Honest

Integrity

Compassion

Patience

Friendship

Love

Spontaneity

Adventuresome

Low-maintenance

Forgiving

Ambitious (but not overly)

Aware

Generous

I put this here so I can come back to it and check myself to be sure that I am giving all that I want in return. I have some work to do on a couple areas. But I think I’m good for the most part. Anyway, that’s all for now.

I have always justified my ‘stubbornness’ as my way of standing up for my beliefs and morals. But now I realize all I am doing is sabotaging my relationships and causing myself to become isolated.

I am asked out on dates all the time, but I never accept because I like to be the aggressor. I’ve always liked the challenge but now I think it’s because I can control the situation if I am doing the work to make it happen. I am almost speechless right now. It just really hit me. I can’t remember even one relationship lasting more than a few weeks if I were the one being pursued. Out of all of my long term relationships, I was the one who did the chasing. I like it. A lot. I was always taught that a woman should go after her man. Women have more choices than men, typically. The men that do the chasing are often mistreated and walked on…ummm…I would imagine just the same as I have felt that I have been mistreated and walked on in the past. Ok wow…I never looked at it like that before. I feel like such a dork! Of course  some of them are going to take advantage of me and not care how it makes me feel in the end. If I put my heart & soul out on a silver platter for him upfront like that, I am not giving myself the respect I deserve to hold onto my heart & soul until he earns it.

I feel like I’ve been out of the game so long that I’ve forgotten all the rules. Dating is exhausting and I don’t think I really want to. I think instead of looking for someone to fill his shoes, I am going to use the control freak in me to make some changes in my life. I need to find a better job. I need to get a better handle on me. I may try to control everyone around me, but I think it’s because I haven’t learned how to control certain areas of my own life yet. For me, everything becomes a reason to not do something else. Procrastination. It’s not that the laundry is hard to do every day, I just don’t want to do it every day. I need to learn to just do the things I don’t like to do everyday instead of not doing them & having them grow to huge problems for me later. I know I enjoy doing them if I have someone to do them for, so why can’t I love myself enough to want the same for myself as I do for others? Appreciation? But if I am not appreciated I become bitter. It’s a viscous circle! I need to stop. Maybe now that I realize what I am doing, I will be aware of when I start to make an excuse for not wanting to do something and stop it before it becomes a mountain of negativity for me & everyone around me. It’s hard to change life-long habits. Really hard. I can do it though. And I will.