Baggage Reclaim » Dating

Dating Is A Discovery Phase: Are you trying to strike up a relationship deal before you’ve ‘discovered’?

Natalie (NML) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:51:13 +0000

Living a life that respects you and follows the path of the values you claim to have means you shouldn’t be trying to ‘strike up a deal’ with any ‘ole person. Unfortunately, this is what many people are trying to do with dating – before you’ve even sussed out the person, you’ve already put yourself under pressure that you’ve got to close the deal! But you don’t know what the deal is plus not enough has actually happened to indicate what the deal possibilities are.

Dating is a discovery phase for you both to find out the facts about one another and work out whether you can strike up a mutually beneficial co-pilotted relationship.

Note, I don’t factor casual relationships (oxymoron alert) into this because it’s a bit thick to claim to be dating with the purpose of lining up someone for a shag, an ego stroke and a shoulder to lean on – it’s called ‘dating’ to get your foot through the door like one of those dodgy sales people. If they told you they were going to sell you a busted up vacuum cleaner or insurance that you don’t need, you wouldn’t let them in. It’s easier to sell it to you as something better and then leave it to you to either discover the truth when they’re long gone or be like “Oops I did it again. Let’s just go with the flow/my fish died/I’m not ready for a relationship.”

If you date without a person shaped void, with your eyes and ears open and your feet in reality, it allows you to become aware of who they are – it stops it from being about what they can give to you to ‘make’ you whole. You’ll begin to discover the facts about them (and they you) and part of this is recognising what the facts mean, even if it signals the end. Sometimes in your eagerness to be in a ‘deal’, you forget a few things:

Being asked for your number is an expression of interest, not a contract being entered into for a relationship or even a date.

Going on a date or few is an expression of initial interest but it’s also not representative of a contract being entered into for a relationship.

Having sex or being sexually intimate isn’t an ‘action contract’ that locks you both into a relationship – unless you’ve both verbally agreed it, it’s not even an automatic precursor to exclusivity.

Experience has taught me that whether it’s in personal or business relationships, many people will talk the talk and appear to be walking the walk in the run up to closing and confirming the deal, but when it comes to putting their proverbial money where their mouth is, they disappear, raise ‘sudden’ objections’, or withdraw what they’ve been offering and leave you with an inferior replacement deal.

Having self-esteem which includes your boundaries and values, plus being knowledgable on code amber and red behaviour, helps you to work out your deal breakers, which are the things you cannot accept and overlook that will render your relationship over.

Dating is like courting each other to strike a deal.

Some of you are trying to strike a relationship deal without doing due diligence.

Some of you think you’re doing due diligence but are looking at the wrong things and then wondering why you’re not in the right relationship. Good sense of humour, shared love of bungee jumping and sleeping at a 17 degree angle and whatever else – no indication of values, or at least not that the ones that are fundamental to you.

It’s ultimately someone’s character that’s going to make or break their participation in a relationship with you.

Some of you are trying to strike a relationship deal by signing on the dotted line with people who are not out of contract on their previous deal.

Some people are courting a few deals and avoiding signing to any…

Some have no interest in or capacity to strike a deal.

Some of you are trying to strike a relationship deal with someone who wants to be a silent partner, even though relationship deals can only be made with joint stakeholders who are putting in 100:100 effort.

Some of you are trying to strike a relationship deal with everyone you date, which is like throwing crap at a wall and hoping it will stick. Or like those companies that are sold for £1 with a view that the buyers will take on the debt, fix the problems, and turn them around…

Some of you are trying to strike a relationship deal from a sandcastle in the sky in fantasy LaLa Land.

You cannot strike a deal with everyone - you’re just not that desperate. When you indiscriminately attempt to strike deals or you’re getting into bed with shady partners, you’re eroding your own value in the process.

Before you commit to the idea of being in a long-term relationship with someone, maintain the commitment you should have to yourself that requires you to act in your own best interests. Always. Then commit to using the dating phase to evaluate the potential of moving into a relationship while enjoying yourself – you do know that you can date and even get laid without losing your mind, your ability to judge a situation, or even yourself? That said, if you’re the type of person who can’t mix sex with getting to know someone, it’s best not to ‘get down’ until you can.

It’s also important to remember that you are not automatically signed into a relationship deal, a mentality that a lot of people who don’t value themselves enough seem to have.

It’s like (and this is mostly for the ladies), “Jaysus, someone’s giving me the time of day! I should want a relationship with them just because. This could be my last chance saloon. Right, I’m in! They’re interested in me so I’m gonna draw up some papers but this is a done deal either way.” Say what?

You get to choose too and you can walk away. When I listen to people talk about some of their dating angst, often with people they’ve known for all of a hot minute, I’d be forgiven for thinking that they must be shackled to what are practically strangers for all of eternity. This isn’t a hostage situation – it’s a discovery situation, mutual discovery at that. To treat it as anything else is to act like they’re automatically OK for a relationship deal regardless, it’s just you that has to prove yourself, which is bullshit.

Even credit card companies do a bit of homework before pre-approving you for a card – I’d like to think you’d put far more effort into choosing a potential relationship partner.

Why are you so committed to something that’s not even a relationship?

Dating certainly isn’t easy, but it’s certainly easier when you remove the pressure of trying to make every date work out, and only try to move forward with the ones that show some actual promise.

Not every person you date has the potential for the relationship you envision. When you’re already acting attached, it begs the question of whether you do this with everyone. You might argue that you do it because they’re so special, but over-investing in people you hardly know with your betting on potential goggles and even ditching your own life for them, sends the wrong message – you’re just not that desperate.

Dating is a discovery phase – you can walk away at any time and equally you have the power to opt into what you want to. Own your power, use it wisely and stop walking around with a handy contract in your pocket ready to hand out to the next person that shows you a whiff of interest.

Are You Waiting To Be Chosen? Why It’s Time To Put Away Your Choose Me Stick

Natalie (NML) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 22:51:25 +0000

When I listen to people explain their frustrations with dating or how they’re feeling rejected after a possible date didn’t materialise, or not getting past a date or few with someone, what I realise is some of us are waiting to be chosen.

In these situations, the dynamic is imbalanced from the outset because you’re putting your fate into someone else’s hands, because you assume that if they choose you that it’s something you want to be in, and on the flipside you assume that if you’re not chosen that it must definitely have been a relationship you should have had.

The trouble with all of this is you’re not showing up as someone who is holding their own and owning their right to choose and go through the discovery phase of dating. Instead, you’re taking a more passive role where you’re happy to be the passenger on whatever journey the driver takes you on, just as long as they take you on a journey and keep driving. If ‘chosen’ for their journey, you may be happy to make their agenda your agenda, or you’ll privately decide that when you’ve got your feet well and truly under the proverbial table, that you’ll be so valued and loved, that they’ll be willing to change.

In effect, it’s like handing over a Choose Me Stick – when someone is in possession of it, they have the power to choose you, validate you, and even shape you.

Why? Because when you’re not showing up to your dates and relationships as an equal party with their eyes and ears open with the right to choose, the only choice you have is to subconsciously and possibly even consciously adapt your behaviour to increase the chances of being chosen.

Think about it: While it’s very possible that initially you might be yourself, as soon as you start to feel like they’re ‘pulling away’, or you’ve already stuck your pump on them and started inflating who they are so that you can think that they’re way more special than they actually are while they look down on you from that pedestal. If what’s on your mind is to be chosen, then you’re going to reflect that in your behaviour which essentially boils down to being and doing things that contradict your values to hold onto someone you haven’t positively chosen, at all costs.

Whatever it is, you change, morph, adapt, twist, and contort to be chosen. You also go into a holding pattern circling over the possibility of the relationship that you want, hoping that air traffic control will give you the signal that you can land and take up your slot.

Waiting for someone to make you a priority, to proceed to a relationship, to not breakup, to leave a different partner, or whatever it is that you’re waiting to be chosen for, just de-prioritises you. If you prioritised you, you’d never be in a situation where someone not only has the power to decide your fate, but to leave a crater sized hole in your life, because by handing out so much power, you’re bound to feel very rejected when it all goes tits up.

When you’re not co-choosing in a mutually beneficial relationship, it all becomes about one person working harder than the other, which by default assigns greater ‘value’ – they’re just not that special.

You may go for the easy, low-hanging fruit option and choose people that you perceive as being more likely to be with you. It could be that you recognise certain things that would register as issues to avoid with someone else, but you see it as an opportunity. Of course, when it doesn’t pan out, it’s like “I can’t believe someone like them doesn’t want me – what’s wrong with me?”

Or you’ll choose a challenge in the form of someone who you think is unlikely to choose you, which may be simply based on the fact that you’d have to convince them to make you the exception to their rule of being unavailable.

Waiting to be chosen is a bit like how some people go about job hunting – they put so much energy into being the right person for the job, it’s assumed that it’s the right job for them. Interview processes do actually involve you evaluating whether it’s the right job for you, which will arise from the questions you ask and what you glean during the interview process plus any other research you do. Instead they get the job offer and then start evaluating whether it’s actually the right opportunity for them. If they don’t get the job, some take it as a huge blow of rejection.

Of course it’s not as great an issue with your job hunting unless you end up miserable in a job that you knew wasn’t right for you but felt compelled to take it because you were asked, or you feel blah about your career, or you end up floating around getting job offers but never staying in a job for any decent length of time and always have a foot out the door…

With dating and relationships, once you start dipping into the Illusions Account, the High Growth Sexual Activity Fund and start planning a future around this idea of what it’ll be like to be The Chosen One, you can see why you will struggle to deal with rejection.

We don’t spend enough time asking if it’s the right job for us, just like we don’t ask if it’s the right relationship for us. It’s like there’s a job going that’s in your field – you want it. Someone in your common interests, appearance or whatever ‘field’ has a vacancy, you’re on it without even truly evaluating what the ‘opportunity’ is. “I’m on it! I’m on it!”

You’re just not that desperate.You technically have a ‘vacancy’ too – surely you don’t want to give it to any ‘ole muppet off this street?

One of the things that job interviews and eventually dating and relationships taught me, is that anything that you get ‘rejected’ by through the process of not being ‘chosen’, there’s normally a very good reason why you wouldn’t have chosen them either. The overwhelming majority of the time, you are already aware of these reasons, it’s just that you get sidetracked by your ego that needs that gold star of someone choosing you. It’s like “I want to be chosen so I have the option of telling them to bog off.”

Newsflash – you have that option already.

What may come as a surprise to you is that your ego needs you to own your power and get on with your life, more than it needs you to bust your proverbial balls, hollow yourself out, or ruminate yourself into a Ph.D on A.N. Other so that you can figure out why you weren’t chosen to be on the rowing team of a boat you don’t even want to be on, or a boat that you’ve already worked out is a bad ride and that you need to get the hell out of.

I’m thankful that whether it was through actions or ego, that I eventually steered myself out of various dodgy dating situations. I’m also thankful that I wasn’t ‘chosen’ for certain relationships – when I was ready to own my power, it left me free to choose and be chosen for a relationship I genuinely wanted for healthy reasons.

This is your life – you must be the primary driver of your choices. Hold your own and put away your Choose Me Stick and stop playing a role in life that says “How can I be the right one for you?” You have control over what you do and don’t participate in – choose (positively) instead of letting life happen to you!

Your thoughts?

Check out my book and ebook Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl in my bookshop.

The Truth About Porkies: Are you comfortable with being lied to?

Natalie (NML) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 23:06:35 +0000

Recently, BR reader Magnolia shared a lengthy quote on lying from which the first line stuck out for me“As soon as there is any kind of deception, stop everything.” (source: Boundaries in Dating) Experience has taught me and so many others, that when you’re eager to date at any cost, you don’t trust yourself, and you’re actually willing to participate in an unhealthy relationship, you don’t stop everything – you continue.

What this immediately communicates is that you’re very receptive to lies, which may shock you if you consider yourself to be a very honest person. It’s important to remember though, that honesty isn’t just about saying that you’re an honest person or believing you’re beacon of goodness while hanging out with a shady crowd and putting yourself on an honesty pedestal.

Honesty involves being prepared to hear and say things that make you uncomfortable, with respect. It also includes respecting reality.

Lying and our acceptance of it from others is about our own moral compass and where we are on the scale of acceptance of reality. When we accept lies, on some level we recognise we’re telling a few porkies of our own.

A lie is a deliberately false statement.

There is a tendency for us to become preoccupied with ‘intention’ in relationships but if your relationship and any perceptions you have about it is based on illusions, fantasy, denial, excuses etc, the whole situation is founded on a mistaken impression.

Intention is all about acting with conscious purpose. We can always rationalise that it wasn’t our (or their) intention to lie or that we’ve even lied with ‘good intentions’, but sometimes that’s a lie too.

The reason why liars can convince is because they insert a smattering of truth to make the lie plausible.

When you’re receptive to a lie, it’s plausible because it makes your own illusions plausible. The smattering of truth may also only be true when it suits the context of your illusions.

Example: They tell you a lie about how busy they are, pressure yada yada yada as to why they’ve been unavailable.

They have been busy (possibly) although they may be busy doing someone else or living up their backside, but it’s not the reason why they’re treating you as they are. It’s plausible however, because some of the busyness may be real but also because accepting the lie means that the illusion that they care and that this relationship is going somewhere can continue.

Lies are like weeds – let one in, more will grow. Admittedly also similar with rats and cockroaches…

What would you do if you had started dating someone and discovered that they’d been lying to you? Would you stay? Or would you go? Just so you know, this is false representation. Now don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that sometimes people panic, feel nervous, insecure or whatever, however what you immediately learn, especially if it’s more than one lie, is that they lie when under pressure or fearing being out of control, and more importantly, they don’t seem to think you have a right to make choices under honest conditions.

If someone told you they were going to be and do certain things and it didn’t come to pass, what would you do? Hang around and act like a bailiff collecting on a fantasy debt? Or force your feet back into reality and opt out? Talking up a future to gain an advantage in the present is Future Faking. If they put some intense action behind it, it’s also Fast Forwarding.

What would you do if someone lied, ‘confessed’ to ‘all’ the lies, then later down the line you discover that there’s more lies? Would you wait for the next dripfeed? Or would you bounce them and exit back to reality?

If you don’t exit on immediate recognition of dripfeeding, it’s like giving someone the controls to your life to paint your reality for you and then they keep changing the ‘set’ with each new revelation.

If someone told you that they lied to you because you might not have gone out with them, or you’d have left, what would you do? Rationalise it and even feel flattered? Or feel duped and even violated? When you’re lied to, so that you’re prevented from making honest decisions, it’s obtaining goods by deception.

What would you do if someone said something to you that you recognised as being untrue? Would you recognise what this means, process it, and apply it into your action? Or would you play Columbo investigating the crap out of them or even worse, investigating yourself for reasons to blame you?

When someone says something to you that’s untrue and you know it, either because it’s all or partially untrue (that’s enough), this is mind f•ckery, especially if they deny it, which is gaslighting. It’s use of The Outrageous Principle. This relies on the recipient of the lie having their own issues with honesty – lack of self-esteem and self-trust means that you quickly offload what you know to be true, to accept their lie so that you can proceed.

They (the liar ) need to have an almost steely confidence and lack a moral code, empathy, or remorse unless…they suddenly need to take the high road for themselves.The lie is so blatant, you suddenly think maybe it’s not a lie especially if lying so callously is something you feel that you wouldn’t do. It’s either accept the lie and realise they’re dangerous, or…lie to yourself.

Now I could go in deep on this whole lying thing, but let’s stick with the topline data:

If you accept lies in your relationship that actually change the truth of what you can assume and expect about your relationship, you basically believe that there are good reasons to lie and to even be deceived. You may even see it as a sign of ‘love’ and them being so enamoured with you, they didn’t want to risk you being in reality….

It’s time to ask yourself the crucial question: How desperate are you? Particularly if it’s a new relationship (you’re in the discovery phase anyway), what kind of frickin’ potential are you seeing in someone who is getting to know you with lies? It’s a fast slide down a slippery slope – how many excuses and lies you’re willing to put up with directly correlates to how deep you’ll get into an unhealthy or even abusive relationship.

Lies are a stop, look, listen and do not proceed until fully rectified. And/or opt out. If it’s early in the relationship or there are other examples of boundary busting behaviour, do not fear pressing your flush handle.

Particularly after you recognise that one or both of you are lying and you don’t seek to immediately rectify the situation by reconciling the lie with the truth, taking responsibility, and moving into a position of honesty – one that respects the truth – it’s game over, no credits.

There’s nowhere to go because lies on top of lies on top of more lies and beyond, just digs you further into the ‘lie hole’. As it wasn’t nipped in the bud so that your relationship could be put onto a level footing, neither of you can truly trust in yourselves or the other that the truth is now ‘out there’ between you and that you’re not lying about about the fact that you’re now being honest, or even lying to yourselves. If you’ve ever been around someone who doesn’t have a realistic vision of themselves, they can actually be very convinced of their own lies so even if you decide to stick to facts, you’ll become surplus to requirements because you’re a reality check.

It’s better to start fresh and accept no lies from yourself or others – then you know exactly where you are.

Your thoughts? (Not porkies obviously…hehe)

Check out my book and ebook Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl in my bookshop.

Do You Have a ‘Not Allowed To Fail’ Mentality To Dating & Relationships?

Natalie (NML) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 23:05:28 +0000

When I was a product design student, I learned through theory and experience that it’s better to recognise mistakes, which are actually opportunities for change, or even ‘failure’, which although it’s a lack of success, it at the same time also represents another opportunity for change. Recognising when something isn’t working and applying that knowledge was better than deciding “I am a product designer and anything I make is right and must work.”

If you’ve ever watched something like Dragon’s Den, a British show where entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to millionaire investors, you’ll know that some people are so invested in the potential of their idea, in spite of external indications that they need to tweak or abandon, that they’ll sometimes sink hundreds of thousands of pounds into bonkers ideas. Well sometimes, our attitudes to relationships or our lives in general can be like this – we don’t know when to fold and we also don’t process ‘feedback‘.

Too many people operate on a ‘not allowed to fail’ mentality which heightens a fear of failure. It’s like no mistake or lack of success can be admitted, and when they eventually are, it’s taken so deeply, it’s as if they’re seen as permanent marks on your ‘relationship record’ or your ‘life record’.

If you have a ‘not allowed to fail’ mentality, when you’re dating or in a relationship and recognise that all is not well or it doesn’t work out, your attitude is like:

“I’ve… given you my time, energy, spent some money, spent some ‘attraction coins’, kissed you like my life depended on it/forced myself to feel more attracted than I actually was, had sex with you at X days/weeks/months (and just in case you didn’t know, I wouldn’t have had sex with you if I didn’t think that we were serious or had the potential to be), used up my ‘trust fund’ (I find it hard to trust and now I don’t know how I’ll trust again), believed in your potential, cared about you, put on my best drawers, given you my game face, acted like I liked things that I didn’t, shaved my legs, been on three dates with you that took up a combined total of 11 hours and 27 minutes of my life, declined a date with someone who I wasn’t interested in anyway but who I might have forced myself to be if you weren’t around, didn’t take the number of that person that smiled at me on the train the other day (they could be the fricking one and you’ve robbed me of that chance), and extended some hope and fantasy credits amongst other things – you’d better give me my bleeeeep bleeeeeep [insert expletive of choice] relationship!”

If I focused on my various dodgy relationships that I clocked up, I’d see them as ‘permanent’ and this would actually become reality because I’d be dragging around all of my baggage and showing up to my relationships believing I brought less to the table, because I had a relationship or few that didn’t work out even after I tried to bust a gut, or I was the other woman. It would be like having to go out there and date like millions of others, but having penalty points and showing up with an ankle monitor sending a beep to me every time I dare to hope or try “Don’t get too carried away Natalie – you’re a failure.”

But my mistakes and ‘failures’ aren’t permanent – they’re events in my life that I had a part in, but unlike back then where I was experiencing them or in the aftermath and seeing my eff up’s as a sign that I was indeed not good enough, a failure, and worthless, now I see them as events that taught me what I needed to know when I was ready to watch, listen, recognise, and apply.

A critical aspect of dealing with mistakes and failures, is that the period of time from recognition of an issue to decisive action shrinks and that the period of time between relationships spent dwelling on a failure, also shrinks. It’s a bit of a Goldilocks ethos – not too short (for example weeks for a serious relationship) and not too long (years, especially if the time elapsed is greater than the relationship itself).

You are far more likely to be greatly impacted by even a brief acquaintance not working out if it takes you a very long period of time before you’ll work up enough confidence and energy to try again, or if you ricochet around from relationship to relationship avoiding your pain.

Yes you could sit out your relationships and wait to have the ‘perfect conditions’ – the truth is, getting out of your comfort zone, facing your fears, and putting yourself out there again means that discomfort comes with the territory. If we could all find a relationship without risk or without even leaving the house, what an easy time we’d have but as many of you have already discovered even with online dating, there’s no such thing as ‘risk free’.

When you start to look at failure and mistakes differently, like me you’ll realise that they are and were just relationships. These guys were not my father reincarnated for me to validate myself, nor were they gods. Yes we have history, yes there were feelings, yes we could have all stood to do quite a few things differently, but it wasn’t just me in these relationships – if I failed, they failed, hence if they and everyone else can get on with their lives, so can I. So can you.

Unless two people have only ever been involved with each other, each of us have been with people, who’ve been with people, who’ve been with people. Believing that you’re a failure for making mistakes and having some failed relationships is a very distorted view.

We all have experiences where the sum of events surrounding them are ‘lacking success’ but you’re a living, breathing, human being with life in you yet, so every day presents you with opportunities to grow out of mistakes and to experience success. Writing yourself off as a ‘failure’ is a waste – what are you supposed to do with the rest of your life? Not try?

Not trying again and refusing to adapt and grow, looks more like failure than a relationship not working out.

You’re independent of the events – you are not your relationships and you’re not the other person. If your identity is intrinsically tied to these, you’re at the mercy of external factors beyond your control. This is why after a breakup, it’s the relationship that should be broken, not you.

Your mistakes and any failures (bearing in mind that with the benefit of hindsight, you’ll likely see them as blessings in (painful) disguise, pave the way to your successes. You’re allowed to fail – you can only learn from it. Don’t treat each relationship like it has to be right because of your presence – it doesn’t. Allow yourself to fail at things (and move on from them), so you can allow yourself to succeed.

Your thoughts?

Check out my book and ebook Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl in my bookshop.

When They’re Not Over Their Ex: A Lesson In Empathy

Natalie (NML) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 22:39:13 +0000

You meet someone, they ask you out, you enjoy yourself, you continue talking and spending time together, and feel the attraction and desire for a relationship building as the dates continue. Unfortunately, in spite of chemistry, common interests, apparent shared interests, direct and indirect references to the future etc, it becomes apparent that they’re not over their ex either because they tell you, or it becomes apparent through their actions.

Despite the new ‘evidence’ that scuppers your ‘case’ for a relationship, they tell you they like you a lot and that they want to be friends, even if you don’t shag. Or they try to get the fringe benefits without the relationship.

Here’s what empathy would look like: You’d put yourself in their shoes and immediately recognise that after a breakup, it’s a confusing and painful time where you go through a plethora of emotions – it’s time to get out of the way. You may even recognise that when you’re keen to avoid the hurt, it can feel oh so tempting to attach yourself to someone in the hope that they’ll distract, numb, or even excite, but you know that what they don’t do, is fix your breakup for you.

You’d recognise that not being over your ex, in whatever guise it takes, means still emotionally tied, whether it’s positively or negatively. It means that you might still be in touch with them, a reunion may still be under negotiation, and that you may be putting a lot of effort in to not making contact or swatting off their efforts.

It means thoughts popping into your head when you least expect them that you may feel like you have no control over. It means crying unexpectedly or feeling a sudden surge of anger or a deep wave of sadness.

Being empathetic means that recognising that they’re hurting but may be finding it hard to deal with it. There may have been no ill intention and that they were and are interested in you, it’s just they overestimated how ‘ready’ they are for a relationship. They thought they could handle this and didn’t want to miss out – sure you’ve met people when you’re not in the right place and been afraid of letting them go in case they get snapped up by someone else.

It’s recognising the futility of this three-in-an-emotional-bed-situation and wanting no part of it, because even though you are sympathetic and compassionate, this wouldn’t be good for them and it sure as hell wouldn’t be good for you. Of course they’re going to want to spend time and hold on to you (Who wouldn’t?!), but you have to do what they’re unable to do for themselves or you – the right and respectful thing, because you don’t do second best.

Here’s what not empathising looks like: You’d put yourself in their shoes and immediately recognise your pain and your experiences…even if their pain comes from a different place and they’ve in fact had entirely different experiences. You’d recognise that it’s a confusing and painful time, but reason that they’re ‘confused’ and that if you give them enough time, they’ll forget their ex. You recognise that it’s an emotional rollercoaster but you don’t trust your own feelings and judgement, so maybe they have it wrong too.

You may reason that you’ve often dated or even had relationships when you were still emotionally invested in an ex but you believe that the love you had to give was still a lot, even if you were divvying it up on the quiet – it’s not though; you’re overvaluing what you bring to the table.

You may believe that it’s the job of the next person you date if they’re that fabulous, to make you forget about your ex, so by the same token, if you snatch the hot seat, then you’re validated as being ‘good enough’. Then you’ll think “What? They’re telling me that they’re not over their ex! We were having such a great time but I obviously wasn’t good enough to make them forget about them. I feel so rejected! I just need some more time to show them!”

While not being over your ex means press your eject button, you might recognise this, you might not. You’d be worried that you were ‘impatient’ and that after allowing yourself to be a Buffer, once they’d recovered in your Rebound Hospital, they’d skip on out of there and be an available, over their ex partner with a different person. This would then translate into you seeing potential and believing that they want you to be ‘patient’.

Then you’d think to yourself that if someone was willing to love, care, and shag you even though you were hurting and not ready for a relationship, that you’d be so grateful when you were feeling better, that you’d give them a relationship full of the potential you envision as a ‘reward’.

It’s either that they said they’re not over their ex, so you decide their actions say otherwise, or you see they’re not over their ex, but decide that they’ve said different – either way, nothing matches.

You’d say stuff like “Well if I wasn’t over my ex then I’d leave” or “If I wasn’t over my ex, I wouldn’t get involved with someone else” and then reason that ipso facto, they haven’t left and they did get involved with you, so they must be over their ex. Then you’d wonder if they were talking out of their bum as a gentle way of letting you know that you’re not ‘good enough’.

You’d put yourself in their shoes and remember the good times you’ve had, even if they’re brief, and remember the potential you’ve seen, and then see it for the both of you. You’d imagine that they don’t want to make the ‘wrong’ decision, so decide to help them not make any decision.

Sometimes, you get empathy mixed up with sympathy, which is feeling pity for someone’s misfortune, and then sometimes, you get empathy mixed up with bullshitting and fantasising.

If you put too much of you into another person’s situation in the guise of empathy, that’s not recognising and sharing the feeling’s of another – that’s latching and hogging. It’s not about you.

You can relate to their situation without becoming them and making their situation about you. You will make too many assumptions about their motivations and the meaning of their actions and even tell yourself that you know what they’re thinking – you don’t.

Empathy allows you to consider another person’s perspective – if you make it about your feelings, it’s your perspective, which when you deny, rationalise, and minimise the truth so that you can remain in a situation, turns it into a fantasy.

Genuine empathy allows you to be real. Genuine compassion for someone in a difficult situation does not always boil down to doing the easy thing, especially if you doing that, is more about keeping you in your own comfort zone – you may do more harm than good, including to yourself.

When someone shares a piece of information with you that’s critical to the status or perception of your relationship, such as “I’m not over my ex”, first ask yourself what it means about them/your perception of them, and then ask what it means about the future of your relationship/the potential you had in mind. This then helps to form action points or the basis for asking important questions to clarify their position, which then can help you make healthy decisions in reality.

What you shouldn’t be asking is “What’s wrong with me?” Nothing’s wrong with you – they’re hurting/struggling/whatever. They’re emotionally dealing with something from their past, so they cannot recognise and truly participate in a good thing in front of them.

Your thoughts?

Check out my book and ebook Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl in my bookshop.

Are You On Standby? Why You’re Not Mr or Miss Last Minute Option

Natalie (NML) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 21:32:35 +0000

Over the past few days since I wrote about whether you’re ready to date again, there’s been a flurry of discussion in the comments about people who rely on making last minute plans under the guise of being ‘spontaneous’ and who when you try to make plans, or call them on their lack of commitment, get all shirty with you.

This is what spontaneous looks like: You’re dating or in a relationship for a while, you see each other regularly, make plans in advance and then one day they phone up and say “I just found out that X is doing a gig tonight – do you fancy it?” or “Surprise! We’re off to Paris/having a weekend away/eating out tonight” or giving a gift just because.

This is not what spontaneous looks like: You’re dating or in a relationship for a while and you only find out what you’re doing on a Friday evening or on the day that it’s happening. Plans are rarely if ever made in advance and when you try to, they’re difficult to pin down, so in the end, the decision for them to agree to your suggestion is so last minute that they’ve pulled their usual stroke on you again – passive aggression.

Spontaneous also doesn’t look like: You haven’t heard from them for several days, a week, a few weeks, or even months and then a text comes through “Hey…hope you’re well. Fancy going out tonight?” And then after you spend time together, you don’t hear from them again for another several days/weeks/months until the next textvite comes through. That’s mind f*ckery. You can be damn sure that it also doesn’t sound like a call after dark asking whether they can ‘come over’ – that’s a booty call.

Spontaneous: “performed or occurring as a result of a sudden impulse or inclination and without premeditation or external stimulus.” (Oxford Dictionary)

I’m all for seizing the moment but if the only time I hear from you is when you’ve seized the itch in your pants, or your ego needs some pumping, or when you’ve finally decided to get around to thinking of me and considering me in your plans at the last moment, I’d rather take a raincheck.Sometimes it’s nice to fly by the seat of your pants, but the type of person who relies on keeping you on ‘standby’ as an option to avail of and actually expects that should they choose to only spring their plans on you five minutes before, that you’ll drop everything, is someone who is like the seat of someone’s pants…after a bad day – shady.

It’s like you’re on standby for a flight or a backup generator!

Do you want to be someone’s ‘sudden impulse’ or do you want to be considered?

Would you be happy with someone not thinking ahead, planning, and committing to something as basic as short-term plans?

Just like the whole ‘busy’ issue, it’s a question of valuing other people’s time.You can be damn sure that the person who doesn’t make plans with you assumes that you’re on their ‘waiting list’ without something better to do. Often, it’s not a question of what you’ll be doing together; it’s a question of whether you’ll be seeing each other at all.

Much like people who keep emphasising how ‘honest’ or ‘nice’ they are, suffer with Those Who Doth Protest Too Much, when someone goes to the trouble of telling you that they’re spontaneous, you’re dealing with a Future Avoider that has basic commitment issues. If you can’t get them to commit to making short-term plans, may the force be with you for anything bigger.

These people expect you to go with their flow – this will gnaw at your insides, having you anxious about whether you’ll be ‘picked’ each week. Feck that!

One of my ex’s wasn’t keen on ‘making plans’, often using the phrase “flying by the seat of my pants.” Most weekends I’d be ‘summoned’ after he’d decided what he wanted to do, or be subjected to having to listen to him whining about finding something to do that ticked his ‘spontaneous’ boxes. Invariably, 99.9% of the time, it was boring. So I did the smart thing – I went ahead and made my own plans. If I was around and I wanted to go, I’d meet him, but if not, hey ho – you snooze, you lose.

Sadly I didn’t heed that lesson as he wasn’t my last Mr Unavailable and after being summoned here, there, and everywhere by text, phone, and email, I recognised how devaluing this was – it’s like floating around on the coat tails of other people’s lives – you have a life of your own!

This shouldn’t be so hard for us to recognise as worthwhile, valuable individuals: We are people worth thinking ahead about and making plans with.

You will know you’re dealing with someone who really isn’t all that spontaneous and who in fact has commitment issues, when the things that they’re being spontaneous about aren’t really all that exciting.

It’s also important to consider the bigger picture: If someone rarely plans ahead, them leaving things till the last minute isn’t spontaneous – it’s routine. This is a bit like the person who is so inconsistent that they become consistent at being inconsistent.

Everything is contextual. If you have a healthy, mutual partnering and they surprise you periodically or you both decide to do things on the spur of the moment, that’s spontaneity. Them doing things on their terms and you being shoehorned into one way or the other is passive aggression.

Your whole relationship can’t be one big ‘ole impulse. Part of being available and committed is being able to commit to doing basic things that if you’re not too busy trying to micromanage your intimacy and responsibility levels, you’d take for granted as being part of your relationship and enjoy it.

You are not a ‘standby ticket’. You’re not.

You are better than sitting around waiting to be called up for duty. You’re also better than being a standby option after they’ve made sure they haven’t got better plans.

You’re someone to be made plans with. You’re also someone that can be surprised and seize the moment but within the context of already having the freedom of a relationship where you can talk about making plans without being shut down.

And that’s the test: Spontaneity cuts both ways. You can be damn sure that you’re with someone who has commitment issues when it’s all on their terms and you can’t be spontaneous and get together on impulse.

Don’t be a passenger. If you’re not comfortable with being dialadate, then don’t. Instead of giving a big explanation or even a small one, just say that you’ve made other plans, which you should do anyway as leaving yourself as an option makes you a passenger giving people the option of choosing you, while you’ve already chosen them. They’ll either meet you in the middle and make plans, or beat it. Or…they’ll pretend to meet you in the middle and gradually eek it back to last minute, at which point you bounce them and walk.

Start as you mean to go on because really, you don’t have time to be teaching a grown-up to value and prioritise you. Remember – when you don’t allow yourself to be on standby, they can’t treat you like an option.

Your thoughts? If you have been reluctant to step up and make plans and have relied on them doing all of the ‘chasing’, read my post on why you shouldn’t make it the guy’s job to do all of the calling and making plans.

Check out my book and ebook Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl in my bookshop.

Are You Ready To Date Again? Go Out and Find Out!

Natalie (NML) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 23:21:40 +0000

The question of whether you’re ready to date again, is something that perplexes many people. I’d love to say that you bounce out of bed one day and it’s shazam, you just know and you then hurl yourself back out there without issue, but the truth is, you’ll only be able to judge your readiness when you’re already out there dating, or when you’re experiencing Dynasty levels of internal drama and angst without actually having done anything.

Relationships serve to teach us about ourselves and they’ll keep throwing you the same lessons until you heed them. The key in rising out of previous experiences and knocking any ‘mistakes’ on the head, is in the application going forward.

It becomes somewhat of a distraction to essentially try and get a Ph.D in dating, or playing Columbo on your exes, or trying to acquire a ‘perfect self’ to put out into the dating world. This is like becoming immersed in the theory and understanding it on an intellectual level and then instead of going out there and living it, applying, tweaking, gaining confidence out of the results and taking action, you think “Nah…I need to do some more study…and actually, truth be told, I think that my last chance saloon has gone.”

There’s 3 specific questions that you can ask of yourself to gauge your readiness, although you can ask more:

1) Have you cleaned out your relationship house? Over your ex, not shagging anyone else, not keeping track of exes and even brief dates on Facebook, not dialling and texting to collect attention, and certainly not hoping that one or more of your exes might spontaneously combust into being The Person You Want.

Your past relationships are firmly in the past.

It also means dealt or actively dealing with anything that you’ve realised through your interactions and introspection is affecting your ability to have healthy, mutual relationships and good self-esteem. Again, life is an ongoing journey so if you’re in a good place, even with previous issues say from childhood to deal with, this can be dealt with in the background to your life. However if any issues are front and centre and greatly affect you right now, impacting your ability to be honest with yourself or even with others, to be responsible, functioning etc, you can’t. You’ll need to focus on those - the truth is that getting laid or starting out on dates can wait – you can’t.

2) Do you at the very least like you and have a reasonable grasp on who you are? Liking and loving you is an ongoing process – these feelings need to be growing not receding. I knew I’d made progress when I told a guy to beat it after dating for a few weeks and instead of feeling like the sky might fall down or busting my own proverbial nuts, I wanted to high five myself. In fact, if I’m honest, in the 8 or 9 months before I met the boyf, I felt relief when I walked away from situations or it didn’t work out – experience had taught me that I just wasn’t that desperate to make anyone into a ‘prince’ when things were far from being ‘princely’.

When you like and love you, you’ll listen to and trust you, so you’ll be OK with paying attention to the feedback from your interactions and acting upon it. This isn’t to say you won’t feel disappointed if something doesn’t work out, but you’ll be real enough to recognise and accept why and see the blessing in disguise instead of saying “It started out so great and they promised me a future that didn’t materialise – why can’t they go back to being that person and give me what I want? Is it because I’m not good enough?“

Yep – you’ll know you’re ready when you don’t make other people’s behaviour and everything going on around you about you. What’s your actions is yours, and what’s theirs is theirs.

You’re not ready if you’re malleable – that’s still relying on people who aren’t in your life yet or have been around for a wet week to validate or even define who you are. You’re definitely not ready if you start changing yourself up – that says you don’t like and value who you actually are and are willing to offload yourself if you think it would seal the deal. You’re also definitely not ready if you take your boundaries out on a couple of dates and then start making exceptions.

3) Are you feeling desperate? If the current person or someone you haven’t even met yet feels like they have to be ‘the one’, or the thought of something not working out or getting what you perceive as rejection scares the crappola out of you, you need to take it down from a 10 to about a 5 - that’s just too much drama to carry around with you. If you feel attached to them or the idea of the relationship you’d like with them, before you’re really gone through the discovery process of dating, it’s actually a signal that you need to make a very concerted effort to stay in reality.

If you start dating and thoughts of your ex increase, you start falling apart, or you feel tortured by your fears, you’ve got two choices – gather yourself together, talk calmly and rationally to yourself, check your internal and external fears while cross referencing against code amber and red and listening to what your discomfort is about, or, step back from dating.

Just like you may discover that you’re ready to date when you find yourself accepting one, enjoying it or not even being too dented if it doesn’t shape up into anything, you also may discover that you’re not ready to date when you’ve been on a few dates. This is OK. Dating is a discovery phase – as well as discovering the facts about the other party and assimilating what the possibility is of moving forward into a relationship, you also discover things about yourself.

You’re ready when you’ll walk and not treat them like they’re irreplaceable and your whole dating future depends on them.

You’re ready when you’ll stay, not because you’re afraid that if you don’t you’ll have missed your last chance saloon or because you can’t bear the thought of being ‘alone’/having to start over, but because there are valid, positive, mutual reasons to stay.

I’ve said this before, but there’s no fire. It’s not to suggest that people are expendable or that dating is easy, but the fact is, unless you’re dating for dating’s sake, it defeats the purpose of dating, especially when you’re claiming you want a relationship, if you’re barely able to cope with going out on dates or are still living in the past, because you’re actually undermining your own chances.

There really isn’t very much point sitting around worrying about something that isn’t happening, might happen, or hasn’t even got a cat’s hope in hell of happening – if you’re going to be worried, at least do it based on reality.

But remember this – the fear you have about things that aren’t happening yet is based on the old you that didn’t have the knowledge that you have now. It’s bad enough when shady exes show up hoping that you’ll be the you they used to know – honour yourself and the lessons you’ve learned, and give yourself a chance to be you and apply yourself.

Your thoughts?

Check out my book and ebook Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl in my bookshop.

Proportionate Responses: It’s JUST a text

Natalie (NML) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 23:47:20 +0000

One of the most popular questions in my inbox at the moment is something along the lines of “My ex sent me a text saying Happy Holidays/Great result tonight/Did you see the snow?/Are you ignoring me still? (or some other feeble message) – what should I respond with?” Some of you are even thinking ahead and clocking up some serious energy consumption pondering what you should respond with if you get a Happy Holidays/Christmas/New Year message.

Here’s the thing: It’s just a text.

There is nothing in “Happy Holidays/Great result tonight/Did you see the snow?/Are you ignoring me still?” that says “I love you”, “I want to get back together with you”, “I’ve changed”, “I’m sorry” or even “I’m making a great deal of effort to show you how much I care.”

If you attach any of these meanings and:

1) Start imagining your future

2) Respond back by pouring out your feelings

3) Invite them around for a shag

4) Cancel your plans or put everything on hold

5) Go into a tailspin and begin ruminating about what it all means, the Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda and yada yada yada

6) Call and keep calling in the hope they’ll pick up

7) Dump your current partner

8. Turn up at their home/office/place where they hang

9) Tell them all about themselves, or

10) Contact their new partner,

you’ve had a seriously disproportionate response.

You are experiencing high intensity emotions/rumination or engaging in high level action for low level contact and effort.

Do you know what you respond with when your ex sends a text saying Happy Christmas/Holidays/New Years?

You either say nothing (it may well be a bulk message anyway), or say nothing because you’re No Contact, or say ‘Thanks and same to you’ or respond with “Happy Christmas/Holidays/New Years”. That’s it! Next! Move on and go about your business. Anything else is OTT.

Likewise, if you’re the sender, you shouldn’t be expecting much either. You might think December offers up the perfect opportunity to reach out to your ex (read: attention seek but you may pitch it to yourself as being the bigger person or a ‘good’ person), but if a text is the best you can manage, it only goes to show that you’re trying to be risk averse and generate an ‘ideal’ maximum response out of a low effort.

I mean, how great would it be (not!), if all we had to do to get a shag, ego stroke, shoulder to lean on, or even have someone declaring our love for us, was to send some text messages?

This all goes back to why you must focus on building mutual relationships – when you match someone with their low effort and see their low effort for what it is, you don’t see gold where’s there’s copper – you see their lack of effort and the reflected results in your life and distance yourself, flush them, or know the limits of your interaction with them.

If you’re making a big deal out of texts, you’ve become acclimatised to a diet of crumbs – it’s time to expect more for and from yourself.

It’s not that text messages aren’t useful (I reminded the boyf to pick up milk earlier) and that in context of a relationship where there’s healthy human contact, calls, and a consistent, progressing, balanced, committed, intimate relationship with shared values and love, care, trust, and respect, you don’t need to be concerned about the use of them, but some of you are making a very large deal out of what can only be called rat dropping communication.

You only have to make a big deal out of text messages when you haven’t got much else to go on… I’ve seen it time and again – the only people who champion text messaging as some great means of communication are those who have an inflated sense of their own importance and believe they’re busier than a world leader, and those who’ve managed down their expectations into crumbs.

I’d also like to point out that the only men who have attempted to ‘sex text’ with me, have all been attached. ‘separated’, or numpties…

I hear from people who live off a couple of calls a month and live off texts the remainder of the time, who are twitchy and waiting around for their phone to vibrate with a text, who only ‘communicate’ when it’s date/shag/lend us some money time, and who are making a mountain out of an ant hill.

You might even think that texts you send are representative of a great effort – they’re just texts.

If your idea of breaking contact and reaching out and saying something meaningful is to send a text, you’re engaging in low level (low risk and low effort) contact but trying to pass it off as high effort.

It’s not – it’s just a text. High effort, is picking up the phone and arranging to meet, turning up, jumping on a plane etc. Even picking up the phone and having a conversation and arranging to meet up (somewhere neutral ideally) to progress the conversation is a reasonably good effort.

Texts are rarely a great effort unless they’re in the context of an already effort filled relationship. It’s great to get a thoughtful text from someone who is already thoughtful, that you have a great relationship with and communicate via other means. It’s not really very thoughtful if the length and breadth of their efforts (or yours) is to send an attention seeking and/or ego fishing text.

Would you find it acceptable to be broken up with by text? If not, you have to ask why you would you feel it was acceptable to conduct your relationship by text?

If you had to say it to their face or pick up the phone and follow up with action, would you still say the same thing?

Texts give too much room for the imagination. You end up imagining how they may be saying things based on how you’re saying things and there’s tumbleweeds where there should be tone – I know I read text messages in how I’d like to imagine they sound, which can be wide of the mark if you allow your ego, libido, or your imagination to get in the way. At least on the phone you can hear hesitation, change in tone, and face to face you can pick up on body language. Of course, for many of you reliant on text messages, the sad reality is that if you stopped texting, there wouldn’t be much or anything going on.

But remember, it’s just a text. If you’re looking to forge a relationship, it’s important to recognise that you cannot be available for a relationship, never mind a healthy one, if you’re on fantasy text island in an unavailable one.

It’s just a text – you’re better than making a big deal out of crumbs. Or rat droppings.

Your thoughts?

Can You Take a Hint? Why Hints Are Clues To What’s Really Up With Your Relationship

Natalie (NML) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 22:57:13 +0000

Every day, people who are dating or in relationships where there’s unavailability or other issues, come up against hinting, you know indirectly or slightly indicating something. In essence, we receive feedback and signals from the actions and words of our partners that let’s us know what’s up…if we’re listening and watching.

You always know you’re up against hinting when:

- You’re making excuses for their behaviour or are even making excuses for their excuses.

- You make a lot of assumptions that you don’t sanity check and adjust accordingly.

- You deny, rationalise, and minimise which then means that hints become a blank canvas for your overactive imagination.

- Certain things have been said that you don’t like or want to believe, which you then spend copious amounts of time and energy analysing and ruminating over.

- You’ve decided that until they spell it out, loud and clear and even get a whole heap of nasty on you, that not only are you still in with a chance, but that you don’t fully believe what they’ve been ‘hinting’ at because they haven’t said it.

Hinting is a clue. Actions and words (or the lack of them) give a clue, as do certain situations. Where there’s one clue there are other clues, but the truth is, often just one clue alone is giving you vital information.

We used to love the British game show Catchphrase. Contestants were presented with a hidden image of a catchphrase and the computer would remove jigsaw like pieces one at a time, and they’d have to try and guess what the image said. The less pieces revealed, the more money you won. We’d be killing ourselves laughing when the host Roy Walker would get distinctly impatient when practically the whole image was there and they were still struggling. “Say what you see, say what you see!” he’d say tersely in his Northern Irish accent.

Well hinting in dating and relationships is very much like Catchphrase – the more clues you have to collect before you take the hint, the less of a relationship you have and the deeper you are into an unhealthy situation, either because they’re at best taking advantage of and at worst abusing you, or because by refusing to take the hints, you’ve ended up acting without self-love, care, trust, and respect towards yourself.

It’s your job as the person in charge of navigating your own life and setting and knowing your own boundaries, to be listening, watching, and acting upon those clues.

The most popular argument that people who won’t take the hint make, is that they believe that if someone for example wants to communicate “I don’t want a relationship” or “I’m not ready” or “I’m not interested” or “I’m not leaving my partner” or “I only want you for a shag, an ego stroke, or a shoulder to lean on”, that they should say this directly. Stop bullshitting yourself.

Putting it all on someone else to spell it out, is major avoidance of responsibility and accountability. You’re also saying that you don’t trust yourself to take the hint. When you’re dealing with someone who is either conflict avoidant and/or afraid of endangering a shag/ego stroke/shoulder to lean on/money/ or even a job, they’re going to hint.

Expecting a direct statement is like saying “I know they’ve not been calling, failing to show up, pissing me around, telling lies, and all sorts of Future Faking, but what if I have it wrong? Yeah I’ll just wait for them to tell me that they don’t want to be with me or that they’re not going to commit.”

What the frickin what now? They’re already showing you and possibly even telling you in their own airy, fairy rinky dink way that they don’t want to be with you and that they’re not going to commit!

When someone isn’t calling you, it’s a clue that…yeah, they’re not calling you, which means they’re not making the effort communication wise and are actually being disrespectful.

When someone only calls you when they want to hook up, it’s a clue that they only contact you to pave the way for a shag.

When someone doesn’t show up, unless they’re in a coma, it shows disrespect and disinterest.

When someone disappears, it is a clue that they’re a coward. If they try to come back and press the Reset Button, it’s a sign they’re manipulative coward.

When someone is married/attached and is trying to shag you or you’re already in an affair with them, it’s a clue that not only are they avoiding commitment, but that when they experience problems, whether it’s within themselves or their relationship, that they avoid them.

When they’re always drunk whenever you’re together or they’ve admitted that they have an addiction of some sort, or are clearly negatively impacted by their reliance on something, it’s a clue to get the hell out of dodge and that this person solves internal issues with external solutions.

When they’re telling you lies, it’s a clue that they’re dishonest.

When they’ve recently broken up with their ex, it’s a clue that they’re likely not over their ex which means you should be alert for subsequent clues.

When your partner hints that they’re gay or you even see them hitting on someone of the same sex or know that they’ve actually been sleeping with them, it’s a clue that you need to bounce unless you’re OK with this type of relationship. It shouldn’t take you having to find them literally having sex for you to take the hint!

When someone Future Fakes you and the future arrives without them making good on all of their grand talk, it’s a sign that this person is full of hot air. Instead of wondering what you did to scare away plans that were never going to happen, you should be taking the clue that that this person is all shirt no trousers.

When they’re being nasty, controlling, manipulative, abusive etc, it’s a clue that you’re in danger and need to exit, fast. You shouldn’t be waiting for them to put you in serious danger before you take them seriously.

When they act like a jackass to try to get you to finish it, it’s a clue that they want to end it, they just want you to do the dirty work. Either way, you have a relationship on your hands that needs to end.

When someone keeps breaking the relationship, it’s a clue that they don’t value you and that they also feel free to leave and return. Stop waiting for them to be nasty and say it’s definitively over – you end it!

When they say:

“I can’t give you what you want”

“I love you but I’m not in love with you.”

“I’m bad news.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I’m really busy.”

“I need more time.”

“What’s a nice girl like you doing with a guy like me?”

“I don’t have time for a relationship.”

“Let’s be friends.”

“You know my situation.”

“You deserve better.”

“I just want to keep it casual” and other such guff, it’s a clue that they’re unavailable for an available relationship and have commitment issues.

It’s important that you listen, watch, and process the clues in your relationship because what hinters do is give you what they feel is a heads up about who they really are. It may be what you perceive to be a ‘weak’ hint, but it’s a hint and lo and behold, when you get medieval on them about messing you around, they’ll remind you that they said “I’m not in a good place right now” or that surely with all of their dodgy behaviour, you should have ‘known’ that they weren’t committing or even decent kind.

Listen to the feedback from your relationship and take the hint so that you stop selling yourself short. Trust the hint, trust your judgement.

Your thoughts?

Check out my book and ebook Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl in my bookshop.

Are You Insecure About Whether You’re Insecure In Your Relationships?

Natalie (NML) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 23:28:39 +0000

If you’re someone that regards yourself as feeling or being ‘insecure’ in general, which is having a lack of confidence plus the anxiety and uncertainty surrounding it, you’ll find it difficult to know where you and others begin and end. It then puts you in a bit of a quagmire when you experience problems or a breakup, causing you to ruminate on “Is it me or is it them?” It then becomes you being insecure about being insecure in your relationships, which will have you going round in circles.

I’ve felt insecure in all of my relationships, even in the early days with the boyf. The difference between this relationship and all of my previous, is that there was no external evidence to support my insecurity – my lack of confidence was about me and my beliefs, my uncertainty was about me in the context of the relationship and being afraid to believe I wasn’t going to drop the ball, and my anxiety was my own Dynasty level drama going on in my head.

This is something you have to remind yourself of – you can be insecure and be with someone who is behaving in ways that will actually make even the most confident of people struggle to have confidence in the relationship.

All too often I come across people who have a list of things that tick the unhealthy boxes that would rightfully remove anyone’s confidence from the relationship and yet when they want to find reasons to blame themselves and stall the process of letting go, they get it into their head that being insecure and being with someone that may be behaving like a jackass are mutually exclusive.

Whatever insecurities you have, they don’t turn an otherwise decent person with character and integrity into someone that at best takes advantage of you and at worst, abuses you.

I’m not saying that insecurity doesn’t affect relationships but if you put together a list of what has happened in your relationship and you have stuff that’s code amber and red territory, you being insecure is the least of your concerns.

If you meet someone who is actually behaving in ways that are conducive to a healthy relationship but you’re insecure anyway, you’ll still battle with the lack of self-confidence, the uncertainty and the anxiety and gradually, if you don’t get a handle on yourself, it will erode the relationship.

Your lack of confidence will be bolstered for a period of time by the other party’s confidence, and if it continues, the relationship will become imbalanced. If you won’t be secure in spite of external evidence to contradict your lack of confidence etc, you have to ask yourself why they should keep trying to ‘convince’ you? You might think it will show how much they love you if they’ll spend their time constantly reassuring and proving themselves and the relationship to you, but what are you bringing to the table? You’re not showing confidence in them and the relationship so who is reassuring and convincing them?

Many people are under the misguided impression that in the ‘right’ relationship your insecurities will ‘vanish’ just like these same people might believe that their commitment-resistance, addictions, persistent problems and hurt from a previous relationship/experience will disappear, as if ‘love’ fixes everything. Then when all of these things still exist, it actually only adds to the insecurity.

It’s not unnatural to be insecure about certain things but it is unhealthy to be generally insecure or to enter into relationships lacking a good level of personal security as it actually becomes an invitation for someone who reflects your insecurities.

Personal security means knowing who you are, having a reasonable level of self-esteem (boundaries, treating yourself with love, care, trust, and respect), and being a whole person instead of someone with a person shaped void to fill. You don’t inflate people’s value and carry on like they’re that special, and you’re not desperate.

In my last post I talked about when you can’t figure out what’s bothering you because you’ve normalised treading water in stress. By the same token, you need to be careful of treading water in insecurity. While some people get off on it and call it ‘passion’, ‘chemistry’, and ‘fireworks’ and ‘once in a lifetime love’, for most of us, insecurity will have a detrimental effect on our sense of self, particularly because if it remains unaddressed, it does become difficult to distinguish between your insecurity and Other People’s Behaviour.

Your first port of call when you do feel insecure is to ask yourself if your concerns are valid. This helps you to identify the source.

You are right to feel insecure when someone has promised to change umpteen times and then come back claiming that they’ve changed again. If you don’t genuinely feel, see and experience that change, your insecurity is telling you to stop flogging the chance donkey.

You’re right to feel insecure after you’ve been back and forth waiting for your married lover to ‘choose’ you and leave their partner. You’re even more right to feel insecure if they say that they’re getting divorced as a way to get back into your life and then shazam!, nothing. You then feel like you’re being distrusting by chasing them up and are afraid to say anything for fear that they’ll say “Right! Well you obviously don’t trust me, so I’ll just stay with them!” Someone who is leaving will leave. If they could change their mind over you rightfully querying what the frick is going on, they were never leaving anyway. If you tell me you’re getting divorced and then say nothing, I’m not being impatient asking you what the hell is going on – it is my right.

If you feel insecure due to previous experiences this is natural, but these are issues that you should resolve before you take them into a new relationship and expect a partner to iron out your problems and play armchair psychologist. I’m not saying you can’t have your wobbles but whether it’s that you’re tormenting yourself or throwing all your fear at your partner, you will suck the life out this relationship faster than a publicity stunt marriage.

Offloading all of your fears and lack of confidence into a relationship is toxic.

It’s not that you shouldn’t discuss concerns with your partner (of course you should) but if your insecurity is internally driven, you would serve you, them, and your relationship well, by doing some work to support yourself. Write an Unsent Letter either to yourself or them and write out all of your concerns. Just vent them and then identify recurrent themes and look at specific ways to address them.

If there are insecurities being triggered by specific things in the relationship, this gives you a starting point for discussion – this is better than lumping all of the insecurities in and then overwhelming and drowning out concerns specifically pertaining to your current relationship.

Anything that’s a recurrent theme throughout all (or most) of your relationships is for you to address – you’re the common denominator. Whether that means talking to a professional, keeping a Feelings Diary, going a little bit slower – make sure that you’re addressing the insecurity rather than just letting it it eat away at you and the relationship.

What I do know is that if it’s internal and you have no real external concerns, you’ve just got to exhale, put both feet in and let it be. Equally I know that if there are real external concerns, don’t invalidate how you feel, because whatever you feel, it’s real in that you feel it which means you must address it. When you’re honest with yourself, you can differentiate between a personal wobble and…a wobbly relationship.

Your thoughts?

Image source: SXC trubluboy

Everyone has the potential to be nice…but you’ve still got to go through the discovery phase of dating

Natalie (NML) — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 23:05:34 +0000

Many BR readers are venturing back out there and dating again, and of course, if you’ve had your hands burnt in an unavailable relationship or have even encountered behaviour and situations which left you shaken or questioning whether you can trust yourself, you’ll be ‘on guard’ for anything shady while at the same time latching onto ‘nice’ signals. One of the things that readers remark about is how someone that they’ve just met/reconnected with, or been on a few dates with, is ‘potentially’ a nice person. If they go on to do something that doesn’t fit with your vision of nice, it can send some of you into a tailspin or have you questioning your judgement.

Here’s the thing: We’re all potentially ‘nice’ people on those first few dates. In fact, everyone is potentially nice but in reality, everyone isn’t.

Most people put on their best drawers, are charming, funny, accommodating, and may even seem like you have a lot in common. In essence, we showboat our best Let Me Impress You Selves because we want to be liked. OK that and we may hope to get another date and on the shadier side of things, we may have our eye on getting a shag, an ego stroke, and a shoulder to lean on. These things are difficult to come by without behaving halfway decent *initially*…unless the other person ignores unhealthy behaviour.

It’s only the most deluded who don’t actually recognise that certain types of behaviour and characteristics are not actually attractive or healthy, or the ones that are shady and looking for a quick hit, that will show you their arse (figuratively, OK and possibly literally) very quickly.

If you’ve ever interviewed someone for a job, unless you’re letting people walk in off the street, you have a pre-screening process where you work off first impressions based on certain information gathered through a telephone interview, a CV/resume, application form, or letter. It could end up being that none of the people you select to go forward are ultimately right for the ‘role’ but what you do is based on what is presented, candidates where it’s immediately obvious that they’re not the right fit are removed.

Now there’s every possibility that a portion of these ‘candidates’ were misguidedly overlooked but bearing in mind that you can only work off the initial information that was given by them and your own judgement, you have to let this be. You can’t miss what you never had. Obviously you could decide to call them back up or ‘give them a chance’ but that may not change what you originally gauged.

If you recognise that most people are ‘potentially’ nice, you can relax, go through the discovery phase of dating, and let the situation unfold.

Just like with the job candidate, some will show themselves to be wrong for the role of friendship or a relationship but you know this is the case. You expect this not because you forecast doom but because you forecast reality, a reality where not everyone you meet is someone you can wind up in a relationship with.

If an employer had one job and tried to hire all the applicants irrespective of their aptitude for the role, that would be pretty effed up.

Stop latching onto a few arbitrary things displayed or conveyed in early conversations or dates, thinking ‘Bingo! They’re a nice person’ (whatever nice means) and immediately assuming all sorts of things about them and then feeling like you judged them wrong if they stray from your vision.

Let’s be real – Even if you have really great judgement, you cannot immediately know what someone will or will not be, hence why saying you’ve fallen in love at first sight, is like saying you fell in love with an illusion and air. It’s giving yourself too much credit for your powers of judgement. Yeah you can often smell a rat from a mile off, but some people are actually pretty decent folk with relationship habits that rule them out of a relationship with you.

I assume most people are decent until shown otherwise and then adjust accordingly. I don’t feel disappointed if they turn out not to be ‘nice’, because instead of starting out by building them into something off a few ‘nice signals’ which is basically Betting On Potential and blowing smoke up a strangers bum, I start from scratch and let the person ‘build up’ through the discovery phase – this is when you’re getting to know someone.

If you don’t like what you know, you bounce. Case closed.

Many people are going out there with a pre-constructed vision of ‘nice’ and then based on what appear to be subsequent ‘nice signals’, inflating the vision further, and then feeling disappointed. The danger is that if you’re the type to latch onto things and make a big deal out of them and then assume the person is automatically in possession of *other* qualities and characteristics that you deem attractive (people constantly do this with common interests, appearance, intelligence, sex, chemistry etc), you’re not in reality about who you get involved with.

Assuming things about people you meet and Betting On Potential and then being pissed off when they fall short, is like going out with a fully conceived Lego person based on your vision and then having to remove the bricks when they don’t stack up and then being pissed off with the gaps, even though the person isn’t what you built anyway.

Dating is a discovery phase. As you get to know them, if you’re in reality, you gradually build up a picture of who they are instead of leaping ahead and assuming who they are and having to reorganise your vision.

In this way, any picture that you have of someone is consistent with what you actually know and in context. This means, yes you may have thought they were great from day 1-20 but if on day 21 they do something that completely contradicts what you felt you knew and/or it’s code amber or red territory, you can say “It’s a shame as I’d thought they were whatever and whatever but hey, we’ve only known each other for 3 weeks/been on a few dates. It’s good that I see this now” – remember you can judge a situation without having to judge them.

When you spend time around someone over a consistent period of time in a range of situations, then you discover. I remember a reader being shocked at how disrespectful her partner was when they were out. I was like “You only discovered this after seven months?” She said “We spent most of the time in bed or in our apartment for the first six months…”

I’m not saying that they’re not nice, but going on a date or two or even seven isn’t all there is to discover about a person. Hell you’re always discovering (just at a slower pace as the relationship progresses) but there comes a point where you can rely on what you’ve discovered to be a predictor of what is to come – this is only something that comes with time…and of course reality. You can’t hurry this.

Your thoughts?

Check out my book and ebook Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl in my bookshop.

The Trouble With Feeling Owed After a Relationship ‘Investment’ Goes Sour

Natalie (NML) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 23:28:44 +0000

I’ve heard from more than a few readers recently who are feeling resentful after being in a relationship where they feel that they gave and gave and gave and that they got nothing or very little ‘back’. Leaving more than a sour taste in their mouthes, they feel ‘owed’ and even lose sleep ruminating over whether someone else will reap the benefit of their ‘investment’.

In truth, the area of investment into relationships is very shady territory. Just like in my last post where I explained how when people are confronted with what they know to be at best inappropriate, and at worst downright dangerous carry-on in their relationship, that they increase their trust, you will step up your level of investment when it feels like you’re on a crumb relationship diet.

It’s like “Hmmm, this relationship isn’t panning out how I expected. I could fold but instead I’m going to ramp up the level of my investment so that when they realise how much I love them and that I’m more than good enough, that they’ll match me.”

The trouble with working hard at a greatly imbalanced relationship is that of course it’s going to feel like incredibly hard work and a huge investment of your energy, because it’s like putting your bucket down an empty well repeatedly and hoping that water will come back up. Or trying to break concrete with a plastic shovel. At its worst when you’re actually in a relationship where the person is busting up your boundaries left, right, and centre, it’s like peeing into the wind – it all comes back at you in a rather unpleasant manner.

Relationships are 100:100 – you never have to feel like you’ve busted up your back, contorted yourself into a pretzel, or sold yourself down the river if you 1) arrive to your relationships as an equal and if you 2) only remain in your relationships when it’s mutual. If you feel ‘owed’ it’s because someone left some of their effort on the table.

Once you start ‘topping up’ the other party like a Pay As You Go Relationship, or doing things with a view to triggering their fountain of love, or even doing all of their effort for them, of course you’re going to feel like you’re ‘owed’ because in recognising that there’s supposed to be two of you in this, when all is said and done, it looks like the other party has reaped the benefit of your over investment.

When people tell me that they’ve given someone a roof over their head, money out of their back pocket, cooked, cleaned, turned a blind eye, taken them back repeatedly, ‘overlooked’ what they shouldn’t, and basically been incredibly indispensable across the board, I hear where they’re coming from, not least because I’ve been there…but, and there is a but…aside from some of these things being silent contracts with uncommunicated expectations, sometimes we do this stuff to substitute for really stretching ourselves.

If may seem easier to pander to their every need and even fix their problems, because if you strip it down to the basics of mutual love, care, trust, respect, shared values and intimacy, commitment, progression, balance, and consistency, it would cause you to realise your fear of being vulnerable and ‘risking’ yourself plus you’d come up short from the other party.

You can focus on their problems and lack of ‘matching’ and then remind yourself that you’re ‘there’, that you ‘love’ them, that you’ve suffered the most for this person and that it takes someone special to put up with some of the stuff that you have.

If it was a question of how much you ‘suffer’ for someone’s love, we’d all be shackled to assclowns. Pain is not love. Forget love against the odds or ‘sacrificing yourself’ – that’s bullshit! If you’re ‘suffering’, you should be exiting.

If it was a question of how much you love someone, you wouldn’t need their input because in theory you could say “I love this person to infinity and beyond!” and qualify yourself for the relationship and their ‘love’ based on what you perceive to be this grand love. Unfortunately we’re not very objective when we consider ourselves in the love equation and may have very unhealthy ideas about what constitutes love.

In the new edition of Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl, I talk about being an indispensable overgiver, where I explain:

“I’ve heard from many indispensable Buffers who basically cook, clean, babysit, chauffeur, and nursemaid uncommitted men. This is excessive. In a healthy relationship, he’ll prioritise having shared values and mutual love, care, trust, and respect over your housekeeping and other abilities.

Focus on getting your relationship in order and addressing issues. Being indispensable will not address your problems. Don’t substitute taking an active role in your relationship and being emotionally available with doing stuff like cooking, cleaning, etc., because they’re not one and the same thing. A man who has one or both feet out of the relationship and has emotional and/or legal ties elsewhere will lose respect for you while availing himself of the fringe benefits of a woman that just doesn’t know when to step back. If you did, you’d soon see where this relationship really was, and ultimately, why do you need to run yourself into the ground?”

People only talk about ‘investments’, feeling ‘owed’, what the other party ‘isn’t', and only have a sense of what they’re doing and essentially keep tabs, in unhealthy relationships. If you become too focused on what you’re ‘giving’, it ceases to be wholehearted – it becomes The Stuff I Do To Provoke You Into Giving Back What I Want. That’s not giving to them; that’s giving to you albeit via a very convoluted and painful route.

If you’ve ever given someone a home, material goods, money etc with the idea being (even if you didn’t quite verbalise it), that the person would ‘reward’ your generosity with a relationship, you’ve likely already discovered that this isn’t what happens and you’re probably out of pocket too. Hard as this may be to hear, the most they owe you is a thank you, some respect (although not a given), and potentially rent or monetary payback, not a relationship.

If you ‘give’ to drive a relationship that doesn’t exist in the way that you hope and expect it to, you’re getting your relationship action back to front. Establish the relationship first and ensure that it’s mutual and co-pilotted. If you’re giving to provoke a match, you’ll wind up bankrupt, emotionally and possibly literally.

You don’t have a ‘claim’ on an ex or even all your exes – they don’t owe you their better selves, just like if and when you make positive changes to your own life, much as an ex might try, they don’t have the right to collect what they feel they’re owed.

We have to invest ourselves into relationships – it comes with the territory. If we don’t put ourselves in, we’re out. The key is 1) choosing healthy relationships and 2) knowing what our deal breakers are so that we fold when the relationship ‘deal’ can’t continue. If you don’t do the due diligence, ignore code amber and reds, or you then stall to trust yourself and make decisions, you’ll end up knee deep in an unhealthy investment trying to ‘recoup’ what you’re ‘owed’.

When you do feel like you’re owed, it’s confirmation that your relationship isn’t or wasn’t mutual. It means it’s either time to walk or, if the relationship is now over, confirmation that it’s right to be over, because if you feel owed, and you stay, you’re just going to end up feeling more owed.

Your thoughts?

If you have a history of spending too much time hanging around in an unhealthy relationship, check out my book and ebook Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl in my bookshop.

Why You Should Imagine Yourself As Cool, Calm, & Confident When You Deal With Awkward Situations Like Bumping Into an Ex

Natalie (NML) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 21:18:33 +0000

Our imaginations and mentality have a lot to answer for. When we consider a hypothetical situation and lack confidence in our ability to deal with it and in fact imagine the worst, we’re setting ourselves up to fail before we’ve even started. Where I see many people shoot themselves in the foot, is when they imagine coming face to face with their ex. They say stuff like “I hope that if I see him/her again that I can be strong” or “I hope I’ll be able to resist them” or “I know that if they say X/Y/Z or do A/B/C I’m going to give it another shot/wind up with my underwear swinging from the chandeliers”.

What you don’t realise when you picture yourself being weak or ‘effing up’ before you’ve even effed up is that you’ve already given up, accepted defeat, and resigned yourself to the inevitable.

The odd thing is that with all the ruminating and mixing up your overactive imagination with horniness and then potentially throwing inverted ego issues into the mix, is that with all that thinking, you’re not using any of that energy to come up with a plan A, B, or C. It’s like only the worst or whatever you envision can happen – nothing else.

Much like when you blame yourself, when you let yourself get hijacked by your imagination and remove your power, you’re being a perfectionist. Instead of being “It’s all my fault or not at all”, you’re now going down the road of “It’s going to be how I imagine or no other possibility”.

There’s a lot to be said for imagining yourself as cool, calm, and confident when you contemplate the possibility of being in a particular situation.

If in your imagination you see yourself bumping into your ex and being scared sh*tless or being in bed ten minutes later or them character assassinating you, well of course you’re going to have a shaky mentality! They’re already overpowering you in your imagination so it’s only a hop, skip, and a jump to do it in reality.

Instead of thinking the worst of yourself and ‘hoping’ you can survive the situation, imagine yourself cool, calm, confident and what you will do and even say. People who imagine themselves as hopeless end up being powerless. Thinking about what you will do is the beginning of being conscious and having self-control.

Don’t say “I hope I’ll be strong”; say “I will be strong”. What will you do if you’re in a particular situation? It’s time to start planning ahead positively. If you know that you already don’t want to do or be something and that it would be a bad idea, or have even been down this road before with them, you know you’ll say NO so work out what you’ll say and do. People who imagine themselves as having their own power end up using it and planning ahead.

I can tell you right now that you’re not going to call Ghostbusters – you’re going to have to call on yourself. You and only you can handle your situations. If you’re relying on the other party to Do The Right Thing especially when that’s not exactly their forte, you’re handing over your power and leaving your progress up to fate.

I made plans on days when my ex was most likely to make a move plus I was already keeping busy, to not only keep myself out of trouble, but to actually help redefine my life on my terms. I wasn’t going to be one of those people who keeps sacking off their friends to accommodate the whims of some guy, so I really meant it when I said I was busy…even if I’d made an agreement with myself that I was having some down time at home alone.

I find the ‘And…move…’ trick very useful. If you see them at a social occasion or bump into them, respond politely to their hello or even a little warmly, say ‘I’m great” when they ask how you are, and then say “I have to go / Have a nice evening (or whatever)”…and move away before you can be drawn into a conversation. Treat it like being professional with a colleague…which they might even be… The key is to avoid looking like a wounded animal by practicing smiling in front of the mirror where you don’t look like a maniac but instead come across as composed.

What you don’t do is launch into The Big Discussion about why you broke up, or why you’re still hurt, or what you think they should have done to change. I’d also avoid asking them if they’re single etc – that just says “I care WAAAAY too much about you.” You also don’t start flirting or trying to act like you’re friends – It is amazing the sheer volume of people that don’t recognise that you can be ‘friendly’ without having to be in a [pseudo] friendship.

If and when your ex calls, especially if you’ve gone No Contact and they do the sneaky sneaky and call from a blocked number, quickly regain your composure once you realise it’s them and say “I can’t talk right now” or “I’m actually on the way out so let me give you a call another time…OK take care byeee” even though another time might be in 2047…

PLAN A – Polite, friendly, firm and off the phone within 0-5 minutes, of if you don’t like them, go straight to PLAN C.

PLAN B – If they’re being rude or trying to draw you into something, polite, extra firm and exit within 1 minute. Remember it’s not important to have the last word or find out what the hell they want.

PLAN C – If they’re not taking the hint or you just don’t like them “Please stop calling me”…and hang up.

And let’s just cut right through the bullsh*t – I’m all for having a chat with a friend but if they’re trying to get into your pants or have been busting up your boundaries, or you still have feelings for them, then you’re not friends, which means you can be ‘friendly’ but you don’t need to hang around/stay on the phone for a great deal of time. It’s also OK to be unfriendly.

It’s also not a bad idea to practice saying the word NO out loud. Seriously because most people imagine saying NO and then quake at the thought of the sky falling in but don’t actually say it out loud, even to themselves. You’ll notice when you do say it that the room doesn’t start shaking like there’s an earthquake!

Believe that you can handle a situation because when you think you can’t, you won’t handle it and when you think you can and are not allowing anyone to steal your wind, never mind your power, you consider other options instead of thinking the inevitable is your only option. Don’t talk yourself out of succeeding before you’ve made a truly concerted effort to get on the path of change, which does involve getting out of your uncomfortable comfort zone.

Yeah it would be rather handy to experience these situations we fear and either zap them with our forcefields of power, have The Most Perfect Person in the Universe draped on our arm to scare them off, or have some 3rd party ‘thing’ occur that will somehow cause you to avoid conflict without you getting uncomfortable. I actually think half the time, we’re privately hoping the other person will change so that if we don’t exercise any self-control, we’ll somehow be quids up without having to get uncomfortable. Not.Gonna.Happen.

Be cool, be calm, be confident and plan ahead especially if you’ve been in this situation before – you have a good idea of what to expect so have a plan of action instead of looking to be the exception. If you’re going to predict a situation for yourself where you have control over what you do, forecast success.
Your thoughts?

The new edition of Mr Unavailable & The Fallback Girl is now available to buy both in print and in digital formats plus check out my ebooks the No Contact Rule and and more in my bookshop.

Slow Your Roll: Why Being Asked For Your Number is an Expression of Interest – Not a Guarantee

Natalie (NML) — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 22:12:30 +0000

Claire recently got in touch with me because she was literally freaking out about a guy that had asked for her number and hadn’t called when she expected. They’d met on the weekend, he’d called on the Tuesday and suggested meeting up a couple of days later, she’d said she wasn’t free and suggested the weekend, he said he was away that weekend but would call the following week, and she was flipping her wig by Sunday evening fretting about if and when he’d call. When she got in touch with me, it was the Thursday i.e the weekend he was away hadn’t even arrived yet. I.e When she got in touch with me, she had known of this man for five days.

Too.Much.Drama. Let’s be realistic here: Isn’t it just somewhat disproportionate to be investing so much mental and even physical energy into someone you just met and that you don’t know?

If this is how you carry on before a date has happened or when you’re in the early stages of dating, what will happen further down the line or when you experience conflict? Will you explode?

How on earth can you see so much potential in something that hasn’t happened yet that basically amounts to someone asking for your number? When they say that they’d like to take you out or ask for your number, it’s an expression of interest. It’s not a legally binding contract for a relationship nor a guarantee of a date.

I hear from a hell of a lot of people, admittedly mostly women who are waiting around. I’m not talking about waiting around in a relationship or during the dating phase which is bad enough. They’re waiting around for someone they just met to call or even email/text them. Their whole life has gone on hold and they’ve even cleared their schedule in anticipation of the possibility of a date happening.

When I see people losing their marbles over an ‘expression of interest’ and putting themselves into a holding pattern circling over the dating skies waiting for their ‘slot’, it worries me. What were you doing last week/month before you knew of this person’s existence?

They’re just not that special. And I say this especially with regards to how women behave towards men and treat them like the sun shines out of their bums, glorifying them without them so much as having to date you and put in any effort! I was talking with a friend yesterday who was expressing praise for a guy that’s not trying to get into her knickers or get fresh with her. Now I’m not saying that this isn’t a nice thing, but to be honest with you, it’s the least we should expect from someone that we don’t know very well!

That’s not to say that someone like this may not end up being relationship material but the whole latching onto one thing and making them out to be the messiah has been done to death – just see my posts on appearance, intelligence, and common interests!

Now I say this with the benefit not only of writing Baggage Reclaim for six years but also spending almost all of my dating life being guilty of what I’m talking about – picturing. I’d meet guys and I won’t lie – sometimes I put our names together, or imagined what it might be like to go somewhere with them or meet their parents. I’d check my phone umpteen times and was already committed to a future with them when I hadn’t even been on enough dates or had a relationship with them to justify all of this energy.

It’s like “Wow, a man has asked for my number. He must be really special and I must feel interested in him. Oh he mentioned he likes to play ping pong, listen to similar music to me and looks just like I like them. Squee! I wonder if this might be it? Oh how great this would be because this whole dating thing is exhausting. Right, I’ll have to let the girls know I might not be around next Friday/Saturday. I wonder where we’ll go…” This whole internal conversation could happen within seconds.

Now I get it. When you venture back into dating, you might feel a bit jittery because of previous experiences. Or…you meet someone and feel a bit excited by them and your hopeful meter along with your libido and overactive imagination go into overdrive. Or…you’re on Columbo alert because you recognise that dating is a discovery phase, only you’re a bit too eager to get the dating crime scene tape out.

Slow your roll on all counts – there’s no fire.

I’ll be honest with you, if you’re losing your mind over someone you’ve just met (I’ve heard from people having anxiety attacks even), it’s a sign that you 1) need to address the real source of the anxiety and get that under control and 2) focus on building up your confidence and trust in yourself before you get back into dating. You’re not going to discover a damn thing if you’re freaking out because it distorts what you perceive yourself to be experiencing.

Freaking out in itself is a signal that you’re not ready.

If you mentally get carried away as soon as you meet someone, it’s time to force your feet onto the solid ground of reality. Not only are you betting on potential but you’re reacting very disproportionately which is like Fast Forwarding yourself. Alarm bells should be ringing because you’re over-invested. It’s just not healthy to throw yourself into something that doesn’t fully exist yet – you’re emotionally committing before there’s something to commit to.

If you’re holding a magnifying glass to your interactions, it’s important to give yourself a caution. Be aware of your boundaries and recognise code amber and red behaviour but it’s also important to recognise that you’ll be going nowhere if you put nothing into your interactions. Fine if you see something that clearly shows that they’re not worth pursuing anything with – just bounce. It doesn’t cost anything – FLUSH! NEXT! If you’re not sure, go on a date – it’s just a date. If you don’t want to – that’s fine! No biggie – let it go.

You don’t owe a date or interest to everyone that expresses an interest.

Whoever they are isn’t your last chance saloon. When someone asks for your number or invites you on a date or even has a few conversations with you, it’s an expression of interest. How far that interest stretches and where it lies is only going to reveal itself in the coming days, weeks, and if you go on to date, months. Some people will express an interest and it won’t materialise into anything – you can’t miss what you didn’t have.

It’s like getting upset because your numbers didn’t come up on the lottery. Surely you don’t start mentally spending the money when you haven’t actually won?

If you don’t slow down, you’ll kill things before they’ve even started with Dynasty levels of drama, most of it going on internally! You’re setting yourself up to fail! Some expressions will materialise into something but it won’t necessarily be what you thought – that’s what the discovery phase is for. And then others will grow into something more enduring. The point is you can’t treat everyone like an equal opportunity relationship – you’re not that desperate.

Your thoughts?

Behind Every Excuse is the Real Reason

Natalie (NML) — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 22:14:54 +0000

One of the things that I’ve recognised as a differentiator between healthy and unhealthy relationships is the presence of excuses, whether it’s yours and/or theirs. In the worst of situations where you may be denying, rationalising, and minimising, you may even be making excuses for their excuses which only goes to show how poor the original excuse was.

Just like how on the other side of a jumped boundary lies disrespect, on the other side of an excuse often not only lies at least some element of disrespect but also the real reason.

An excuse is a reason that is given to justify an offence or fault but its primary purpose is to lessen responsibility by getting you to overlook, excuse, or even forgive off the back of it. This of course is rather tricky because when there’s excuses it means that any commitment is being lessened, which means everything else tied to it becomes pretty flimsy. You may also be overlooking things that are busting up your boundaries.

People often get ‘reasons’ and ‘excuses’ mixed up because there appears to be some crossover. Excuses allow people to remain in their uncomfortable comfort zone, dodge conflict by avoiding honesty both with others and themselves, dodge accountability, and cast themselves in a better light.

Saying “The dog ate my homework” gives the impression that you’ve been a victim of misfortune and avoids conflict whereas saying “I couldn’t be arsed to do my homework” or “I forgot” makes you look lazy and lacking in conscientiousness.

Likewise saying “I’ve been really busy” gives the impression that you’re so busy (ya know busier than a world leader) that you haven’t had the time to contact or see them whereas saying “I’m not interested / am half-hearted / have been trying to get back with my ex” will not only have you in the position of saying something that most people squirm at and possibly inviting ‘conflict’, but if you’re the type of person that likes to hedge your bets, you may want to keep them as a rainy day option. If anything you’re hoping they’ll take the hint and do your job for you and at the worst of things, you may be hoping the excuse allows you to avail of their ‘usefulness’.

Excuses are inherently negative whereas things happen every day that are positive that have reasons behind them – that’s what a reason is; a cause or an explanation and yes sometimes a justification for something happening.

A reason doesn’t lessen responsibility or even act as an automatic precursor to being excused or forgiven and what I’ve found differentiates a genuine reason from an excuse is that when someone provides a reason for why something has or hasn’t happened, a solution is in the offing.

People who make excuses aren’t really looking to ‘make sh*t happen’ or find a solution that you can both live with, or even ‘rectify’ or make amends. Excuses are not real reasons; they’re BS ones.

In my post about ‘Sorry’, I explained how when someone gets on your case about accepting their apology or forgiving them that it really means:

“Look, can you hurry the eff up and accept my apology so I can stop feeling bad about it? You perceiving me as wronging/hurting/abusing/whatever you is terribly inconvenient and my ego doesn’t like the pinch of reality, so if you don’t mind, get a shuffle on, accept my apology and let’s move on so I can slam my palm down on the Reset Button. “

Well guess what? When someone uses an excuse, they’re really saying:

“Look, hurry the eff up and get off my case so I can get my shag / ego stroke / shoulder to lean on / money / perfect image back etc. You perceiving me as wronging/hurting/abusing/whatever you, is setting off my responsibility alarm bells which is setting off my reality alarm bells which is setting off my commitment, expectation, and intimacy alarm bells. The sooner I’m excused, the sooner I can get back to doing what I always do.”

Or “Look, can you hurry the eff up and get off my back because I’m only offering up this feeble justification for what I’ve said/done or failed to say/do because the real reason doesn’t sound too great when said out loud and may invite conflict, plus if I gave you the real reason, it would put me in the position of actually having to do something.”

Or “Please reduce your expectations of me and this relationship immediately.”

Sometimes, they’re even saying “Look, you know and I know what’s happened here but if you want to go along with this charade, I’ll throw you an excuse and see how much more of a free ride I can get.”

Sometimes, they’re saying, “Wow, it seems like you don’t seem to see what’s really going on here! Can’t you see I ain’t sh*t?!/ Can’t you see that I clearly am not putting in the time and effort here? Hmmm…well I won’t be direct with you because I don’t want to look like the bad guy here, so I’ll palm you off with this excuse in the hope that you get the hint. And if you don’t, well it’d be almost rude not to avail of what’s on offer…”

Often it’s literally “I cannot be arsed to put some real effort into a real reason.”

And when you make excuses for their excuses “I’m telling you….I’m not leaving! You’re the best thing I’ve never had or only had for a short time before the Future Faking ended and I don’t want to let go of the fantasy because then I’d have to see and accept some uncomfortable things and even get out of my comfort zone. You’re gonna love me!” – Note, best read as if singing with Jennifer Hudson’s voice.

And when you make excuses for yourself “I’m not really looking to find a solution or take any action that would involve making a decision and leaving my comfort zone.”

Behind every excuse is the real reason.

Sometimes it simply boils down to “I don’t want to try” and what’s really important is that you don’t clog up your life with excuses whether it’s yours or theirs because you’ll become a person of inaction that doesn’t make decisions. Excuses, especially when we buy into them make things appear more complicated than they are.

The next time you’re presented with an excuse, it’s time to ask “So what does this mean?” or “So what happens next?” I remember when Dot Dot Dot Man told me how busy he was for the umpteenth time and how he’s not ready for a relationship and I told him that he clearly doesn’t have time for a relationship and this meant that our ‘relationship’ was over.

That’s what it meant and that’s what happens next when someone keeps excusing themselves for not having the time, energy, decency or even ability to evolve into a copilot in your relationship.

Trust me when I say that when someone is looking to maintain the status quo and keep palming you off with excuses, no solutions are on the horizon, after all, if they’re the one making the excuses, they have to be a part of the solution, which means they have to be responsible in the relationship, which means that excuses become redundant.

You’ll know you’re in a healthy relationship when you don’t have to listen to excuses or make excuses. Instead of accepting excuses, start accepting the reasons.

Your thoughts?

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