Self Worth

_I_ once had a low sense of self worth in my romantic relationships.

My life before the transition period.

Throughout all of the relationships that I was in for the first 29 years of my life, I had very low self esteem. In order for me to illustrate one particular example of this, I need to go back in time to 2006. I had been going out with a girl named L. for about a year. During that time, I allowed her to mistreat me because I had very low self esteem. One way in particular was with regards to my personal time– something that I place a very high value on. We would set up a date for a particular day and time, and she would simply not show up for 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, and in many cases, 3-5 hours. This was not a one-time incident; this was a habitual action which I simply decided to live with. I had such strong feelings for her that I simply overlooked the fact that something I valued very highly (i.e., my personal time) was merely given away for free with no acknowledgment.

One very memorable incident was on a Sunday. We were to meet at my place at a specific time, and she didn’t show up. I sat on my couch and watched TV for about 1/2 and hour as I waited for her to show up. We had set up that specific time in order to get to a particular restaurant for brunch before it got too crowded (we had been there before, so we knew approximately when we needed to get there). When she didn’t show, I called her up to see if she was perhaps stuck in traffic– my call went directly to voicemail.

“Hey, hope you’re ok… give me a call back….”

I waited an additional hour — a total of 1 1/2 hours — and nothing. No call back. No text message. Nothing. I wanted to do my laundry, but I didn’t want to accidentally miss her call while I was in the basement, so I stayed in my apartment and just tried to kill the time. I watched one of my favorite TV shows that I had tivo’ed (Mythbusters), but it wasn’t as enjoyable for me as it usually was. I was starting to feel that deep seated feeling of disappointment welling up inside me. I thought that perhaps I had been stood up.

This was by no means the first time she had been more than 1 hour late. It was so frequent, that I really never knew when (or if) she’d show up. There would be some rare occasions when she’d actually show up within 15 minutes of when she said she would, and those would be the few things that I would keep in my mind during the many times that she was excessively late, as she was right now.

That 1 1/2 hours became 2 1/2 hours, and I was still waiting. I sent a text message because I, for some reason, thought that she might be in some weird dead zone for her cell phone signal where calls wouldn’t go through, but text messages would. Hey, I figured, “It’s possible.” Deep down inside, though, I still didn’t feel good, because the “It’s possible” thought was unmistakably coupled with the thought of “oh man, not again.” I received no response to my txt message.

When she finally showed up, a little more than 3 hours late, I said, “are you ok?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened?”

“Oh, we just got stuck in traffic.”

“Did you get my message?”

“Oh, I just got that now. Thanks for calling!”

No acknowledgment. No mention of “hey… I know I kept you waiting for 3 hours.” No mention of, “I know that I’ve done this to you about 10 times already….” She and I both knew that it doesn’t take more than 1 hour to get to my place from hers, and even if there was some kind of traffic jam due to a car accident, that wouldn’t happen so many times in a row. I tried asking her what happened, and she wouldn’t give any details or information. It just didn’t add up. And it made me feel so much heart-ache inside, because I was so into this girl.

I was completely head over heels for this girl, actually, to the point where even though she disrespected me on a regular basis, I continued to be with her. At that time in my life, I really did think that I was in love with her. Looking back on my life now, with all the perspective that I have now, I realize that I wasn’t in love with her, I was simply desperate to be with any girl who would be with me because I lacked one critical thing that most guys have in the world of dating:

Choice.

I had no romantic options, and I knew very well that I didn’t know how to seek out new romantic options for myself. This habitual mistreatment is something that I endured for the 15 years prior to that day, but during those particular 15 years it was with the 2-4 other girls that I dated during that time interval. (As you can see, I didn’t date much. I didn’t know how to meet, and romantically connect with girls in conversation or otherwise). This experience that I had with L. was not the first romance that I’d been in where this type of thing had happened. In those other cases I had been disrespected in other ways, but those are subjects for future blog entries.

She later told me that she “wasn’t sure” if she wanted to be with me, or with one of the guys that she “met recently.” My heart sank when she said that. I still stayed with her for a few weeks after that because I knew in my mind that I wouldn’t be able to meet any girls for a really, really long time if I wasn’t with her. It was a feeling of helplessness, and I was indeed a pathetic individual. I did all kinds of things that only a person of low self worth would do.

My life after the transition period.

After I went through the transition period in my romantic life, I no longer had any such need to cling to a girl who is habitually disrespecting me as I once did. In just the one year that has gone by since that period, I have been able to use those 6 things that I learned during the transition period to experience all kinds of things that I would have never otherwise experienced. Now, when I choose to see a girl, it’s because I actually chose to, and not because I simply had no other options and clung to the one girl that just happened to be there. That’s really what was going on with me and L., but I didn’t want to admit that to myself. Thus, I stayed with her for so long despite being habitually mistreated. I really had no sense of self worth in my romance life. Now, I’m never mistreated. I don’t need to stand for that bullshit because I’ve got the ability to meet someone who will treat me the way I want to be treated. It’s such a joy to be able to know, in a very tangible way, that it’s really easy for me to meet someone else if I get into another similar situation. I always understood, on a theoretical level, that this was the case, but I could never really feel it. I do now, and it’s totally wonderful.

As a side note, when I was with L., I DID have a very healthy sense of self worth in my work life, my hobbies, and in my community volunteer activities. I excelled greatly in my achievements in those areas of life. But those areas of life, and the relationships and interactions that stem from them do not contain one thing that a romantic relationship contains:

Romance

Thus, despite my successes in other areas of my life, I still lacked some fundamental skills that I needed in order to find and establish a romantic connection with a girl back in those days. Now, though, it’s no longer a problem.

Doing things that a person of low self worth would do? A thing of the past