Hello, my name's Heather Garbutt and I'm a love and relationship coach specializing in calling in the one and I've been publishing a series of lives, which are called Desire, and they are the step-by-step guide to calling in true romantic love.

You can find me in the calling in the one official coach led group in Europe and beyond on Facebook, or you can DM me whichever you like, if you want to go further. Thank you. So today we're gonna look at the patterns in love, which actually get in the way of you attracting true, committed, romantic love.

We need to do this so that you can really see how you've been thinking, feeling and behaving in relationship that contributes towards unsuccessful relationships, a dearth of relationships or relationships you want to get out of.
Have you been choosing unavailable partners?

This could be because they're living a long way away. They're involved with somebody else. They're not really wanting to be in a relationship, they're not ready to be in a relationship, or they don't have the right circumstances to be in a relationship.
Ask yourself seriously, what have these patterns been for you?
Are you having the same relationship over and over again feeling unsatisfied and like your needs aren't getting met?

Your feelings aren't getting really truly addressed. That some way you have to dim yourself down or reduce your needs in order to be there at all. In a way, I think some of us, um, I've been there myself, try to fit our huge personalities and talents and gifts and hearts into relationships that just aren't big enough to contain them. It's like wearing shoes that are too small. They pinch, they hurt, and they make life really, really uncomfortable and painful.

So are you choosing men who don't really suit your character?

Maybe men who have a neediness and are quite childlike rather than somebody who can really meet you, support you and provide with you, you know, create this relationship together. It could even be that you choose exploitative relationships. They may look different each time that you go into them, but they may turn out to be the same. So where that person is getting more out of the relationship than you. And that can be in all those cliched forms of emotional, spiritual, practical, financial, getting their needs met before you.

Are you a people pleaser?
Are you a caretaker?
It's really easy for women in our culture to be that way, but are you doing that too much?

This is at your cost, it may be that you are so hurt from past relationships that you choose to be alone. So this piece is our s for desire in desire, s for self-development. Tracing these patterns and clearing up the past is the self-development that's needed. Once you've got that beautiful intention set for your true love and your vision really clear, these are the pieces that you, the universe will present to you to address because they're the pieces that keep you small, safe and hidden. They may do so in business, in your career and in your personal relationships.

So let's look at the clearing up and of the past in some concrete ways. It may be that you've got old resentments, you've stayed bitter in resentment, resentful about things that have gone on in your past. It makes you feel passive. It makes you feel powerless. It gives the other people or persons or the situation the power and not you. Some important questions to ask yourself here without shame or blame because there will be really good reasons for this.

Is there a truth you're not saying?
Is there a way you can see that you've given your power away?
Are you being passive through fear and shame?
Are there any old agreements you've made that could be getting in the way of true love?

You know, the resentments piece are that those resentments are the things that hold you back and make you feel less able to have a healthy relationship because they make you feel like you can't really do it without losing out somewhere.
And these old agreements can tie into that. It can be like, I never can really get what I want, so I'm not going to try. That's an agreement you made to yourself. Or it could be that you've got an emotional attachment to somebody in the past. You know, you've said something like, I'll never love anybody but you. And in the moment when you were 14 or 17 or 19 or 25, 35, you meant it. And on a a soul level, you made that commitment and it's blocking you.

You need to let go of that - release it, and make a new agreement with yourself. I think sometimes this is particularly difficult if you've been married and you really meant your vows when you said them. I know that was a difficult thing for me and it's taken a long time to allow myself to see that the vows we made on our wedding day were really good and wholesome, but they weren't ones that we could keep. So you can't really be allied with those now, but these are the sort of emotional allegiances we hold with people from our past that can hold us back from really going into true love. Now

And also at this point, it's important to let go of any sort of mementos we have of those relationships. Like, stop wearing your wedding ring or your engagement ring. Put it somewhere safe. Yeah, make it into another piece of jewelry that you can enjoy better or give away to somebody else or sell it for the gold if that's what floats your boat, you know, whatever gives you something rather than holds you back and makes space in your life for a relationship.

Have you really got time to have a relationship? You need a couple of evenings a week at least to fit somebody in in the beginning and a Saturday or a Sunday on the weekends if you possibly can. You need to keep that space as a sort of pregnant pause for when that really lovely relationship can begin to gestate. You also need the physical space, you know, empty out a, a bedside cabinet ready for your partner's, things to be put there, a shelf in your wardrobe, a drawer in your dressing table, a little space in the bathroom cabinet for their toothbrush. Those sorts of things. Just give you that sense of space, an invitation.

So the next piece we look at, is there anything currently toxic in your life?
Anything that's draining. You shouldn't have anything in your life if you can possibly help it that isn't useful to you or radiant. You know, it's like what somebody or something you can warm your hands on and build. A friend of mine said, you know, assess your relationships in terms of if they're a drain or a radiator. If they're draining your energy, let go of them. If they're giving you energy and warmth, really hold onto them.

The draining is quite easy to identify, where do you feel you're giving more than you're getting?
Where do you feel obliged to be?
Are you the one always reaching out?
Do you somehow feel guilty or ashamed? A pulling on your heartstrings.
Are you taking too much responsibility for the other person?
Are you mothering them in some way?
And it can be any kind of relationship, not just romantic ones. It can be taking on too much responsibility at work or in friendships. Can be the people pleaser side of you who feels you've got to look after everybody else before yourself.

I'm asking you now to draw a boundary and step back. You don't have to be nasty to that person. Just withdraw and slightly disinvest to come back and focus on you. Begin to love yourself as you would wish to be loved. So that's in considering your feelings and your needs, your heart's desires, your ambitions, holding yourself gently and firmly to commitments to yourself before other people. The the cliche is the oxygen mask in the plane. They always say put it on yourself before you look after anybody else because otherwise nobody's going to breathe. And you really need to breathe to be your full self and to give your gifts in relationship or in the world.

How you care for yourself will be mirrored in how other people care for you. So if you are dismissive of your feelings and needs, they will be too. Anybody who would like to pay attention to your feelings and needs, you'll have, how can I say, sort of negative reactions to either you won't notice or you'll subtly push them away, or you'll sort of say, oh, no, no, no, I couldn't possibly, you know? Um, yeah. So watch out for that. Watch out for that. It's really hard for somebody to love you more than you do.

Now, these patterns didn't just happen on their own, they happened through our life events. Sometimes really early ones where there is emotional trauma or physical trauma. The emotional trauma is where you didn't get looked after the way you wished. You weren't emotionally listened to, you weren't comforted and held and supported. Your ambitions and desires weren't supported. You didn't have the practical support. The things provided to you that would really enable you to flourish as YOU. So you've learned to dim yourself down, not ask for too much, not expect much. Keep yourself safe so you don't get disappointed.

That's the small T trauma, the big T traumas of where you've been abandoned. Like if your mother or father left you or died, that's a big trauma. If you were uprooted and moved to a different country or even a different area within the same town, if you lost connection with all your friends, that's a big Emotional trauma. If there was any illness in your family for you or anybody around you or, uh, loss of home or loss of income, that's big trauma and all of those things will affect the way you choose to live your life because will naturally be self-protective.

We won't want to take the risks of loss or pain again, and it's these things that I'm going to address next time where the roots of these traumas are in our childhoods and what we can do about them. It's not a done deal. It really isn't. We can shift our identities from living from that childhood fear and anxious attachments or avoidant attachments, and really come through to be secure in ourselves and secure in our relationships with others and find true romantic love.

It's my heart's desire that each of you watching this before the end of 2023 will have true committed romantic love.