Your Taste in Men/Love Changes When You Fall In Love With Yourself…!
This story is for you if you’ve ever found yourself stuck in toxic abusive relationship cycles where you find yourself constantly questioning your emotions, not knowing what’s right or wrong anymore to feel…
With every new man/relationship, you find yourself hoping that this time it’s different, only for it to fall to pieces AGAIN, and you find yourself wondering “Why me?! Why does this keep on happening to me?!
What do I keep doing WRONG to keep attracting the same situations again and again?!”
You find yourself wondering that maybe you’re ‘unlovable’, maybe there is something wrong with you.
Whether you’re the emotionally “f!%$ed up” one…
Secretly you fear love just isn’t meant for you…
Ok lets rewind a little….
I’ve spoken a lot about my past lets just say s$!*ty love-life…
A few years ago I was SO desperate to be loved and have this “perfect fairytale boyfriend” so that THEN I could feel happy and good enough in myself.
Love had felt SO missing all my life and deep down I believed I was unlovable and that GOD had decided Uma was just not meant to have love!
That fear…that I was DOOMED to be alone forever was TERRIFYING and one of my deepest *wounds* that I held onto believing for so long!
That fear felt SO SO real!
So I was literally serial dating ALL the wrong emotionally unavailable men, trying to prove my fear wrong.
I’d be speaking to psychics trying to figure out if this guy was FINALLY “The One”…
I would make up stories in my mind, excusing their emotionally unavailable, non-existent behaviour and mistaking their desire and lust for me sexually as them passionately loving me… (cue for later heartbreak!)
OR I’d end up in really toxic/abusive situations.
One of the major relationships in my life, was this guy I met when I first moved to Bali.
I was so afraid to be alone I quickly jumped into a relationship —
I was yet to truly understand and come to grips with my past trauma, my childhood and my wounded relationship with my Dad, who had very much played the role of the narcissistic parent all my life.
The relationship quickly fell to pieces and for a long time I was in and out of this emotionally abusive (that later turned physical) relationship with this guy.
He was SO unsupportive, cold and HARSH with his words and extremely critical — nothing was ever good enough.
I felt INVISIBLE.
There was no sense of emotional “intimacy” beyond pure sex — where I felt used, and I could feel he was SO disconnected from me, yet I didn’t know emotional intimacy was even a *thing* then.
I just knew I craved for someone to LOVE me — like look me in the eyes and REALLY love me.
I craved a DEEP meaningful connection, which at the time I just judged myself for;
I was asking for too much, I wasn’t being grateful enough, there was something wrong with me, God had just designed me in such a way that I’d never truly “fit in” and “belong” anywhere, with anyone, and I felt this deep void that I was destined to be INCAPABLE of experiencing love.
All my boyfriends up until that point had always told me something along the lines of there was something wrong with me.
I was TOO emotional/too sensitive
I needed to see a psychologist because I was so emotionally crazy…
I believed it was wrong to have emotional needs and feelings so I tried to suppress them.
I would be in so much inner conflict, self doubt and questioning with the way I felt, trying to make sense of my emotions — what was right and wrong?
Was I crazy?
Did I have a “right" to feel the way I did?
When I felt like I couldn’t keep my emotions in any longer, and finally DARED to speak up and ask questions about how I really felt — I was literally SCREAMED at and called a f!%$ing b!tch…!
I would get such a CRAZY reaction for wanting to talk about how I felt or for asking for clarification on his actions.
He would just blow up at me, cut me short, gaslight me and BLOCK me for days… and I’d be left reeling, terrified and sick to my stomach that I’d made a huge mistake, regretting speaking up about how I felt; believing I was this awful person for not keeping my feelings in!
I’d start questioning and beating myself up as to what was wrong with me, was I crazy?!
That I shouldn’t trust my feelings!
I was SO desperate to apologise and for him to forgive me (!!!)….and so scared of being abandoned FOR GOOD.
This was something I had grown up learning and believing about myself from my Dad; that my emotions were WRONG, and how I felt was wrong.
I was in a constant internal battle within myself in this relationship of not knowing what was my intuition and what was my insecurities.
Deep down a small voice would tell me — this is totally NOT okay! He is NOT your guy and you deserve better!
But I did not feel good enough to trust that voice and believe I was worthy of more in love.
Deep down I feared there WAS something wrong with me so I “deserved” this treatment.
My *wounded* inner child could NOT get her head around the fact that, if I was so worthy and deserving to be treated like a QUEEN in love as people around me would say to me, why could he not SEE me that way?!
What was wrong with me?! Why couldn’t he love me in the way I so desperately hoped and needed?!
I was SURE it was because I wasn’t good enough yet. So I kept trying to PROVE myself and make myself “better”…
I was in a constant mentality of needing to prove myself and struggle and fight to be loved.
IF I just made myself more successful, more pretty, more sexy, THEN he might finally love me, be more caring and treat me the way I desired…!
Instead he would purposely taunt me to get a reaction from me telling me things like I was BORING in bed and “f!%$ing me was like f!%$ing a plank of wood”
When I would cry and plead, he would mock me for being so sensitive.
“You’re so sensitive, I’m only being honest with you, it is better I am honest with you…why does it hurt you so much?!” and laugh.
We would frequently argue about his drinking.
He was an alcoholic and I was SO emotionally tortured by the CONSTANT broken promises, LIES, paranoia, not knowing where he was, him yet again coming home drunk, seeing him wake up and open a bottle first thing in the morning…
The constant sensing something was up only to be told I was CRAZY and making a big drama out of everything, only to later find stashes of hidden bottles, and then get so heart-broken and ANGRY when I realised I wasn’t crazy all along…
The constant mood swings and differences in character from when he wasn’t drinking and vowed to stop… to when he was drunk, absent and nasty yet again…
Deep down I believed he was drinking because I wasn’t good enough. I saw his drinking as personal.
Anyone who has been in a relationship with an alcoholic knows the experience of TRYING to get an alcoholic to stop drinking, is like banging your head against a brick wall…
It emotionally, mentally, and spiritually F’s you up and drives you to insanity.
But I kept on staying!
Why?!
I thought the inextricable bond that kept me staying was “love”.
Really I had attracted someone who mirrored my relationship with my Dad and the way he would abuse, taunt and manipulate me constantly under the guise of love. I had subconsciously learnt that love comes with abuse.
I was TERRIFIED of being alone if I left. Deep down I BELIEVED all the things he said about me to be true….
That there WAS something wrong with me, I was the terrible one, I was emotionally CRAZY…I was this f!%$ed up mess!
I was the one causing the trouble in the relationship. It was MY insecurities that were sabotaging the relationship.
Everything was MY fault…!
He would frequently drag me on the floor by my hair during arguments in our apartment, and eventually one night he beat me up.
And that was one of the WORST days of my life.
It was like a WAR ZONE. I won’t get into too much graphic detail, because it was truly something from a HORROR movie, him hitting me over the head with beer bottles and punching and kicking me on the floor.
I was literally paralysed and frozen from leaving even when I physically could have left many times during that night, because inside I was terrified of accepting what was black-and-white right in front of me.
Him hitting me meant I couldn’t deny anymore to myself that I had to leave this relationship.
After that night, I left for 6 weeks… I was in SO much shock, GRIEF and shame.
I felt like I was in a nightmare I was so desperate to wake up out of.
I so desperately could not accept that the relationship was now over.
I BLAMED myself for him hitting me and I felt so so UGLY in who I was. I felt so much SHAME that I was this mess of a person to be in such an *ugly* relationship.
He tried to get back in contact after a while to persuade me to get back together and one day I broke.
I mistook my loneliness as me loving him, believing those strong feelings despite what happened, meant we loved each other and I was meant to be with him.
The first step of codependency is ADMITTING you are powerless over your feelings, other people and their actions, and your life has become unmanageable because of it.
Me and my life literally fell apart every time I chose to become involved with him again.
On this cycle went for a couple more months , until it ended in him smashing the door down and breaking into my apartment one day…!
That’s when I truly decided to leave and GET HELP!
Part of that help was Codependents Anonymous in coming to terms with my truth, my feelings and my inner-pain from my childhood I was trying to escape and avoid.
I had to heal those wounds and beliefs I had that was the version of Uma who was SO desperate for this guy’s love and was SO TERRIFIED that this relationship was proof of her deepest fear; that she was unlovable and there was something deeply wrong with her.
I had to learn to reparent myself.
Codependents Anonymous truly saved my life.
I felt SO suicidal in that relationship and wanted nothing more to disappear than feel the deep shame and pain of what I thought that relationship and his UN-love of me must mean about me, and the real deep hurt I had buried under the carpet and had tried to spend a lifetime running from — the way my family also made me feel unloved and mentally “crazy”.
I had to heal the toxic shame I had around myself, that relationship, my childhood, the beliefs, pain and trauma that I was still living through from my past and essentially get to know myself and become a “new” Uma;
Who knew how to value her inner DIAMOND Self-Worth,
who honoured and valued her emotional needs, who gave herself permission to feel whatever she felt, who trusted in who she was; that she was so divine, precious and infinitely worthy and unique for who she is, and that was her divine-right!
To know there was NOTHING wrong with her.
Rather than believing she had to “make" herself better to be loved, “prove" her worth to others, or secretly fear being “found out".
The more I emotionally broke away from that relationship and grew stronger in realising I didn’t “NEED” him, I found a new found sense of inner-power and confidence that fuelled me and that’s when my life truly started to take off.
I started having the courage, self-belief and happiness to finally get my dream business off the ground instead of spending years spinning my wheels.
For the first time in my life I was making money for myself and it gave me a huge sense of self-empowerment of how I’d been able to get out of a relationship that I’d spent so long deeply fearing the idea of it ending!
That relationship and having the strength and courage to leave for good was one of the most painfullest things I ever went through, yet today I am now able to have so much gratitude for that experience…
It really was the growth catalyst in my life that opened me wide, in it taught me to cultivate an immense self-love within me.
The self-love I had been searching to give myself all along all my life.
It pushed me to have the level of insights and realisations within myself that helped me understand myself and the effect my childhood and upbringing had, so I could truly heal those unworthy patterns that kept on showing up again and again with every relationship and every new guy I dated, hoping that somehow this time, this guy was different and would be “The One".
The patterns that had me on the floor many times over crying “GOD WHY ME?! WHY THE F DOES THIS KEEP ON HAPPENING to me?! What the F!%$ am I doing WRONG! Please GOD help me!!!”
That had me having major meltdowns on the street as I’d be crying on the phone to my mum…
How I’d been STOOD up by the guy I had been seeing on my 30th birthday…
Stood up on Valentine’s day…
On and on the list went of s$!*tty things that ‘kept’ on happening to me in my love-life!
For ages I was SO SO angry during this process of coming to terms with the consequences and pain of being blind sighted by my emotional history and past.
How it was ME who had LET someone treat me this way, how I was the one who was hurting me.
The problem was me in that I was the one walking into these situations with very little self-worth and so setting myself up for the consequent pain, hurt and suffering.
THIS WAS ON ME.
I did not know HOW to truly value and believe in my worth and honour my inner soul beauty.
I was too busy hiding my true self.
I was out of discord with my emotional needs and feelings so how could I have a healthy relationship and fulfilling emotional loving intimacy with someone else if I felt ASHAMED of my emotional needs and the true parts of me?!
I was WAITING for the perfect man to love me to THEN feel safe and good enough to be all of me, to finally be happy and have my happy ever after fairytale.
So I put on the picture perfect Uma I thought I HAD to be until it ALWAYS exploded around me.
So, fast forward to a few months ago, when I bumped into this guy completely out of the blue after a few years had passed…
The whole time during us talking about what we were both up to, it was like I was observing this guy for the first time from a NEW person, through NEW eyes!
And I was truly speechless!
SHOCKED… Disgusted even...!
All I could think during that conversation was “This….THIS???!!!! Was the guy that I was SO distraught, hung up on, TOLERATED being in *that* much pain for for so long????”
Who WAS this Uma???!!!
The person I saw in front of me, now that I was completely emotionally unattached from him, was like you could NOT have picked someone who was MORE wrong for me even if he was the last man on earth (lol).
There was literally NOTHING about him (healed or unhealed) that would have ever made him “right” or ever have remotely made the cut for potential ‘Uma partners’…!
In a MILLION years!!!!!
It didn’t take a genius to see that THAT guy was NEVER meant for me and was never even close to being…
You know what was worse?!
I was DISGUSTED at myself that there was once a point in my life where THIS (what I was seeing in front of me) is what I “pitched” my self-worth and self-value at.
Without sounding brutal, it was like me exchanging a diamond for a piece of COAL…!
The conversation made it SO clear we had absolutely NOTHING in common apart from the utterly bizarre fact we were once in a “relationship”!
I was literally speechless that this is what I once thought I was WORTH in love.
The guy in front of me was nowhere near capable of being the partner I needed or wanted to feel loved and have the type of relationship I wanted.
I often say to my clients when they are distraught at how someone is not treating them in the way they desire, yet that person is incapable of BEING *that* person — it’s like expecting orange juice out of a cow (!)
And then you’re taking it personally.
Our childlike mind says, "IF they loved me then they would treat me this way.”
We take the way someone treats us to MEAN something about our lovableness and what we are worth.
WRONG!!!
How someone treats us is literally just showing us who they are.
How we feel about it is a reflection of our wounds, and our soul communicating to us about what we need to value and honour in ourselves to keep us moving on our dream pathway where we can experience what we do desire for ourselves, versus settling and keeping ourselves stuck with the pain and suffering of what we DON’T want.
So my point is…
When you love yourself your taste changes!
You stop being attracted to your childhood trauma and the version of love you learnt in childhood that has become your normal.
You stop feeling addicted to people who make you suffer and are literally incapable of loving you in the way you need and deserve.
You stop feeling like its life or death in desperately needing that person’s love in order for you to function and feel ok.
You stop looking at people through rose-tinted glasses, seeing what you WANT to see at the beginning, projecting what you need to see and believe to fall in love, consequently falling in love with a persona in your mind who is NOT the person who is in front of you.
This is NOT love.
This is fantasy and illusions.
The chemistry and feelings we have learnt to mistake as love lead us to partners who recreate our childhood feelings.
There is no way I could “FALL” for a guy like *that* again!
It took me a long time to TRULY feel worthy of the types of high quality men I deep down desired to be with.
The idea of being SEEN vulnerably for who I truly was by such a man used to terrify the F!%$ out of me —
Which is why I settled — I did NOT feel worthy of *that* level of intimacy) .
Feeling worthy of being truly loved and adored for who I was, and having the deep meaningful emotional and SOUL connection and intimacy that I SO desperately craved back then is something that felt SO foreign!
In a way emotional unavailability, hurt and abandonment felt more ‘normal’ and comfortable.
I cannot describe how freeing it is in itself to KNOW your diamond self-worth as fact, and even better FEEL your inner soul *beauty* and truly LOVE yourself for your unique, true precious Self, and come into relationship with others from *this* place.
Your heart literally BURSTS open when you open yourself up in love from *this* daring-to-be-SOUL-naked-place.
Because you will NEVER truly be fulfilled when you show up to love with wounded unworthy beliefs.
I knew deep down when I started the relationship with that guy, that I was settling just because I was flattered that here was someone who finally wanted me!
So I went along with it, ignoring all the signs from day one.
At the time I thought that this guy must love me for wanting to be so serious with me so quickly! (He asked me to move in with him within 3 weeks and I did...!)
I “trauma bonded” with this guy. That was NOT love!
At the time the idea of taking the time to get to know someone slowly, and being discerning, and seeing that as a sign of self-worth and valuing myself, versus rushing in and letting those powerful feelings of chemistry and “passion” lead, was foreign to me!
In learning to awaken what I call my Diamond self-worth, and start being an embodiment of self-love for myself, I had to take radical RESPONSIBILITY for my emotional needs and *wounds* and do a complete debrief of my childhood.
By taking “stock” of what actually happened in my childhood, and the emotional trauma that had occurred, I could understand my emotional patterns and who I truly was that I neglected long ago in order to survive, “cope" and adapt with the emotional environment of my upbringing.
THEN I could become the best matchmaker for Uma
— i.e. stop lil wounded Uma from running the show and doing the picking, because let’s face it, that was like letting a child drive a car in the sheer naivety and the NOT so great choices she was making in my love-life !!
I had to really consider who would make a GOOD partner for Uma versus who I was used to and who my feelings usually drove me towards!
I had to take responsibility for the kind of man I needed taking into account my emotional history and consequent vulnerabilities.
Then I could be discerning when I was dating versus dating unconsciously and blindly, letting my low self-worth patterns lead the way.
Was this someone who could potentially trigger my childhood *wounds*? Or is the Uma who honours and values her Diamond Self-Worth doing the picking?!
I had to become aware of my habitual patterns in love, like settling for someone I didn’t ‘like’ just because they were showing me interest and affection, which I did on almost auto-pilot, and get quicker at nipping these patterns in the bud when I caught myself and realised what I had been unconsciously doing.
Versus what we so often do when we aren’t aware of our wounds and patterns; we project expectations and responsibility of our emotional needs on partners that are totally a mis-match and incapable of meeting them.
We set them up to fail in this way!
And consequently set ourselves up for pain and suffering, trying to be loved and get our needs met from someone who is completely ‘unqualified’ to do so.
This is how our wounded inner-child CONTAMINATES our love life, and is incapable of creating true soul-fulfilling intimacy because we are showing up and leading with the wounded CHILD version of ourselves rather than our TRUE self — that inner soul *beauty* and pure soul essence of who we TRULY are within BEFORE we soaked up LIES and distortions of who we believed we HAD to become, to be more worthier, good enough, lovable and accepted.
Who we were before we learnt to believe there was something wrong and “faulty" with the way we naturally were and our inherent emotional needs and feelings.
You will never TRULY feel loved being a “fake” you…
You deserve to be loved for ALL of you
From a girl that a few years ago used to get/mistake her sense of self-worth and being “loved” from men’s sexual attention and mistaking their passion, lust and “chemistry” for me sexually as them loving me…
My number ONE value in my love-life now is EMOTIONAL INTIMACY and SOUL connection!!!
Once I learnt emotional intimacy was even a *thing* … that I was WORTHY of having deep emotional and soulful connections, and have someone love and adore me for who I WAS, my spirit not for how I looked to them, my BODY, who I could be for them, or how i was SEXUALLY…
I then had to learn how to be comfortable in my emotionalness, my highly sensitiveness, my beingness of UMA (for my raw inner soul beauty) and just feel FREE in me just being ALLLLLL of me, knowing I’m worthy and deserving of being loved for THAT me…
However imperfect, not *there*, messy, crazy, not good enough, unlovable I judged or shamed myself for…
Experiencing a man who cares about my feelings, needs and desires and who I can share myself so openly and freely with was literally something I once could only DARE to dream of but thought was IMPOSSIBLE and just NOT meant for me…
I literally believed the complete opposite…
That I was UNLOVABLE and there was something massively wrong with me for having emotions and feelings...!
Soul beauties, I’m guessing if you’ve got this far, you can relate.
DON’T SETTLE FOR LESS!!
Create a love-life, inner self-worth and self-love that will make you feel like a DIAMOND in who you are…
You deserve this!!
So… if you want to create love beyond what you have ever experienced before…
And maybe you are sitting here reading this secretly believing you’re just NOT meant to have love in the way you deep down dream of and hope for yourself…
Deep down you fear you’ll never be truly loved, SEEN and adored for allllll of you so deeply, and have that depth of emotional and soul intimacy with someone…
You have had S$!*Y past experiences over and OVER… and you find yourself secretly hoping *this* guy is finally “The One” only for it to quickly fall to pieces…
Leaving you wondering why does the same pattern keep happening over and over again?
What is it about you?! For the love of God what are you doing wrong?!
Maybe you believe you’re not worthy of having *that* fairytale love… “I’ll never be *that* girl” type thing…
It all just kinda feels too good to be true to happen for you and you’re actually TERRIFIED of daring to be soul *naked with HIGH quality men and them actually loving you for ALL of *that* true you…
So it’s easier to settle, you find yourself settling because you deny to yourself what you deep down really want in love because you just don’t feel good enough for that.
If this is you — you HAVE to make a choice…
Things can either stay as they are…
OR you can really take stock of understanding your childhood, your past, and really become awakened to your *wounds*, emotional trauma, and the unconscious belief structures and main ‘operating system’ that you’ve been operating on your entire life.
The main ‘rules’ that are always unconsciously running in the background that keep you looping smoothly smoothly and perfectly on the same unworthy programs, stories and limiting beliefs that have become your personal LAWS… as to what type of people you keep on attracting into your love life… to keep everything running as it was programmed to long ago when you learnt false, faulty beliefs and lies about yourself.
When you start to learn and understand who you truly are, how to truly value and honour yourself and your Diamond self-worth, and be able to be in touch with your True Self’s authentic emotional needs (not your wounded self’s, or your inner-mean girl’s needs from a place of believing you’re broken, there is something wrong with you, that something on the outside can give you the love, self-worth, happiness, validation and approval you’ve spent your whole life searching for to finally make yourself feel better…)
Then you can be the best matchmaker for yourself and go into dating situations with a kinda curious spirit like hmmmm….🧐🧐🧐🤔🤔🤔
“Is what I’m seeing potentially the wounded lil child in me doing the picking??
Is this person gonna exacerbate my inner wounds and emotional triggers?!🌪🤯
Or is this the version of me who OWNS her *inner* Diamond Self-Worth, doing the picking?!”
THAT’S when you start attracting and creating differently.
So do you chose to take back CONTROL of your life, your love life, and loving yourself?!
To no longer let your PAST trauma, abuse, dysfunctional family dynamics, shitty/ toxic relationships, dictate your future, who you believe yourself to be, and how u treat, honour and value your INFINITE worthiness?!
To leave that past *shit* in the dust once and for all!
If so…
➳➳ I’m currently offering 10 spaces for a FREE 1x1 Self Love coaching call with me:
This is a friendly, no expectation call where you can share more of whatever is on your heart that you feel stuck/struggling with in your life right now, and receive my coaching, advice & intuitive insight into your unconscious belief structures holding you back, how to heal your personal unworthy beliefs, wounds and trauma to awaken your DIAMOND self-worth, step into being the powerful conscious creator of your life, and become an embodiment of Self Love for yourself.
We will discuss:
💗 Any patterns that you keep experiencing again and again in your love-life — you deep down don’t know what keeps going wrong for *this* to show up again type thing… or why you keep attracting the same behaviour
💗 What your dream relationship vision and partner is and how to be a reciprocal to what you desire in love
💗What types of partners would make the right match for you vs letting your wounded inner-child do the picking (!!)
💗 Your attachment styles in love and any anxiety/fears around intimacy and your fear of being abandoned /rejected, and breaking the cycle of attracting emotionally unavailable men.
💗 Healing any past hurt and painful traumatic experiences, any shame/self-blame/anger you carry and giving yourself the validation, understanding and self-kindness you need
💗 What unconscious belief structures are holding you back and how you can heal your resistance (self protection) to having the love you desire
💗 what you can do now in your love-life to start attracting/dating strategically in a new emotionally safe way, show up feeling worthy and deserving of being loved for who you truly are, ready for the relationship you desire
At the very least you’ll walk away from a POWERFUL soul-nourishing chat with awakened self-belief, clarity, and inspiration with someone who believes in you, loves and adores you, and intuitively sees you for who you TRULY are and what’s TRULY possible for you, vs. seeing yourself through your *wounded* unworthy glasses!
➳➳Click here if you would like one of the free spots — and I will be in touch with you within 48 hours to arrange your *FREE* SELF LOVE COACHING call with me (I will suggest some suitable time options based on your time zone and you’ll receive a zoom link for our call)
If you found this blog helpful, I would so appreciate if you could give it a clap, comment what resonated, and share it with someone you think needs to hear it!
Sweet dreams, Uma xoxo
Uma is an intuitive Self-Love Coach
She went from 5″ heels working in luxury fashion in London, glamming up, partying & serial dating ALL the *wrong* guys…to hitting suicidal rock bottom and taking an overdose one day…
She decided to massively change her life and made a huge commitment to herself to do what it takes to finally start believing in herself and to follow her dreams. She spontaneously booked a one way ticket to go and live in Bali and create her dream Soul Catwalk Life that was once just a foggy faraway pipe-dream in the back of her mind !!
She has been living in Bali for the past 5 years, where she runs her online coaching business Soul Glamour from her laptop; she coaches and works with women privately from all around the world, and regularly hosts her 3 month digital group course “Diamond You-niversity”.
She is author of her book Soul Glam on Amazon, and a fashion designer. She loves designing and making her own clothes in her spare time.
You will usually find Uma in Seminyak, sipping a latté in her favourite cafe, writing on her laptop! xoxo
You can find out more about Private Coaching with Uma here: SoulGlamour.Coach
Follow me on instagram @thesoulglamour
