Break Emotional Unavailability, Embrace Loving Relationships, Grow Self-Esteem

Podcast Ep. 33: Personality vs Character, Feeling Over-Responsible, One-Night Stand ‘Hat’

By Reading Time: 2 Minutes

It’s time for another episode of The Baggage Reclaim Sessions.

In episode 33, I cover:

Personality versus character: There’s a big difference between the two and particularly in dating where we’re going to encounter personality before we really see character, we need to be discerning and ensure that we don’t jump to conclusions about what people with a certain type of personality will be like.

Being over-responsible: So many in the BR ‘tribe’ (I must settle on a name for our gang!) have assumed or been given way too much responsibility from a very young age. This habit affects our adult relationships as well as what we feel obliged to be and do, plus it leads to procrastination and trying to get others to be responsible for us [because we’re bloody exhausted!]

Some people won’t see it: I explain why burning up your time, energy and emotions pursuing someone who has done you wrong to ‘finally’ see things in the way that you do or to apologise or explain, is going to drain you out and that if you can acknowledge it, you can learn to accept that apology you never got and move on with increased awareness.

Listener Question: We had great dates including being introduced to his friends yet he’s gone silent–what should I do? This week’s listener started off dating with a view to finding a relationship, then relegated the date to one-night stand but then had more dates and has developed feelings, and now he’s not in touch. I offer some advice on what to do and explain why she needs to work out her priorities and decide if she has her one-night stand hat on or her relationship one.

What I Learned This Week: I made an important visit this week that reminded me that not everything is about me (or any of us) and that when we blame ourselves for where loved ones won’t step up and are self-destructive, we’re not seeing that there’s something in their journey that we’re  not necessarily privy to that is driving their behaviour.

You can listen to this podcast below. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe on Soundcloud, iTunes, Stitcher or via a podcast app on whatever device you use.  If you’re new to podcasts, find out more about what they are and how to subscribe with this handy guide.

If you love the podcast and you listen via iTunes, I’d love if you could leave a review as it helps to spread the word about the podcast. And tell your friends–it all helps! Listener questions can be emailed to podcast AT baggagereclaim DOT com. If there’s a topic you’d love me to talk about, let me know! Nat xxx

Sometimes Embarrassment / Shame Stops A Person From Making Attempts To Remedy A Situation Or Get In Touch

By Reading Time: 5 Minutes

It's Not About YOu

Have you ever felt so embarrassed about something (or even ashamed) that you try to avoid any and everything to do with it? I remember walking by St Stephen’s Green in Dublin and seeing a guy who I had an ambiguous flirtation going on with. Strutting in my wedge heels, next thing I found myself sprawled out on the pavement with my legs in the air. There was an audible gasp from the crowd queuing outside the club and then some laughter, including mine which disguised my deep embarrassment and even masked my tears of pain. Mor-ti-fi-frickin-cation. Every time I saw him after that, I steered well clear of him, which turned out to be a blessing as I discovered he was Mr Unavailable with a girlfriend stowed away.

Being really embarrassed or even ashamed and keeping a distance as a result of these feelings, isn’t limited to embarrassing moments though – I hear stories about parents, exes, and even one night stands that serve as a reminder that while it is so easy to make someone’s behaviour about us, there can be ‘deeper’ reasons than anything we’ve managed to come up with (normally a ‘one false move’ that we’ve pinned it on) or various inadequacies that we think we have.

I’ve said it many times before and I’ll say it again – It’s not about you. What others do and be (or fail to) is about them. Yes it can hurt and directly impact us as a consequence of their mentality, actions, and even their Overactive Pride ‘Thyroid’ but don’t get it twisted and think that you’re capable of Jedi Mind Tricks.

In the chapter The Making of a Fallback Girl in Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl, one of the issues I talk about is how some parents are so ashamed by their absence or what they’ve done, that rather than step up and at least make a good attempt at trying to build some bridges and be present now, they keep their distance out of shame.

“Sometimes they do regret their actions but instead of the issue taking precedence, their pride does. This means that they don’t do anything to make the original abandonment and hurt right because of their own shame and what they think you might say or do.”

You end up being a reminder of a ‘version’ of themselves that they’d rather disassociate themselves from even if you’re holding out an olive branch, a Reset Button, and some white wash. It’s like they can’t get past this and end up heaping on more pain. They may even be afraid of screwing up some more or having to be accountable and answer questions. Even if they attempt to forge a relationship with you, explanations and questions may prove too ‘taxing’ and so you end up keeping it zipped so that they stick around and you end up with an unsatisfactory ambiguous relationship, or they exit.

It’s Just a Date, Not a Marriage Proposal & 9 Other Thoughts On Dating For The Weekend

By Reading Time: 4 Minutes


ER, I THINK YOU MISUNDERSTOOD ME. I SAID,

1. It really is just a date, not a marriage proposal, nor is it the start of your life, your ticket outta ‘here’ or anything else. It’s just a date. I’m not saying that with more dates, time and progression into a bonafide relationship that it won’t lead into something special, but for now, it’s just a date. I don’t know what is going on with us with our modern lives, but so many people are itching to offload the life they’re in and hitch their wagon to someone, anyone that will take them out on a date. They want this one to be it. It’s too much pressure that sets you up for disappointment or will have you Fast Forwarding. Appreciate and enjoy your own life and you won’t be so invested in something and someone you don’t know.

2. If you’re getting attached to every date or even every prospect of a date, you’re really not that fussy, and you don’t know what you want, other than you seem to want to be attached to someone. If you feel attached to and disappointed by ‘everyone’ you interact with romantically no matter how vaguely, how can you truly have felt something?

3. Know yourself before you sexually wreck yourself. If you’re the type of person that struggles emotionally after you are sexually intimate with someone and are likely to feel invested, don’t ‘get down’ until you’re on enough solid footing to handle the emotional consequences.

4. If you do have sex fairly quickly into dating someone, keep in mind that you may have to write it off. Is it fair? Well it’s not about ‘fair’ per se. Sex confuses things. While some people aren’t bothered, some will actually feel embarrassed about letting themselves get carried away and won’t know how to roll back, so they disappear. I mean, how do you go from having sex to holding hands and ‘getting to know one another’? It can happen sometimes, but it can be a bit like closing the door after the horse has bolted. I’ve also heard too many stories about people trying to roll back to chaste but they keep ‘finding’ themselves naked.

5. People unfold after you meet them, not this ‘changing’ BS. How can someone you’ve known a wet week or a month ‘change’? It’s not that you met them one way and then they ‘changed’ – it’s that you met them, you thought they were certain things, they presented their own thing, and then they unfolded. That’s what time and experience does – show you who someone truly is. As a friend of mine reminded me of the wise words of the wonderful Chris Rock, when you go out on those first few dates, you’re meeting their representative… and they’re meeting yours.

Why Using Casual Relationships As a Back Door Route to a Relationship is a Deeply Flawed Plan

By Reading Time: 5 Minutes

back door

A male friend of ours has been going through a really difficult time. When we hung out last week, he emphasised to the boyf and I, how he’s steering clear of relationships and focusing on getting his life together. My ears pricked up though when he ‘casually’ mentioned a female friend who he was hanging out with. A bit of probing quickly revealed that she’d also recently experienced a breakup.

“So you’re just friends?” I asked and paused for a few seconds waiting for what I suspected was to come. He insisted yes and then said “OK, well actually she stayed over last weekend but seriously, it was strictly as friends.” He then admitted they’d slept in the same bed and that nothing had happened. I waited a few more seconds. He then admitted they’d had a kiss and a cuddle. Hi-la-ri-ous!

Now let’s be real – you know how this story goes, possibly because you’ve been in this very situation yourself.

He’s told her what’s been going on his life and has (so he claims) emphatically stated that he doesn’t want a relationship and absolutely can’t do one. She’s out of something pretty bad too and claims to be in full agreement. However proving yet again that there’s no such thing as a casual relationship (an oxymoron in itself), it was less than a week later before she was trying to make plans and angling to stay over at his. Like a girlfriend.

Even funnier – there’s another couple of women he’s ‘texting’ with. When I asked him why he can’t just be by himself, sort himself out, find things to do, see friends etc, he told me that he couldn’t ‘manage’ without female attention and these interactions break up the routine.

His rationale is that he’s told her everything that’s being going on his life and how he doesn’t want a relationship so he thinks that she understands the ‘terms’ and that he clearly isn’t in a position to be anything other than casual. What he hasn’t realised is that while he may have been upfront, at the same time his actions can be perceived as ‘mixed messages’. Many people still think that people who don’t want relationships either shag you and then shag off, or remain alone – this is completely untrue.

The Quick Guide To Unavailable Relationships – Including Casual, Rebound, Affairs, Dalliances and Secret Relationships

By Reading Time: 4 Minutes

The Quick Guide To Unavailable Relationships : discover the relationships that signal emotional unavailability

After several years of writing Baggage Reclaim and being asked numerous times “Are they emotionally unavailable?”, I’ve put together a list of the most common unavailable relationships , as I’ve realised that pretty much everything I’ve heard falls into eleven types of relationship.

‘Casual’ Relationships – Casual arrangements including Friends With Benefits and booty calls, as well as those who don’t want anything ‘heavy’ and like to keep it ambiguous and unlabelled. Think of these ‘relationsh*ts’ as someone getting all the fringe benefits without the commitment, intimacy or responsibility.

Boomerang Relationships – Can’t break, won’t break, your ex keeps leaving and returning, and you keep taking them back. Or, you keep chasing them down and waiting around, sometimes even being disruptive in their current relationship. If you’ve ever dated someone that pops up, gives you an amazing time, disappears for a while and then pops up again..and lather, rinse, repeat, these also fall under the boomerang umbrella. Got lots of loose endings? You’re the Yo-Yo Girl (or Guy).

Rebound Relationships – Caught between two relationships, this is basically not over an ex or the pain from a breakup, or the hurts from the fallout. This is recently broken up, separated, divorced, or widowed. And remember: people can be interested in you and even tell you that they’re ready for a relationship but how ready they are is self-evident. If you have a habit of being in rebound involvements, you are The Buffer.

Affairs – A messy combo of one person rebelling and the other competing, one or sometimes both of you, are cheating on someone else and you play second fiddle. It also includes remaining with someone that you know shags around on you or who has ’emotional’ affairs. Just in case you’re in any doubt, neither The Cheater nor the Other Person are available whatever their (or your) reasons for the affair. There’s no such thing as an honest cheat.

Dalliances – Typically characterised by being short-term, these are casual flings, one-night stands, or whirlwind romances that fizzle out. Think plenty of Fast Forwarding and possibly some Future Faking. Note – you may not realise it’s a dalliance at the outset.

Rehabing and Remodelling Relationships – This is excessive baggage particularly in the form of problems including addiction which you try to fix, heal, and help, and it also includes relationships where even if they don’t have any major problems, there’s a lot of control and demands for change. This also includes people who are making out that they’re getting help but just paying lip service to it and using it to hook people in and gain their confidence. If you need to feel needed, you have Florence Nightingale tendencies.

Long-Term Struggles – Some unavailable relationships can go the distance in terms of time but have all sorts of problems within them, even when there is history, a ‘title’, a legal piece of paper, or kids. Think of this like flogging that donkey till it collapses. This can include some casual relationships where you haven’t heeded the fact that they don’t want to commit but you stick to them like glue in the hopes they’ll change. Next thing a decade or two has gone by.

Fantasy Relationships – Fantasy relationships are about avoiding intimacy. They’re the combination of illusions and denial, but fantasy relationships also include virtual relationships and anything where because of distanced contact– this includes when you get hijacked by your feelings and then project them onto the person and assume there’s more between you than there is, and getting carried away with online relationships that don’t translate into offline at all or are mostly conducted through words instead of human interaction. I’ve also heard from a hell of a lot of people that wait around for someone that pops up occasionally and then disappears.

Abusive Relationships – Full of manipulation, there’s a presence of emotional, physical, and/or verbal abuse with use of excessive force and control.

Secret Relationships – This relationship is on the down low for whatever reason but often includes issues with race, religion, and family. However it can be as simple as them giving you some rinky dink reason why nobody else ‘needs’ to know, introducing you as a ‘friend’, working together (watch out – this is the easiest excuse for a secret relationship) and of course includes some ambiguous casual relationships. It also includes immensely secretive people who put up walls as well as people who are being ambiguous about their sexuality and drip-feeding revelations.

Excuse Relationships – Are they busy, scared, too tired, in need of more time, shy, dealing with a lot right now, ‘overwhelmed’ by their feelings, got a presentation in two years time that they need to prepare for, ‘overwhelmed’ by their feelings for you, got an ex that they’re tip toeing around, kids that don’t like you, a mama who needs ‘more time’, or just in a need of an extra day/week/month/year/lifetime to give you what you need? If you or they are making excuses, they’re obviously not available for a relationship not least because you or they keep lessening their responsibility with the excuses. If you’re the type that’s been reluctant to pigeonhole them into another category or reluctant to admit they’re unavailable, this is your relationship. Where there’s excuses there’s denial and there’s an unavailable relationship.

And remember: If you’re in one of these relationships, it means you’re off the market for an available relationship making you unavailable yourself. Being available to an unavailable isn’t the same as being available – it’s like putting a cap on yourself and limiting your options.

Remember: if your relationship is missing the ‘landmarks’ – commitment, consistency, progression, balance, and intimacy – you’re dealing with unavailability issues. Whether it’s emotional, mental, physical, or spiritual unavailability – they’re unavailable for an available healthy relationship.

Your thoughts?

 

Casual Relationships: All The Fringe Benefits of a Relationship…Without The Actual Relationship

By Reading Time: 6 Minutes

Several years back, in what turned out to be my ‘epiphany relationship’ that completely changed me, I was involved with someone that:

1) Pursued me and when we finally got together, he said he’d fancied me ever since we’d been introduced several months before (when he was in a relationship by the way…)

2) Said I was a ‘great girl’ and how he loved spending time with me

3) I slept with on a number of occasions and he stayed over

4) We hung out sometimes with each others respective friends

5) I did a lot of ego stroking

6) I listened to his moans and gripes about work and even his ex

7) We went out to dinner and the movies

8. Called, emailed and texted me

9) I made myself available for him to make plans with

I believed we were in a relationship. I’ll admit I didn’t go so far as to call him my boyfriend but I thought we had something decent going on and that we were moving towards a committed relationship. Aside from 2-3 weeks of intensity, the remainder of our five month ‘relationship’ was hot and cold, where both the frequency of seeing each other and the level of contact went downhill and I just didn’t know what to expect or what the hell was going on. It was only when I started to fully acknowledge my discomfort and play the ‘relationship’ back that I realised it was a barely there relationship or as many refer to it, a casual relationship.

Knowing just how hot and cold and inconsistent our ‘relationship’ was, you would be forgiven for wondering how the hell I didn’t realise?

It’s because I was ‘thrown’ off the scent of a casual relationship due to what I saw as the ‘hallmarks’ of a relationship.

It really isn’t too great a leap to believe, that because someone seems to enjoy your company so much, you’re sleeping with them over a period of time, giving them an ego stroke, a shoulder to lean on, being introduced to friends and even family, and are even having references to the future slipped in, that you’re in a relationship.

However it’s best to stop taking that leap and recognise that just because someone does want to contact you, sleep with you, and look for emotional sustenance from you over a period of time, it doesn’t mean you’re in a relationship because without landmarks of a healthy, loving (or on the way to loving) relationship such as commitment, intimacy and progression, your relationship is all shirt, no trousers, ham, no burger, bread, no butter.

Don’t believe how misguided I was? When we finally had The Conversation and I told him that it was obvious that it wasn’t working out, he admitted that he didn’t want a relationship – when we’d got together, he’d broken up with his ex a couple of months before. He then proceeded to remind me that I was gorgeous, fun, intelligent, great to spend time with and yada yada yada.

I was his Fallback Girl and I gave him a soft landing out of his old life and helped him avoid whatever feelings he had about his previous relationship.

Why Dating Is a Discovery Phase To Work Out If You Want a Relationship (With Them)

By Reading Time: 5 Minutes

skitched-20100812-184935.jpg

I’ve been in enough pseudo, illusionary relationships to know that I have sometimes made assumptions about the state of play and engaged in behaviour that was counterproductive to me actually forging a healthy relationship with a chance of growing. This happens because the lines get blurred between ‘dating’ and a ‘relationship’ and we start building sandcastles in the sky and love and trust blindly even when there is real evidence to show that we should be rolling back.

I get asked a lot of questions about dating but I felt the easiest way to start a series of posts addressing dating was to say:

You need to go into dating with a reasonable level of trust and self-esteem. Let’s imagine that you go through life and engaging with people that you have just met and don’t know enough about them to know exactly how much you can trust them, it’s best to have reasonable level of trust and increase or roll back accordingly based on your interactions with them.

Dating is a discovery period. If you imagine that the idea of dating is about discovering other people and seeing how much you ‘click’ and whether you have enough going on to forge a relationship, this period is for you to learn about one another…even if what you learn is bad news.

This is why you shouldn’t be so committed to a relationship you don’t have yet because if the ‘feedback’ is ‘Abort mission! Back away from the target and abort mission’, if you’re too invested, you’ll think ‘Yeah..but I love him! I can change him! And this one time in bandcamp he said he was going to marry me and take me on a cruise!’

Unfortunately, we don’t all date for the same reasons.

Some people date because they are genuinely looking for a relationship.
Some people date to pass time.
Some people date to get laid and they pretend that they want more so that they don’t endanger the possibility of getting laid.
Some people date because they’re afraid to be alone.
Some people date because they want to see what’s out there – a bit like experimenting.
Some people date lots of people and treat it like a numbers game but don’t end up being close to anyone.
Some people date because even though they claim to want a relationship, they’re afraid of commitment and have no true genuine desire to forge a committed healthy relationship, but have not connected their actions with the results and assume it’s ‘everyone else’s fault’.
Some people will claim they want a relationship, but are afraid of commitment, but feel compelled to keep ‘trying’ placing the onus on some mystical person to come along and ‘change their mind’.

Many people date and have intentions to have a decent, healthy relationship but don’t always behave in ways that are productive for dating or a relationship making it you in the end, incompatible.

You just don’t know enough about someone immediately or even in the first few dates to know whether they are on the same page as you with their intentions, although if you say you’re looking for a relationship and sex is the primary thing being pushed on their agenda for example, you can rest assured that no matter what they say about looking for a relationship, they’re looking to get laid.

If you date someone and take the time to get to know them, you can work out whether you actually do want the same thing as opposed to saying that you do and something else resulting.

If you’re looking for a relationship and they’re looking for a relationship then you have a starting point.

LOOKING FOR A RELATIONSHIP + LOOKING TO PASS TIME = YOU BEING IN LIMBO WHILE THEY FLIP FLAP

LOOKING FOR A RELATIONSHIP + LOOKING FOR A SHAG = YOU BEING USED FOR A SHAG & BEING AN ‘ACCIDENTAL BOOTY CALL’

LOOKING FOR A SHAG + LOOKING FOR A SHAG = GOOD TIMES (but if you change your mind and start looking for a relationship, you’ll become an accidental booty call)

If you’ve had a history of being involved in dubious relationships or base a lot of your interactions around attraction, chemistry, and common interests, you are likely to need to address some of your beliefs about dating to have greater dating success, starting with remembering what dating is about:

Dating is a discovery period. It is a fact finding phase where when you get involved with someone, you go in with a reasonable level of trust and then use your discoveries like an internal system of checks and balances.

You go in with your eyes and ears open and your feet on the ground and as you engage and interact with them, using your boundaries, values, and awareness, you either increase your level of trust because their words and actions match up and you feel good within the relationship, or you decrease your level of trust because you get signals and evidence that show that the basic level of trust you date with is misplaced with this person. If you do these things as a basic, it won’t be a hardship to do and you’ll filter the information naturally and process the signals.

You cannot make the decision that you’re in a relationship until you’ve gone beyond the point of seeing past attraction, appearance, chemistry, and common interests, to whether you have shared values.

You’ll only find out if you have shared values and a foundation of care, trust, and respect that can lead to love in a loving relationship if you take the time to get to know the person in the reality for who they are. You cannot do this if you’re already in lala land building sandcastles in the sky betting on potential or building a fake future with someone in spite of the fact that they don’t back up their words with actions.

Dating is the beginning. There’s the initial dates where really, you’re finding out if you want to take the time to continue getting to know one another. This leads into the interim stage where you date some more and continue the discovery, which can lead into a loving relationship.

If you enter at the beginning, jump straight into bed or sexual contact and decide you’re in a loving relationship before it is a loving relationship, you will miss vital clues and information that tell you whether it can be a loving relationship in the first place.

The mistake that many people make in dating is assuming that because they find someone attractive, feel a chemistry with them, and share some common interests that it’s a match made in heaven because they make blind assumptions with these nuggets of information and correlate them to the rest of the person and assume they share the same values.

If you use dating as a discovery phase, even if you do feel attraction, chemistry and have common interests, you’ll seek to discover whether you have shared values.

If you miss the vital steps in dating and don’t take the time to lay the foundations, you’ll end up in a shady relationship built on little or no foundations wondering why the relationship isn’t working. It stands to reason that if the way that you have been dating isn’t working, to continue to repeat these behaviours would be relationship insanity. It’s time to get out of stuck and take your time.

Dating takes time. Take the time to get to know people you’re dating and don’t be too quick to give away all the goods, whether that’s sex, your full trust, or your commitment. There is no fire – do due diligence and you will reap the rewards.

Your thoughts?

 

Drama Seekers: It’s time to get off the relationship crack

By Reading Time: 4 Minutes

Today is the very first day in the 30 Days of Drama Reduction series.NML says: Say no to relationships crack

Lot’s of women believe that drama is part and parcel of relationships. Some are purposeful Drama Seekers, actively pursuing men that cater to the high adrenaline factor, but there are a hell of a lot of women out there that are ‘Accidental’ Drama Seekers.

You say you want to be happy. You say you want to settle down. You say you want to have better relationships. You say you want to stop being men with an emotional age that’s in the minus category. You say you are sick and tired of the same sh*t, different man, yet…it’s Here We Go Again Time.

You just seem to have a lot of drama going on in your relationships.

Your actions and relationships are in contradiction with what you profess to want. You actively pursue relationships you say you don’t want. You are heavily emotionally invested in relationships you say you don’t want.

No Ex On The First Date

By Reading Time: 4 Minutes

empty speech bubbleYou’re on a date. You’re both nervous and you make polite chit chat. Maybe you order a drink and loosen up a little and you’re both tentatively finding out about each other. You start talking about dating/relationships/how you’ve come to be on this date and somehow the conversation slips into the shock infested waters of Ex Territory. Now I don’t care how you got to the conversation, exes do not belong on dates in any way, shape, or form, and certainly not on the first few. If you talk about your ex you might as well have brought them along with you and plomped them in between the two of you.

The most common misconception about asking about exes or blabbing about them is that people believe it’s an opportunity for either party to find out how the other ticks within relationships. People think that you can find out how ready a person is for a relationship, whether they are looking for something serious or searching for a shag, whether they are crazy, and how they think this person will behave if they were in a relationship with them. Now I’m not saying it’s impossible to glean some information from conversations like these but there are two factors that skew any information that you get:

When Sex is Just Sex: It is what it is but how about the guys speak up!

By Reading Time: 3 Minutes

male and female symbolsA few days ago I wrote about The Justifying Zone, that slippery slope that women can find themselves on when they stick with a guy so that they can justify their emotional or sexual investment, even if they recognise that that the relationship is doomed. A couple of male commenters raised the point that sometimes a guy just wants sex, which of course made me want to revisit this subject.

Ladies, we like to see shades of grey, read between the lines, and see gold (or even platinum) where there is in fact copper, but sometimes sex, really is just that; SEX. It’s not the beginning of a grand love affair, it’s not an indicator of greater things to come, and it’s not a great idea to base a relationship solely off how good a guys strokes are.

The trouble is, are guys honest enough to say that sex is just sex?

Guys, we are not frickin’ mind readers. We don’t find out things by osmosis and there are many men out there that do not own a pair of brass balls to be upfront and honest about their intentions, or should I say, sexual intentions. Instead, because they don’t want to be perceived as a total bastard and of course they don’t actually want to endanger the possibility of actually getting laid, they bring on all the hearts, flowers, charm, and hints of more to come, only to have to backtrack and make a rapid disappearance afterwards.

This is all a double edged penis sword. Yes we should both be adult enough to screw like rabbits and walk away but we are humans. Casual sex is rarely just ‘casual’ and it’s only casual sex if BOTH parties know that they’re having casual sex in the first place!

As far as I’m concerned, it is just sex if:

One or both of you actually say it is
You meet and screw in the same night (one night stand)
The only thing that exists between you both irrespective of how long you have known each other is sex

Anything else is open to misinterpretation and it is alarming how many women will still see it as more even if it is one of the above situations.

‘Yeah but we talk a lot’ one woman said to me recently. Moaning, groaning, asking when you can meet up, and making small talk to facilitate you both having sex and appearing polite is NOT talking a lot!

Whilst I do think that we can be guilty of building sandcastles in the sky on occasion, I have to say here that much of the ambiguity that surrounds sex and women feeling the need to justify the fact that they slept with the guy by investing themselves further is caused by ambiguous, hard to read men who blow hot and cold and leave everything ‘literally’ wide open to interpretation. So guys, if it’s just sex, maybe you should start by saying it is, or avoid going for women who clearly want more than you’re actually able to give!

But…ladies, ladies, ladies, heed the signs. If it walks like duck, quacks like a duck, and flaps its pretty little wings like a duck, it’s a duck. Pause for a moment the next time you’re in this situation and strip away all of the rationalising, reasoning, and justifying, and ask yourself if you have anything left besides a walking, talking…penis.

The Justifying Zone: when a woman needs to justify her emotional or sexual investment

By Reading Time: 3 Minutes

end signThe Justifying Zone is that slippery slope that a lot of women find themselves in, especially after they have sexual contact with a guy. Many of us feel that we need to justify our emotional and sexual investment and this justification is effectively attempting to close the door after the horse has bolted.

The Justifying Zone will always appear when a man fails to live up to the initial promise that he first exhibited or does something inappropriate or that raises a major red flag that could potentially scupper the possibility of the relationship. If for instance, he’s a Mr Unavailable and the ambiguity increases along with all of his other core behaviours, the potential to stay in the zone and cling to it for dear life becomes even bigger.