My dear Jil, it’s important you have self-esteem. Without it you’ll auction yourself to the undeserving, or less deserving.
You need to undertake economic valuation of yourself and of your worth – both intrinsic and extrinsic worth. You see in life, the value we place on ourselves is the value life places on us. If you keep devaluing yourself you’ll attract less than you deserve. You need to do a self-audit – of your strengths, qualities, capacities and capabilities. You need to know what makes you, you – what makes you special. If you pare off your commonised assets, one by one, all the basic stuff you have in common with other women, generic stuff, at some point you’ll get to your core – the very you – a “something” that is so you. It is a combination of factors all fused together. No one can have that core except you. It’s your combination. It’s what makes you remain attractive in a relationship. It’s beyond just the physical.
The physical soon loses appeal after some time in a relationship. It’s just there. It gets used to. That thing that makes you, you is a combination of so many wonderful factors – values, parentage, history, learning and culture. That core is your heart, personality, capacities and qualities all rolled into one. It’s unique. Unique things have value.
The law of economics lets us know that the rarer a thing is, the more valuable it ought to be. That the quality of exertion required to acquire a thing will determine its value. When women play hard to get for example, they are exploiting the laws of economics. And so if you make yourself too commonly available people will trample upon your value. Undervalued assets are often treated cheap by the undeserving – like a bargain basement commodity. There’s that principle in scriptures about casting pearl before swine. Pearl is valuable, but it loses value in the wrong company. The value of pearl cannot be appreciated by swine. It lacks assessment capacity. Swine has no sense of value. To the swine everything is processed through mud. Everything is coated by mud. That’s its paradigm. If it’s coated in mud it has the value of mud, says the swine. Avoid the swine in relationship. He has no faculty for evaluation of valuable items.
Your self-esteem will also determine how far you go in life, how high you climb. And no one can give it to you. No one can give you self-esteem. It’s why it’s called SELF-esteem. It’s a DIY product. You must do your own self-accounting, do your own self-evaluation and self-valuation. Now, I’m not saying over-rate yourself. Some people do that and instantly lose value. They don’t know their limitations; who to respect. They can’t appreciate invisible boundaries. And they don’t have enough substance to carry the price tag they’ve attached to themselves. They over-reach and they compete in the wrong category. That’s not what I’m talking about.
If this guy you’re supposedly dating thinks you have worth he won’t treat you the way he treats you. And he won’t marry you because he does not value you. He’s commoditised you. He sees you as someone he can dump on, sleep with and treat with disrespect. After all you’ll be back tomorrow. No matter how badly he treats you, he knows you’ll come back. He knows you’re needy. You know he has no appreciation of you yet you keep hoping that by continuously sleeping with him he’ll marry you. You keep casting your pearls before swine. Let me tell you about such a guy. He’ll probably marry the girl who refuses to sleep with him; the girl who proves difficult, the one he needs to pursue to see as a conquest. You’ve got to make up your mind what you want: do you want a wholesome relationship, or want maltreatment. How many abortions have you had for this guy? Three? Four? Is he even talking of marriage? Has he ever spoken of some day meeting your parents? Does he respect them? Your father, your mother? You’ve portrayed yourself as something to be picked up cheap, and dumped after usage.
This guy has no regard for you whatsoever. He’s even suggested a ménage à trois with his friend. No guy committed to a girl makes that kind of proposition. No guy who values his girl wants to share her with a friend. I’d advise you get out of this relationship. Not that he’ll really miss you. You’re just the girl he’s using for sex. If you keep on in this relationship chances are you’ll damage your reproductive organs with the spate of abortions. And you know he’s sleeping around with other women. You’re just deluding yourself he’s exclusive to you.
Self-deception is an amazing thing. It’s a sophisticated denial, a convincing of self with untruth. Self-evangelism. We keep hoping what we know is untrue, keep acting out our delusions, living in the world of make-belief. Maybe that wouldn’t be too bad if your future was not the stake. But you’ve staked your future on a self-lie. At least exercise a little bit of self-appreciation by dumping this guy before he finally dumps you.
He’s going to dump you and you know it. And please don’t make the mistake of trying to trap him with pregnancy. He’ll not only deny paternity, he’ll denounce you as well, to your shock and horror. Of course he knows you’ve been exclusive to him but he’ll accuse you of probably sleeping with other guys. How do you deny a probability put forth as fact? How do you prove you’ve not been sleeping with other guys? Truth is, you can’t. All you can prove is that it’s his child, and that requires DNA test. That can only force him to accept paternity, not need for matrimony. And why go down that route? You’ll solve all these potential problems by doing just one thing: Place a value on yourself.
Your mentor, LA
© Leke Alder talk2me@lekealder.com