Why He Can’t Make You Happy
I am talking to single women, married women, dating women- all women here! No relationship can make you happy!
When someone says to me – “He just doesn’t make me happy anymore”…. I always cringe a little inside.
I even cringe when someone says “he makes me soo happy”, because inevitably, the flip side is coming.
A relationship is not meant to make you happy. It is nobody’s job to make you happy but your own.
I do believe God made humans to be in relationship with each other- to need relationship from each other, but if you assume that someone else should be making you happy, you are committing these 4 crimes against yourself:
- You’re giving someone else control over your emotions. Your emotions suddenly become a roller coaster, based on how your partner is feeling or you perceive them to be feeling in the moment.
- You don’t take ownership and responsibility of your own feelings and your own happiness.When it is someone else’s responsibility to make you happy, you don’t own your own happiness, which means that you blame others and don’t even experience the gains of self -care.
- You set your relationship up to fail. It’s likely that many people in your life have failed you in one way or another- your mother, your sister, your best friend, but one day you meet this guy that makes you feel “happy and loved”. Trying to fill voids others have left with a relationship will just make you idealize and idolize them. If your partner is human, he will fail, it’s just a matter of when and how. And now, boom! You’re not happy anymore.
- You are putting an unreasonable and unfair burden on the relationship andyour partner. If YOU don’t even know how to make you happy, how in the world do you expect him to figure it out? It’s just not possible and it’s not fair.
If a relationship isn’t meant to fill the voids others have left, if it isn’t meant to replace or forget anyone, if it isn’t a solution to all the messed up people you’ve had to endure, what’s the point of a relationship then, you ask me? Well let me tell you!
Relationships are about
- Partnership-Two really are better than one. A healthy relationship is reciprocal. Two people working together to accomplish life goals and share in a life is the essence of what a relationship should be.
- Growth-A good partner puts a mirror up to your face and you are challenged to grow. Growth doesn’t always feel good or make you “happy in the moment,” but it does make you healthier.
- Healing– We love each other through our awesome and our disgusting. In the process of being vulnerable, we develop areas that were previously weak, which is healing.
I’m not saying that happiness can notbe found in a mature, loving relationship- It can be! It is actually an inevitable consequence if you two are really growing together in a healthy way.
But it never works if happiness is the goal. It can only be created as a by product of working towards the goal of growth, partnership and mutual healing.
So, once you have relieved those people in your life of the burden of making you happy, you can go on with your life, figuring out how to create your own happiness.
When you no longer need another for your happiness, you have the gift of enjoying him for who he is and not who you need him to be. The most beautiful thing is that you will get more from the relationship when you are not showing up needy, sad and angry.
Many of you who have listened to me for any length of time have heard me say that love is no good reason to get married and lack of love is no good reason to get divorced. Well, I’m going to add happiness to that equation. Happiness is no good reason to get married and lack of happiness is no good reason to get divorced.
I will take it a step further and say that if you are contemplating ending a marriage or relationship because your partner does’t make you happy anymore. Don’t do it. It’s not going to fix your problem.
I can feel a woman out there saying- wait- you don’t know my situation. You don’t know how horrible this relationships is.
Yes, I do. I have seen every gamut of it in my practice over the past 18 years. And barring any physical abuse, I still say, don’t do it! ….. yet
Your new task is to figure out how to be happy even in your miserable relationship.
When you yourself have finally grown to a point where you can look at him and be happy even if he isn’t giving you x, y and z- even if he isn’t bringing to the table what he ought to in your relationship, then you can evaluate whether you need to let the relationship go. And if you must leave, you will be a healthier person because you are leaving already happy! It can only go up from there.
And if you find that once you are happy, the issues in the relationship have faded into background noise, you will be thanking yourself that you didn’t leave… and you will still be happy. It’s a win-win.
It takes some real soul searching, on purpose kind of living that is totally doable when you begin to make a habit of being happy.
Abraham Lincoln said that most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be… what truth is in those words.
Take the focus off of whether he is making you happy, focus on how you can make yourself happy and you will be amazed at how it will all fall into place.
**If you wish to listen to this podcast, check out the side bar for a list of my recent episodes.**
