Note 71: Have The Confidence to Walk Away
Confidence in relationships isn't always the cute, empowered version where everything clicks into place. Sometimes it's the version where you walk away, grieve someone you loved, and choose yourself anyway. In this special bonus episode, Yaya gets honest about why women settle, what it actually costs them, and the part nobody talks about: that refusing to settle can feel lonely before it ever feels free.
Inside this episode:
• What settling really looks like (hint: it's quieter than you think)
• Why so many women learned to tolerate instead of expect
• A real story about a woman who stayed for ten years through betrayal, and what it reveals about confidence and self-worth
• Why men will only do what you allow, and what it takes to raise the standard
• The honest truth about confidence and loneliness: raising your standard costs something
• Why the loneliness you feel after walking away isn't proof you failed; it's proof your standard is finally real
• Why Yaya does this work, and why she refuses to stop talking about it
This is an episode to sit with. Share it with someone who needs permission to stop settling. And please, fill out the Season 2 survey; your voice shapes what comes next.
Transcript
Hey, girl.
Speaker A:Hey.
Speaker A:Welcome back to Notes to Her, the daily pep talk.
Speaker A:I'm Yaya, your confidence and mindset coach, and I am popping back in for one special note before I officially come back for season two in September.
Speaker A:Now, before we get into anything else, I need you to do something for me.
Speaker A:And if you're like, wait, you just got here and you're already asking for something.
Speaker A:Yes, I am, But I promise you, it's something small.
Speaker A:There's a survey link in the show notes, and I would love for you to fill it out.
Speaker A:I really want to know how often you want to hear this podcast in season two, what you want me to talk about and drop your email address so that we can stay connected instead of you.
Speaker A:Just hoping that you catch me whenever I post or I catch you whenever you listen.
Speaker A:Okay, so let's get into it.
Speaker A:And fair warning, this one might be a little longer than you're used to, but I don't care because this one needed room to breathe, and so I gave it that.
Speaker A:Today we're going to be talking about confidence and relationships.
Speaker A:Not the cute version, not the just love yourself and he'll come version.
Speaker A:We're talking about the real one, the one where getting confident actually costs you something, where it can make you lonely before it makes you happy, where you will lose people you did not want to lose simply because you stop settling.
Speaker A:That's what this note is all about.
Speaker A:So let's get into it.
Speaker A:Now.
Speaker A:I think we can both admit that we don't walk around saying, I'm settling.
Speaker A:A lot of times we'll say, I don't want to be too much.
Speaker A:I don't want to nitpick.
Speaker A:He's not perfect, but nobody is.
Speaker A:I should just be more understanding.
Speaker A:Maybe I'm just being dramatic.
Speaker A:That is not understanding.
Speaker A:That's shrinking.
Speaker A:Settling rarely looks like a woman who's lying on the floor crying, I'm settling.
Speaker A:It looks much quieter than that.
Speaker A:It looks like talking yourself out of your own discomfort.
Speaker A:It looks like explaining away a red flag before anybody asks you to.
Speaker A:It looks like making yourself smaller so the relationship feels bigger.
Speaker A:Low confidence doesn't always scream.
Speaker A:In fact, most of the time it whispers.
Speaker A:It whispers, don't ask for that.
Speaker A:You'll see.
Speaker A:Needy.
Speaker A:It whispers, don't bring that up again.
Speaker A:You'll seem like you're nagging.
Speaker A:It whispers, just let it go.
Speaker A:At least he's here.
Speaker A:At least he's here.
Speaker A:Listen to that.
Speaker A:That is not a standard, and that is a survival strategy.
Speaker A:And we're done with that.
Speaker A:So if you're here asking how you got here, how you got to the place where you were settling for less, I'm here to let you know that you didn't just wake up one day and decide to accept less than you deserve.
Speaker A:You learned it.
Speaker A:Maybe you learned it from watching someone you love stay in something that clearly wasn't good for them, and you absorbed the lesson that love requires endurance.
Speaker A:Maybe you learned it from a relationship where you spoke up once and the fallout was so bad, so cold, so punishing, that you decided it was easier to just not speak up again.
Speaker A:Maybe you learned it in a way before any relationship.
Speaker A:Maybe it started with a parent whose love felt conditional.
Speaker A:Maybe it started with being the easy kid, the one who didn't make waves because waves got you in trouble.
Speaker A:So you got really good at one tolerating.
Speaker A:And somewhere along the way, tolerating started masquerading as loyalty.
Speaker A:Enduring started masquerading as love.
Speaker A:And the woman who can withstand the most became the woman everyone praised for being so understanding, so patient, such a good girlfriend or wife.
Speaker A:Nobody tells you that what they're actually praising is your nervous system quietly agreeing to disappear.
Speaker A:Now, I want to tell you this story that has been sitting on my chest since I heard it.
Speaker A:And I knew it would be good to share in this note.
Speaker A:So there's a woman.
Speaker A:Her name is Dana.
Speaker A:She has been dating this man for about 10 years now.
Speaker A:They keep separate homes, but they have a whole life together.
Speaker A:Somewhere in there, he started seeing someone else on the side without her knowledge.
Speaker A:And he eventually got that woman pregnant.
Speaker A:Now, when the woman told him that she was pregnant, you know what he said to her?
Speaker A:Oh, and by the way, I'm in a relationship and I don't plan on leaving it.
Speaker A:What?
Speaker A:And then he went home and told Dana, I have a baby on the way.
Speaker A:And what did Dana do?
Speaker A:She stayed.
Speaker A:She stayed.
Speaker A:Recently, he told her a little bit more truth.
Speaker A:He told her that he has slits and cheated on her with his baby's mother again.
Speaker A:So now, without ever agreeing to it, without ever choosing it, Dana is in something like a potty relationship that she never signed up for because he ping pongs between the two women, between two homes.
Speaker A:Two women who never consented to sharing him, but who are allowing it because the alternative feels like starting over, feels like being alone, or feels like admitting that being in a relationship for years and years brought them nothing.
Speaker A:And I'm not telling you this story to drag him, although we know that I could.
Speaker A:I am telling you this because I am so tired.
Speaker A:I am tired of watching women get cheated on, lied to, disrespected in broad daylight and stay because they have already invested so much time that leaving feels like a loss instead of a rescue.
Speaker A:If that man cheated on you, he does not respect you.
Speaker A:That's not a hard sentence.
Speaker A:That is not a complicated idea.
Speaker A:But I watch women twist themselves into pretzels trying to explain it away, trying to find the version of the story where it's not that simple.
Speaker A:Because the version where it is that simple means that they would actually have to do something about it.
Speaker A:Men will only do what you allow them to do.
Speaker A:So if you allow disrespect, you will keep receiving disrespect.
Speaker A:That's not cynicism.
Speaker A:That's just what happens when there is no standards in the room.
Speaker A:Now let's talk about the bill.
Speaker A:Because there is always a bill.
Speaker A:When you settle, you don't just lose the relationship that could have been right.
Speaker A:You lose access to yourself.
Speaker A:You stop trusting your own gut because you've overridden it so many times to keep the peace.
Speaker A:You stop voicing your needs because somewhere you decided your needs were the problem.
Speaker A:You stopped performing ease performing.
Speaker A:I'm not bothered performing.
Speaker A:It's fine, really.
Speaker A:When something inside of you is quietly keeping score every time you've abandoned yourself to avoid abandoning him, that's the real cost of settling.
Speaker A:Not just a so.
Speaker A:So relationship is a slow erosion of the woman who used to know exactly what she wanted.
Speaker A:And here's the part that really gets me.
Speaker A:A woman with low confidence will often stay in something mediocre or something painful because she's terr that what's out there is worse.
Speaker A:Not because she thinks that the relationship is good, but because she doesn't trust that she's worth something better or that something better even exists for her.
Speaker A:That's not love keeping her there.
Speaker A:That's fear.
Speaker A:Now, here's something that I'm going to be really honest with you about.
Speaker A:I don't want you to sit here and think that the second you build confidence and you stop settling, the universe is going to hand you a man who deserves you.
Speaker A:When everything gets easy, that's not what happens.
Speaker A:What actually happens is this.
Speaker A:You raise your standard and some people will not meet you there.
Speaker A:And it will hurt.
Speaker A:And for a while, it might actually feel lonelier than when you were settling.
Speaker A:Because when you stop tolerating, you stop accepting half effort.
Speaker A:You stop accepting inconsistency, you stop accepting being someone's convenient option.
Speaker A:Or someone's secret, or someone's.
Speaker A:I'll leave eventually.
Speaker A:And the people who only knew how to show up at that lower standard, they will not rise just because you asked them nicely.
Speaker A:Some people will not respect the boundary the second it costs them something.
Speaker A:Some people will look at that version of you who finally knows her worth and decide that that version is too much, when really you're just no longer offering yourself at a discount.
Speaker A:And some people, the hardest ones, are the people that you genuinely love, People you gave real time and real softness to.
Speaker A:And you'll come to a devastating realization.
Speaker A:They can't love you the way that you need to be loved.
Speaker A:Not won't, in a cruel sense, can't.
Speaker A:Some people simply are not capable of meeting the love you're offering.
Speaker A:Not because you asked for too much, but because they don't have access to that depth yet, or maybe ever.
Speaker A:And confidence means that you have to let that be true, even when it breaks your heart.
Speaker A:Now, here's what I need you to really hear.
Speaker A:The loneliness that you feel after walking away from somebody who couldn't meet you.
Speaker A:That is not evidence that you did something wrong.
Speaker A:It's evidence that your standards are finally real.
Speaker A:For a long time, you didn't feel lonely.
Speaker A:And mediocre relationships because you weren't asking enough to even notice the gap.
Speaker A:Low confidence usually doesn't feel lonely.
Speaker A:It feels familiar.
Speaker A:It feels like that's just how it is.
Speaker A:The loneliness shows up precisely because you started asking for more.
Speaker A:The loneliness of standing in your own truth instead of bending yourself into someone else's comfort.
Speaker A:It's the loneliness of finally knowing what you want and refusing to perform satisfaction with less than that.
Speaker A:Even when less than that is available.
Speaker A:Even when less than that is easier.
Speaker A:Even when less than that is right, they're asking you to come back.
Speaker A:That kind of lonely is not punishment.
Speaker A:That kind of lonely is the price of integrity.
Speaker A:And it's temporary in a way that suddenly never is.
Speaker A:Because settling keeps costing you for as long as you stay.
Speaker A:But the loneliness of standing firm, that has an expiration date.
Speaker A:It ends the moment the right person, the right friendship, the right thing, finally meets you at a level that you've been holding.
Speaker A:This is exactly why I do what I do.
Speaker A:It's why I built my coaching practice.
Speaker A:It's why I'm building a community for women who are on their confidence journey.
Speaker A:It is why I will preach confidence until I am old and gray.
Speaker A:Because it genuinely pains me when I watch a woman settling.
Speaker A:This is not about bashing men so let me say that clearly so that nobody misunderstands me.
Speaker A:This is about building women up.
Speaker A:Because you are a queen.
Speaker A:You are not an exaggeration when people say that you are the ones who are bringing life into this world.
Speaker A:And somewhere along the way, so many of us have gotten convinced that we need to shrink in order to keep the peace, that we have to absorb discomfort and disrespect quietly that we had to be grateful for whatever attention showed up at our door.
Speaker A:I genuinely wish women respected themselves enough to raise a standard and force people in their lives to meet it.
Speaker A:I wish that we understood that we deserve better and meant it enough to refuse anything less.
Speaker A:That's the whole point of my work.
Speaker A:It's not about punishing men, and it is definitely not about becoming bitter, just refusing finally to disappear for anyone.
Speaker A:Now, I want you to think about one relationship right now, romantic or not, where you've been shrinking to keep the peace.
Speaker A:And ask yourself, honestly, is this person capable of loving me in a way where I need?
Speaker A:Or have I just gotten really good at needing less so I don't have to find out?
Speaker A:Would you tell your best friend to stay in this?
Speaker A:If the answer is no, what is it costing you to stay?
Speaker A:So if listening to this note stirred something up in you, I'm not sorry.
Speaker A:Because you needed to hear it.
Speaker A:You needed to hear that loneliness isn't proof that you're doing it wrong.
Speaker A:It's proof that you finally stopped negotiating yourself down.
Speaker A:Confidence in relationships doesn't mean that you will never lose anybody.
Speaker A:Sometimes it means you will.
Speaker A:You'll grieve them and you'll still choose you.
Speaker A:You were not made to shrink to keep anybody comfortable.
Speaker A:You were made to be met.
Speaker A:And until you are met, choose yourself anyway.
Speaker A:Lonely and whole is still better than shrinking it into somebody who cannot see you.
Speaker A:Now, don't forget the survey link is in the show notes.
Speaker A:I want to hear from you.
Speaker A:I really want to know what season two needs to be.
Speaker A:So until then, I'll see you in September.
Speaker A:Sam.
