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Hint: You can't.
By Virginia Clark — Written on Jan 06, 2017
Have you ever tried to make a man love you, or at least love you more? Have you ever been so sure that the two of you were meant to be together that when he tried to break up with you, you tried to persuade him to stay?
Have you ever tried to convince a man that no one could love him better than you?
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I've done all this and more. When I was single, I would try almost anything to make a man love me.
I paid money to psychics who said they could cast a spell for me. I chanted and prayed. I bought beauty products and books about how to attract a man by their astrological sign. But none of these things made a man fall for me.
In desperation, I would beg a man to stay with me because I was so convinced that he was the one. Why didn't he know it?
In my book It's Never Too Late To Marry, I describe the time I chased down an old boyfriend at 4:00 in the morning and knocked on his door waking him up. As you can imagine, that didn't go over well, and I ended up alone back on the street.
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I was acting from my feelings of need. I felt unworthy of love so I tried my best to make it happen, to create it.
All the effort I spent trying to make a man love me was a substitute for my own lack of self-love and self-esteem. I needed validation that I could be loved from the outside to believe myself loveable.
So, all my efforts were never about getting the man to love me, but more about me trying to love myself.
Can you change how a man thinks about you through argument or persuasion? No. You can't control what a man feels— he just feels the way he does. Just like you feel the way you do.
Ask yourself: can a man you're not interested in persuade you to love him?
The more you learn to love yourself, the easier it will be to let go when a man you're interested in doesn't feel the same way. You will be able to accept the fact that you're not a match and move on.
Bonnie Raitt sings it beautifully in her song, "I can't make you love me if you don't, I can't make your heart feel something it won't."
Hopefully, you won't end up pursuing a man like I did, thinking I could talk him into wanting me again. Instead, you'll be able to keep your dignity and gracefully let him go while you wait for true love to find you.
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