By facing things head on, you go consciously through each step of the situation that may shed light on the root cause of many of your problems.

A mis-take is nothing else but a skewed belief system about something that causes us to repeat the same problematic situations over and over again.                                                                                                                                                                                                                  As an example we could take love relationships. Often people wonder why they wind up in the same unhappy relationships.        When we find ourselves again in a  relationship where the partner is maybe cheating. Does this mean the partners are always cheating in every relationship? I don’t think so. The same for having partners that keep using you as a doormat, do they always use partners as a doormat? I don’t think they do.                                                                                                                                                                        I personally think people are being triggered to have certain behaviours as a response to others having other certain behaviours.

Let’s say you are fairly insecure, lack self worth or self love . The moment you are in a relationship you may compensate these feelings by pleasing someone so much cause you don’t want to lose them, you look up to them or fear that they will like you less if you don’t, take your pick, but you do this to the point you suffocate them at some level or you please them to the point they know automatically you will never leave them or defy them but they don’t get this mutual balanced and healthy feedback of you, cause one does feel the difference between being pleased and being treated as equal.                                                                                                   It may not be a conscious thing from either party, it is a dynamic that develops over time. There is an imbalance in respect towards the self vs the other.

It’s always interesting how we subconsciously pick up on the imbalance but don’t consciously work on it, and so, behaviours will lead a life of their own in order to compensate for the dissatisfaction that is being experienced. You may not be aware of it, but it still manifests itself.                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Using the “fake it till you make it” strategy won’t teach you anything, it will only manouvre you into an unnatural positions where the disingenuous part of you will shine through on the energetic level and if the faking is done even more poorly, it will definitely come across as fake. Even then, if it is not consciously detected, what a partner will probably do is mirror it back subconsciously.

Now you may tell me: ”Well , there is never a reason to cheat!”  Maybe not, but maybe there is a reason. What if the cheating it self doesn’t always come from wanting to cheat for sex but rather subconsciously mirroring a lack or dissatisfaction in the other person. The cheating partner may have his/her own insecurities too.                                                                                                                            Someone who lacks self worth never takes into consideration the other may lack it too, maybe it is just less obvious to you, being occupied with your own lack of self worth doesn’t give much room to spot it at your partner.                                                                           It is rare to find someone that has gone consciously through it all and learned all the lessons as they would not find themselves in such a problematic relationship unless it is a teacher/student type of relationship, which could work if both are up for that, but the likelihood of that is rare for the very fact that those relationships are unbalanced, but they can actually happen successfully  if the student grows to the teacher’s level which balances it out.                                                                                                                                Cheating, however, happens by either consciously looking for it and those people never took a relationship serious to begin with and you may have noticed this but consciously ignored the signals. Or the opportunity comes on ones path and one chooses to either do it or not. So what makes one choose to do it? What makes one not think of the partner at home? Surely not cause the relationship is balanced, but because there is a lack of mutual respect.                                                                                                                             “Mutual???”, you may say…                                                                                                                                                                                                  Yes, there is a lack of respect for oneself or for the other or both.                                                                                                                              Lack of self worth is also a lack of respect for yourself. Just like you cannot really love someone if you don’t love yourself , nor can you respect someone else if you lack respect for yourself. Respect is a broad term, often what one sees as respecting the other in this situation can easily be masqueraded as pleasing the other for the wrong reasons, that is not respect.                                                              If one perceives the relationship as mutually respectful and balanced, it doesn’t mean it really is. That in itself can be another belief system that we use to soothe ourselves.

This is where “Face it till you make it” comes into play.

Once you search for the answers within yourself instead of outside yourself, things start to change. Analyse your own behaviours and shadow sides, your real beliefs and feelings, even if that means giving up on the partner. Because you may find yourself not ready to give what you should give or to receive what you couldn’t receive yet.                                                                                                                        I sure have done this when it comes to this particular topic. 

When I was in my twenties, I had relationships with cheaters, my jealousy grew with each new relationship as I was so afraid they would cheat. So I faked being completely in control which was impossible to uphold as my fears of him cheating overshadowed my capability to pretend to be confident and secure about myself.  The result was that I would play tricks to make them jealous , which made it worse, because it was fake and they seemed to know it, therefore I was no threat whatsoever. If that isn’t an unhealthy relationship, I don’t know what is.                                                                                                                                                                                       Today it makes me laugh, because there is nothing left of the person I was at the time. 

At a certain point I was so fed up, not just with the cheating partners, but rather with myself being exhausted of keeping up with the games and fakery in order to hide my own insecurities, not to mention that it did not change a thing, it made everything worse. Once I started digging into myself, I realised a few things. 

One: I had such low self-esteem that my partner had to compensate by giving me the constant feeling of self worth like a bottomless pit and as we all know; no one can give you that feeling, only you can. 

It’s not a compliment that makes you feel more self worthy, it has to come from within.

Two: Being jealous cannot prevent someone from cheating on me. So I threw that overboard as it became so extreme that I would check for cheating signs, but I eventually realised there was no point in checking if someone did exactly what I was afraid of, after all , it would already been done if I’d find signs of it. Which defeats the purpose.

Three: I was creating the very situation for my partner to cheat on me, cause I, myself, was obnoxiously insecure to the point that I drove him into cheating, no matter if it was justified, deep down I knew that I had a hand in it.                                                                    Not just me, but I certainly did not help to make it less likely.  This last one was the most difficult one to look at and to admit.

Cause, why does one cheat? Not per se for the sex with someone else, but maybe more for the brief feeling of being with someone that doesn’t always need the constant reassurance, maybe to feel like being in a normal relationship or to take the pressure off of the relationship crisis for him or herself (This is not gender specific as it happens both ways).                                                                            There may be many reasons, they also have their own beliefs and behaviour patterns. As we often attract each other based on compensational attributes.                                                                                                                                                                                                   I’m not saying it is always the case that one cheats for this reason, but we need to be willing to look at ourselves and what our own contribution is to the problem.                                                                                                                                                                                       Another reason may be that you attract unstable relationships cause you simply settle for less. The reason you settle for less is cause your insecurity feelings don’t allow you to aim higher when it comes to expectations of a partner and/or a relationship.                      The signs are visible very early on in meeting a person that you may see as a potential partner if you are open to see them.             What is that you look for in them? Is it just looks and status?                                                                                                                         Admittedly, there was a relationship where I just did not spot the signs from someone that just did not care for the relationship, I learned from that too through facing my own lack here.

Here is what I eventually did, I figured, I don’t know what I do want in a relationship, for lack of experience, but I definitely do know what I don’t want anymore. So, I started looking for characteristics that would give a solid base. I would see if the person is a good communicator, does he shy away from topics or from going in depth about certain topics? Does he avoid answering certain questions that should not be an issue at all to answer? I’ve decided that I would want to be friends with someone first and foremost. After all, you do discuss anything with a good friend, so I would put that same criteria on a potential partner. Communication and friendship was my first criteria.

No matter how smitten I was, I would keep that focus, because by now I knew that no matter what, I did anything to prevent another broken heart and would put myself above anything else in that process. I demanded self worth of myself , which is a form of “fake it till you make it”, but with discipline, the self worth became the mission before it became a real feeling in this.                                            The next thing was obviously chemistry, that was a must too.  If either of these were lacking, I would not even consider pursuing a love relationship. 

And so it began, I simply changed my behaviour and patterns by starting to choose it.                                                                                      The next relationship had a more stable character where I would discover other things that I would not choose for in a next relationship, should this one fail. At a certain point he expressed that he wished I had a university degree (I was not dumb, but it would look better on me for his status, apparently).                                                                                                                                                          The old me would apologise and compensate with God knows what, this new me said to him: “Why don’t you just find someone that has a university degree, cause I’m sure it will bring more value to a relationship!”                                                                                                    He eventually broke up with me and I got over it really fast, only for him to try and get me back two months later, as he realised that I had more to give than he could ever find. Took him a year to get over that and we became long time friends after that.                    And from that moment the next relationship became better than the former. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, there is no need to keep doing this over and over again and go through many relationships until you get it right, just look back in your own former relationship(s), the deeper you look into all aspects of them without judging the ex partner but rather your own contribution to the problems of that relationship, the more you learn about yourself and what you do or don’t want in a potential partner. Some people are lucky, and get it right the first time, but most don’t.                                                                   My last relationship was beautiful, not perfect by any means, but definitely one I look back at with fond memories. We stayed friends for years after that too.

That is all behind me now without any ugliness, cause life moves on, paths change and new paths appear again.                                  “Face it till you make it” is a tougher road in the beginning but definitely one that teaches you so much more for the rest of your life to come, and not only does it prevent mis-takes from being repeated endlessly, cause now that you may have found the root cause of the problem, you may just prevent a lot of other mis-takes from happening that you never thought were related to the same root cause.

Remains to be said that sometimes people hop into relationships cause they don’t want to be alone, which is another indication something is lacking within yourself.                                                                                                                                                                                 Face that too, till you make it to the next step. Never settle for less.

– Keystone’s Philosophy –

Ps. A big Thank You to my ex Alex for leaving my life with this meaningful phrase: “Face it, till you make it” , cause I faced it and I’m      grateful for it now.