Welcome to another episode of The Baggage Reclaim Sessions.
In episode 73, I cover:
Personal anniversaries: January 31st marks 16 years of living in London and 9 years of self-employment. I reflect on the significance of these big changes and the importance of recognising these milestones so that we can acknowledge how much we’ve changed and the progress that we’ve made.
Tackling your conflict and criticism habits: I share 3 key areas where you can make strides in adapting your responses: distinguishing between the past and the present, getting out of a child role, and depersonalising the other person’s behaviour.
Link mentioned: Episode where I talked about, What’s your money story?
Valentine’s Day: Before we give ourselves too hard a time about what we think everyone else is doing, let’s consider the bigger picture of whether this day speaks for our values about love.
Listener Question: Is it a red flag that he’s not asking me any questions [about me]?
What I Learned This Week: We’ve got to be OK with someone having a negative opinion of us, rather than burning up energy trying to change their mind.
Listen to the podcast episode below. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe on iTunes. If you’re new to podcasts, find out more about what they are and how to subscribe with this handy guide.
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android
Please subscribe and/or leave a review on iTunes (how-to guide here) – it really helps in growing the show! If you’re new to podcasts, find out more about what they are and how to subscribe with this guide.
Listener questions can be emailed to podcast AT baggagereclaim DOT com and if there’s a topic you’d love me to talk about, let me know!
Nat xxx
Add to favorites
yes to all you wrote (and said). I am having an issue that relates to “threes”, to people pleasing, and also to the shaky ground we’re on when we have our lives back on track, but there are things we need to learn for the first time.
I was on a work trip, and met some amazing people (men and women). the guys seemed to like me, which is how it usually is (disclaimer: it’s a fact, please don’t think i’m boasting, because it’s part of the problem, read further!). Unfortunately, this liking is purely superficial. I’m pretty, I look sweet, they like me. So they project things on me, and act slightly possessive. I am now in my skin again, so I managed to show my boundaries, and everything was going great. Then, a boy i like shows up. He is the only one I find attractive, and i’d like to know him better, he seems to think the same, we talk, everyhting fine. But: one of the others – to whom I had shown basic courtesy – notices, and inserts himself between us. Long story short, he played the “bro” card, monopolizing the guy i liked. I am a bit shy around guys I like (part of this is charachter, part is insecurity, part this time was the fact that i live very far from this guy, so i didn’t want it to be a fling), and i didn’t show my interest. Or better, I did, but i also let the other guy take the stage, and in the end I think the guy i was interested in didn’t get it, he acted confused, i “lost” him.
This is an old pattern: I am pretty, and my charachter is strong, and I like to be around people. However, I get very shy with attractive guys, I enter a “failure” mode. For yrs I actually didn’t realize they found ME attractive (my tweens and teens have been plagued by bullism), and let “friends” (boys and girls) manipulate me by putting themselves between me and the guy i liked. In fact, like many of us here on this site, from the outside I seemed perfectly fine, well adjusted, functioning, even succesful. So the guys I liked thought I was “playing hard to get”, and felt like they had to defend themselves from this (understandable). So I either used to go all out to compensate, or did nothing. The reason I fell so hard for my assclown EU was that he, instead, pursued me upfront, “saving” me from this situation. I am however conscious of the fact that this “saving” ain’t nothing good, and I don’t want to end up with another EU alpha male who is incapable of feeling anything besides narcissism. So I know that I only can save myself. But how?
I am also being patient with myself: I am still scarred and scared, understandable. like you, Nat, wrote, I have to acknowledge the huge progress I’ve made. However, I can’t get over what has happened with these two guys. Probably it’s because it felt like an old, hurtful pattern, and this alone makes my heart bleed. In other words, it’s an old wound. But I also think that I should avoid this to happen in the future. But is the only way to say “no, don’t sit here, A was sitting here, move”, or “stop monopolizing A, let him talk to us, to me!” etc? Or are there other ways? Or do you, Nat and girls/boy of baggagereclaim, have suggestion, ways to stop this pain?
So I guess an itneresting topic would be the recovery phase: it’s joyful, but painful, and i soemtimes feel like a small child. Sorry for the very long post! I hope it makes sense.
I get where you are coming from, Misa. You are hesitant to stand in your own power…there’s still some fear of what the “other” person might think. As in – the man you are interested in might think you’re too forward, the man you are less interested in might think you are stuck up, the women on this blog might think you are full of yourself….etc., etc.
The more we are accepting of our own strengths, the less we feel a need to apologize for those strengths.
While it is true that people in general are more accepting of those who use self-effacing humor, those of us who were raised to “hide our light” take self-effacement to the extreme of self-erase-ment. We focus on our weaknesses, not with an eye toward improving, but more like giving ourselves the reason to people-please. We let everyone else around us make choices FOR us. We make ourselves invisible.
What we have to teach ourselves is that we do have a right to have a voice in how things are going to BE.
So in the example of the two guys on the work trip, if you were standing in your power, in your RIGHT to assert your interest in one man over the other, you would be OK with saying to the one you are less interested in that you are enjoying talking to the one you had more interest in….without feeling a need to apologize for your preferred interest. In the quest for good human relations, you do need to find tactful ways of doing those things, but the point here is that you are not at the mercy of what the blocking man wants. A woman who knows what she wants and can be direct about it is unsettling, for sure, to a lot of men. But it certainly beats wasting your time with 1)people you are not interested in or 2) people who are not interested in you.
The Amazon series “The A word” has a fine example of a straightforward no nonsense woman in the music teacher who is quite direct and quite comfortable in stating what it is she wants.
Misa,
I had a similar experience recently! So I understand about speaking up and how it’s sometimes hard in situations like that. You don’t want to be rude, yet it’s not rude to deny men who think they get your attention by default of being….well a man. Haha. Just like every street cat caller isn’t entitled to anything just because I am currently existing near them, the same goes here.
I was invited to a New Years Eve party, and I knew a guy I was interested in was going to be there. Yet, I only got to speak with him for maybe 5 minutes the entire night! Why? I was basically “c**k blocked” if you will by 2 other guys who bogarted my space the whole time. It was like being stuck between two peacocks squawking to talk to me, and the whole time I’m thinking “But I’m really not interested in either of you!”
I learned from this experience to be more assertive. The guy I wanted to talk to, I found out later wasn’t single, so I didn’t miss out, but I could have. So, lessons learned.
To the Listener Question, he’s is not exhibiting a strong interest in you. Your gut is telling you that, but you are going by “hallmarks” rather than accepting the truth you are feeling in your gut. I bet you are mentally marking off the “amount of time spent together”…the fact that he accepts dates that you initiate…the fact that he ticks off some positive attributes on your Ideal man checklist….the common interests you share.
But your gut is screaming “He is not all that enthused by me”…and you do not want to accept that.
Your “relationship” will remain in this state for as long as you let it. But the longer you let this thing languish, the more you will call him an AC when he does fall head over heels for someone else and he starts to say no to your invitations because he is busy elsewhere.
You know, why can’t we accept that some things are not destined to be? Right now I am reminded of two scenes from two old movies where the adults acknowledged they did not have the “right” kind of feeling for each other. They could have gone along with the program, and maybe had a very polite marriage, but no real highs or lows because the “feeling” was not mutually strong for each other. Those movie scenes were so adult in the acknowledgement of the facts! But I guess that really only happens in the movies??
Actually…not so…..because I once was in a similar situation, but I questioned the man, and he told me that I was not the “type” he tended to fall head over heels for. It was an adult situation, he wasn’t unkind, and I wasn’t scarred by his truth. I cut my losses and we parted with no animosity. In another situation, I could tell the man was lukewarm about me romantically, even though we shared lots of laughter when we were together….I point blank asked him about his interest and he told me he was gay. I admit to having to lick my wounds and mourn my romantic dreams for a couple of weeks, but I healed, and resumed the friendship which lasted for several years…..through his boyfriends and mine.