Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android
A couple of day’s back, I wrote about how, when we’re in a situation where someone pretty much clicks their fingers and we come running, and then we’re gradually feeling hurt and resentful because they don’t feel the same way, we need to draw our line.
In this week’s episode of The Baggage Reclaim Sessions, I delve into the subject of how ambiguous situations come about, some of the questions they raise, and why it’s so important for us to be unambiguous if we don’t want something vague and confusing to flourish.
Topics covered
- Signs of ambiguity including when our mind is busy trying to work out whether our interpretation is correct and reluctance to take action disguised as confusion
- I share three very real stories that have ambiguity written all over them
- Why passiveness and latching on to hallmarks, so things we take as signs of romantic interest while ignoring the landmarks are key themes in these situations
- Ambiguous relationships often originate from ambiguous friendships and as comfortable as it can be to admit, there is a hidden agenda
- The breakdown in communication including our own ability to communicate honestly with ourselves and that tricky issue of hinting
- Why it’s not just one person being ambiguous…
- Why where’s there’s ambiguity, there’s assumptions and a bias towards collecting info that supports our outlook
- How ambiguous situations open us up to being used
- Why if actions and words don’t match, there’s a problem
Links mentioned
- I Need You To Not Play With My Affections
- Moving Past Ambiguous Situations: It’s OK To Take A Step Back When They’re Not Interested
- Actions Matching Words In A Nutshell
- Episode 90: Pretending To Be Something We’re Not
- Episode 91 where I talk about sameness
- Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl
- That time when my school friend was dating my ex and it turned out that he hadn’t changed at all
- Professor Life episode where I talk about us being life’s student
Next stop
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
Cannot see the link to the podcast. Thank you 🙂
Wow Natalie. I wish I had heard this two years ago. You are exactly right- I was deliberately ambiguous because I was afraid to know the truth and now he is with someone else. I won’t take all the blame. He definitely played it shady to keep his options open. But I have learned my lesson, I hope, and I’ll go forward making sure the boundaries are clear.
You always bring a great truth- look forward to the new podcast dropping every time. (Speaking of, are you still doing “Why we broke up?” episodes?)
I really miss the ‘why we broke up’ podcasts as well. Will they be coming back?
Thanks Natalie- looking back now I can see not only my part in so many ambiguous relationships but also I’ve realised that the social group I hung out with encouraged me to subscribe to ambiguous relationships as “the norm.” I made a decision to distance myself from the social group who cared about me from years of history together but who I realised had really really different (and in some cases almost opposite) values to me. This distance, whilst painful at first, has really helped me see the ambiguous situations/relationships for what they were. Thank you for your blog and podcasts which have really helped me make these decisions and put clear boundaries in place. I want to rate the podcasts but I can’t work out how to on an Android. If I could, I would consistently give it 5 stars!
Boy does this podcast resonate in so many ways in how I have lived my life unconsciously and habitually in friendships and romantically just ambiguous. Afraid to speak up, going with the flow, being impulsive, people pleasing, using with a hidden agenda and being devastated when I have felt used. Often times I do and have confused assertiveness with aggressiveness and instead would not say anything until it was to late or worse become passive aggressive. I’ve been so afraid to show up feeling and believing that who I am is not enough which stems from childhood I have in fact hurt myself in the end. I have a lot of inner work to do and I’m not a spring chicken either but better late than never. At least that is what I’m telling myself. Hopefully in being aware I can make better healthy choices for myself and finally have the Love relationship I desire and friendships as well. I’m tearing up as I writing because this is the most honest I have been with myself but needed to share. I hope I didn’t ramble on too much.
wow, I could have written the exact same thing. Ambiguous and then upset when people disappoint me. Currently realizing I just got used by a best friend has made me come face to face with everything you wrote….and I am no spring chicken either lol.
The story about a guy taking the girl away for a romantic getaway is word for word what happened to me. A guy friend takes me to a tropical getaway, and drops a lot of hints about us being more. He even went so far as to suggest we be in a relationship and asking me questions about what I like in bed. Of course, nothing happens. When we get back into town (because I don’t want to face awkwardness while we are sharing space) I call him on it and he acts like I’m insane. Ended the friendship, went no contact (which he repeatedly violates but that’s another story). Lesson learned: call them on their BS sooner rather than later. But seriously, what is wrong with these people?
Heather, did he try to sleep with you during the trip?
Nope, he didn’t make any moves. Just dropped a lot of hints in the last month about us being in a relationship.
I needed to hear this today. It’s helping me prepare for an uncomfortable but necessary business meeting next week in regards to a trifecta ambiguous friendship. One where I have being professionally used/undervalued, emotionally strung along, and disrespected. I
can see where I went astray, but I am proud of myself for reasserting my boundaries across the personal and professional sphere with this individual. Thank you.
I haven’t been on here for about 3 years, when I was coming out of a painful ambiguous relationship with an unavailable. I really haven’t dated much since then, in fact I would tell my friends I was “retired” from dating. Then I met a guy who seemed to be REALLY into me – almost too much so. Lots of “charm,” flattery, a bit of future faking. However, I knew enough to keep some emotional distance and watch for actions meeting words. For about two months, they did. We even took a short vacation together, which I had never done that early in a relationship, but I felt very comfortable with him. Nevertheless, I was still on guard.
I had just started to trust that maybe this was all for real when I caught him in an enormous lie involving another woman. He then compounded the original lie by lying some more. I broke it off with him, but over the course of the next month, began to soften a little as he expressed deep remorse and apologized profusely, and stuck to his story that he and the woman were “just friends.” We had also not discussed exclusivity so even if they weren’t just friends, I was prepared to let that slide, but not the lies.
Fast forward, I finally agreed to meet with him to “talk” and suddenly he disappeared for three days. He then popped back up. I was pretty much at the end of my rope, but decided to offer meeting in a daylight atmosphere (no bar, no booze). He disappeared for another few days, then popped up again.
Meanwhile, as soon as he started this shady business, I came to BR for emotional reinforcement. I read all the Future Faking posts, the “charming” ones, the mixed signals ones, etc. I knew this isn’t what I wanted for myself.
After the last pop up, I called him and asked point blank what he was after. “I thought we were just friends!” he exclaimed. “I thought we’d just catch up!” This after a month of “I miss you, I miss your smile, your laugh, walking with you, talking with you,” etc. Now suddenly he wants to be just pals. I told him if that is what he wanted, perhaps we could meet up with a group of people in the future.
Thanks again, Nat, for everything, because I think without BR I would have been wildly confused and spent far too much time wondering why Mr. Wonderful abruptly changed and whether I’d done something to facilitate that. Flush. Only a couple months wasted.
I have an ex that I have been back and forth with for years and we keep sleeping together and he usually returns for a casual relationship, this has been going on every year for many years in a row. I keep thinking that he will commit. It’s ironic, I have been in many relationships like this, I even met Natalie at a wonderful talk years ago, and ended up still continuing to get involved in more relationships like this, however, I know what I get into. This guy has been returning to me for years and we continue in a sexual involvement and it feels so amazing when we are together and I keep hoping for commitment and he’s always ambigous about it. I’ve been in many relationships like this and I feel that it’s been so many years and I keep hoping for a change and he always returns to me and I always continue being intimately involved with him and getting so invested. Sometimes it seems like we are heading towards commitment. He’s come back after a year, after many months, and for years we engage in the same type of relationship and I keep noticing little changes and thinking that things will change. I realize this back and forth relationship can very well go on for the next hundred years and it will always be the same. When were together it’s great and then I’m always wondering when I will hear from him next. It’s funny how I’e been viewing this site for years and going through so many similar relationships allows me to see it this way, it’s funny, with all my relationships I end up back to viewing this site and when your viewing this site it’s obvious there’s issues in the relationship especially when years go by and you continue the same cycle.
NML, thanks so much for this podcast. It did come to me at a perfect time to understand more about my patterns and of people I tend to involve myself with. I had never seen it this way, about how we are also ambiguous.
Actually, I was in a really ambiguous situation for a while this last winter with someone that I had a major crush on, and that seemed to be interested back. Even though I was never fully direct about my feelings (we know each other through work), I thought I had hinted enough about my intentions. I know that, in her place, I would have figured it out, and I find hard to believe she didn’t. Buuuut, our interactions were all sorts of ambiguous, and probably a mix between #2 and #3. Flashfoward to when I actually asked her out on a date and she started avoiding me like I was the plague and never said a word. I took the cue and did my best to stop interacting with her (with just veeeeery occasional small talk) since we are at the same workplace. This was 5 months ago.
But then yesterday, my co-dependent side got the best of me and I went in to bring a gift to her, to which she denied and I finally got the guts to actually talk about this really awkward stuff. What I got from the conversation was that neither one of us is emotionally healthy and that was a huge wake up call for me to actually get my things together because I don’t like what I am seeing.
On her side, she never directly said that she was bothered by me trying to date her (just said “the invite was inappropriate as we have a professional relationship” — not everyone sees it as inappropriate since we are not at the same institution and have no direct connection, but that’s her opinion and I respect it), and much less used any word related to dating or crush or romance or anything. Also, just pointing, she never said anything about her being straight, or that it would never happen. She said she “was really uncomfortable” with our previous interactions and “should have said something” (weird thing this only showed up now, and clearly didn’t look like that when we were on good terms). I am going to treat it as a “would never happen” because I am not going to feed the ambiguity. I am refusing to hope for this to turn into more based on the words unsaid, but that just shows how freaking ambiguous this thing was. If she said “no thanks I am not interested”, whether after the e-mail or after she got uncomfortable for the first time, I would have backed off and understood. This crap that happened…? Not even real communication.
On my side though, I tried to pretend I actually didn’t really ask her out. That it was just a misunderstanding. I think I just couldn’t be rejected yet again, but I will call it by its name, it’s manipulation. And I threw my coworkers name under the bus because he had told me to actually ask her out for drinks (and that she would know how to separate things….. sure).
Anyway, thanks again, I will have to think about so many things now, and scratching ambiguity out of my behavior will be the first goal!
Question:
You often talk about gut feelings. But how can you discern whether what you’re feeling is fear/anxiety or intuition/gut feeling? How do you know whether your perception is skewed by previous negative experiences or the current Person DOES fit the characteristics of the people you’ve Bad those negative experiences with? Thank you! 🙂