012: Why You Keep Settling in Love (And How to Finally Stop)

Why you keep settling in love — and how to finally stop when your soul is begging for more.

In this deeply honest episode, I walk you through the hidden patterns that cause us to stay in love relationships that don’t meet us. You’ll learn how to reclaim your voice, define what you truly want, and stop playing small in your love story. This is for those ready to raise their standards — and refuse to settle ever again.

What we cover inside this episode:
– The “Wants / Needs / Non‑Negotiables” list that will change how you choose partners
– How your nervous system stays loyal to familiar pain (even when it’s not love)
– My personal story: from abusive relationships to aligned, peaceful love
– How to shift your energy so the right partner actually sees you
– My favorite healing tools — from Human Design to subliminals — that helped me reclaim my self-worth without burning out

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Transcript

0:00

Before we get into today's episode, I wanna ask you something when it comes to love, to relationships, to partnerships, have you been choosing from your worth or from your wounds? Because what I've been seeing over and over is women and men settling, not because they don't want more, but because they've never really asked themselves. What do I truly desire in a partner? So today we are reclaiming that question and we are doing it together. Welcome to the Amplified Female, a podcast where soul led living, spiritual alignment, and intuitive leadership. Meet, hosted by Lisa Garce, a spiritual mentor, intuitive channel, and transformational guide. Each episode is a sacred space to explore healing, purpose, and empowerment. Now, here's your host, Lisa Gar. So let me share something that still blows my mind today. People highly successful, intuitive, brilliant people spend more time researching what kind of car they wanna buy than they do. Choosing a partner. I mean that literally. When they're buying a car, you ask them, right, and they'll know the model, the color, the trim, the exact features, whether they want heated seats, and that's a must have. If having Apple CarPlay is optional or if it doesn't have leather interior, that's a deal breaker. And they'll do the test drives, right? They'll look at reviews. They'll know really what their non-negotiables are and they don't compromise. And if it's not available, they will wait for it, right? They will spend time searching for it, uh, looking in other dealerships, but then ask the same person what they want in a partner. Sometimes I get silence. I've seen confusion. I've seen more surface level answers about what they want them to look like. Because no one taught them really how to choose someone with the same discernment and self-honoring that they use when buying a car. And that's not their fault. It's conditioning. It could be cultural, and it's something that can change. So here is the first tool that I give every single client. Do your wants, needs, and non-negotiables list for relationships. I heard about this many, many years ago from somewhere, but I really encourage everyone to do this and to revisit it once in a while because sometimes we evolve, we change. I know what I thought I wanted in my twenties is not at all what I wanted in my late thirties. So this is how it works. First, start with your wants. These are your pleasures. They're not required, but think of them as something that makes you happy. It could be something like, I want them to, like Italian food, maybe go hiking. Now you're needs are more like requirements, such as I need them to have shared values. I need them to have open communication. Now your non-negotiables, these are your sacred line in the sand. These are the things you do not compromise on. These are the things that define the standard of your inner peace, alignment, even safety. Let me give you an example of like my non-negotiable. Mine was for my family. I've dated men who didn't understand why I love to spend weekends with my family. To them, that was strange to me. That was sacred. It brought me so much love, happiness, joy, connection. My family's amazing and they're hilarious, so I would try and make it work anyway, so I would try to negotiate with them. I would even sometimes missing my family on holidays. I would shrink the importance of what mattered to me because I was taught really to respect the man and kind of put them first to be honest. So I would try and twist my wants and to something else and my needs or my non-negotiables and. That obviously was the biggest mistake because when you abandon, especially your non-negotiables, you don't lose your happiness. You really do lose yourself. I need to say this out loud for everyone to hear because you wake up a year, five years now wondering what happened and I'm sure everyone looking back see the red flags right. But what I wanna bring attention to is the red flags and the fact that you still stayed. And yes, I'm talking to some of you why, and it's not because you're weak. I did the same thing. Not because you're broken, something's wrong with you. Really it's because your nervous system is trained to chase what it already knew, even if what it knew. Was pain. And then there's the beliefs of maybe you thought you're asking too much, you're being too much. Maybe it's me. Maybe he'll change. Maybe I'm being ungrateful or my favorite. Well, he's not really that bad, but what if the truth is this? You are never meant to. Bend yourself just to be loved. You were never supposed to stay where you had to be someone else, and it's not your job to fix what someone else refuses to heal. That's a huge one. This is what the wants, needs and non-negotiables lists will protect you from. It will save you from spending years of life trying to build a home in someone else's. Emptiness or life that really isn't yours or what you want. I ignored all the red flags in my past relationships. I stayed too long several times. I also thought I could heal someone with my love or also that I was the problem. And truthfully, the real reason for my past failed relationships. The big one was I really didn't think I deserved better. I was in physically abusive and emotionally abusive relationships. And if you know me now, that surprises you. It surprises me looking back. But it's true. I was raised in a house really where fighting was normal. I had two older brothers and we were rough. I also trained in MMA in Kav, Maga. In fact, I was invited to compete professionally as a fighter. So when a man shoved me, pushed me, punched me, honestly it didn't register as abuse. And I know that's so hard for me to say right now, but it registered as familiar. And that goes the same with yelling and criticism. I was trained to normalize chaos, and I know many of you are too, but here is what I want you to understand and also so that you can have, I hope, compassion for yourself, your parents' relationship becomes your blueprint for love, whether it was healthy or not. For me, my parents were married for 25 years, but their dynamic was not healthy. It wasn't safe, it wasn't supportive. It taught me that love really meant surviving, not happiness, not thriving. And that became my model and I repeated it, and in the cultural expectations I was raised with. Where women really are taught to priorit prioritize men always. And of course I seen women in my family maybe abandon who they were, abandon themselves, and this isn't about blame at all. This is just about awareness so that we can choose something else so we can teach our children something else. Now, I went to many years of therapy. I love psychology. I love neuroscience. I am obsessed with human behavior. But even after years, I was still stuck in the same patterns I noticed because therapy helped my mind. But my body, my energy still held onto all that trauma. So I started exploring deeper modalities and spiritual tools. That's where I discovered human design, nervous system work, energy healing, but that also was fragmented 'cause I was spending lots of money and time and energy running around to different practitioners for different pieces. And that's why I created the sole reclamation method because I know there's others out there just like me that needed something that met me. While I was still working many hours at corporate, facing all these challenges because I needed something that addressed the mind, the body, and the soul, and something that helped me honor my truth, figure out what my truth is, and especially as a projector with sacred energy, I need to respect my time. Now when I met my fiance, I didn't want a relationship. I didn't need one. I was so in love with my life. I was full. I was whole. I was complete. I, but I heard someone mention the wants, needs, and non-negotiables list again, and I thought, okay, well let me do this just in case and. A month and a half later, he showed up and he didn't just match my list. He exceeded it in ways I didn't even know to write down. Sometimes God, the universe, whatever you believe in, has something better in mind for you, but here is what I know now. I would not have seen him before. I wouldn't have recognized. That kind of love because I hadn't healed in the past who I was that told me I had to settle. If you haven't taken the five Love language quiz, do it. It's free. But here's the deeper piece no one talks about, and I'll put the link below in the show notes. Or you can just Google five Love Language test, so your love language. Once you figure it out, you must give it to yourself before you expect someone else to. That way your nervous system recognize it as safe and not foreign. My love language is acts of service. So before he ever showed up, I started hiring help. I started someone to do grocery runs, cleaning acts of service. I normalized that being. Something I received so that my body recognized it's safe, and that way when someone came, they stepped into that space without being asked because I created that frequency already. If yours, for example, is quality time, take yourself on solo dates. If it's gifts, buy yourself flowers. If it's words of affirmation, record your own voice speaking to your inner child, we don't rewire our worth through theory. We have to rewire it through practice. Now, I didn't have hours a day to do the journaling, the breath work. I was working full-time in a single parent, so I needed the tools that worked with my life and not overwhelmed me. That's also why I discovered and love subliminals and sleep hypnosis. You literally can play subliminals while working, driving, sleeping. There's no extra effort to them. They reprogram your subconscious gently, and in my experience, they help the shifts stick. So you can start today and find trusted versions online. Just make sure that you are able to see the affirmations list because I think it's very important and your energy is too sacred to take in words you don't agree with, so it's very important you know what they are. I also offer affirmations in my three week audio journey. Sorry meant I offer affirmations and subliminals for the three week audio journey. What I want everyone to know is you are not meant to settle. You are already worthy just as you are. And when my daughter passed. I heard her voice say, be the light that helps others see, and that's why I'm speaking, that's why I'm sharing, and that's why I want to create this space for people like you who are done settling, done shrinking, and really calling the life that we deserve. Because life is short, so if this hits something within you, come join me. Inside The Empowered Path, it's my free newsletter where I share weekly channeled activations. There's no pressure, just real remembrance. The link is below in my show notes. Remember, your self worth is sacred. So is your time and energy. So let's raise the standard together.