If you keep attracting the wrong type of man, listen up: spiritual life coach Iyanla Vanzant wants you to find real love, not “boo-boo the fool.” On a recent episode of “Help Desk,” she sat down with Jihan, 30, who has been falling into one unhealthy relationship after the next.
“I am attracted to — and I attract — emotionally unavailable men,” Jihan tells Iyanla in the above video.
Iyanla wastes no time getting to the heart of the matter. “Like your father?” she asks.
“That could be a possibility,” Jihan says. She goes on to explain that her father wasn’t there for her as a child. “So that’s why I’m attracted to those types of people?” she asks.
“Well, it’s not that you are attracted to them, because that makes it sound like something that you’re consciously doing,” Iyanla says. “It means that you have a memory and a pattern within you that hasn’t been released or cleared that you need to release or clear so that you don’t keep recreating the relationship with your father.
“And the way you do that is with forgiveness,” Iyanla says.
Jihan admits she struggles with that. “Because forgiveness means that the person won,” she says. “That’s the way I perceive it.”
That reasoning makes no sense, Iyanla tells her. “We are all born for giving and for getting love. And whatever you give, you receive.”
Now the question remains: How do you forgive the man who wasn’t there for you? Iyanla tells Jihan to go to a place where she feels safe. “And sit in the heartbreak of what it was like growing up without your daddy,” she says. “And once you really open that wound and clean it out, you’ll be able then to forgive him [and] yourself.”
Iyanla wants Jihan to understand that withholding forgiveness isn’t doing her any favors. “You’ve been denying yourself love all this time,” Iyanla says. “Because you keep attracting boo-boo the fool.”
“You know him well,” Jihan laughs. “You dated the dad, I dated the son!”
After sharing a laugh, Iyanla tells Jihan the bottom line: “You got to clean that out.”
“I receive that,” Jihan says.
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