How do I get my self worth back after a bad breakup?

[hardboiledink]

I know I should never put my self worth into other people, but I give them a lot of my time, effort, money, and energy cuz I care about them. So when I have a breakup or even with friends not being there for me it really messes me up. How do I get my self worth back especially after a bad breakup and keep it?

[Anonymous]

For what it's worth, my observation on life is that you really want to WORK on developing a stool that's held up by as many legs as possible. Because eventually, it's inevitable that each of those legs WILL get kicked out. But the more you have, the less damage losing any one of them does and then you have more ability to do repairs.

What are the typical legs you can work on building?

Your health
Your relationship (which you just had kicked out)
Your family (parents and siblings)
Your family (spouse and kids) (which you probably haven't been able to get to yet since your relationship was kicked out)
Your career
Your finances
Your home
Your relationships with friends
Your relationship with your broader community
Your hobbies and interests

That's a LOT of legs! At any point in time you may have a few of those that are working well. You should seek to maintain and improve those. But you should ALSO work on building up the ones that aren't so strong for you.

The mistake that many, MANY people make (myself included) is that they over focus on ONE leg. So they may put everything they have into their relationship for instance and ignore their career. Or everything into their career and ignore relationships, health and hobbies. You get the idea. And when you do that if something happens to that one leg, you're FUCKED. But if you had a few legs going it's not such a big deal.

[Anonymous]

Well for starters this is why you take a MEASURED approach with women. NEVER put anymore energy into a woman than she would put into you. That way when it inevitably heads south you can step away unscathed.

But, you layed the tracks already man. Now you have to deal with the fallout. Time is the biggest healer dude. Flirt with women that are gettable. Build your self esteem back up. Then you're ready to return to the major leagues.

[hardboiledink]

Thanks. Yeah, it's hard cuz women will say the words like "I love you" and don't even really mean it or make commitments towards that. It's just emotional BS talk to fool themselves and the guys they're with, and a guy should just pop a girl with a baby if they want her to stick around

[Opinion Owner]

Yeah it isn't easy. But that's why I've trained myself over the years to be very even keeled. I tell her what she wants to hear, because we both know women need that. But I still keep her at arms length until I'm relatively certain it isn't part of her "act". It's a shame but it's necessary to be this way today.

[jahaims]

By not being dumb enough to get your self worth from others.

[petitedollbabee]

Time heals.