How to get your love life together for the life you deserve to live…
Hey Rockstars,
This past weekend I gave a talk to the amazing women of L.A.C.E.S., Women of Empowerment in Brooklyn. As a woman obsessed with evolving into the best person I can be I was proud of them for spending a Sunday afternoon on trying to better themselves. They were walking their talk.
So many of us have made so much of our every day grind about being miserable that we don’t even know any different anymore. We let life beat us into submission until we don’t even recognize ourselves. Don’t let life pass you by without becoming the woman you were born to be.
The talk and love seminar that I gave was called “Relationship Rehab: The Top 10 Patterns That Are Making Your Love Life Suck.”
Many of us are suffering from what I call PTLD. You know PTSD. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is what the soldiers experience. It is a mental health crisis created by a traumatic experience. Well I think that many of us are suffering from what I call PTLD – Post Traumatic Love Disorder. A personal crisis created after suffering from traumatic love experiences. And then it leads to what I call DWD, Dating While Desperate, but we’ll get to that later!
I grew up in NYC; I was raised in Queens and went to an all girls school in Manhattan. My mother was very conservative and didn’t teach me anything about love, sex, dating or relationships and I was at an all girls school so I kind of had to study the rules and make it up as I went along.
My first boyfriend at 15 had a job on the ice cream truck so I literally started dating the first boy who rolled through my block! I had a different relationship in college and then met someone as I was graduating and rode that relationship out for my entire twenties. I got married shortly after 30 and it all crashed and burned.
When I started studying love, the overarching revelation was, how you do anything is how you do everything. My upcoming book is named the Official Bombshell Handbook because I am reclaiming the word bombshell.
So who are some famous bombshells, people that the media tells us are bombshells or ideal women? There’s Marilyn
Monroe, Beyonce, Jennifer Lopez, Halle Berry, Sophia Vergara and more. To me, a true bombshell is a woman who owns and loves herself. When we embrace life with love, there is always love flowing back. Sometimes we don’t want to hear it but as I say all the time, a bad relationship is a reflection of a bad relationship with ourselves.
We all know that Marianne Williamson quote: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.”
Anyone ever do that? Pretend to be less than you are? See it all comes back to self worth and personal power. That’s why I am reclaiming the word “Bombshell.”
So the 10 Deadly Relationship Sins: Why Your Love Life Might Suck
(Notes & excerpts from my women’s empowerment talk.)
10. Your love life might suck if… you have low expectations.
People always ask what I learned from being on reality series “Tough Love” as a fun social experiment. As I said earlier I was there to collect a paycheck and I also thought that it would be really cool research as a social experiment for my work. I had a boyfriend at home in real life. We all did. I also had a weekly advice column in Rolling Out and was fresh off of hosting a BET show at the time.
But for me the coolest thing to come from the VH1 realty show was that they nicknamed me “Miss Picky.” You deserve the love you want. If you can’t find it in your own town, block, borough, ethnic group, try something new. But you get what you expect. So expect to be loved fully and don’t be afraid to pick and choose.
When women are selective we’re too picky but when men are selective they’re just not that into you, right? Hogwash.
LOVE AFFIRMATION: I deserve love and happiness in my life.
9. Your love life might suck if… you fear and block intimacy.
Many people have a fear of true intimacy. How do I know? Because I am one of them. We build what I call a golden gate around of lives and never really let people in to know and experience the real us. Particularly for us as black women, we have that cultural meme of the strong black woman. On the surface it sounds positive but it’s really not, the strong black woman is a myth. We are human beings like everyone else who need and desire love. Real love. Many times we just don’t know where it is or how to ask for it.
If you build a golden gate around your heart to avoid getting hurt, to avoid feeling vulnerable you are cheating yourself of the real stuff that life is made of. We don’t want to look stupid, we don’t want to risk failing or being hurt, we don’t want to risk someone saying who does she think she is?
A big complaint I get from men is, “she doesn’t seem like she needs me.” Men need to feel needed. There’s a difference between being needy and needing love from your partner. We are need love, that’s what makes us human.
LOVE AFFIRMATION: I am willing to be vulnerable.
8. Your love life might suck if… you have a bad boy fetish.
Raise your hand if know or ever you have ever had a thing for bad boys. Ladies, we are cheating ourselves because we are equating being a good person with being boring. The thing is, that we’re taught as little girls to play nice, to get along, to don’t make waves, to blend in, to be people pleasers. When we’re not taking courageous healthy risks in our own lives, we then can fall into a pattern of wanting to feel that rush of living on the edge, disguised as passion, from dating a bad boy.
But there is nothing good about feeling bad in matters of love. There is nothing sexy about being mistreated. Move on and risk being in a real loving relationship with a good man.
LOVE AFFIRMATION: I deserve a good man.
7. Your love life might suck if… you are “pedestaling.”
In my house growing up we all used paper plates to avoid the fights that my brother and I had over who was going to wash the dishes. My parents had a dish washer but we could only use it on special occasions because it used to much hot water and electricity. So we had paper plates for all of us — except my father. Apparently, being the man of the house means that you are too good for paper plates.
So the lesson was that some how my awesome dad was above the rest of us. And so many of us women repeat those patterns in our relationships. When we are in love, we see that man, the object of that affection as being above us. True love is love between equals.
LOVE AFFIRMATION: My lover and I are equally yoked.
6. Your love life might suck if… you are attracted to fixer uppers.
Well if I just help him get a job, then he can go back to school, then if he takes anger management, then I’ll pay off his child support. Stop, the only self improvement project you should take on is yourself. Move on.
LOVE AFFIRMATION: The only person I can change is myself.
5. Your love life might suck if… your man is unavailable.
So many of us talk about wanting a soul mate but then we get into relationships with guys who are unavailable. Either we don’t truly feel that we are worthy of having the love that we want or we’re not really available for love.
So we’ll purposefully get into a long distance relationship, or a relationship with a man who is emotionally distant or cold, or a man who is already taken, because we are really not available for love. You deserve to be in a relationship with someone who is fully present mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually — and ready to build.
LOVE AFFIRMATION: I deserve a man who is available.
4. Your love life might suck if… you are more in love with your story than you are with yourself.
Repeat after me ladies, I love being me. Nuff said.
We all have a story that we lead with. I want you to learn to say, “SO WHAT!” to that story. Your history is not your destiny. Your past is not your present.
LOVE AFFIRMATION: I am not my history!
3. Your love life might suck if… you are projecting.
Are you bringing your luggage from past relationships into this one? We all, as adults have a past. Now this goes back to 
knowing yourself. For example, because of my personal history I have issues with trust. Now, it’s not fair for me to dump that on my dude without actively working on it. I have to constantly be aware of improving my communication skills and creating a safe emotional space in my relationships.
If you don’t know how to do that, get help. Go to therapy, buy a book, join a support group, try EFT or some other healing modality, but stop projecting. It’s not someone else’s responsibility to do the heavy lifting when it comes to our baggage.
LOVE AFFIRMATION: I am willing to let it all go.
2. Your love life might suck if you were dating who OTHER people think you should date.
Many of us were raised to be people pleasers. So we think — even with the ones we love- that we need to satisfy the people we love by dating someone of the correct race, religion, class, educational level or whatever it is. You set the standards of what you want and who you want to date.
For example, I love good looking, extremely geeky guys and one of my friends always turns up her nose like, no you don’t like him. Or he’s not for you. What she means is that he’s not right for her. Big deal. She’s not the one interested in him. I am.
TURN TO THE PERSON NEXT TO YOU AND SAY: You don’t have to like who I like.
1. Your love life might suck if… you are a serial monogamist who has never been truly single.
Shout out to my fellow Leos, Halle Berry, Madonna and Jennifer Lopez. Being single is not a disease to be cured. That’s why I recommend the Goddess Year, a year of living single on purpose.
The biggest thing we can do to heal and have better relationships is to understand and practice forgives. Forgive those who you feel have done you wrong and most of all forgive yourself. After all, this room is filled with extraordinary women. Bombshells. Who against all the odds of each and every one of our lives has come together on this day to evolve into being a better person.
Repeat after me: I deserve love. I am worthy. I am strong. I am beautiful. I have more power than I ever thought possible.
YEAH!!!
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