DON'T FORGET YOUR CROWN: Self-Love has everything to do with it.

by Derrick Jaxn

Probably the most undeniable of all is that without self-love, no love matters.

I was living out the proof that the saying, “A man will act right for the right woman” was false. This had nothing to do with her being right, but everything to do with me being wrong, and subconsciously I didn’t bring myself to accept that truth until it was too late.

She knew long before what her goals were and committed to the work necessary to show up when the opportunity came.

Some men are “naturally gifted” with creativity, compassion, work ethic, romantic inclination, and other qualities that would make a woman feel like the luckiest person alive, but due to the decision not to work on themselves before meeting her, those men make their woman regret the day she chose not to ignore him.

the other half of this equation has been getting trained for a completely different sport, the sport of being “players.”

Raise your boys the same way you do with your girls. Just like your daughters, teach them how to love, how to care, how to nurture their second half. Show them what self-love is and prepare them for marriage.

With this mindset, men will continue being unprepared for relationships, and women will continue hurting themselves in efforts to love unprepared men or even worse, spending their best years preparing him for the next woman.

outside of his mother, no, a woman’s purpose is never to give the best of her love, get her hopes up, invest her energy and precious time into a man, just to be left to see him take that and give to another woman while she’s left to pick up the pieces to her heart.

other than the love a mother or father has for their child, or for a person loving themselves, unconditional love has done more harm than good, and would benefit anyone who abandoned the idea of it.

I’m not referring to love as the fuzzy feeling most people characterize it as, but love as an action verb. The application, display, and consistent investment into your partner to grow with and manifest the best in them; that love should only be given with conditions,

She continued being there for me, holding in the hurt that she was feeling, hoping it would just go away. She continued trying to satisfy me physically and understand me emotionally despite me being distant. She continued rejecting the guys who wanted her, and she stayed in even on weekends when I was out at different parties. She continued loving me, and it took such a toll on her that over time, she was no longer the girl I originally met.

This right here, is precisely what I should NEVER do. Unconditional love is a scam

Yes, I genuinely wanted another chance, but no, I did not deserve one and there’s a huge difference. Me wanting another chance at that time was just me not wanting to accept the consequences of my actions.

It’s amazing how you’re only able to see the negative in something until it’s almost gone, then you see it for what it was. It’s like people who hate their life until there’s a near-death experience, and that restores their appreciation for it. I had gotten so focused on the negatives of the relationship, I forgot what it was like before that, and what it would’ve been without me slowly deteriorating it over time, and now I wanted to keep it.

Don’t let yourself get there. Appreciate the flaws and focus on the good stuffs. But do not hesitate to speak when something is wrong or if things don’t add up. Stop jumping over conclusions. Ask questions and trust your gut feeling to analyze the answers + the facts.

The truth was, she had unconditionally loved me, in action form, and with every day that she did, she loved herself less because deep down she knew she deserved better than the things I’d begun doing. She allowed herself to tolerate so much of my disrespect for the relationship that it ate at her original identity and nestled its way in as a part of what she taught herself was normal. Without condition, she continued to love me and it cost her herself, and that’s when she became someone else.

It’s no coincidence that everything in life worth having comes with conditions.

With great power comes great responsibility, and with significant value comes high expectations to keep that value. So, why should someone be allowed to receive the love of another person without having to meet certain conditions?

If two people have a healthy level of romance in their relationship after years of being together, it’s because they’re meeting the conditions necessary to fall in love over and over again.

Because good sex is like glue, while bad sex is like a chokehold.

Teach your sons the benefits of monogamy. A man only belongs to one single woman.

If a wild tiger can be taught more manners than your Golden Retriever, wouldn’t you think a man’s wild penis can undergo the same domestication?

It’s not ten times worse when a woman cheats, we just care ten times less when we do it because we believe that’s what we’re supposed to do.

Anytime someone says, “It’s worse when a woman cheats,” they’re really saying it’s better when a man does, a man’s pride is worth more, and he should be allowed to care less for the same crime.

A woman’s cheating is worse to a man in the same way a college grad feels insulted when he’s told to go fetch coffee on the first day of his internship. It doesn’t suck because we see it as wrong, but because we see being cheated on as beneath us, and only us.

Being stupid for a moment doesn’t require us to make stupidity a way of life. I’ve been stupid before, but I refused to accept it as a part of my identity, especially when I knew better.

there was a simple solution to not being ready to be in a faithful and committed relationship which was to simply remain single.

singleness is not the time to do what you want but to prepare for what you want so when it comes you’ll be ready.

Roger that!

sex is way overrated.

Sex without a real connection was a waste of time.

I then did what a lot of us do. I confused being frustrated and pissed off with casual sex as an indicator that I was a relationship-type of person, and therefore, I must have been relationship-ready, too.

Being frustrated doesn’t necessarily mean you’re ready to get involved in a relationship. You’re just fed up with casual sex on a regular basis and it might be a red flag for you to start focusing on self-love and your well-being ALONE.

If he cared for her, he would’ve realized by that time how much damage he’d done and removed himself based on that alone. And if he had removed himself because of that, it wouldn’t be the possibility of her being loved by someone else that would make him come back, it would be the fact that he had dealt with whatever part of him he blamed for his previous behavior, fought whatever demons he had been dealing with before, and was ready to love her, correctly.

Don’t Be a Hard Rock When You Really Are a Gem

as humans, our dependency on safety as a knee-jerk reaction to being hurt is natural, but when it comes to love or the pursuit of it, we must be willing to take a risk or else we’re bound to lose before we even start.

the only way to guarantee we never lose is to also guarantee we’ll never win.

The solution is to stop gambling and start taking calculated risks by learning from the mistakes and acting on red flags sooner.

but at the end of the day, if you ever truly believed in love, you can’t just switch the programming of your heart to want something completely different. It wants what it wants, and it dies a little every day you starve it from the effort to try one more time.

Spotting that person is harder because a lot of times, they haven’t even spotted themselves, which makes all the things they do to get your guard down that much more convincing.

The fact he was patient enough to find out your middle name and ask about your upbringing was such a breath of fresh air that you forgot the most important step in getting to know each other is making sure he knows himself. If he’s a stranger to himself or lying to himself, then what do you think he’s going to do to you?

our embedded inclination for error in judgment, particularly for places we’re most vulnerable, should be taken into account before handing something so precious as our heart over to someone because that’s what determines how faithful we will be, not how many options we have.

But what people end up realizing the hard way is that the day comes when the love is difficult.

A man who’s taken inventory on himself before he seriously pursues a woman solves that issue, not a man who has no options.

But no, cheaters are not ill-fated to eternal infidelity the same way that those who got cheated on are not destined for eternal naivety.

A complete stranger trusted me to help him, and I delivered. From that point forward, there were no limitations valid enough to not help whoever would allow me to.

A better characterization of a narcissist is someone who not only thinks the world revolves around him or her but works to create that world no matter who they hurt in the process.

In the beginning, a narcissist will offer protection, companionship, or whatever makes him out to be an idealistic version of a dream guy, and once she’s bought it, he shows his true colors. Except he doesn’t just show them, he’ll convince the woman she’s the one who painted him that way, and if he’s successful in doing so, he’ll know he can get away with much more.

Times where he twists the things his woman says into something opposite of what she clearly meant, but instead of it being something he misunderstood, it’s always something she miscommunicated.

The “miscommunication” on her part is flipped into somehow convincing her that she’s crazy and doesn’t actually remember what she said in the first place.

she’ll be running on a treadmill of seemingly never-ending ways she needs to change herself to please him.

Narcissists lack the capacity to empathize, which means that you can never expect them to realize the damage they’re doing or to stop because of how it’s affecting others.

But one way to see if there are hints of narcissism is to see how he responds when someone shows they do not like him.

Trying to rush into a relationship or having serious relationship conversations with a woman too soon are also red flags.

Another red flag is a friend circle full of yes-men.