You Do Not Serve Anyone by Shrinking Yourself for Love

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Woman, I know you have been hearing for a lifetime that you’re too much …

… too needy, too loud, too opinionated, too demanding, too happy, too sad, too large, too emotional, too expressive, too whatever. So you learned to shrink yourself in countless ways, to disappear or somehow deny your true full expression as a woman.

Which only always then makes you somehow not enough.

It’s tragic. You can’t win. So why not stop trying?

Please hear this:

You do not serve a man by shrinking yourself to fit inside his limited capacity to love you.

You cannot scare off a man – or anyone – who is genuinely ready to learn how to love all of you.

You’re perfect as you are.

Which doesn’t mean you don’t have your own inner work to do. Of course you do, we all, men and woman, act unskillfully out of fear and old false-self limiting beliefs that just push love away.

But never forget that you’re here to express the FULLNESS of you, moment by moment, from your agony to your ecstasy.

If you really are too much for someone – and you will know because they’ll be constantly fighting to shrink you into something they can understand and manage or they’ll just keep running away – then you do not serve that someone by shrinking yourself just to keep them close.

Anyway, why would you want to be with someone who keeps showing you they aren’t at least willing to learn how to love you?

You aren’t here to just be easy to put up with.

A man truly worthy of your heart is one who is willing to show up and fight whatever dragons arise inside him that disconnect him from his heart and prevent him from offering his love.

Look, none of us have been taught how to love. Actually, we’ve been taught the opposite; we’ve been taught that logic and reason – but only our own – should take priority over emotions and feelings which are just obstacles to progress and productivity, which is why we dismiss you when you don’t act the way we want you to (which is only almost always).

It’s your willingness, your courage, to offer all of you, even the uncomfortable parts, that is our invitation to get out of our heads and drop into our hearts.

If a man is clearly committed to resisting the fullness of you, don’t suffer yourself till he figures it out. Let him resist and let him go. Letting him go just might be the wakeup call he needs to figure out he’s only here to learn how to love, anyway!

And if he is genuinely ready to love you, he’ll be willing to fight those fire-breathing dragons that guard the gates to his heart. For that’s the only way he can ever claim the massive treasures hidden inside yours.

We need you awake and alive and lit up in the fullness of you. Don’t shrink yourself just to get love. You didn’t come here to play small in love. You didn’t come here to enable others to play small in love, either.

You are humanity’s invitation back into heart.

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Previously published on bryanreeves.com

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