The Path to Self-Esteem

As we detailed in my last article, "Self-Esteem: Infidelity's Biggest Trigger," a low self-esteem often plays into the underlying reason that a person falls into infidelity (there is something missing in me that the Affair Partner completes) as well as getting in the way of successfully rebuilding once the affair is in the open (He's rejected me for someone else; I'm a horrible person for doing what I did; motivates blame-shifting and  rug sweeping mindsets). I pointed out how bad self-esteem does not equal low self-esteem, but that good or proper self-esteem removes a focus on self from the esteem equation. If you've not read that article, I encourage you to click the above link and do so.

The route most people suggest to build one's self-esteem revolve around the band-aid treatment of making one's self feel more important, more respected. Often the list includes things like treating yourself to something special, doing something for yourself, demanding more respect from others, adopt some beliefs that make you feel better about yourself, etc. These are band-aid treatments because they treat the symptoms, not the root cause. Doing those things are a temporary fix until the next message you receive from a source that you're a failure, and it all takes a nosedive again.

I suggested last time that the "cure" for an improper self-esteem is humility. Before we dig in to what this is and how to get it, first we need to clarify what it is not. Because when someone brings up humility, they tend to associate it with the following self-esteem destroyers:

Doormat

True humility is not to become a doormat for people to walk over. The real source of this unhealthy relational model is pride, not humility. It is based on believing if I do the right things to make him happy, he'll like me. Hold onto your questions; I'll explain why in a moment.

Codependent Relationship

True humility does not result in a relationship where fixing the other spouse provides the spouse's esteem. It does quite the opposite, freeing the other person to be responsible for themselves, even while you are cheering them on.

Passive Aggressive Behaviors

True humility will not result in underlying resistance while appearing cooperative and agreeable in order to maintain control and get what you want. Instead, it seeks to truly serve others for the betterment of all, including one's self.

Some will look at a truly humble person and believe they are exhibiting one of the above traits. But the key difference is in the above traits, one is seeking to feel better about their self through some attempt to control the situation or manipulate people. That is always a form of pride, not humility.

Humility, on the other hand, results in not focusing on self. On not seeking to control or manipulate others to feel good about yourself. The goal of humility is to place one's self on an equal plane of worth with everyone else.

The base definition of humility in the ancient Greek is "to lower oneself in relation to another." Likewise, the base definition of pride is "to raise oneself in relation to another." In order to put yourself on equal footing with everyone else, you must view their lives and needs just as important as your own. Any attempt to focus on your own self while using others to make yourself feel good is pride. It is putting your self as of more worth because you are using others to satisfy your desires and wants.

Keep in mind what humility is lowering one's self to. It is not inherent worth. All men and women are equal. It is not respect. It is in a focus of meeting needs and desires. If we are truly equal in worth, then my needs and wants are no more important than anyone else's. So the focus of our efforts cannot be on meeting our needs and wants above others. The moment we do, we put self in a position of worth based on what we do.

How Do We Foster True Humility?

You don't become humble by trying to be humble. The moment you seek it, you end up in pride, because you are doing it to lift self to a higher level than others. "Ah, look how humble I've become!" Then we're back to putting self in the esteem equation.

The key to answering this is control. At the heart of pride is making self important by controlling others or a situation. This is true of the doormat, the passive aggressive victim, or the narcissist. Pride says, "I want to control this for my maximum self interests."

To gain humility, we do the opposite. We give the control to others. I know, I know. This goes against our ideas of proper self-esteem. Seems to open up the door to being treated as a doormat, or abused by an abuser. But not really. Here's the difference.

For a doormat person, they meet any and every need because they hope to be liked and appreciated. Or they do it to control the other person in codependent manner or subvert them through passive aggressive behaviors. For a humble person, they do it purely to meet that person's true need, with no expectation of benefiting from it. Self is out of the picture, so there is no doormat to walk on. If they are unappreciative or don't reciprocate, that is no skin off their back since they didn't do it for that reason.

What loosing control means in practical terms is obedience. We become obedient to one another in love. When you are merely being obedient, you don't have the satisfaction of being prideful.

For example, when I was a teen, I decided on my own to clean out the garage because I wanted to surprise my mother. My motivation was to see her shock and praise me for being so considerate and helpful. It became a source of pride for me to say, "See what I did!"

Now back up. Let's say before my mom left that day she told me, "Rick, would you please clean out the garage for me?" Would I have been nearly motivated to do it? No, because self wasn't going to get kudos for deciding to do it. She might say it was a good job, but she would have expected that. Because I was only doing what was expected of me, I wouldn't have been able to take pride in what I'd done inappropriately, at least easily.

What am I saying? Don't surprise your loved ones with gifts? No. Rather, if you want to remove self from the esteem equation through humility, it is done through obedience to one another.

But we need to make one more point on this to avoid confusion. It is not an obedience to their demands and wants, but to what is in their best interest. To put it in obvious terms, if they say, "Give me a gun, I want to go shoot some kids at a school," you'd be obedient to everyone's best interest by not giving him that gun. A doormat would give him the gun. A humble person with proper self-esteem would not.

So, let's put this in marital terms, which is what our focus is here. What if your spouse is abusive, manipulative, etc.? Do you just obey him?

That will depend, but as pointed out, you are obedient to his best interest. Such types of relationships are not healthy for any involved, including the abuser. Obedience in that instance would be to leave in hopes he'll get a clue and seek help to change his destructive relational patterns. It would be obedient to the best interest of the kids, if any, who might suffer emotionally under such an atmosphere, to leave.

It would also be obedient to your own protection. "But I thought you said self doesn't enter the picture?" As a motivation to control others for your own ego boosting needs, yes. But if you do not protect yourself, there are needs other than your own that will go unmet. If mom is an emotional mess because of an abusive husband, she won't be able to fully meet the needs of her kids as their mother. Taking care of basic needs for yourself is being obedient to the needs of others. If you can't function in a healthy way, you can't help others.

"But what about a spouse who is simply not humble to me? Am I to continue to obey him when he doesn't respect me?" Yes and no. Yes, in the sense his lack of desire to meet your needs doesn't affect your reason to meet his needs. You aren't meeting his needs, if it is from true humility, because you want him to return the favor. So when he doesn't, you don't stop. To do so would indicate it arose from pride and a damaged self-esteem you are trying to shore up.

But, to continue in that type of relationship for long is not good for either of you. It needs to be addressed. It needs to be dealt with an healed. You might need to force the issue at some point by making it clear the situation cannot go on without forcing you to take some extreme measures, like separation. However, letting it go on and on would be an indication of pride rather than humble obedience.

In the end, you are simply being obedient to him/her by doing what is in the best interest of all involved. By so doing, your own needs are not front and center, though your basic needs are getting met that keep you going and healthy. But you are focused on other's needs not to use them for meeting your own, but because their needs are just as important as yours.

The end result is self is removed from the esteem question. You know your esteem is equal to everyone else's. Because of that, what others think of you or your performance matters little as it has no bearing on your self-worth. With self out of the picture, you are free to respond to others and be obedient to what is in their best interest out of genuine love for them as a person of worth.

Fostering humility becomes the path to proper and healthy self-esteem that will not only allow a hurt spouse or unfaithful spouse to heal quicker, but will prevent any self-focused decisions to have an affair to happen in the first place.

Self-Esteem: Infidelity's Biggest Trigger

Self-esteem and infidelity are like wind and fire. They both feed off each other.

Low self-esteem is often cited as a core issue within the unfaithful spouse in deciding/allowing an affair to take place. Makes sense, since a lot of the draw for affairs is that the affair partner makes the unfaithful spouse feel good about himself in ways either their spouse isn't or can't do.

Likewise the discovery of a spouse's affair leads to self-esteem issues of competency on both sides of the fence. The sinking of self-esteem by an affair often leads a hurt spouse to be embarrassed, as if its presence was a statement on his ability as a marriage partner to keep his spouse "happy." It leads the unfaithful spouse to avoid dealing with the fallout of the affair in a productive manner because being reminded of it is evidence of their failure and being a "bad" person.

Therefore, it is an important topic to explore in relation to healing infidelity, not only for the above reasons, but because so many people don't know the correct way to think about this issue, and so head down paths to deal with it that never fix it, only put a band-aid on it.

First, let's establish what we are talking about when we use the term self-esteem. It refers to the perception of worth an individual believes they have. There are two primary sources we tend to derive this perception: how we believe others perceive us and how competently we believe we have accomplished a given task. The two sources often overlap, as we may believe a person thinks we have done a good job or a bad job.

Often, the diagnosis is we have low self-esteem, and if we developed some high self-esteem, it would fix the problem. However, it doesn't tend to work that way. As long as our perception of our worth is based upon our belief of what others think and our accomplishments or lack thereof, our self-esteem will shoot up only to fall back down. We can always find someone who doesn't like us or thinks we don't know what we are doing. Most of us cover that up by acting like we don't care and/or putting on a "macho" attitude. But inside we are wilting.

The real solution to this problem isn't to work to make yourself feel better, but to base your self-esteem, your self-worth in reality, not on what others think or how well you can do something. It goes back to forming a foundation of your own belief in your worth as a person divorced from our perceptions.

The reality is most fameously enshrined in the United States Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...

The fact is no one person is inherently worth more or less than another. It is the belief that some are worth more than others that accounts for many of the ills in our society, past and present. It used to be a popular belief that the color of one's skin made a person worth less. Used to be women didn't have the right to vote; their voice was not worth as much as a man's. Still is if a woman doesn't have a particular set of dimensions to her body, she is not worth as much. Still if a man is not perceived to be manly enough, he is looked down on in some circles. Still is that certain sins are seen as making one less of a person.

Therefore, the goal of healthy self-esteem is not merely avoiding a low one, nor to raise one's self-esteem, but to get the self out of esteem.

That is realize and believe that our esteem is based on being a member of the human race and not on what we believe others think of us or what we succeed or fail at. It is not founded on the good or bad choices we make in life. In short, the route to healthy self-esteem is to take your focus off of "me" and put it on "us." When you are no longer the center of your worth as a person, your worth will be based upon the whole group of which no one is worth more or less than another.

You'll notice I said your self-esteem is based in this reality. It isn't that the other things won't affect one's self-esteem, but they won't serve as the foundation for it. Your worth as a person won't change with each failure or when the boss chews you out. No one likes those things and they make us feel bad, but it is a mistake to treat them as forming our worth as a person.

It is when those things form the foundation of our self-esteem that we can feel good about ourselves one day and bad the next. It creates the vulnerabilities to be swayed by someone treating you special, or want to run when not everything is sunshine and roses. It allows your self-esteem to go into the pits when your spouse has an affair because your first thought is, "What did I do wrong?" Especially if blame shifting goes into high gear. 

For those in Christianity, there is an added reality. Not only did God create us all as inherently worth the same, but the message that He came and died to redeem us says a lot about what we are worth to God. The core of the gospel message is that God so loved the world, that He sent His only begotten Son to redeem us from death. For the Christian, that is the basis for our esteem.

I honestly think this mindset is the reason my self-esteem, while it did take a hit due to my wife's affair, wasn't severely wounded. Rather, I focused on the fact that my wife was in danger and how could I help her. Not on myself. Not on how this would look to others. I evaluated my failures as a husband without feeling less of a man or person, or accepting the blame for my wife's bad choice to cheat on me. Those things don't define my worth, as bad as they are.

The road to a healthy self-esteem is to take the self out of the esteem equation. How to do that? Next time we will look at an approach that at first may sound counter-intuitive: humility. "The Path to Self-Esteem." Trust me, it isn't what you think.