Recently, I looked up some of my old middle school classmates on Facebook that I’d had a crush on when I was about 12.
There was Joey, head of the football team. Woodey, the sexy snowboarder. And Nick, the quiet, reserved scientist.
Yes, I crushed on them all. Super hard.
I dreamed about them when I put make-up on for the first time.
I looked for them in class so I could get high off of their presence.
I fantasized about our first kiss(es).
And they all rejected me.
Joey, Woodey, Nick…not one of them wanted to kiss me back. Not on the football field, not on the ski slopes, not in the science lab.
Not in middle school, not in high school. Not ever.
In my despair, I needed to understand what was making me so radically unattractive to these teenage boys…so I looked at who they were choosing instead of me.
Brittany. They really liked Brittany. They also seemed to like Veronica a lot.
Ouch.
And thus started a long and painful road of comparing myself to other women.
Holding myself up to them and deciding that I was unworthy, undesirable, and unwanted in comparison.
It was too painful to sit with my unworthiness all the time, so I started making up stories about what men did and didn’t want. I started to find faults in myself that made the world seem sane and reasonable – there must be something wrong with me.
I internalized a belief system about what men wanted: “Not a powerful, outspoken, leader of a woman, nope, not a nerdy, passionate weirdo.”
I spent a good decade trying to be Brittany or Veronica or any other woman I thought was better than me – and failing miserably.
And I kept carrying those beliefs…
So, when I looked up Joey, Woodey, and Nick on Facebook and saw them not as my teenaged fantasy but as adult men who have chosen very different paths from mine, I was like, “Whoa. You have ascribed your total self-worth and desirability to these men’s opinions and desires from 20 years ago and so have given yourself a lifetime of unnecessary and unreasonable pain.”
I love Facebook for these profound insights.
I realized that I STILL believed that men don’t desire powerful women.
I still believed that my own personal power as a woman was some sort of liability to men desiring me.
Which is crazy because this is literally why Andrew says he loves me.
And all of the men I MOST admire in the world picked powerful women to stand by their side.
My step-dad picked my Mama for over 30 years, until the day he died, and my Mom is seriously powerful.
Johann, who is featured in this video, picked my dear friend Rachel to marry, who is a powerhouse creatrix.
Obama picked Michelle.
And that isn’t to say that if you don’t come off as a certain type of powerful, that you aren’t desirable or amazing. The point is: as women, we don’t have to shove ourselves into tiny-ass boxes to make ourselves worthy of men’s affection.
The toxicity comes when we, as women, if we are attracted to men, internalize belief systems that say our authentic selves are not desirable or good enough and we start to distort.
Here’s what I’ve seen: there is a good man out there for every woman with the courage to be authentic and whole who wants one.
Where we lose ourselves is in the belief that what we are isn’t good enough.
So, I needed to update my beliefs to match my new reality as we often do.
I asked three men that I deeply admire (Andrew, Johann, and Alain) to come in and make a video about why they chose a powerful woman as their life partner.
If you’ve ever doubted that what a conscious, amazing, heart-centered man might be looking for is a powerful woman, then this video is for you.
Love,
Layla
P.S. My VITA™ Sex, Love & Relationship Coaching Certification enrollment opens in July! If you are craving a lifestyle that you love and desire while making a huge impact on the world, I invite you to check out the program!
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