trust issues Archives - Baggage Reclaim with Natalie Lue

Advice Wednesday: Something doesn’t feel right (& he still had the Plenty of Fish app on his iPad). Help!

May 11, 2016 By NATALIE Reading Time: 2 Minutes

One of the things that I’ve learned from too many instances of doubting my gut and intuition is to never ignore it. Have I misinterpreted gut messages in the past? Sure, but that doesn’t mean that my gut was wrong, it’s just that at the time my experience with reading it was patchy and I tended to leave it to the wire before properly paying attention to it, so of course I was going to misfire. This is why I always stress to people who tell me that something feels off, that if something doesn’t feel right, it’s normally because it isn’t. That doesn’t mean disaster’s about to strike but it does mean that you need to try and get grounded and tune in to your inner voice–try and get a gauge on what has been going on inside and outside of you that might be giving cause to this unease.

If you feel uneasy for all or most of a relationship, this is a code red alert that you are not paying enough attention to your feelings and needs.

In today’s Advice Wednesday, I really feel for Helen because she’s had a bad feeling that she hasn’t been able to shake off for the duration of her 9-month relationship yet she hasn’t been able to put her finger on it because in her mind, she’s seeing his parents regularly, he takes care of her cat, he’s not away much, and he’s the one who broached moving in together three months into the relationship. Yet weeks away from moving in on what she calls a “trial basis”, she’s found the Plenty of Fish app on his iPad and confronted him about it. He says that it’s not being used and deleted it (after she demanded that he did) but she doesn’t know what to think. I offer up some advice to help her make sense of the situation.

If in doubt, retrace your steps by playing back the mental tape of your relationship and see what you notice. It’s also not a bad idea to try to identify other situations where you have felt similarly and what you learned from those. Keep in mind as well that ignoring your gut is stressful plus it can lead to snooping or being on red alert for ‘signs’, which only further erodes trust and communication.

Also, if you find a dating app on your partner’s phone/tablet, you’re not “paranoid” for being concerned!

Have you ever had a bad feeling that you couldn’t shake off in a relationship? What happened in the end? Have you found dating apps on a partner’s phone etc that apparently they’re not using? What happened? If you have any insights or some advice, please do share.

Take care of you,

Nat

PS There’s another Advice Wednesday video that’s also just become available (I got so many requests while I had time off so will be putting up some more over the next week or so) and it’s on: Will having sex [without emotions] after my painful breakup set me back?

Podcast Ep. 24: Dating As A Single Parent, Help vs Support, The Debit & Credit Trust System

February 19, 2016 By NATALIE Reading Time: 2 Minutes

It’s time for this week’s episode of The Baggage Reclaim Sessions podcast!

Here’s what I cover in episode 24:

Dating as a single parent. One of the most popular requests I receive is regarding advice for dating when you’re a single parent. I share seven tips including about having fun on dates rather than going straight into interviewing for a step-parent, to not using dating as salvation and the importance with touching base with your child about what they’re feeling and perceiving. | Episode 1 has tips for figuring out whether you’re ready to date. If boundaries between you and your ex-partner are still an issue, I write about Low Contact (how to maintain civil contact) in my book, The No Contact Rule.

What’s the difference between help and support? It’s a fine line but there is a difference. I explain why frustrations can arise and how it’s doing things for the wrongs reasons that can you to end up playing Florence Nightingale in your relationship which is more harmful in the end than beneficial. I include suggestions for how to recognise when help (or support) isn’t really happening as well as what to do if it’s put a strain on an interaction. | More posts on Florence Nightingale relationships | Another post on ‘help’ | Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl has an entire chapter devoted to Florence Nightingales and Renovators (people who love a fixer-upper)

The Debit and Credit Trust System. Trust is something that many of us struggle with but it’s also the foundation of our relationships. We won’t go far in any relationship if we trust too little or over-trust out of resistance to trusting ourselves. I do a quick run-through of why we’re distrusting, some of the implications, and what The Debit and Debit Trust System is.

Listener Question – Meena’s turning 30 and wondering if there’s something wrong with her because she’s been focused on her career while her peers have gotten married.

What Nat Learned This Week: When something is outside of my control, I’ve got to accept the things I can’t change instead of giving myself brainache from moaning about it!

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.

Leave a comment or post on Facebook and please do subscribe. If you know someone who would enjoy it, please help spread the word. 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

Advice Wednesday #4: My Ex Exacerbated My Insecurities By Objectifying Other Women–How Do I Move On?

February 17, 2016 By NATALIE Reading Time: 6 Minutes

Insecurity is exacerbated by trying to control the uncontrollable. When you become less self-critical and more certain about you, you don't have to seek validation or fear uncertainty anymore

The tricky situation: In my last relationship, the problem of emotional cheating was a really big insecurity of mine. After reading your blog and starting a Feelings Diary, I came to understand why I was insecure about it and it boiled down to me not being happy in the relationship and me projecting. That said, my ex also gave me reason to worry including talking about other women in sexually fetishistic ways–it made me uncomfortable and was a constant source of insecurity. I understand that this should have been a code red alert for me that we were incompatible (and immature) and that I had fear of “not being good enough”, but unfortunately this experience tinted how I feel about possible future relationships.

Where do you draw the line? I hear about people in mutually fulfilling healthy relationships, such as my mother and her husband, where the partners still talk about other people as being “attractive” and that bothers and worries me due to my own experience with my ex. Is it something I need to sanity check? Is it normal that even in healthy relationships people are still going off being attracted to others? Normally, due to my experience with a Mr Unavailable, I would have chalked that up to being dissatisfied with your own relationship/partner, but this seems to be something most of my close friends do and normalise.

The other thing I hear a lot about from friends in relationships (though not necessarily healthy ones) is this idea of “crushes”. Similarly, this idea about having a crush on someone while in a relationship seems to go into emotional affair territory for me, even if it is superficial. I think it makes me uncomfortable because I find it sort of juvenile really and the people who talk about it are people who tend to be more illusions-driven types.

I understand there is a healthy difference between thinking someone is handsome and then straight out emotional affairs or being actively attracted to another person while in a relationship. To me, however, just the word “attraction” implies an active process, not to mention a “single” mentality. I’m beginning to wonder if this is something that is a personal boundary of mine (emotional and physical monogamy) or if it’s just an insecurity I need to work on and sanity check?

********************

You’re mixing up a number of issues and using generalisations and judgements that chime with your own narrative to justify your position and reinforce an underlying insecurity and wall that you have about relationships. Let’s take it from the top:

Emotional cheating is an inappropriate emotional liaison with another person, so think of it is an affair sans sex. Often regarded as being worse than if a partner had actually had sex, emotional affairs involve secrecy, lies, and thinking about, talking with, and confiding in another person in a way that isn’t happening within the existing relationship–it’s betrayal.

I’ll tell you what emotional cheating isn’t: acknowledging that a person of the opposite or same sex is attractive.

While a sexual fetish isn’t a crime (depending on what it is of course), objectifying people, whether it’s in front of a partner or not, and being sexually inappropriate in behaviour or language, is a problem. One ex had poor sexual boundaries and was described by my friends as “deviant”–he constantly talked about other women, he made invitations dressed as wisecracks to my friends about threesomes, and degraded me with his behaviour to name but a few. When he came to visit me in the U.S. (this is after spending weeks emailing me about all the “young fillies” that were apparently eyeing him up in a club back home in Dublin), we joined a group of my friends for dinner on the first night and he said to my best pal, “I’m like a fire engine ready to spray you with my hose!”. I ended it with him shortly after, although I internalised his behaviour for quite some time.

Podcast Ep.14: Long-Distance Love or Avoidance?, Listen To Your Body, Bullies At Work

December 5, 2015 By NATALIE Reading Time: 2 Minutes

The scariest thing about distance is you don't whether they'll miss you or forget about you. The Notebook It’s that time of the week again for The Baggage Reclaim Sessions podcast.

Here’s what I cover in episode 14:

Why do some people find long-distance relationships especially attractive?: Sometimes long-distance relationships are unavoidable and both parties are endeavouring to close the distance gap asap but sometimes being in a long-distance relationship is the perfect smokescreen to hide emotional unavailability including fears about intimacy and commitment.

Painting a picture of your past position with a parent (or other family member): Sometimes a parent really does not see the same set of events in the way that we do because, well, they were both adult and parent back in the day plus we were experiencing those same things from a child’s perspective. We can become frustrated because we’re assuming that they understand everything that we’re feeling and why, but actually, being vulnerable enough to say, “This is what I felt, this is what I thought was going on, and here’s a few examples of why”, can open up a fresh dialogue and some understanding between you.

Tips for dealing with workplace bullies: I offer up some suggestions for overcoming bullying behaviour at work. Stop seeing these people as strong – they really are not!

Listener Question – How do I deal with the distrust that I now find myself viewing women with after what was a brief but very painful and confusing relationship with my ex? I explain what this distrust is really about.

What Nat Learned This Week: Listening to my body is vital – it provides vital clues about where I’m overdoing it.

It Doesn’t Have To Be So Scary In a New Relationship

November 16, 2015 By NATALIE Reading Time: 6 Minutes

New relationships are quite daunting if not downright terrifying when you’re worried that it’s all going to belly up, not because you have any reason to back up that concern but more because you’ve already lived out the entire relationship in your head and been broken up with a thousand times. Thinking about how it might not work out is a way of protecting you so that you don’t allow you to get too comfy. Of course the side effect of this is that you end up stressed out to the max and using worry to essentially pray for what you don’t want.

Worry distorts perspective and doesn’t leave room for love. It’s all too easy to forget once you jump on the worry train of thoughts that everyone has a past that includes a relationship not working out or unrequited love, or pain from painful experiences, and instead decide that because you’ve had a past that it’s going to follow you in to your present and future. You might also decide to go a step further and decide that because your partner has previous relationships that it spells doom for you. Sure, this is understandable when they’ve been a shady partner but then you’re problem in this case is, Why am I hoping that this person will make me the exception to their rule of behaviour and all while ignoring code amber and code red warnings that something’s up in funky town? But judging a partner based purely on the fact that they have a past (he-llo, even babies do! It’s called time ticking by!) or by the fact that his/her relationships haven’t worked out is a tad unfair.

When you’re scared in a new relationship and struggling to relax because you don’t know the middle and end of the plot, you’re wanting Mystic Meg to come along and say, “Yes it’s going to work out” or “No it’s not”, or to give you the end date so that you can privately accept failure from the outset and feel safe in knowing that your fears and the story that you tell yourself are true. That’s not how it works and unfortunately, if you already have one foot out of the relationship and are imagining the end and in fact, living it time and again while making predictions, you are not present in your relationship and are showing lack of commitment.

If you’re not truly in this relationship, that’s a problem that needs to be cleaned up, especially if your reasons for not being committed are not on the merits of this relationship which would mean that the showing up and even commitment issues are about unresolved feelings about previous relationships and experiences. You don’t trust you so you don’t trust this partner.

You will need to give this relationship 100% because relationships are 100:100 not 50:50 so you need to manage your own feelings and behaviour and let him/her manage theirs and then work with them as part of the team of your relationship. You cannot be a team player if you are secretly carving an escape route out of the ship of your relationship or have your eye on the dinghies so that you can jump into the waters and say, “HA! I bloody knew that I was right not to get too invested in this relationship! They all end the same way.”

It is OK to have wobbles but if you are feeling rocky about being in a new relationship, take it as a code amber alert to get grounded.

A lot of people say to me, “Natalie, I’m worried he/she is going to decide that we’re not a good fit?” Who are these partners? Relationship royalty? The Grand Poobah? You have a say too. It’s not about you finding out if you’re the “right” one for them – you need to show up and decide if this relationship and person is for you. You’re not being picked because that puts you in a rather passive role. What you need to be asking is, Do I believe that this relationship is a good fit? If I were to find that it isn’t, would I do the right thing and say that it’s not a good fit?

This is a two-person relationship, not an audition process where this person holds the key to your happiness. If that’s the way it feels, take a parachute and jump.

It’s also time to ask, Am I being myself in this relationship? Let’s imagine what it’s like when you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop (something I did in the early months of my relationship with my now husband). You look for problems, you don’t look for evidence of positivity, you are edgy, watching yourself all the time in case you ‘mess up’ and reading into things like the past. You are not yourself because everything becomes about whether you are saying and doing the wrong thing and this sense that it could all slip away. This is a fast track to sabotaging your own happiness.

If this relationship isn’t going to work out, it’s not going to work out.

Now, it can either not work out and you spend the whole time worrying (praying for what you don’t want to happen), anticipating doom, feeling ill at ease etc, or you can step up and be present in your relationship so that whatever the outcome, you know that you were there, you gave it your all, that you enjoyed yourself, and that you didn’t spend the whole time looking over your shoulder to see if Freddy Kreuger the relationship killer was at the door.

There is no magic bullet for trust and relaxing. You have to choose the thoughts, choose the words, and choose the actions each day. You recommit over and over again. You talk back to your inner critic and don’t denigrate your relationship by throwing it under a bus when you decide that you’re not in the mood or there is a disagreement. Granted, there are big code red issues that spell the end of a relationship but conflict, criticism, getting to know each other, is part of a relationship and it is not fair to your partner or you that you’re ready to throw in the towel each time a thought passes by or he/she does something that you think could spell doom because you’re looking for evidence to support an underlying decision that you’ve made about you failing or them being just like the past.

Do your due diligence because remember that dating is a discovery phase.

Is this partner similar to previous partners?
Are you thinking, feeling or behaving similarly with this partner as you have with previous partners? If so, what is it that you’re thinking etc and why? What can you learn from the similarities that will help you to recognise how you can take care of?
Are you an equal partner in this relationship?
Are you being yourself?
Are you personally secure including knowledgeable about your values, boundaries etc? If you’re not, now is the time to put extra effort into working on these areas because they can’t give these to you and you will not be able to make decisions from a secure place.
If you were in a code red situation whether it is with him/her or anybody else, would you step up?
Do you trust you? If not, why? How do you intend to resolve this? Try a Feelings Diary and Unsent Letters.

You can only make a decision about this relationship with the best of the knowledge that you have at the time. You do not need to make a perfect decision– you need to be conscious, aware and present so that you know whether you’re an actual good fit, not just evaluating him/her but also getting a sense of your own happiness and contentment within this relationship.

Use Unsent Letters to work out the overhanging feelings about past experiences and change the story. Get clear on what was really behind the end of previous relationships and locate the blessing in disguise because you know what? If you actually like this person and want to give it a shot, it is the right thing that the past relationships didn’t progress. You cannot be available for this relationship if you’re still on some level working off thinking that suggests that the past relationships should have worked out.

You do not need to be perfect. Breathe. Your whole life does not hang in the balance on this person. Dating isn’t life support! You will be OK. Trust in you.

Your thoughts?

Also check out episode one of the Baggage Reclaim Sessions podcast where I talk about knowing when you’re ready to date again. The Pattern Breaker and Tune In To Your Inner Voice also help with breaking patterns and being kinder to you.

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“Why did you get me to trust you?” Why walls can make us ripe for the charmers…

November 2, 2015 By NATALIE Reading Time: 5 Minutes

Have you ever sought to be invited to something that deep down, you know that you don’t really want to go, you just want to be invited? Have you ever felt really into somebody, not because you truly are but because the moment you realised that they weren’t interested and/or unavailable, not only did you almost want to correct them like, “Hey, you made a mistake in not being interested in me. Here’s why…” but they suddenly seemed so interesting and desirable once you knew that you couldn’t have them?

Us humans are contrary folk that sometimes let our egos run ahead of us. That same desire that makes us want something now that we know that we haven’t been offered it or can’t have it, is not only that same desire that causes millions of people to suddenly start blowing hot the moment that they’re unsure of whether their ex still wants them, but also the one that some people use to deliberately encourage us to trust them even though they don’t truly have good intentions.

Trust is an exchange of faith and while some of us trust ourselves and others, some of us are more reserved or even terrified of trusting because certain experiences have caused us to put up walls to protect us from vulnerability. We stop trusting ourselves and decide to red light everything because we’re trying to protect us from a bigger future pain. We put up walls because we want to ensure that we don’t go through a past pain again, not realising how walls close out everything both good and not so good.

One of the reasons why I encourage people to address their trust issues is because ironically, walls make us more likely to engage with people who really shouldn’t make it within 50 miles of our circle of trust.

Us having a wall up makes us more likely to be reliant on some heavy duty flattery from somebody who we feel would allow us to right our wrongs of the past and who on another level, we recognise that it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy where we get go, “See, I was right – there’s no point in trusting”, not realising that our beliefs affect our mindset, affect our choices. If we believe something, we’re biased to look for evidence to support it, otherwise we’d have to change our beliefs. Walls say, “No one is trustworthy including myself” whereas boundaries say, “I recognise that not everyone is trustworthy so I will listen to myself, so my due diligence, be discerning and be vulnerable enough to show up and adjust my level of interaction accordingly”.

When we have trust issues, we make the mistake of thinking that if a person works really hard to win us over and to ‘break down’ our walls, that they must be really into us, but aside from the fact that walls means emotionally unavailable which distinctly skews who we’re going to gravitate to anyway, we’re setting us up for pain by being reliant on somebody not respecting emotional, mental and even physical boundaries as our marker for opening up. “Charming” tends to be a precursor to code red problems.

Some people, once they know that you have trust issues, feel compelled to prove to themselves that they can win your trust, and then once they have it, boom, the uncertainty that they feel due to the lack of control they feel from not being trusted, disappears along with their motivation. They don’t want to genuinely earn your trust in a mutual interaction – they just want a moment where they can say, Shazam! I’ve got him/her now, and then they put the trust medal on their mental display case, press the reset button and move on to pastures new.

Some people need to feel needed and some people need to feel trusted, not because they are trustworthy but because somebody who is reluctant to trust seems so much more valuable than somebody who would go in with an open mind but quickly discern that that this person isn’t trustworthy and shuffle them out with boundaries.

It’s a boost to their ego that they’re lowering a person’s defences. For some, there’s no doubt that it’s a game for them and for others, it’s lack of self-awareness – they are not honest with themselves about their motivations and so they don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing or feeling what they’re feeling.

The not so funny thing is, is that when someone who needs to feel trusted thinks that they’ve won over our trust, they panic! Why? Because now that they’ve earned the trust of somebody who has trust issues, they think it comes with big expectations that they won’t be able to live up to.

The person who wants to break down your walls is the same one that will bust your boundaries. Much like the person who fears success feels increasingly afraid of doing better for fear of creating greater expectations which might open them up to disappointing others or criticism, the person who fears being trusted, fears being relied upon and the expectations that might come with that. What if I’m not able to do what he/she expects of me? Now granted, there may be expectations stemming from feeling as if it’s a massive deal that we’re finally trusting someone but odds are, the expectations that they’re afraid of, are ones that they themselves have created. They could have slowed their roll, not said and done certain things and taken their time to go through the whole getting to know process but no, they had to go giving the big I am. They then either disappear or start behaving badly or certainly in a manner that contradicts what they’ve been putting across, all to relieve this feeling of being expected from.

If we don’t want to be seen as a challenge for shady folk or even the don’t know their arse from their elbow folk, we have to address our own trust issues so that we don’t mistake someone laying it on thick with trowel to charm and disarm us, for a trustworthy opportunity. We’ll be like that person who hasn’t eaten for several months who finally gets a cracker and thinks it’s the best food they’ve ever had. It will also hurt that much more because when we have walls up, we tend to be starved out of affection, attention, hopes, and so after a lean period, somebody working so hard to win us over can seem like all our Christmases come together, but then when it doesn’t work out, it can cause us to end up obsessing because it feels as if we gambled and should have won but lost big instead.

We have to be vulnerable in order to trust and if we begin to forgive ourselves for our past pain so that we can compassionately understand what we’ve been through and begin to heal, we start to restore faith in us. The fact that somebody breached our trust doesn’t mean that we’re “stupid” or a “fool”, or that what they’ve done is a permanent statement of what to expect from others in future.

We can’t live our lives treating everyone like wolves. When we take the time to understand why we have trust issues by looking at the beliefs hangover that we have from past experiences, we learn about where we’ve judged ourselves and made generalisations. We can learn to be boundaried instead of walled so that we’re open to good experiences and able to opt out of what doesn’t feel in alignment with us. When we allow us to recover from those painful experiences of trust, we know our own trust and so we will no longer be receptive to somebody who is glib and charming in order to give us a feeling of being reassured without giving us consistent action of actually being trustworthy.

Your thoughts?

Don’t forget that I’ve got a 30-day project, Embrace Healthy Boundaries which teaches you about the difference between walls and boundaries and shows you how to regain your trust in you by acting from a boundaried place.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting love and a relationship but the path we choose to achieve our desires has its own consequences

February 12, 2015 By NATALIE Reading Time: 5 Minutes

I listen to people express their desire for a relationship and romantic love and there are a significant portion of these who come across embarrassed and almost apologetic. They feel as if they have to defend how they feel and what they believe, and some of these people, when confronted with romantic partners who are presenting them with something less than mutually fulfilling, will back away from their desires for the sake of keeping the peace and not wanting to appear “uptight”. Next thing, they’ve been on a permanent date for numerous years with one particular person who keeps flip-flapping in and out of their life or who keeps putting the brakes on any movement. They believe that what they want is wrong or that if they hang in there and keep trying to be as pleasing as possible, that the other party will finally cave and meet their needs, expectations, and wishes.

It’s OK to desire love and a relationship. If we get involved with somebody whose preference is for something else, that doesn’t invalidate our desire. Their preferences are a matter of taste for their life. Imposing theirs upon us, whether it’s them or us doing it, is to carry on as if their preferences are objectively ‘right’.

Sometimes our attitude to relationships reminds me of our attitude to enjoying life and retirement; we work ourselves to the bone and by the time we retire, we might be too frickin worn out with ill health or shrinking energy levels to actually enjoy our lives.

Similarly, we could spend a significant chunk of our life pursuing that one person that we’ve decided will be ‘it’ and that they’re eventually going to make us the exception to the rule or, maybe we’ll chase variations of the same person. If we finally get them to succumb to a relationship, we’ll probably be emotionally exhausted and bankrupt of energy, esteem, and even the the other things that used to matter to us, that it will all be a bit of anti-climax. Is this it?, we’ll wonder.

It’s important to be honest about what we want, not just so that we can be more authentic by being and doing the things that are in alignment with our values including our needs, expectations, and desires, but also so that we can consider how we’re going to go about fulfilling our desires.

We must consider the consequences of the option that we pursue.

Sometimes we get so focused on what we want and the basic premise that, yes, we’re only human and it’s only natural for us to want to love, be loved, and desire companionship, that we forget to consider the fact that there are various options for arriving into a relationship, all with consequences.

Snooping Never Leads To Anything Good

February 4, 2015 By NATALIE Reading Time: 5 Minutes

When I was pregnant with my first daughter, longtime readers may recall that I got into the hidden camera show ‘Cheaters’ where people who suspect their partners of cheating have them investigated and followed… and then confront them.. I know, I know, but I was signed off with a bad back at 34 weeks. Call it BR research. It fascinated me that people either wouldn’t trust the information they already had or that they would go on TV before they would communicate with their partners or make a decision.

There are clues as to why you suspect your partner of cheating (or whatever it is), and unless you’re projecting – that’s when you’re up to something, feeling bad about it on some level and then looking to dispel that feeling by finding a similar fault in them, or when you’ve already got the story in your head and just want to bring the self-fulfilling prophecy to its conclusion so you can be right and remove uncertainty, those clues, if you pay attention, provide you with a hell of a lot of the information that you need.

The first thing that you have to admit if you’re tempted to snoop or already have, is that you have trust issues and a relationship without trust is like washing your front but not your back; mucky.

If you won’t use your senses, your gut, your brain, your self-awareness etc., to take a reading on a situation, to open up a dialogue, to help you figure out whether an experience is in alignment with the values you profess to have and the feelings and life you want to experience, snooping, hiring detectives or even dragging your partner on reality shows becomes the substitute for these.

Judging Isn’t The Same As Guessing: Why it’s time to stop giving you a hard time for being a bad guesser of character

July 14, 2014 By NATALIE Reading Time: 4 Minutes

One of the issues that many people who have felt burned by a relationship experience, especially those where the other party unfolded into something dramatically different to what they’d envisaged or believed, is that sense that due to having misjudged this person, they don’t feel that they can trust themselves. They worry that they’re going to invest trust in someone else who turns out to be a heavyweight bullsh*tter or who just quite simply cannot live up to the picture that they’ve painted in their minds. They relive the experience over and over again and beat themselves up for not being a good judge of character, but if what happened was actually based on assumptions, then they’re actually beating themselves up for something that they didn’t do.

There’s a big difference between judging character and assuming or should I say, guessing character. They are not one and the same thing.

When we make a guess, we estimate or assume something without having enough information to be sure of being right.

This means that with a guess, we might be right, we might be wrong, we might be close. By understanding that we made that guess though, then we accept that we’re working with estimated/assumed information. My five-year old sometimes estimates how many items there are. If she wanted to be sure of being right, she’d count them. Em has this grating habit of saying, “Guess who I bumped into today?” It’s not as if we know three people between us and so I start suggesting names and he’s giving me a look that says, I can’t believe you haven’t guessed it yet. I’ve started asking for clues…

If you’ve ever met somebody and jumped in head first with very little information, that’s guesswork. If you noted one particular quality or attribute or even a few of them and then assumed the existence of others, that’s also guesswork.

Sure, there’s potentially an element of ‘judgement’ there in the sense of glancing at the information in front of you and then estimating or assuming what you’re dealing with, but it’s not the type of skillset you would use for judging a person’s character or situation, after all, if you were doing that, you would be working with the knowledge that people unfold, you don’t know them at a glance, and it takes time and experience for you to able to gather knowledge that would help you discern their character and/or the situation.

Why do we want to be liked by people who we dislike?

April 7, 2014 By NATALIE Reading Time: 5 Minutes

One of the things that fascinates me about human nature, is our irrational desire and sometimes need to be liked by people who we ourselves do not like. We can be mad at a person and decide that we don’t like him/her but then feel wounded and even rejected when they don’t respond to our dislike in the way that we would prefer. It’s as if we need the validation of knowing that they’re negatively impacted by our opinion. We want them to chase after us for our ‘like’ and when they don’t or it even becomes apparent that the feeling is mutual, we feel compelled to engage them in some way that may generate the response we want or that will let us gain clarification about their position, or we quite simply feel rejected.

Why do we need people who we don’t like or who we’ve even called out on something, to like us? Why do we need them to be ‘visibly’ affected in some way? And actually, while we’re on the subject, why do we feel that we should be able to tell a person all about themselves and that they should take it ‘graciously’ and still want our approval?

And that’s really what’s at the heart of this; our relationship with disapproval.

When we want someone whom we don’t like, to like us and to even chase us down for our approval and prove us ‘wrong’ even if actually, our mind is made up, it’s because in some respects, it’s what we would do, but it’s also because when we feel disapproving of somebody, there is an illusion of power and control. When we focus on our dislike of a person, that’s about our perspective and of course, we’re making a judgement. We feel that we have very good grounds to dislike them – and this may well be true – but when we feel disliked or rejected (even though that may not actually be the case) by that very person, it feels unfair.

We don’t feel that they have a good reason to dislike us, or we may even perceive their response as a reflection of us being in the same or even worse light than them. We may even feel that they’re being petty and retaliating and that our feelings and opinions are being ‘invalidated’, when in fact, we are the ones who are doing that due to how we’re responding.

The thing is though, while in an ideal world, it would be great if people only had entirely rational and ‘justified’ reasons for not liking a person, in reality, we don’t always dislike / like people for entirely rational, reasonable, or even existing reasons. Let’s be real – wanting to be liked by someone whom we ourselves don’t like isn’t exactly rational or reasonable either.

A dating hiatus is a healthy, empowering break, not a prison sentence!

March 17, 2014 By NATALIE Reading Time: 5 Minutes

I regularly come across people who recognise that they’ve either been in similar types of relationship with same type of person, different package, or that regardless of who they’ve been involved with, they’ve had a pattern of seeing of seeing themselves as ‘less than’, people-pleasing, and accepting crumbs while having little to no boundaries. Each will express their frustrations and have a genuine desire to not go through the same pain again, and yet when I suggest that they take a temporary hiatus from dating and relationships, it’s crickets.

Let’s get clear on what a dating and relationship hiatus is: It’s basically putting your romantic activities on pause so that you can take time to not only break a pattern but to also get to know you, so that when you do re-open your romantic doors, that you are coming from a healthier place. The hiatus is to take time out for you and hopefully you’ll use it well and give you the opportunity to be and do the things that tend to take a backburner due to the latest relationship.

What it isn’t, is a prison sentence.

It should be a positive choice to take time out, not the equivalent of being put on the naughty step, because if you’re effectively sulking, stropping, and feeling hard done by, mindset affects actions so you’re not going to be behind your decision as you’ll be undermining it instead.

Now just so we’re clear, dating and relationship hiatuses tend to be 3-6 months, sometimes longer and they are an investment in your future.

Think of them as a detox. You can let go of all the bullshit, get a clear head and some perspective so you can own your own and let others own theirs instead of taking ownership of other people’s feelings and behaviour, plus you can be free of the burden that many people give themselves of either waiting to be chosen by someone or being a performing seal and trying to convince and convert.

Learn to listen to your feelings and if you’ve lost your way and are unsure of who you are, rebuild trust and faith in you.
Have a break from dating, or should I say introduction (and hookup) sites.
Give you permission to delete (or screen) nuisance exes that tap you up periodically for a shag, a favour, or just to fish around for an ego stroke.
Grieve your last breakup or even all of your breakups if you have a backlog of hurt.
Learn how to take care of you and also connect with the things that truly matter to you and make you you, so that you can ensure that you’re living your life in line with who you are (your values) , so that when you do start dating again, you are much clearer on what you need, want, and expect, instead of waking up knee-deep in a relationship and wondering why a person who you feel so intensely about isn’t actually making you happy or even why you’re pretty much suffering from malnutrition.