iTunes | Spotify

—

If you feel like you are constantly attracting low-quality men into your life, I’m breaking down how to explore and address the beliefs you hold about yourself that are causing you to attract the wrong partners, and how you can shift into attracting the high-quality partners you deserve and desire!

Note: Below is a transcript of the podcast, edited for readability. This content was intended for audio and may contain errors.

Crystal Irom

Hello, hello, hello. It is Crystal Irom here. I had this hit of inspiration to talk about something, and we can basically think of this as a hack to help you move from that commoner energy to that duchess energy much faster.

Commoner Vs Duchess

So here’s one of the things to understand about what makes a commoner a commoner versus a duchess, and that is that there’s a lack of self-acceptance, a lack of self-love, a lack of certainty around herself and who she is. A duchess knows who she is. She’s very, very strong in it. And her certainty about herself, her certainty that she gets to have love, creates a calm around her. It creates a very strong, calm energy that’s magnetic. It’s extremely attractive to people. When you can shift into that, it’s like everything changes.

One of the things that comes up when people start to recognize that there are ways that they’ve been acting like a commoner and are ready to make that change into more of that duchess energy, is this acceptance of yourself.

Everybody has things about themselves that they do not like, that they think will keep them from having the kind of love, the kind of relationship that they really desire. And this can totally range for some people. Maybe it’s a physical thing. They think, “There’s something about my nose that no one is going to like.” They think, “I’m too overweight. I can’t possibly have love when I’m like this.”

So people have different things in terms of physical, but for a lot of people, there are things that are about their personality as well. “There’s something about my personality that I know is such a turnoff.” And one of the ways that you know that this could be one of those things for you that’s keeping you from that full self-acceptance is that it’s triggering for you. If someone points it out to you, you feel triggered. You want to defend yourself. You want to tell them why they’re wrong, but it feels like something. It makes you feel a little cringe or you feel a charge and you’re just like, “Ugh, don’t say that. That’s not true.” It’s like the charge is coming because it is partially true. You believe that it’s true. It may not be true, but there’s a part of you that is buying into it, a part of you that really believes it. If someone says something to you and there’s no part of you that believes it, you don’t feel anything, right? It’s just sort of like, “Mm, okay, I hear ya, but wrong, so I’m going to keep it moving.” There’s nothing about it where you feel like, “I need to defend myself. I need to explain why I’m not that.” It’s just, “That is not true. If you think that, then enjoy.”

If someone said to me, “Crystal, you’re really mannish. You just kind of look like a man,” I don’t believe that, so I would just be like, “Okay. Interesting. Thanks for sharing your observation.” There’s nothing about that that would trigger me. But if I’m feeling like I’m a little bit out of shape, and someone’s like, “Oh, have you maybe lost weight?” that might get me, or if someone says, “Oh, you cut your hair recently?” And I haven’t cut my hair, I’ve been growing my hair out, that could trigger me.

It’s not that someone is necessarily saying something that is inherently mean or wrong or insulting. It’s only a trigger because of how you feel about it. So if someone’s saying to me, “Did you cut your hair?” when I’m trying to grow my hair out, I would wonder why are they saying that? Does my hair look shorter? By digging in, you can recognize if it’s a little bit of a trigger.

With your personality, there are things that may come up where if someone points it out, the same sort of thing. So for me, for example, one of them would be I can get a little bit lazy physically. I’m a Taurus, so I can get a little bit lazy. I exercise and I like to be active, but if it’s unforeseen or if I don’t know about it, then I can get kind of irritated by it. If I’m going somewhere and someone’s like, “Oh, it’s like a five-minute walk,” but then it ends up being a 30-minute walk, I’ll get pretty testy about it. Someone might be like, “What’s your problem? You’re being so lazy,” and then I could get really triggered by that. “Well, I’m not lazy. That’s not it. I just like to know,” but there’s a part of me that maybe does feel like I’m a little bit lazy. So this is just to give some context for what I’m going to have you address in yourself.

What happens is that when we have these things about ourselves that we don’t like, that we feel offended when someone notices, when we feel a little bit triggered, then that is a part of yourself that you’re unwilling to accept. A commoner has a lot of those things. This is what makes people feel really insecure, when they have a lot of aspects of themselves that they want to keep hidden, that they don’t want to admit to, that they don’t want people to see.

And this is really problematic because it can cause us to create not just walls, but it also creates a lot of insecurity and a fragile ego and sense of self where people feel like they could say something and you’re going to be really offended or really hurt. There’s this level of sensitivity that’s a little bit harder to deal with.

And when it comes to attracting a mate, a really high-quality partner, the more sure of yourself you are, the higher quality person you can attract. Because the feminine is the magnet. The feminine is the energy that calls in the other energy. When you can feel really good about yourself, when you feel really sure of who you are and what you have to offer and you really are accepting yourself fully, it’s raising the bar. It raises your standards in terms of what you can call in.

But no one is going to get to a place where they’re perfect. Everyone is going to always have some things that they don’t love about themselves. It’s not that you have to love every single thing about yourself, it’s about having an acceptance where it’s not so sensitive that it’s hard to get around. Because that’s when we create a really huge facade where we are blocking people from actually getting to know who we are and what’s real for us.

Hack for Moving Past Your Insecurities

So the way that you move past this is by getting clear on what those things are and starting to accept them. We have all these things about ourselves that we don’t like and we try to keep them hidden. So instead of having someone say something to you and feeling triggered and recognizing, “There’s this aspect of myself that I’m not accepting,” we just try to deny it. We try to push it away. “Well, that’s not true. That’s not me,” we try to defend ourselves. But while we’re defending ourselves, we’re pushing away this one part of ourselves. You can’t fully accept yourself when you’re pushing away this one thing that you don’t like about who you are, about the way that you are, and you overcome that by just allowing it. It’s not that you have to love it, it’s just that you have to accept and allow it. You have to be able to acknowledge these aspects of yourself that you don’t like.

This is going to be a process. This isn’t necessarily something that you’re going to do once and then be done with because there’s probably more than one thing about yourself that you don’t love. And that’s okay. I consciously do this and I still have things where I can get triggered or I can be very sensitive about it. But the awareness is a big step. It’s really the starting point because as you get that awareness, it’s easier to start accepting those things.

So what you’re going to do is just start by writing out a list of the things about yourself where you’re just like, “I don’t want anyone to know that/ I don’t want anyone to think about that. I get really upset when someone points it out.” Think about those things that are triggers for you and just start writing them out. You don’t have to share this list with anyone. This is just for yourself. So be really honest, be really real with yourself. Seriously, it sounds so basic, but you have to believe me, this is insanely powerful. It is so powerful when you can just claim all of those aspects of yourself and it’s like, “Yeah, these are some of my flaws and I’m aware of them.”

And it’s not that you have to just be like, “Yeah, that’s me, take it or leave it,” but, kind of. You don’t have to be a jerk about it, but that is sort of the mentality of, “I accept that I’m not a perfect person. Here are some of my flaws, things that are works in progress, things that I’m working on and moving past, and I’m looking for someone that’s okay with those,” because frankly, that’s as much of it as anything else. When we are looking for a partner, we are looking for someone not only who has qualities that we love and adore and admire and that we think are so sexy and amazing and wonderful, but also who has the quirks and idiosyncrasies that we can tolerate.

Some people are going to have quirks and you’re just like, “I cannot deal with that. Ugh, impossible,” but there’s no such thing as a perfect person and there’s definitely no perfect man. So you’re going to have to find someone who has the things that are less than perfect that you can tolerate, and you need someone who can also tolerate your things that are less than perfect.

So the way you’re going to think about this is, “What are those things for me?” So for me, I’ll give you some examples, and I’m going to be really honest with you guys because these were things that I really tried to reject and really tried to hide. And my husband sees them. Of course, he sees them. Your husband, your person you’re with really closely, they’re going to find out. In an intimate relationship, everything comes out, so you might as well know what some of these things are for you.

So some examples for me were things like high maintenance. Someone could call me high maintenance and that would really trigger me. And I got to a point where it was just like, “You know what? I get that. I am high maintenance and that is totally okay.” There is a scene in Friends that I just think sums this up so perfectly. And it’s Monica and Chandler, and Monica is like, “I’m not high maintenance.” And she’s really putting up a fuss about it. And if you watch Friends, you know that Monica is the most high-maintenance bitch ever. She’s so high maintenance. And Chandler gave the most perfect response, and he said, “I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t think that’s a negative thing because I’m happy to maintain you.”

I thought that was so good and that sums up this whole situation so perfectly because that’s how Kobi is also. My husband doesn’t mind that I’m high maintenance. He’s happy to maintain me. And the way that I need to be maintained is something he can meet. I’m not looking for things that he’s unable to provide. And often enough, when someone would use that against me, it’s that he was unable to provide in the way that I desired to be provided for. And men that are in their masculine like to be providers, and it can feel very defeating for them and emasculating to be unable to provide what the woman that they are interested in wants.

And so me recognizing that, yes, there is a part of me that is high maintenance, but also it could just be that he’s unable to provide what I need, it’s not that I’m unmaintainable, it’s just high maintenance. And so I released the shame around that. I released the anxiety and the fear of like, “Oh, let me make sure I don’t seem high maintenance. Let me hold back what I actually want and need. Let me not express myself fully because I don’t want to be high maintenance.” If you’re high maintenance, be high maintenance. Who cares? Just be who you are, do what’s real for you.

It’s definitely not about changing for a guy, because also, when you try to change for someone, especially when you’re just doing it for them, I think you have to make a distinction here between changing for someone versus evolving as a person. Changing for someone sort of implies that someone’s saying, “I want you to be different in this way,” and you’re saying, “Well, I want to be with you, so I’m going to be different in this particular way.” You’re doing something that’s not real for you. Something that’s not authentic, something that’s not coming from that highest version of yourself in the hopes of pleasing someone, versus I’m evolving. I am in a committed, loving relationship now with someone that I love and adore and there’s this behavior that I have that’s hard to deal with. That’s really obnoxious. That’s really hurtful. That is when it becomes I’m evolving. I’m taking feedback from the person that I care for and I’m wanting to become a better version of myself. And it’s not only in the context of a partner. You can obviously evolve on your own as well and you can evolve based on a prompt from another person and that can still be different than changing for someone else. I think that the idea of evolving, is really more for yourself. It’s yeah, someone’s pointing out this thing and I can see how I would be a higher version of myself if I did that less.

Another one for me would be I’m pretty straightforward. I’m super straightforward. I’m very straightforward in a lot of ways, but then not in other ways. If I have an opinion about something and I feel strongly about it, then I might voice it really directly and that can come off as bitchy. And for a long time, I had a thing about being sweet. I was just like, “I’m really sweet. It’s really important that people think I’m sweet. I’m a really nice girl. I’m not mean.”

And it’s a little weird. It’s like, okay, if I’m bitchy sometimes, it’s not a big deal. I know my heart. I know that I’m a kind, loving, caring person and I never go out intentionally being like, “Let me see if I can hurt anyone’s day.” Never. But if someone interprets something that I say in a bitchy way or if I deliver something in a way that’s a little bit cutting, that’s okay. I don’t have to hate that about myself. I don’t need to try to be super sweet, like over the top giving to people and trying to make them feel a certain way.

I get to deliver my message. I get to say what’s real for me. I will always do my best to be kind. It’s never my intention to hurt anyone. And if I say something that someone interprets as being a little bit bitchy, it’s no big deal. I can keep it moving. I don’t have to get stuck on that.

It’s very, very powerful when you can see these are the things that I have going on that are maybe less than ideal, these parts of myself that I am rejecting, recognizing that it is really the first step to starting to accept them. And then now you have this higher level of awareness. So when you see it coming up, when you can feel yourself stepping into that thing that you don’t like and that other people point out about you and that triggers you, you’re going to stay with yourself instead of trying to escape it and allow the feedback, whatever it may be.

This is so powerful because we are very used to people defending themselves. When someone is willing to just receive, even if it comes across as negative or critical, it’s a huge, huge thing. It’s a very noticeable thing when someone is just receptive because it shows that there is not so much weight in what another person is saying that they feel like they need to abandon themselves. And it’s common for people to really take it to heart when they get negative feedback, to really defend themselves. That’s what commoners do. And it’s just a little bit… It’s easier to connect. It’s like this layer of vulnerability when you’re sort of open to feedback, even if it’s negative, even if it might be hurtful, even if it doesn’t feel great to hear.

It’s a powerful thing to do. It’s a powerful thing to witness and it’s a powerful thing to experience for yourself. And getting to this place where you are able to sort of accept it because you have this certainty around yourself, you already know what those less than ideal things are about you and you’re okay with them. And that way, you can get more feedback from people. And you can either decide, “I hear what you’re saying, I am going to evolve because I want to,” or, “I hear what you’re saying, it doesn’t resonate with me.” It allows a lot more to just sort of fall away instead of making everything so personal .

So this is a really incredible hack that you can apply if you’re ready to step into that duchess version of you, if you step out of being a commoner much more quickly and easily.

Start recognizing those aspects of yourself that you’ve been pushing away and start to really embrace them and you’ll notice everything shift. As you do that, as you start becoming aware of them, the more that you can not only accept it within yourself, but even embrace it, meaning be okay with it, and talk about it.

As much as people might want to talk about the things that are great about themselves, to be able to say, “Here’s what is not so great about me, but I’m still totally okay with it,” that’s a huge level of acceptance. It’s really, really powerful. And as you start to accept it, it starts to bother you less and less. It becomes something that really doesn’t trigger you, to the point where it’s like the examples that I gave, there’s nothing triggering to me about them now. If someone tells me that I’m high maintenance, I’m just like, “Yeah. Yeah. And I have really dark hair.” It’s just like you were saying something, you’re telling me information that is clear to me. I’m not going to argue about it. Like I am not a blonde. I am not low maintenance. There’s nothing upsetting about that to me. That’s just what it is. And it’s a really good place to be. It makes a huge, huge difference in your dating when you can really embrace those aspects of yourself.

So for some people, it could be something like, “I’m a little bit flaky,” or, “I can be really forgetful,” or, “I have very ditzy moments,” or, “My laugh is really loud.” Whatever it is, just start to embrace those aspects of yourself that you have been judging yourself for, that you haven’t been showing acceptance of, and this is a really, really powerful step to step into that duchess energy.

So there’s my little hack. This went much longer than I had expected, but I hope it serves you powerfully. And that is all I have for today and I will look forward to talking to you again so soon.

In the meantime, make sure to check out some other episodes like What We Can Learn from a “Quitter” Like Simone Biles.