In her book, Taking Out The Trash, author Antonia Ragozzino uses the weekly chore of taking out the trash bins as a metaphor for saying goodbye to the men in her life. With one mismatched date after another, Antonia started to wonder what was wrong with her. Why did she keeping picking the wrong man? Then she found her answer. Here’s Antonia:
I always ended up picking men who had all these issues and I was always playing the victim,
“Why do all these things happen to me?”
I didn’t realize that I didn’t deserve to have them happen to me. I was making wrong choices. I was picking the wrong people. I didn’t love myself and I didn’t have the confidence that I was a good person to actually realize that I deserved better people. I never went for the higher caliber of men because I didn’t think that they deserved me, and I don’t even mean that materialistically.
It’s just basically about being treated nice and I never thought I deserved that. I just didn’t have confidence in myself, so I was choosing the wrong people and they were train wrecks.
I started taking them out with the trash and I realized,
“Wait a minute, I don’t deserve to be with anyone who’s going to disrespect me for two hours”
That’s when I started loving myself.
The Divorce Coach Says
I have not dated since my divorce but certainly before I was married I did date a number of men who were definitely not marriage or even long-term commitment material and I absolutely agree with Antonia, that it was because I didn’t have confidence in myself. At times, I was just happy someone was paying attention to me. I also agree with Antonia that the dynamic changes when you start loving yourself and that sets the stage for deeply meaningful relationships. So how do you go from a mindset of pleasing someone else to loving yourself? Antonia shares how she did it in the next post.