Do you know a man who is perfect for you but he just doesn’t seem to realize it?
Have you been dating the same guy off and on for months or years, but he just can’t seem to commit?
Does he refuse to let you meet his family and friends, but he blows up your phone if you spend even a few hours with another guy?
Yeah. I’ve been there. Today is the FOUR YEAR ANNIVERSARY of the day that I woke up, after spending another New Year’s Eve alone, even though I was dating the same guy for a few years. But he never took me out on New Year’s. Or Valentine’s Day. I’d never met his family. I celebrated special events alone.
When I began to think about giving up on him and moving on, he would suddenly develop a renewed interest in me. He would discuss our relationship with enough convincing dialogue that I would decide to give us another chance. He would say I love you. Maybe he would take me out for my birthday and buy me a nice dinner. But the end result was always the same. No real commitment, and certainly no real love. Not like I needed.
So, there I was on New Year’s Eve 2016. Alone. I was tempted to find a quick date on Tinder (don’t ever do that). Instead, I heard a voice from deep inside urging me to stop chasing after the dream of this guy. The voice told me to do things differently. It urged me to step away from this joke of a relationship and try something new.
When you make decisions based on an inner voice, there aren’t usually instructions, so I stepped tentatively away from my fake relationship wondering what to do next. I wanted a real relationship, but where could a girl find such a thing? Then I saw a commercial for a free communication weekend on eHarmony. So, I headed over to the website and tried it out. I matched with a guy and sent him a smile at 4:16 pm on January 1, 2016.
And the rest is history. In hindsight, I realize that I did things out of order. I found the guy and then figured out how to love myself and God. Fortunately, God is gentle with those of us who wander. I was also fortunate that my now-husband was patient with me as I figured all these things out.
I remember those first dates, not knowing how to be on a date without having to work for attention and approval. It felt all wrong. I was tempted to give up and run back to the guy who’d been wasting my time all along. It would have been easy. And comfortable.
If I had, I’d probably still be there, waiting for him to want me.
Instead, I went down a different path. And I’m so happy I did.
Today, I celebrate the FOUR-year anniversary of that choice. I also celebrate the thirty-three-month anniversary of my marriage to the most wonderful man in the world. A man God sent to me who I wouldn’t have even noticed if I hadn’t stepped away from the guy who couldn’t love me.
So, as a gift to the many other women like me, I will share my simple three-step plan to make a guy fall head over heels in love with you.
Are you ready? (Be careful, it works!)
- Fall in love with yourself. We all know that self-esteem is attractive. But when you truly learn to love and respect yourself, you will realize that the guy who is tossing you crumbs of attention and affection when it is convenient for him is shortchanging the amazing woman you are. You deserve more than crumbs. You deserve the entire meal. You deserve romance, desire, attraction, commitment, and loyalty. If you focus on loving yourself, you will realize that he doesn’t, and your interest in him will lessen. Take a class, join a club, read a few books. Do things that inspire you, and make you realize that you’re pretty awesome — because you are.
- Fall in love with God. Seriously, I know. I sound like a self-help book, but it is true that when you fall in love with God, He will love you back. When you receive perfect love from God, the attention your crush gives you will seem substandard in comparison. God’s complete love puts all other love in perspective. The closer you lean toward Him who created you, the less you will desire a guy who isn’t loving you right. If you’re not sure how to fall in love with God. Find a church and reach out to someone there. Message me. Email me. We can help you with this. It is easy to fall in love with God.
- Let go. This is the hardest step. Let go of this guy who won’t love you like you need to be loved. Maybe you’ve been friends or “special friends,” more than friends, or even lovers for years, and it may be a difficult break, but LET HIM GO! Maybe he’s told you he loves you, but his actions show you another story. Maybe he writes you sweet cards and buys you soup when you’re sick, but he refuses to make a commitment to you or call you his girlfriend. You spend nights out with your girlfriends defending him and telling them that you are strong enough to stick around until he realizes your worth. Let him go. When you do, you will realize (after a few weeks of misery, crying in your pint of Ben and Jerry’s while watching romantic comedies) that you were better off without him. You will realize that all he ever gave you was a lot of doubt about your own value. Let him go.
If you follow these three easy steps, these things will happen:
- You will free yourself up to spend more time with your friends, family, and God. You will spend less time enmeshed in drama over whether he loves you and when he is going to realize that you were meant to be.
- You will become stronger and more focused because you are no longer wasting energy on him and your pseudo-relationship.
- You may realize that there are other men in your life who are interested in you. Men who can give you what you want and need in a relationship.
- One day, several years from now, you will look back and wonder why you spent so many hours yearning for the affection of an unavailable man. But it’s okay, here is the amazing part — if you’ve followed the three steps above, the odds are, that man is sitting ALONE, or with another woman that he has still not committed to, and he is wondering how he LET YOU GO. When you finally move on, when you finally find love, in God, in yourself, in a good man, the man who wouldn’t love you, the one who couldn’t love you, finally realizes that he DID love you. And that realization of what he had and now LOST will FOREVER haunt him.
And then he will love you. Only it will be too late for him. And by the way, it won’t matter to you. Because you’ll be happy.
Hang in there, girl. Being single is hard. But being unsingle with the wrong guy is the hardest. You will be happy you decided to let go.