Knowing what you want in life and what you want out of a partner is one of the most important things to establish before going into a relationship. Making a personal list of what you want and need out of a partner is a good practice for people who are single. Like a business deal, a relationship is a negotiation, you have to make it clear to someone you are dating what it is that you need out of a partner, this gives them the opportunity to state their needs and also to walk away if they are not able to give to you the things that you want. A lot of men will look past their needs during the infatuation period of a relationship if a girl is extremely attractive or displays some desirable characteristic that is appealing to him, this will only come back to bite you in the end. As time goes on and the infatuation wears off those needs still exist but the willingness to bend fades more and more. You owe it to her to be up front about what it is you need and not allow yourself to give up too many of your own wants and needs.

Some People aren’t Givers

Love is easy during the infatuation period but once that starts to fade the work begins. Those early months of a relationship facilitate ample amounts giving, and love is all about about giving. There are some people who are just not givers, they are highly individualistic and perfectly content on their own. Being in a relationship with a person like this is often challenging for people who express love through affection and/or gift giving. Learning the five love languages and knowing what your potential partner’s love language is as well as your own can help keep a relationship alive when times get tough. Knowing yourself and what you expect or don’t expect out of others is the cornerstone of respect.

Women Test Your Self-Respect

Women instinctively test a mans strength through various attempts at trying to erode his self respect, they know that if he will stand up for himself, he will stand up for her. When a man breaks his self respect and sacrifices his needs to please a woman, she will instinctively continue to test his boundaries, the further she can push those boundaries the more she will lose respect for him. Women can’t help this, it is built into their nature, and a when a man continually allows her to break his boundaries, her feminine nature will not stop until she destroys him. The vast majority of men in modern relationships live their lives in relationships where they are completely at the mercy of their woman’s dominance for fear of losing her. It is important that women maintain their boundaries as well, a large portion of the men who are not broken by female testing are insecure and controlling men who lead the relationship not by virtue but through fear. When women tell you that there are “no good men out there,” they are not wrong, being a high value man is rare and extremely difficult, only 2-3% of all men fall into this category.

Total Loss of Self Respect

Men who have lost respect for themselves have also likely lost the respect of their wife or girlfriend. When a woman loses respect for you she will instinctively not feel safe in your presence and will assume her more masculine energy as a defense mechanism. When this happens she will almost always begin to withhold affection and sex, this only further depletes the man’s self-respect and if he has options and lacks integrity he will likely cheat. Once a relationship has reached this point it is almost certain to end or due to a lack of self respect the man is too afraid to leave and things continue to get worse. The woman sees no incentive to invest anything into the relationship and the man will become needy and desperate which causes the woman’s attraction levels to drop even further. Woman are naturally drawn to confident men that they respect. Often times when a woman has lost respect for her partner she will also be inclined to cheat with a man that she perceives to be confident and strong. Her husband may be a stronger or more confident guy than the new lover but it all comes down to perception, she hasn’t seen the new guys dirty laundry yet and she picks her husbands up off the floor daily. In my experience, this scenario comprises an alarming amount of modern relationships and most guys aren’t even aware.

Self-Respect, The Final Stand

One of the most unfortunate realities of self respect is that it often takes a man getting the balls to leave in order for him to regain his self respect. Just like in business negotiations you have to be willing to walk away and mean it. Being clear about your expectations and boundaries and the partner not accepting the terms leaves a self-respecting man with one last card to play, to walk away. Whether or not the downfall of the relationship was the mans fault or woman’s fault doesn’t matter. This particular relationship may have been what taught him what his needs and boundaries are but he can’t continue to let those lines be crossed, he has to make a move or lose even more of his time. The reality is that a man will be unhappy in a relationship where his needs aren’t being met or his boundaries continually crossed and will in turn lash out or make his woman unhappy through his continued frustration. Sometimes it just doesn’t work and that’s okay. Most men live in fear that they won’t find another woman but in most cases men who make this step regain their confidence and end up finding someone new. Once a woman loses respect for you there is very little hope in regaining it, assuming there are no kids involved finding someone new will almost always be the better option. Learning how to maintain self-respect after a breakup is crucial, many men just repeat the same patterns and find themselves back where they started. Learn how to be confident in who you are, never budge on what you stand for and you will always have the relationships that you want.