I Changed Everything I Believed About Men and Love. Then I Found the Marriage I Always Wanted.

This is part 3 of a 3-part series. Check out my last 2 articles.

When I posted about my relationship, people often left comments like “may this love find me”, “where did you meet him?” or “how did you find him?” I understand positive sentiment. But I could also see the belief behind some of them: you just haven’t met the right man yet, and once you do, everything will fall into place. And in some cases, you really do just need to date more till you find the right person.

But for me, when I dated a narcissist and had a breakdown, leading to therapy and a year of rebuilding myself, I was still many steps behind. I knew even if I had met someone different then, I would have ended up at the same place: self-abandonment. It wasn’t so much a question of “Where is the right man?” but “What does ‘being right for me’ mean?” What do I even need in a relationship? And can I build a healthy relationship with someone who is ready and available? Am I ready and available?

I used to read romance books and watch K-dramas and fantasise about this perfect man who would come and love me and see my value and give me a new life, even when I wanted to hide myself. As you might have guessed, it led me to years of dating unavailable men who activated my anxiety to the point of experiencing physical pain, who left me without looking back, who did not see me as a person but a source of supply. It became a cycle, and it damaged me so much that at one point I wondered if I was even capable of having a normal relationship again.

The thing is, if you put a man in the saviour role, or any kind of role designed to take the pain and discomfort away for you, you’re not really engaging with him as a whole person; you’re objectifying him, and you’re not facing yourself either. You’re investing in a fantasy to detach yourself from your own reality. And when he pulls away or does anything off-script, your standards and vetting will start to break down. There’s nothing to back them; they’re empty inside because you’re already detached from your life. You can’t actually enforce any consequences when you can’t walk away easily. You needed him to play the role to sustain your functioning in the fantasy.

Then once the breakup happens, you have to pull the plug because you have no choice. You’ll be in a lot of pain but gradually, in most cases, you do the usual breakup recovery steps. You stop dating. You mope around for a while. You pour yourself into your work, hobbies, interests, or travelling. You feel like yourself again, and you’re calm because the triggers are removed. It’s all good, but there are key factors that determine whether you will repeat your patterns next time.

First is properly processing your pain, making space for it, and letting it move through.

Second is building your own foundation and attachment to yourself and your life.

And third is changing how you approach dating.

A lot of people skip the first part or do some of the first two and assume they’re ready because they feel good again. But feeling calm when no one is triggering you doesn’t necessarily mean you know how to manage your anxiety when the uncertainty of early dating is introduced again and the stakes feel high, or know what to do when someone starts pulling away - something you can’t control. You can enjoy your life after a breakup, then meet someone and find yourself right back where you were, now with the added shame that you should know better.

Others change how they date by introducing more rules, stricter criteria, or ways to appear less interested. But if you haven’t addressed what makes you abandon your own needs and standards, you can still make exceptions the moment you’re invested and attached. Or you go the other way: you swear off dating altogether or build walls so high that you don’t let anyone close. You know how to protect yourself by staying out of a relationship, but you haven’t learned how to stay connected to yourself while being in one.

I shared in last week’s newsletter how I stabilised myself and took the first - and structural - steps to build my self-trust and affirm my own values. This week, I’ll share how I rebuilt my self-worth, challenged the beliefs that kept me settling, and changed my dating approach.

When I finally met my husband, my mindset had shifted completely.

I knew my value, I knew my worth, I knew exactly what kind of relationship I wanted. I was ready and available for it, and I could hold up my end to nurture and grow it in a way that would serve me. I was looking for a man who could do the same, or else I would be happily single.

Before, I had been drawn to men whose lives looked much fancier than mine. They were successful, sociable, and doing exciting things. Being wanted by them felt like a way into their world, which would prove to me I was worthy, and an escape from myself, my own life, and my circle.

For the first time, I had to face who I actually was and be okay with it, however unfancy it looked to me and how unsuccessful I felt then. I asked myself, “This is me. So what?” These were my circumstances, my interests, my people that I could choose to take interest in and see value of. I could want more for myself without treating everything I already had as worthless. In fact, I figured, the only way to have more was by seeing value in everything I got and using it.

I began finding joy in ordinary interactions: spending time with family, talking to friends, getting to know new people from my network. I showed my curiosity in them and felt more connected to myself. I let me be me in those relationships and realised I was accepted and loved. I didn't have to impress someone with a lifestyle I didn't have or pretend to want the one they broadcast.

Being around people who knew and loved me helped me remember and affirm my own value. I had good relationships. I was cared for and respected. It exposed the absurdity of me allowing the opinions of men who barely knew me to carry more weight than all of that.

These relationships also gave me more reference points for how people could treat me. Their care, consistency, and respect helped me recognise when these essential qualities were missing elsewhere. I could judge a dating situation against the good relationships already in my life and whether he would fit in with these important people.

During the time I had gotten involved with the narcissistic ex, I was at a job that I hated the most. It was a finance-related role that used only my analytical skills and made me feel like a shell of myself. When I started to face myself, it was one of the places I had to look hard at.

Even though I was on a work visa and couldn’t switch jobs easily, I still made a change. I looked for a new internal role that suited me better, and I got it. I also moved to a new apartment in a different area of London. I had picked the previous location partly because of the ex. These structural changes gave me new environments, people, and routines.

I was removing the places and daily habits associated with that period, giving the old behaviours fewer opportunities to repeat themselves. I could build new positive associations through new things I did every day.

That year, I wrote Love Yourself Enough to Let Them Go, a collection of essays about painful attachment, overlooking warning signs, and finding the strength to leave someone when you know you need to but still struggle to do it.

Writing it was a way to reclaim my power and tell my own story. I had been interpreting everything through shame: what I had done wrong, how I must have looked, what my behaviour supposedly proved about me. Writing gave me room to examine the full experience. I could recognise my vulnerability, understand my decisions and take responsibility without letting the worst moments define me. I found strength and power from them.

The book was also a monumental achievement for me. I had felt like I had nothing to show for myself. My career wasn't where I wanted it to be, and so much of my time and energy had disappeared into dating situations that damaged me. Now, I had completed a book that people read and found helpful. It gave me real evidence that I could finish a project and create something of value. I was becoming someone I could feel proud of through work that was mine.

Growing up, I learned that a man’s work was the most important thing in the house. My father was busy working, sleeping, or using the computer, and I knew better than to disturb him. I carried that into dating. I was drawn to busy, successful men and accepted that their time mattered more than mine. Being fitted around a man’s schedule felt normal. I had to question why I thought his ambition justified neglecting me, and why my needs were always the negotiable part.

I also examined what I thought I had to be to deserve love. As a girl, I’d been told to be coy and dainty, to stop “acting like a boy”. I’d absorbed the idea that being a “good wife” worthy of being pampered meant being feminine in the right way and making myself easy to live with. But I realised the hard way that I could not shrink myself or perform a role. My need to be fully myself, with ambitions, feelings and flaws, always eventually came out sideways and led to an explosive breakup. I also refused to accept that I had to be a certain type of woman to be pampered - I wanted to be me and loved and cared for.

I had to admit to myself that I’d put my unavailable father on a pedestal while taking my mother’s constant care for granted. I had given more importance to the man who wasn’t there than to the woman who was. I started questioning the casual sexism I’d heard and absorbed, including things like “female bosses are difficult”. In films and books, I realised the protagonist was often a man and I had to relate to them as a whole person, while women were a niche. Reading books like Invisible Women, following online pages speaking up about patriarchy and looking at the data opened my eyes to how I’d been conditioned to accept less and think less of women, including myself.

So I adopted a conscious approach: give women the benefit of the doubt and deep compassion, and vet men rigorously. I’d spent enough time doing the reverse, finding explanations for men’s behaviour while holding women to impossible standards, including myself. I started to navigate towards the women around me, appreciate them, and learn from them. And the more I valued them, the more I valued myself. I began to see how the judgments I held against other women were also judgments I turned on myself.

Don’t get me wrong - I do believe good, kind men who like and respect women exist. And I love and support them, and I know many of them. But I don’t assume this as a default and put them on a pedestal. I observe and gather data. I question things I know - are they really true or do I inherit them from somewhere already biased? I make my own informed judgments. And I continue to do so even with people I know. I don’t give energy and attention to men who aren’t kind and respectful. I don’t let them anywhere near me and my people. I’m not responsible for fixing them either.

This is ongoing work. One thing I can say for sure is that it has changed my life. it’s enriched me so much, and now I’m surrounded by things and people who make me more me and see me for me.

Reading these words out loud gave me chills. I didn’t realise how hard it was to inhabit these words until I did this exercise.

Admittedly, they weren’t an overnight switch. But it was an important step to practise speaking to myself with conviction and care, and declare who I decided to be and how I wanted to live beyond what had happened to me.

I wrote lists of my decisions. I decided that I wanted to get married.

In my previous newsletter, I talked about how I wrote emails to my future self. Here’s one of them about my intention to date to marry:

Email from Jun 21, 2019:

I wrote down what I wanted in a partner and what a good relationship would look like for me.

When I was fixated on men who were successful for their success, they did not actually give me anything. They added little value to my life; in fact, they caused more damage.

The moment I stepped into myself and looked for core qualities, I found my husband who matches all these descriptions and so much more. He’s also a successful man but it doesn’t define him - to me, it’s a reflection of the qualities he possesses. He gives me the world, and I did not have to compromise anything.

When I returned to dating, I had a foundation to hold me, a life I enjoyed, a sense of self-worth and self-respect, and I had a clear approach: Keep high standards. Set strong boundaries. Vet rigorously. And move on ruthlessly.

It’s about taking an active role in choosing a relationship that works for you: knowing what you need, assessing someone by their behaviour over time, and acting on what you find. You stop organising your decisions around whether he likes you and start asking whether this relationship meets your needs and fits the life you want.

And when it doesn’t, you can leave decisively even if you still have feelings for him. You make space for them, you work through them in private, but your decisions remain grounded in your own needs, values, and long-term goals.

This is what I teach in detail in my eight-week programme, Insight to Action from the ground up, from what to do to how to execute it.

We build four pillars:

You bring your situation and what you know. I'll help you work out what needs to change and where to start, then we'll apply my repeatable frameworks to your life over eight weeks that help you follow through and make concrete changes.

I’ll also host additional webinars to teach my dating approach in detail. You’ll have direct access to me via 1:1 calls, group calls, and email coaching.

Applications close on 28 September.