror and asking yourself, “Would I never want to be given the benefit of the doubt?“, before continuing that mindset.
Like I said, mistakes happen, but excuses are intolerable. The first is a warning, a second is a lesson but three times is an excuse – a strong woman won’t hesitate to nip that relationship in the bud. She knows she is better off single than with less of a man who takes advantage of her trust.
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And when they let go, they never look back
Time and time again, I see women who – for a split second of their sanity – get rid of that lower than dirt of a human being, just to take him back. There’s the whole sad, sob story of “But he’s changed – a changed man this time – he realized he was in the wrong and has proven himself by winning me back”.
Maybe it’s just me, but I think if the relationship goes as far as breaking up, it was meant to stay that way. Because if the relationship was stable, healthy and repairable – everything would have been resolved without going the length of ending it completely.
There’s the saying that sometimes it takes losing everything to understand what you had. Isn’t that a bit ridiculous and far fetched, especially when you’re dating? I think that saying more so reveals someone’s true character and the value (or lack there of) they see in you and/or the relationship in the first place.
But that’s just me.
I know there’s two sides to everything. So there those who believe their relationship needed time apart to get themselves and their lives in order. Hence the breaking up and getting back together pattern.
Guess what? In marriage you don’t get to do that. You don’t get to remove your title as Mrs. in order to “find yourself” or “improve your life”. So why make it that much easier to walk away without a piece of paper? If he let you go without a fight to make things right, I firmly believe it is meant to stay that way if the relationship is no longer worth fighting for.
So for a woman who can make that choice to move on, another strength of her self worth is never looking back twice. A woman with self worth has enough to realize what the relationship means to him by his actions, motivations and intentions.
Instead, that kind of woman will make herself available for the next worthy man to come along.
They don’t tolerate that “salty fluff“
I’m not trying to say that women with self worth don’t care about being in a relationship, but I guess what it boils down to is that independently strong women go into relationships like it won’t be their last.
I know, I know – that’s a tough pill to swallow. Plus, it makes it sound like I’m saying women should never, ever settle or commit to anything – period. That’s not what I’m implying at all.
It’s about thinking more logically – knowing the likelihood of red flags to surface, and understanding that our feelings can certainly get the best of us when we think we’ve met “the one” after Date #1. Granted, she knows to give him the benefit of the doubt without seeming pessimistic, it’s about enjoying the good without blowing it up to scale (if you know what I mean), but having the ability to read into and not justify the behaviors that initially compromise that good.
That salty fluff.
These behaviors can be discrete, confusing, manipulating and often times so subliminal that you may not read into them as red flags right off the bat. It’s like that untouchable gray area between simply being nervousness or inexperience, to a short lived phase you think the relationship will eventually grow out of.
The salty fluff isn’t always bad, yet they will still leave you in question when they happen.
It could be random late night calls, last minute date cancellations, or words and actions that make it extremely difficult to trust his intentions, like his inability or struggle to make time for you, initiating that time together or falls short of frequency or substance in communication.
I once dated a seemingly [perfect] guy – very nice, genuine, funny and literate (the one standout word to describe him). We were friends for years prior to dating, so I considered it the ideal situation when he went from “older brother figure” to “boyfriend potential“. I thought I really knew him.
In time I eventually noticed there was something about the way he spoke – the way he used his words – in regards to every situation. Without immediately calling him what I believe he is, he simply had a way with women…using words. Always knew just what to say – almost too genuinely, too rationally, too logically – that made him look too good.
My mom was the first to point out that he was a shit-talker – yet it took me years after we were over to finally understand what she meant. For lack of better words, he was a verbal and emotional manipulator if I ever saw one.
And that, my friends, that is salty fluff.
Again, these are behaviors aren’t necessarily considered malicious. They can even be inconsistent. That is why they might often be justified or ignored. It’s not enough to point you in the direction that he’s up to no good but they are enough to make you realize one thing:
Nobody should ever make you feel inferior or doubtful. So, really, it’s not that difficult to be a decent, respectful person if they have the right intentions.
In other words, women with self worth take this fluff as a blessing in disguise, since this is behavior that is likely unchanged. It’s merely a foreshadow of what’s to come.
They know the difference between a mistake and an excuse
Like I have said, we all make mistakes. That is why we are imperfect creatures. You are going to make mistakes your entire life, including in your relationships. The key thing to remember is mistakes are unintentional – they are acknowledgement for improvement and deemed forgivable.
Excuses are not. They are intentional, premeditated or deliberately intended to do harm.
That is why cheating is and can never be considered a mistake – it is a premeditated choice. People know it is wrong – they know it is hurtful – yet continue to do it, anyway. So even if that choice wasn’t to hurt your significant other, it was still the choice to disrespect your partner and to fill a void, that your relationship was not, without making the honorable decision to end your commitment beforehand.
Now, a woman with self worth knows this difference – she refuses to tolerate someone who abuses the route of making excuses in the relationship.
They don’t try to change the other person for their own happiness, & vice versa
Everyone has flaws – just as everyone should be more accepting of flaws. But let’s just say there’s something you absolutely, without a doubt, cannot live with. Let’s say body hair, for example. Unless he is 100% willing to change that for you (on his own, without your convincing), then it is not your duty to try and change him.
If my husband had said he would only want to be married to a blonde (me, being a natural brunette) and tried to force that change upon me, I would have to tell him to go shove it where the sun don’t shine.
A woman with enough self worth won’t feel the need to change people to fulfill her happiness, and definitely won’t tolerate this manner on the flip side. She doesn’t have time to waste trying to mold a man to her liking, nor wants to waste her efforts on someone trying to change her.
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They know the difference between right and wrong
Common sense, if you will.
To me, it’s very easy to see every relationship as a clean slate, white room – with one door, and that door always being open, always unlocked. Meaning, I am free to leave if I want to. I will always have that choice – whether from good or bad circumstances.
A woman with self worth sees this door, she understands this door, and always keeps it open or unlocked for herself. She knows the difference between right and wrong. She knows what Love is – what is isn’t supposed to be – and that there are inexcusable behaviors that should never be tolerated (from physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, etc.). She has enough self worth to exit that door freely, and locking it behind her – forever.
They are willing to weed out the bad eggs for the right one
You find that guy. He’s great – perfect, even – except for the fact he talks crap about your parents.
“But he’s perfect in every other way – I just wish he didn’t talk about my parents like that – it’s disrespectful to me.”
Guess what? If there’s anything a guy does that you find hurtful, disrespectful or intolerable in a relationship standpoint – but is otherwise perfect in every fitting way – you are eventually not going to be happy.
A woman with self-worth won’t be quick to settle, especially if she is left with reason to doubt. If she has to swipe left twenty times before finding one that is worth holding onto, she will. She believes there is a balance of the perfect man out there – she just has enough self worth to wait for it.
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