This is the second post in my series “Becoming the Love of My Life” in honor of February. But really it’s in honor of YOU.

And ME.

Today I want to talk about the idea of giving and receiving.  As women, we are usually very good at giving.  We are trained from early on to play “house” and take care of the babies, cook (did you have an E-Z bake oven?) and clean (remember the corn popper vacuum cleaner?).  John Gray asserts in his book Venus on Ice, Mars on Fire that women produce oxytocin (feel good hormone) through giving to our loved ones.

But what happens when we give and give and determine that we are not getting very much back?

I know from my past experience that I have gotten resentful and pissed off.  And that didn’t feel very good.

Here’s why.

Giving has to come from a place of “I have enough”.  If you are giving to another person and there is a place inside of you that believes that you don’t have enough (love, attention, money…), then you are secretly, often without realizing it, wanting and expecting that person to give back to you so you can get your needs met.  This will always feel crappy on some level to the person you are giving to.  Maybe not at first, but over time they will begin to feel the burden and pull back.  And then you begin to notice that you’re not getting much back.  The cycle will just continue.

There is only one solution.

Learn to give from a place of  love, knowing that you ALWAYS have enough and it’s not the other person’s job to love you (it’s their CHOICE).

When you give to another person, it is a choice.  In an adult relationship, when you make dinner for your partner (or any act of love), you are not doing it so that they will take out the garbage, or mow the lawn. Or are you?  Be really honest with yourself and ask.  Every time you GIVE, check in and make sure you are doing it from a place of love and wanting to give.  Because if you are doing it to get something back, I guarantee that in the long run you will lose.  If you keep track, or keep score, you will lose.  It’s not supposed to be fair.

When you finally realize that you have enough love because the main source of love comes from inside of you, you can give freely.

And when you give from that place, the other person will usually WANT to give back because it feels so good.  But if that person feels the burden of being your main supplier of love, it won’t feel good.  It will feel “shackles on”.

So it comes back to self love, doesn’t it?  Learn how to connect to your inner sources of love by doing my three minute Self Love Creationization exercise from this week’s teleclass (I’ll be posting that soon too but if you just can’t wait, send me an email and I’ll send it out to you).