I want them to like me

Wanting to be liked causes a lot of problems and misery. If you think you need to, you will play the other person with behavior that should ensure that the other person will like you, to appease and flatter the other, you then play a role and are no longer yourself and alienated from yourself.

Then you are a people pleaser, a mister nice guy, like i always was. You act nice without being real. You are then unconsciously out to control the other person's behavior, by manipulating him and trying to adjust his behavior in your direction.

You forget that you can't change the other person and you can't force them to like you. In addition, the other person actually determines and controls your behavior. Anything you want to check, check yours, that's the tragedy.

Lao tse zei 500 BC: "If you care too much about what others think about you", you are their prisoner all your life'. Lao tse already knew what codependency was avant la lettre.

What the other person thinks of you is entirely his business and you have nothing to do with that, it's not your responsibility it's his. Bonny Raitt sings very beautifully: ‘Can’t make you love me, if you don’t’

If the other is incapable of loving and liking you, that's not your problem, but his. Americans say 'Don't interfere' or don't interfere, it is their karma, their business, not yours

If you like yourself you don't need others to like you and it will be the best part of you because you really, are authentic and amiable instead of playing a role and twisting and turning and being unreal.

Also from my knowledge of the Norwood groups, it appears that women who are unhappy and self-loathing are most eager to be liked and loved., like plaster on the wound and of course it doesn't work because they are mirrored in their behavior and attract partners who are not willing or able to love and like them, and that's a lesson for them that they often don't see, that they look in the mirror and see their own lovelessness reflected to themselves. They blame the partner and present themselves as an innocent victim and take no responsibility for their own life and happiness. What they don't realize is that if you've repressed your own shadow sides, you subconsciously attract them into a partner that shows them to you.…

In her excellent article 'Do you love to be needed, or need to be loved' writes Shari Schreiber: "The person you choose to love and as a partner will mirror your own emotional development"

If people aren't nice to you, you might not be nice to yourself. The Work of Byron Katie also points to that, that's the lesson we should learn.