Many times I have young women call me that are looking to improve their love relationships. They want a boyfriend, they want a husband, they want to work on the problems that arise in their current relationship or they want to end the relationship and are having trouble gracefully exiting.

One of the most common blockages I see to a woman finding the partner she wants is what I have come to call “dishrag syndrome.” No, it doesn’t have anything to do with being chained to the kitchen sink, washing dishes or wearing an apron. It has to do with the ongoing issue some women have with expressing themselves. Instead of being the bold, intelligent women they are, they consciously and unconsciously choose to behave like a limp dishrag. They are going along for the ride, cleaning up someone else’s mess and then being left in sink. No one really thinks about their dish rag. No one likes it or dislikes it. It is just there out of function. Whatever expression that dishrag has comes from the user of the rag. Not the rag. This doesn’t sound like a very appealing life, does it? Yet, many women sign on for just this sort of relationship. Unable to express their own desires, intellect or creativity, they choose to be the dish rag partner. After all at least they have a function in the relationship.

Hiding behind the façade of the supportive wife, they give themselves over to fulfilling the needs of their partner, often neglecting their own desires, rejecting their own thoughts and ideas, no matter how good they may really be. It doesn’t matter. Inherent in her thinking is the understanding that her ideas are not good enough, her expression is not good enough, her creativity is not good enough. Why bother?

Ms. Dishrag searches and searches for her prince, but will never find him. Never will there be a man who worships her. Why? It isn’t because no one can see her amazing qualities. They can. It isn’t because they don’t think she is pretty enough. They do. It isn’t because they don’t think she is smart enough. She is. The problem lies in the fact that when men do get on their knees and worship her, she runs for the hills. It makes her uncomfortable, squirm with judgment about herself. “How could anyone ever like me that much. I don’t even like me that much!”, she says internally.

And then what happens is that unconsciously she says, “I would much rather be with someone that rejects me like I reject me.” So she finds that man and stays with him, even though the experience is passionless, the time they spend together may be boring or the sex may be terrible. At least no one is throwing themselves at her feet, right? She never has to look into the mirror and face the self condemnation she has lathered herself in every day for years.

But what happens when Ms. Dishrag wakens one day and just can’t take the mediocrity anymore. Her life is dry as toast. Isn’t there something better than this? Isn’t there somebody better than this?

Yes, there is, but first Ms. Dishrag has to open herself to a few new possibilities. She has to begin to make very different choices about who she believes herself to be.

Just for a moment she must suspend the judgments about not being good enough. She must begin to recognize the beauty she has to offer. She is interesting. She is playful. She is creative. She is intelligent. She is nurturing.

Embracing the truth about herself she will soon find there are a million and two reasons why someone would worship her. More importantly, why isn’t she with someone that is doing so? Now she is ready to pack her bags and search out that man who will pursue her like the goddess she is. Her palette of men will explode at this point. As she becomes more and more unrepressed, her passion will flow more and more naturally and she will be walking a truer path.

Ms. Dishrag will no longer be a dish rag. Her head won’t sag, dripping in self-condemnation. She won’t be wrung out to dry and forgotten on the clothes line. She will finally be whoever she is meant to be.