Do you have a friend or lover with this problem? 

There is a lovely line in the musical ‘A little night music’. It’s at the end of the song ‘Send in the clowns’

“To flirt with rescue when one has no intention of being saved.” — Frederick Egerman.

Do you have a friend or lover who flirts with getting help, just never does and you find yourself in the same conversation giving the same advice?

We often flirt with any idea of rescue, but it takes real guts to decide to be saved.

So here’s how to understand them. To be saved is the unknown. You don’t know what happens when you leave the cosy nest of a trapped, stuck situation.

Somehow, at some point, you got into the trap (any trap) as it was at the time the safest option. No matter what that trap is.

The most common trap that people flirt with the idea of rescue from, is the trap of a limiting belief. 

At some point in childhood, you may have believed it’s safer to think that there was something wrong with you than to believe that your parents have a problem. They are your caregivers, the ones in charge of the food on the table or the roof over your head, to believe they are wrong in any way or inept is terrifying. You would be totally vulnerable and that was scarier than to believe something as big as ‘I am unlovable, it’s my fault my Dad drinks, my Mum beats me or I am ignored’. Because you can change and try harder, but if there were something wrong with your parents, nothing you can do. As an adult, the limiting belief stays and starts to hold you back. Because you don’t know who you would be without it, the world without it feels unsafe. So even though you know you could be happier, you’d cash in happy for safety any day.

When you are a caring giving person, and someone in your life keeps seeking your help, but never taking your advice. It’s hard on you. 

Those that flirt with transformation, it’s like a sexual tease, you never get laid at the end of it, but your levels of frustration go up ;) OK I’m only kidding, you get my point!

There are some people who just want a hand out of a situation and have a real intention of using their own legs to climb their way out. Then there are some people who make themselves heavier so they fail at climbing out with your help, but they get to say they tried. 

They didn’t try they flirted with an idea and if you’re not careful, they will have your arm off in the process! 

Bat your eyelids back at them and hope that one day they will be ready for a commitment marriage to change. Because change always takes commitment.