"Why do men so often change after sex?" asked Shelley in our first phone session.

"Tell me what you mean by this. What has been your experience?" I asked her.

"I meet a guy who I like. We are very attracted to each other - lots of great chemistry. It doesn't take long before he is pushing for sex, and I want to have sex too. But most of the time I don't hear from him again after having sex. Even if I wait a couple of months to have sex, this still happens. They seem so into me before sex and then completely lose interest after sex. I don't get it."

"Shelley, what are you looking for in a relationship?"

"What everyone wants - someone to love me, to make me feel safe and secure, someone to make me feel good inside."

This is why men keep leaving you after sex.

"We attract people at our common level of woundedness. You are needy - looking for someone to love you and make you feel okay. As long as you are needy, you will attract another needy person. Like you, he is also hoping that you will fill him up and make him feel good. He is hoping that sex will do this for him, and when it doesn't, he moves on. And it never can, since feeling loved and full and good inside comes from loving ourselves - not from being loved or from having sex.

"Until you learn to love yourself and take responsibility for making yourself feel good inside, this will continue to happen."

"If I learn to love myself, why would I want a relationship?"

"To share love, and to learn and grow with a partner. To have each other's back. To have fun together. When you learn to love yourself, you have lots of love to share and you get great joy out of sharing it with a loved one. When you learn to love yourself, you then attract a man who loves himself, and the two of you are able to share love, which is the highest experience in life. There is a huge difference between trying to get love and wanting to share love."

"How do I learn to love myself?"

"This is what the Inner Bonding process is all about. It is a 6 Step roadmap for learning to love yourself. The first step is learning to be aware of your feelings and wanting responsibility for them. Instead of looking to a man to take away your aloneness and emptiness, your anxiety and insecurity, you decide that you want responsibility for learning how you are abandoning yourself that is causing these feelings."

"I don’t think I can learn to love and take care of myself. My parents didn't love me and I have no idea how to do this."

"I understand. Most of us were not loved in the way we needed to be loved, but all of us can learn to do this. I assure you that you are capable of learning to love yourself. It takes time and practice, but you can learn to do this. And it is the only way that you will eventually create a loving relationship with a man. It has to start with a loving relationship with yourself. People often treat us the way we treat ourselves, so as long as you are abandoning yourself, you will lilkely continue to get left by others."

Shelley decided to learn how to love herself. It took time and practice for her to shift out of self-abandonment and into self-love, but she will tell you that it was well worth all the time and effort. Not only is she happy within herself now, but she also has a loving husband with their first child on the way.

Join Dr. Margaret Paul for her 30-Day at-home Course: "Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships."

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