A Woman Should NEVER Act This Way With a Man

Have you ever twisted yourself in knots for a man, said yes when you meant no, or dropped everything to be there for [music] the slightest thing, or stayed quiet when you were hurting because some part of you believed that's just what love is?

If you live through childhood trauma, this could be a trap that you've fallen into where you learned early that love meant, you know, performing niceness.

To give whatever you had [clears throat] to give even when you got nothing back. Now, I love men and actually this advice applies to men, too, if you're in a relationship where you're giving a lot and not getting anything back. Now, I love men. I'm married to a good one. I have many dear male friends. I have

sons, but I'm here to tell you there are things never to do for a man, no matter what he says. And yes, what I'm going to teach you can also apply to women. This is about not losing yourself in relationships where the other person doesn't treat you right or their complicated needs take up all the oxygen in the

relationship. Have you ever done that? Just kind of like had the life sucked out of you? You don't always see it coming, do you?

And it can become a pattern that you do not want to repeat. So, how does this happen? When you grow up with trauma, especially when your needs were ignored or you had to fight to be loved, it's easy to think that bending yourself to someone else is just what is necessary to get love back.

And if you were neglected as a kid, it's something you that you may have been conditioned to do just to get your basic needs met. And a lot of us, without thinking, carry that kind of trauma-driven behavior into adulthood, especially into our romantic relationships. It helped you before, but

now it's undermining you. And you find yourself calling this uh yielding to what you don't actually want, you call it like "I'm just being understanding."

Or "I'm being there for him." And you tell yourself, "Well, you know, he's had a lot of trauma. He can't be expected to give anything back." Or whatever you tell yourself.

But what you're doing, if we're going to be honest, is betraying yourself slowly, repeatedly, and every time it chips away at your confidence, at your energy, at your ability to trust your own judgment.

And you can lose years of your life stuck in bad relationships that only work because you hide how you feel, what you think, what you need. And I want to show you how you can break out of that.

So, I used to think if I really liked a guy, I had to go to any lengths necessary to get him to like me, to not leave. I have too many stories to count where I was called names, I was laughed at, relegated to the role of the side chick, and pretended I was happy being just friends. I'd end up taking care of