I spent a good hour the other day trying to remember a time in my 20s when I had just calmly expressed my needs in a dating or relationship situation. And there wasn’t one. I was a dating disaster for a long time.
I learned early on that my needs didn’t matter. They made me difficult. And not sexy. They might get in the way of someone ‘choosing’ me. Maybe you were a dating disaster too.
I blame Page 3
A lot of this came from the childhood songs I listened to, the films I watched and the magazines I was exposed to. The way people on TV talked about women. The way female characters were really only ever sidekicks to the men on TV. The fact that a national newspaper had topless women in it for my entire childhood. We constantly underestimate how powerful and programming this stuff is.
Women were pretty, inoffensive objects to be picked off a shelf and then told what to do next by the nearest man.
Consciously I didn’t think I believed this – I studied law, I solo travelled, I wrote a book. But subconsciously that programming was so deeply ingrained I couldn’t even consider my own needs let alone dare to express them to someone else.
This is the definition of “selfless” – to have no awareness of your own needs. It’s another thing women are conditioned to be. And another thing that trips us up.
Does that feel familiar to you?
Because it’s familiar to almost all of the women that I have coached in my career. Women who range from 18 – 80s, different jobs, incomes, relationship status etc. but not expressing needs, not even being able to identify them, is a common theme.
And so, too, is what happens when we start connecting to, and expressing, our needs for the first time. Liberation. Confidence. Clarity on what to do next. Real daily JOY. A huge positive shift in relationships. Careers that blossom.
Yes, it’s massively uncomfortable and scary at first. But that’s only because it’s new.
Once it becomes a habit it’s yours for life. A permanent shift to self-belief and peace. Unshakeable autonomy in a world that constantly tries to deprive us of it.
Ready for it? Let’s chat.
