How To Stop Him From Taking You For Granted

If you feel you are doing most of the work in a relationship and not feeling appreciated or respected, perhaps it’s time to consider he may be taking you for granted. If you want to stop him from taking you for granted however, you may need to take a look at your own behavior and consider that you may be making it easy for him to take you for granted.

I have been talking to women in relationships for years now and the common denominator for women that seem to get taken for granted is often that they over give in a relationship.  Women that over give often find themselves in this position in one relationship after the other.  There is evidence of this on the forum here as I watch the same women get the same results over and over.  You know what they say about that right?  If you want something different, you have to do something different.  You can’t do the same thing or behave the same way (over give) and expect different results.

I have read so much bad advice about talking to your boyfriend to stop him from taking you for granted.  This doesn’t work as a rule.  He will stop for a while and a week or so later, you again start to feel like he is taking you for granted.  Men learned from their Mothers how to take a tongue lashing when they were boys.  They knew their Mother would love the unconditionally regardless of their behavior.  I would like to remind you here, you do not want to be his Mother.

If you keep giving to him when he isn’t treating your right, you are actually reinforcing his bad behavior and showing him it is acceptable to you.  Let’s say for example you are the one that always makes the plans and initiates the contact for a weekend date.  If you are doing this over and over you doing his job for him.  You in essence have helped him become lazy by carrying the load.  Many women who contact me wanting to know how to stop him from taking you for granted have laid the groundwork for him to do so by over compensating for him.

So now that you know that it is most likely partly your fault, how do you turn this around and stop him from taking you for granted.  You stop giving so much when you are getting so little in return.  Relationships should be balanced.  If he hasn’t made plans by Wednesday, make plans of your own.  Take a weekend trip with your girlfriends and get away.  This one seems to work wonders.  There really is some truth in absence makes the heart grow fonder.

In my family, I do all of the cooking and usually a lot of the cleaning, so if I feel taken for granted, it really is my own fault for picking up their slack.  I have found a weekend away shifts the dynamics completely as almost every time I come home to a spotless house.  I also often get I miss you texts from my daughter.

It feels good to be appreciated but you have to do your part.  A man will respect you about as much as you respect yourself and if you spend most of your time bending over backwards to take care of him, you aren’t spending much time taking care of you.  A man will take a woman for granted that doesn’t show herself respect and that includes putting up with his bad behavior.  That is not self respect.