There are three fundamental qualities that I believe make any kind of relationship a lasting relationship, and those are: trust, loyalty, and respect.
Whether it is a friendship or a romantic relationship, I find these three qualities to be the most fundamental in having a genuine relationship with someone else.
Each one of these qualities plays off of one another.
In other words, you cannot have one if you do not have the other two.
If you have no trust, there is no loyalty and no respect.
If you have no respect, you lack the ability to be loyal, therefore no real trust can be built.
If you have no loyalty, then you will not respect the people around you and they will never be able to trust you.
All three of these qualities work in tandem with one another and I believe are also the three most important qualities one must have in themselves.
All three of these qualities are also things that must be earned and not just given.
If you have no respect for yourself, you will never truly respect other people, regardless of whatever you tell yourself to make yourself feel better.
If you do no trust yourself and your ability to do things and achieve desired outcomes, then you will never be able to truly trust someone else to give you the desired outcome in terms of a genuine relationship.
If you cannot remain loyal and be true to who you are, nobody else is going to be loyal to you.
Everything starts with the self before we begin to add other people into the equation.
If you are tired of not finding people that respect you, whether it be friends or romantic partners, it is because you do not respect yourself.
I see this more often then not when it comes to people having failed relationships.
Most of us believe that we do respect ourselves and yet, we continue to attract people that are not right for us and it is because of a lack of self-respect.
I can speak from personal experience that every woman I have attracted into my life that was not right for me, came at a time when I did not respect myself.
I cannot honestly sit here and say me attracting and being attracted to promiscuous women is because I respect myself.
In fact, it is the complete opposite.
Men being attracted to promiscuous women and deeming them to be "wife material" is a result of a lack of self-respect.
The same way that a woman being attracted to men that are considered "high status males" that are insecure is also a lack of self-respect.
We only attract what we put out into the universe.
When a man is confident and has self-respect, the promiscuous woman no longer becomes an option as to who he chooses as a wife.
The same way that a woman who has self-respect will not entertain men who display degenerate behavior.
Even at times when I believed I truly respected myself, I found me putting myself in some questionable situations that often ended up with undesired outcomes.
Luckily for me, I have been able to learn from my mistakes and be able to think more clearly about the kinds of people I want in my life, whether it be friends or the woman I choose to share my time with.
I believe everyone is capable of learning from their mistakes, even though most people don't and end up settling for whatever makes sense in that moment.
When life is long, I believe we would all be doing a disservice to ourselves to not try and learn from our mistakes so that we can all flourish and achieve our own desired outcomes for the rest of our lives.
This all starts with establishing within ourselves, the three important qualities that I have outlined in this post: trust, loyalty, and respect.
Oftentimes when people do not respect themselves, they will push away people that do because the people that do will hold them accountable for poor behavior.
A lack in self-accountability is a serious lack of self-respect because failing to hold yourself accountable is exactly why you continue finding yourself in situations with undesired outcomes and you do nothing to change it.
Without self-respect, your ability to be loyal and be trustworthy to other people goes right out the window.
When men do not respect themselves, they often find themselves chasing short-term pleasure.
When women do not respect themselves, they often find themselves chasing attention and chasing men.
People that come from a place of lack will continue to attract more of the same because it is an internal issue that has not been resolved.
People that come from a place of abundance, peace, and gratitude will continue to attract more of those things because their intentions are pure and only choose things that work for them.
There is a lot to be grateful for and I believe it is easy for people to say that, but rarely ever live by it.
I have learned through my life and working on a ranch with horses that everything that we need is right in front of us, it is just a matter of making the best out of the tools we are naturally given and trying our best to acquire new tools.
It takes a lot of work to gain self-respect.
You don't just go to therapy and all of the sudden have respect for yourself - you need to be able to wake up every single day and make commitments to yourself to be better and do things that make you stronger, smarter, and healthier.
No-one is ever going to be able to see your value, or see you and being someone who is loyal and trustworthy if you lack self-respect and confidence.
It is easy to distinguish people that lack self-respect and confidence when you have done the work on yourself to acquire those things.
If you lack them, people that have them will never want to be around you.
I am not saying this to be mean, but it is a harsh truth.
If a man is supposed to protect a woman with his life and she is making him look stupid by talking to other men behind his back, it is from a lack of self-respect.
If a woman is supposed to support her man to be the best man that he can become and hes spending his time jerking off and playing video games, it is due to a lack of self-respect.
If men cannot willingly do hard things and make commitments to ourselves everyday to be come a better, more capable men, then we are useless to women.
In the same sense that if a woman cannot work to be a soft, feminine, authentic care-giver, then men will never see her as truly being valuable as a woman.
What people need to remember is that it starts with the self first!
If you cannot acquire these qualities on your own, you are never going to be able to offer them to other people.