Hey there. This is clay with modern love.life. And in this video we're going to be talking
about is my ex taking advantage of me. This is a question that people have from time to time.
Is your ex taking advantage of you? I can't say that. They're absolutely not because there are
people out there that will try to take advantage of you, for sure. However, you should know if your
ex has it in them to do that. If your ex is the type of person who might take advantage of you,
you were obviously in a relationship with them, you know, their personality probably better than
I do, probably better than any other coach or any other person out there would. So you should have
a good sense of, of if they have it in them to take advantage of you. However, in my experience,
most of the time they, they, they really, aren't trying to take advantage of you. They're just
genuine people trying to do their best to live their own life. You know, they might just be
confused. They might just simply be asking for what they want. And like lo and behold,
you give it to them. Maybe they just genuinely want some help with something. And you just show
up as someone who can help them and is willing to help them. But one thing is sure is that if you're
wondering, if they're taking advantage of you, chances are, there's probably something in
Your needs Or wants that is not being met in this
situation here. And we want to definitely address that by the way, you know, once again, I am in
the forest near my house right now because they are doing some work on my house. And
just with all the stomping on the roof and everything else, I just can't actually record
videos this week at home. So here I am in the forest. If you, if you like me in the forest,
um, let me know in the comments section, or give me a thumbs up for this, for this video. If you
don't like me in the forest, also give me a thumbs up on this video. It does help me out. We want
to talk about your boundaries, your limits, uh, what you are comfortable with now. Obviously you
probably want to get closer to them emotionally. So there's a part of you that feels okay.
I need to say, yes, I need to do this. I need to do this. They'll say yes and want to get closer to
me. That puts you in a tricky situation where you may potentially be in what we would call a covert
contract. Now, covert contract is where you do something. You give something, you are helping
someone with strings attached. You're basically saying like, okay, if I help you with this, then
you'll fall in love with me. If I do this favor for you, then you'll want to go out on a date with
me or whatever the case might be. And like, again, that's fine. If both of you are openly agreeing to
this, but most of the time with covert contracts, it's, you know, obviously covert, uh, you're
not openly talking about this. You're not openly agreeing to this. It's just sort of implicit.
It's implied. It can set you up for a lot of disappointment. When you know, you uphold
your perceived side of the bargain by helping them out, and then they don't get closer to
you. It can cause you to feel like maybe they are taking advantage of you. The real truth of
the matter is though is that they never even knew that there was this string attached to your help,
your, your participation, your encouragement, your support, your whatever, what we want to do
first and foremost is take the focus away from, okay, is this going to position me a place where,
um, you know, they owe me something or they're going to do something for me because I did
something for them. And we want to start by asking yourself, okay, do you want to do this for you?
For them? Do you want to help them out? Do you want to support, support them through
whatever it is that they're going through? Do you want to provide your assistance in some way, if
you do, and you genuinely do then fine, go ahead and support them with no strings attached. If you
don't, then just let them know that you don't, if you don't. And because it's some sort of boundary
thing where it's like, okay, I could see myself doing that for someone that I'm in a relationship
with, because we're not in a relationship. I don't think we could then, um, lovingly let them know
that that's the case. Lovingly, let them know that there's something more or on the other side of
commitment, you know, like a super common example of this is, uh, I'm trying to watch my words here.
Cause last time I just directly talked about this, we got like, you know, sandbagged by YouTube.
But, um, when, when w when a man wants to be physical with a woman, um, and the woman leaves
that, that she needs to say yes to use the, uh, physicality, the physical connection as a backdoor
to commitment again, that's fine. If you wants to do it, and she can just enjoy it for what it is,
but if there are strings attached, um, you know, you, you're in a tricky place because you want
to obviously reward him for his desire and you, because you obviously want any partner of yours to
actually desire you. Right. But you also want to let him know that you don't feel comfortable with
it. Um, at least not, unless there's a greater degree of connection between the two of you.
So you might just say something like, you know, you know, that wouldn't feel really nice right
now. Um, so that's, that's rewarding him. That's letting him know that, Hey, you appreciate his,
his desire in you, but then you might also say, you know, Hmm, that feels really good right now.
However, I just don't feel right doing this, like outside of a committed relationship,
or I just don't feel that, that this makes sense, given where the two of us are right now,
something along those lines could be really helpful that lets him know that like, okay,
You're enjoying this. However, you Have certain boundaries, you have certain
limits to what you, you feel comfortable with. And you're not willing to compromise on those, um,
at least right now in this particular situation. Um, so, so it's really important that you let your
partner know if there are some sort of boundaries in place. And it's really important to, you
can give without any sort of, um, expectation involved, any sort of expectation of reciprocity.
If there is some sort of covert contract thing there, I mean, the ideal thing is you're going
to give something because you feel comfortable giving it and you just want to give it,
um, for the sake of giving it no strings attached. Um, if there's some sort of boundary in place,
yes. Obviously, uh, enforce it in a loving sort of way and take a stand for yourself.
Uh, this is really super important, but most of the time, your ex isn't intentionally
trying to use you most of the time. They're just confused. They're just trying
to figure things out on their own. They're just trying to, um, you know, ask for what they want.
They're just in the moment something feels good and they're just going for it. And, you know,
it's your responsibility enforce any boundary that you have. So definitely make sure that you do that
by the way, if you do like these videos that we do, please make sure that you give this video
a thumbs up for the YouTube algorithm so that you can help us out with, with all of that. Um,
and if you do like me out in nature, please, uh, please leave a comment down below letting me
know your thoughts on that. Um, and I don't know, maybe I'll go ahead and give it a shot. We'll see.
Maybe we'll do more videos outside, especially since the weather's nice this time of year.
And if you do want to get some, some coaching from us, once again, if you do sign up for one of our
courses, um, we will give you the option to sign up for, for coaching, where you can get three
coaching calls with coach Fiona, coach Francis, and also myself, um, on our team, in addition to
the course that you sign up for. So if you've been thinking about ESP or effortless connection
or something like that, but you're just like, yeah, I don't know if it really fits my situation.
Okay, go ahead and sign up, get some coaching with it. And, um, now, now you basically can't lose,
right? And I'll admit that this coaching is a test, a sample of what it might be like to join us
inside of our commit coaching program. And my hope is that if you go through the coaching with us,
the three coaching calls, you, you, you might always be interested in commit. If it makes sense
for you to get some coaching, please feel free to do so. We have links for all of our courses
down below. Yeah. If you, if you want to get some coaching, please feel free to do so. But if not,
that's totally okay. If you just want to support this channel a great way to do that is by hitting
the thumbs up button for this channel. Thanks so much. Take care. And I'll talk to you again.