November 1, 2023 • 22 mins
Couch Talks is the bonus episode of You Need Therapy where Kat answers questions listeners send to kathryn@youneedtherapypodcast.com. This week we get an update from a previous listener and Kat offers feedback on getting back in the dating scene after going through a break up.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hi guys, and welcome to a new episode of couch
Talks on You Need Therapy Podcast. My name is Kat.
I am the host, and if you are new and
don't know what couch Talks is, it is the special
bonus episode of You Need Therapy where I answer questions
that you guys send to me and you can send
those to Katherine at You Need Therapy podcast dot com.
(00:32):
Now a quick reminder before we get into today's question
that although I'm answering your questions, this still does not
serve as a replacement or a substitute for any actual
mental health services. But we always hope that it can
help in some way. So we usually do one question
a week and I keep them anonymous so you don't
have to worry about anybody knowing it was you, or
(00:53):
somebody finding out about something that you don't want anybody
to find out about. And today is an exciting day
because the email that I'm going to answer is actually
follow up email from a listener question that I got
in April. This listener had emailed me about their relationship
(01:13):
and their partner, who actually they were engaged to at
the time, and how they felt like they were kind
of just disconnected. They were now in a long distance
relationship nine hours apart, and this listener didn't understand why
the partner might have been blowing up at them, and
it was wondering if they were being gas lit, and
(01:34):
just was very confused in the change of the behavior
from their partner and also the change of how they
felt in their relationship, and just emailed and asked how
to validate their feelings and kind of not feel crazy
even though sometimes they felt like they were crazy in
that relationship. So I'll link that first episode in the
show notes if you want to go back and listen
(01:55):
to that one now. They emailed me last week and said, hey, Kat,
thank you so much for answering my last email with
a couch Talk episode. Needless to say, since then, I
am now single. After much needed time to heal, I
feel that I am ready to once again jump into
the dating pool, but I find myself feeling extremely anxious.
(02:17):
I'm very much of a homebody, so I don't really
go out too much, and I'm new to the area,
so I don't have a lot of friends in the
close vicinity. Obviously, we have dating apps, but even then,
it almost feels like a chore. What are your thoughts
on helping me navigate dating again. I feel like I
am constantly battling between enjoying my time being single and
(02:37):
wanting to have my person that I could start a
life with. So first, before we go into answering and
talking about this, I want to just acknowledge that you've
been through a huge life change in a couple months.
May doesn't seem that far away. I don't know when
you guys broke up, but I don't know what that
(02:57):
process was like for you. So I just want to
just acknowledge that breakups are really freaking hard, especially when
the relationship feels so different towards the end than it
used to feel. Okay, so you are wanting some feedback
on how to navigate the dating world now that you
feel like you're ready to go back and jump into that.
(03:18):
So I will say the dating world can be a
scary place, and I want everybody listening if you were
relating to this, Like, I got out of a relationship
and I want to start dating again, but I'm feeling
really anxious. Really dive into those feelings of anxiety, maybe
sift around in them. I wonder if some of that
actually is just like real fear in what your fears are.
(03:38):
Those feelings can very much be helpful. However, if we
don't really listen to them and pay attention to them
and actually listen to what they're saying and have a
conversation with them, we might feel that fear as a
stop sign versus, oh, I'm about to go embark on
something that is very unknown and that's just scary in general.
So I would encourage you to just dig around, have conversations,
(04:02):
inner dialogues with yourself and your feelings, and really identify
what they're saying before we just assume that they're saying,
don't do this. And I also don't think that this
has to be something that you battle. So you said,
I'm constantly battling between enjoying my time being single and
wanting to have my person that I could start a
life with. I don't think you have to battle that.
(04:23):
I think you can enjoy your time being single while
wanting and looking for a partner. Those things can exist
at the same time. I see a lot of times,
as humans do, we polarize everything we want extremes. Everything
feels safer and more manageable when it's black and white,
but rarely does our world work that way, and so
(04:44):
we want to polarize this. You have to be an
act completely independent and not want a relationship in order
to be single and happy, or you're miserable and always
looking for someone to fill some void and you can't
survive on your own. And sometimes that is true. I
really think sometimes that can be the case. But it
(05:05):
doesn't have to be that way. So my first encouragement,
or I guess my second encouragement here would be allow
yourself to have both of those. Allow yourself to take
advantage of this time that you're getting to yourself. Maybe
you're doing some real healing work and paying attention to
parts of you you had not paid attention to in
a while, caring for yourself the way you really wanted
(05:27):
and hoped that your partner would have cared for you.
You get to do that where you also get to
make certain decisions for yourself and by yourself, and that's
fun and that's freeing, and you get to experience certain
things in a way that you wouldn't if you were
in a relationship and you had that responsibility as well.
And at the same time, while you're doing that, you
can be open and putting an effort to finding a
(05:49):
partner that you would be willing to shift some of
your current life for now. Sometimes I feel like a
broken record with the dating stuff on here, But at
the same time I do also realize that often we
need to hear things over and over and over and
over again, and we need to talk about them over
again in order to feel like something has sunk in,
(06:12):
or even just to have a nice reminder when we're
feeling sad or we're feeling defeated in especially the dating world.
If you have been around for a while, you know
my feelings on dating and dating coaches and rules around dating,
and I think that there can be people and there
can be ways where we can help our friends and
(06:34):
maybe our clients move towards a better experience in the
dating world. I don't think there is a step by
step process and there are definitive objective for everybody rules
that will guarantee you to find a partner. There are
ideas that could help you in your process, but nobody
(06:57):
can guarantee you will find a partner in a certain
amount of time by telling you exactly what to do.
And we never want to enter into the dating world
following a rule book. Because when we do that, and
like I said, we like things to be black and white,
so we want to follow every rule just how it
was told to us. When we do that, we strip
ourselves from the ability to actually show up and be
(07:20):
loved and seen and accepted as who we are. And
that's where we get into relationships where a lot of
times things like our attachment styles are off because I
followed these rules and I showed up as this one person,
but this person liked me because I was showing up
as this one person and I'm not that person. And
now I feel like they think that there's something wrong
with me. And it's not really always that they feel
like there's something wrong with you. It's that they might
(07:41):
have fallen in love with this rule book and you're
not the rule book. So long winded way to say,
take the things that I'm saying, Take the things that
you hear on Instagram, that you hear from dating coaches
or maybe even therapists, Take them and really allow yourself
to sit with them and see if they actually fit
for you before you just take everything as like the
(08:04):
solid truth. It's the dating Bible, which depending on what
you think about the Bible. That might not be a
very good metaphor anyway, I do have a couple of
things that might help the process for you. And like
I said, you can take it, or you can say
I don't like what she said and I'm not going
to do that. Totally fine, I think, and I know
(08:28):
from my experience not everybody experiences the same way. But
I really do think that generally dating takes a lot
of energy and it can bring up a lot of feelings.
Most of the time, people will have more bad dates
than good dates. And so I really encourage people who
are entering into dating and are putting themselves into this
(08:48):
sphere to only do so if they're willing to accept
this fact. If you don't accept it, if you don't
accept that there is going to be a lot of ick,
there's going to be some feelings you aren't comfortable feeling,
it's going to be difficult, that rejection is going to
be a part of this process, then I would say
you might want to pause on putting yourself out there.
(09:10):
If I'm not willing to accept that there's it's not
going to all be rainbows and sunshines. Because if you
do refuse to accept it, you enter into it, and
then you experience all of that stuff. What you're going
to do is worse than the sting that already exists
in the process of dating and rejection. I just need
people to know this. Rejection does not make anybody less
(09:33):
than anyone else. It actually makes you normal. We've all
experienced it. It is a human experience to be or
feel rejected by somebody, and being open to rejection is
actually the path to finding what it is that you want.
If you want a relationship with somebody who sees you
(09:53):
and loves you for actually who you are, you're going
to have to be open to rejection to show up
as yourself. It's that it's vulnerability, right. In order to
get what I want, I have to be vulnerable enough
for that to be a possibility. And vulnerability opens us
up to rejection. Possibly it opens us up to this
unknown where we don't know how people are going to
(10:15):
receive it. Sometimes they might receive it well, sometimes not
so much. And trust me, I hate this fact, but
I didn't create how feelings work. I didn't create how
vulnerability works, and we can't change it. So again, only
not accepting that would only be making our lives worse
for ourselves for really not a great reason. The payoff
(10:38):
isn't there now With this specific listener that wrote in,
they mention that you're a homebody, you don't have any
friends in the area, you're new to the vicinity, and
you don't want to do dating apps because they feel
like a chore. What I do know for certain? Actually,
I mean, I guess this isn't for certain, But I
really don't think the love of your life is going
(10:58):
to just like come knock on your door and walk
in your house and you're gonna fall in love and
it's gonna be that way, right, So you're gonna have
to choose an option here. You're gonna have to decide
to do something that pushes you outside what you really
are comfortable doing, because what you are comfortable doing sounds
like kind of staying in your bubble, and that's not
(11:20):
really giving you a lot of options, right, So you
can choose whatever you want. I don't think that there's
one thing that is going to work for everybody. I
think that you can choose to do a lot of
things to give you more of an opportunity to meet people.
But you're gonna have to choose something and do something
that is gonna probably be in some regards either annoying.
(11:45):
It might feel like a chore, it might feel like work,
it might be really scary, it might be really uncomfortable,
and well, it also is the path to meeting people, right,
So you can sign up for events, join a club,
join a new gym, start chatting with people in public. Oh,
if we use if we would talk to people the
(12:06):
way that we used to talk to people, and myself included,
I am the first one to admit that I will
look at my phone to avoid conversation with people, just
because I mean, I think at this point we're kind
of accustomed to that. We have kind of been calloused
to this idea of not making eye contact with people.
(12:29):
So you're gonna have to make little changes that those
can be. Some of those changes. You can start with
just making eye contact with people in public if you
want to, but you're going to have to do something
that allows you to experience more people. I named a
couple that doesn't have to be that, but something that
really gets you out there and allows you to meet somebody.
It might not be that person that you date, but
maybe they know somebody, you meet somebody through them. You
(12:50):
never know how kind of like chains can react, or
you can join a dating app. And I know that
people say that they don't work, and there has been
so much stuff online about how they were created to fail.
And that's not a debate that I'm going to get
into today because I actually don't know how they were
created and I don't know the algorithms. I do know
(13:13):
that they make money, and they have to make money somehow,
and they want people to use them. So sure, I
can understand why people have come up with these theories
around how they are created to not work, so you
stay on them longer. I can understand that I don't.
I don't know if that's true. But what I do
know is that they do work for some people. They
(13:33):
have worked for a lot of people, and maybe they
have not worked for more people that they have worked for. However,
they still have worked for people. And so that is
an opportunity for you to put yourself out there in
a way that sometimes can feel a little bit less
vulnerable than showing up to a new club or group
(13:54):
or meeting or place or space where you don't know anybody.
You just have to go out there and show up fully.
You can tiptoe into it this way. Now, I'm not
saying that if this is going to work for you,
dating apps are going to work in a timeline that
you will want. I can't predict that. I can tell
(14:16):
you I was on dating apps for years. I think
I got I downloaded my first one in like twenty
fifteen or something like that. It could have been a
little bit before or a little bit after. And I
didn't meet my partner until twenty twenty two, and I
was off and on them, sometimes dating somebody, sometimes not
using them, but I use them a lot. Was not
(14:38):
in the timeline that I would have chosen if I
got to choose my life. But if we go into
them already thinking that they're not going to work, then
I do know that you are more likely to experience
and have a negative experience using them, And so I
really want to encourage you. Just like I said, you
have to be open to rejection. I would encourage you
(14:58):
if you're going to put yourself out there in any
of these spaces, including using a dating app, allow yourself
to walk into that space feeling hopeful. There needs to
be a part of you that actually believes that this
can work, or you are going to actually position yourself
to set yourself up to fail, and it's not going
(15:18):
to be your fault. You're going to have reasons to
blame that. However, there may be things that you subconsciously
do that sabotage your experience because you already don't believe
that it's going to work. And I am not saying
just like manifestifesting something will create what the desirable outcome.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it's placebos whatever. However,
(15:42):
if I do not believe that something is going to work,
I am less likely to actually have a positive experience
from whatever it is I am doing. Think about sports,
I know that when I was really down on myself
and I was really nervous, and I was anxious about
making a mistake. Guess what I would go out there
and do. I would make the exact mistakes that I
(16:03):
was worried about making because I just those times believe
that I was going to do it, So my body
just ended up just taking over and doing it. So
our brain and how we position ourselves and these experiences
does have a big impact on what happens. It's not
the end all be all, but it does have a
big impact. So it's going to be in all of
our best interests to allow ourselves to show up to
(16:24):
these spaces feeling hopeful. Now. To do that, sometimes we
really have to create boundaries with ourselves. And I'm not
just talking about dating apps. I'm talking about anything that
puts us out there. If I'm going to do something
that takes a lot of energy and also comes with
a level of rejection that is very uncomfortable, then maybe
create some boundaries and maybe create some goals for yourself.
(16:48):
Like if I go on three dates, then I'm going
to take three weeks off of dating, allowing yourself to
go out and put in the effort and then also
rest and recuperate and think about what you want to
do differently, think about what went well, just have space
to not think about it at all, rather than I'm
just going to go out there and do every single
(17:08):
thing that somebody suggests, and I'm going to spend all
my time and energy on it for three years, and
then after those three years, I'm never gonna want to
date again because it's going to be so exhausting and
so tiring and so horrible. Let's not create it all
or nothing experience for ourselves. It's also how I feel
about when we go on social media, like we go
on breaks and then we try to redownload it, but
(17:29):
then like we haven't taught ourselves how to actually use it.
We just allowed ourselves to not have it, and then
we have it. So we have these extremes. Allow yourself
to build in this process, some slowness, some rest, some
recovery time. Because you mentioned it feels like a chore.
Dating sometimes just does feel like work. I will be
(17:51):
the first to say that dating isn't fun for everybody.
Some people really enjoy it. I actually did not. I
can look back and laugh at certain memories, but in
the moment, I didn't always enjoy it until I was
removed enough from certain experiences that I could actually put
some humor into them. So in summary, I would really
(18:12):
really encourage you, the listener that wrote this email, on
anybody who's relating to this, to just be really really
direct with yourselves. If you want a partner, acknowledge that
and ask yourself, how much am I willing to push
myself in order to find what it is that I'm
looking for? Be realistic, show up with the reality that
(18:35):
dating can be exhausting, and it might be exhausting for you. However,
when we identify why a goal is a goal, and
we really allow ourselves to sit in that as this
is something I really want, we can better rectify why
that exhaustion might be worth it at times and what
I will need to be able to continue to go
out into the world and feel that exhaustion. So be
(18:58):
very direct with yourself. I would also encourage you to
look at what it is you're actually looking for in
a partner, especially, I'm talking to the listener that wrote
this email, thinking about your past relationship and how you
felt in it. If you're going to put all this
effort in, I would be so sad to hear that
you sold yourself short at the end to stay with
(19:20):
somebody who feels distant or who you actually, when dating,
feel lonely with. So really identify what it is that
I'm looking for, not just a partner, but what it
is that you're looking for in a partnership and in
a relationship. I hope that there are some nuggets in
there that that could be helpful for you, But really,
(19:41):
what I'm saying in all of this, if you want
to just like not listen to this ever again, or
just say, hey, I want to send this to a
friend and I want them to hear real the point
of what you're saying, what I am saying is you
are allowed to both enjoy your life as a single
person and also want something more or want to add
(20:03):
something to your life. Those are allowed to exist at
the same time and can exist at the same time. Two.
Dating brings up a lot of feelings, and those feelings
sometimes are really uncomfortable, and it's just part of the process.
So if I want a partner and dating is the
process that I want to find that partner through, I
(20:23):
need to take time to accept the fact that rejection
will be part of this process. And that does not
mean there's anything wrong with me. However, that does mean
sometimes I might need to be really gentle with myself
in this process. Three. If I want to experience something
different in my life and find something new in my life,
I am most likely going to have to then do
(20:46):
something different. I'm going to have to put myself out
there in some form or fashion, and so that's something
I need to choose. What I'm willing to do and
how I might choose that is talking to myself about
how much I really do want this and why this
is important to me, so then I can actually have
some data to support why I'm going out there and
doing these things that might feel really challenging and exhausting
(21:11):
and for hopeful maintain a posture of hope. If it
becomes difficult to do that, then I might need to
set up some boundaries and again go back to that
gentleness in order for me to not totally abandon what
it is that I actually already identified I want, because
when we abandon things that we want when they get hard,
(21:33):
we remove ourselves from actually experiencing the gift of what
hard work can actually bring us. And I could keep
going on, but I think I've summarized everything enough and
I'm going to leave it there. If you have any questions, feedback, concerns, thoughts,
helpful things that have helped you in the dating world,
please please please feel free to send them my way
(21:55):
Katherine at therapy at podcast dot com. You can follow
us at You Need Therapy podcast on Instagram and me
at Kat dot Defata on Instagram and connect with us
that way as well. Until Monday, when I'll be back
with you guys with a new episode. I hope you
were having the day you need to have and I
will talk to you soon. Goodbye.
Hi guys, and welcome to a new episode of couch
Talks on You Need Therapy Podcast. My name is Kat.
I am the host, and if you are new and
don't know what couch Talks is, it is the special
bonus episode of You Need Therapy where I answer questions
that you guys send to me and you can send
those to Katherine at You Need Therapy podcast dot com.
(00:32):
Now a quick reminder before we get into today's question
that although I'm answering your questions, this still does not
serve as a replacement or a substitute for any actual
mental health services. But we always hope that it can
help in some way. So we usually do one question
a week and I keep them anonymous so you don't
have to worry about anybody knowing it was you, or
(00:53):
somebody finding out about something that you don't want anybody
to find out about. And today is an exciting day
because the email that I'm going to answer is actually
follow up email from a listener question that I got
in April. This listener had emailed me about their relationship
(01:13):
and their partner, who actually they were engaged to at
the time, and how they felt like they were kind
of just disconnected. They were now in a long distance
relationship nine hours apart, and this listener didn't understand why
the partner might have been blowing up at them, and
it was wondering if they were being gas lit, and
(01:34):
just was very confused in the change of the behavior
from their partner and also the change of how they
felt in their relationship, and just emailed and asked how
to validate their feelings and kind of not feel crazy
even though sometimes they felt like they were crazy in
that relationship. So I'll link that first episode in the
show notes if you want to go back and listen
(01:55):
to that one now. They emailed me last week and said, hey, Kat,
thank you so much for answering my last email with
a couch Talk episode. Needless to say, since then, I
am now single. After much needed time to heal, I
feel that I am ready to once again jump into
the dating pool, but I find myself feeling extremely anxious.
(02:17):
I'm very much of a homebody, so I don't really
go out too much, and I'm new to the area,
so I don't have a lot of friends in the
close vicinity. Obviously, we have dating apps, but even then,
it almost feels like a chore. What are your thoughts
on helping me navigate dating again. I feel like I
am constantly battling between enjoying my time being single and
(02:37):
wanting to have my person that I could start a
life with. So first, before we go into answering and
talking about this, I want to just acknowledge that you've
been through a huge life change in a couple months.
May doesn't seem that far away. I don't know when
you guys broke up, but I don't know what that
(02:57):
process was like for you. So I just want to
just acknowledge that breakups are really freaking hard, especially when
the relationship feels so different towards the end than it
used to feel. Okay, so you are wanting some feedback
on how to navigate the dating world now that you
feel like you're ready to go back and jump into that.
(03:18):
So I will say the dating world can be a
scary place, and I want everybody listening if you were
relating to this, Like, I got out of a relationship
and I want to start dating again, but I'm feeling
really anxious. Really dive into those feelings of anxiety, maybe
sift around in them. I wonder if some of that
actually is just like real fear in what your fears are.
(03:38):
Those feelings can very much be helpful. However, if we
don't really listen to them and pay attention to them
and actually listen to what they're saying and have a
conversation with them, we might feel that fear as a
stop sign versus, oh, I'm about to go embark on
something that is very unknown and that's just scary in general.
So I would encourage you to just dig around, have conversations,
(04:02):
inner dialogues with yourself and your feelings, and really identify
what they're saying before we just assume that they're saying,
don't do this. And I also don't think that this
has to be something that you battle. So you said,
I'm constantly battling between enjoying my time being single and
wanting to have my person that I could start a
life with. I don't think you have to battle that.
(04:23):
I think you can enjoy your time being single while
wanting and looking for a partner. Those things can exist
at the same time. I see a lot of times,
as humans do, we polarize everything we want extremes. Everything
feels safer and more manageable when it's black and white,
but rarely does our world work that way, and so
(04:44):
we want to polarize this. You have to be an
act completely independent and not want a relationship in order
to be single and happy, or you're miserable and always
looking for someone to fill some void and you can't
survive on your own. And sometimes that is true. I
really think sometimes that can be the case. But it
(05:05):
doesn't have to be that way. So my first encouragement,
or I guess my second encouragement here would be allow
yourself to have both of those. Allow yourself to take
advantage of this time that you're getting to yourself. Maybe
you're doing some real healing work and paying attention to
parts of you you had not paid attention to in
a while, caring for yourself the way you really wanted
(05:27):
and hoped that your partner would have cared for you.
You get to do that where you also get to
make certain decisions for yourself and by yourself, and that's
fun and that's freeing, and you get to experience certain
things in a way that you wouldn't if you were
in a relationship and you had that responsibility as well.
And at the same time, while you're doing that, you
can be open and putting an effort to finding a
(05:49):
partner that you would be willing to shift some of
your current life for now. Sometimes I feel like a
broken record with the dating stuff on here, But at
the same time I do also realize that often we
need to hear things over and over and over and
over again, and we need to talk about them over
again in order to feel like something has sunk in,
(06:12):
or even just to have a nice reminder when we're
feeling sad or we're feeling defeated in especially the dating world.
If you have been around for a while, you know
my feelings on dating and dating coaches and rules around dating,
and I think that there can be people and there
can be ways where we can help our friends and
(06:34):
maybe our clients move towards a better experience in the
dating world. I don't think there is a step by
step process and there are definitive objective for everybody rules
that will guarantee you to find a partner. There are
ideas that could help you in your process, but nobody
(06:57):
can guarantee you will find a partner in a certain
amount of time by telling you exactly what to do.
And we never want to enter into the dating world
following a rule book. Because when we do that, and
like I said, we like things to be black and white,
so we want to follow every rule just how it
was told to us. When we do that, we strip
ourselves from the ability to actually show up and be
(07:20):
loved and seen and accepted as who we are. And
that's where we get into relationships where a lot of
times things like our attachment styles are off because I
followed these rules and I showed up as this one person,
but this person liked me because I was showing up
as this one person and I'm not that person. And
now I feel like they think that there's something wrong
with me. And it's not really always that they feel
like there's something wrong with you. It's that they might
(07:41):
have fallen in love with this rule book and you're
not the rule book. So long winded way to say,
take the things that I'm saying, Take the things that
you hear on Instagram, that you hear from dating coaches
or maybe even therapists, Take them and really allow yourself
to sit with them and see if they actually fit
for you before you just take everything as like the
(08:04):
solid truth. It's the dating Bible, which depending on what
you think about the Bible. That might not be a
very good metaphor anyway, I do have a couple of
things that might help the process for you. And like
I said, you can take it, or you can say
I don't like what she said and I'm not going
to do that. Totally fine, I think, and I know
(08:28):
from my experience not everybody experiences the same way. But
I really do think that generally dating takes a lot
of energy and it can bring up a lot of feelings.
Most of the time, people will have more bad dates
than good dates. And so I really encourage people who
are entering into dating and are putting themselves into this
(08:48):
sphere to only do so if they're willing to accept
this fact. If you don't accept it, if you don't
accept that there is going to be a lot of ick,
there's going to be some feelings you aren't comfortable feeling,
it's going to be difficult, that rejection is going to
be a part of this process, then I would say
you might want to pause on putting yourself out there.
(09:10):
If I'm not willing to accept that there's it's not
going to all be rainbows and sunshines. Because if you
do refuse to accept it, you enter into it, and
then you experience all of that stuff. What you're going
to do is worse than the sting that already exists
in the process of dating and rejection. I just need
people to know this. Rejection does not make anybody less
(09:33):
than anyone else. It actually makes you normal. We've all
experienced it. It is a human experience to be or
feel rejected by somebody, and being open to rejection is
actually the path to finding what it is that you want.
If you want a relationship with somebody who sees you
(09:53):
and loves you for actually who you are, you're going
to have to be open to rejection to show up
as yourself. It's that it's vulnerability, right. In order to
get what I want, I have to be vulnerable enough
for that to be a possibility. And vulnerability opens us
up to rejection. Possibly it opens us up to this
unknown where we don't know how people are going to
(10:15):
receive it. Sometimes they might receive it well, sometimes not
so much. And trust me, I hate this fact, but
I didn't create how feelings work. I didn't create how
vulnerability works, and we can't change it. So again, only
not accepting that would only be making our lives worse
for ourselves for really not a great reason. The payoff
(10:38):
isn't there now With this specific listener that wrote in,
they mention that you're a homebody, you don't have any
friends in the area, you're new to the vicinity, and
you don't want to do dating apps because they feel
like a chore. What I do know for certain? Actually,
I mean, I guess this isn't for certain, But I
really don't think the love of your life is going
(10:58):
to just like come knock on your door and walk
in your house and you're gonna fall in love and
it's gonna be that way, right, So you're gonna have
to choose an option here. You're gonna have to decide
to do something that pushes you outside what you really
are comfortable doing, because what you are comfortable doing sounds
like kind of staying in your bubble, and that's not
(11:20):
really giving you a lot of options, right, So you
can choose whatever you want. I don't think that there's
one thing that is going to work for everybody. I
think that you can choose to do a lot of
things to give you more of an opportunity to meet people.
But you're gonna have to choose something and do something
that is gonna probably be in some regards either annoying.
(11:45):
It might feel like a chore, it might feel like work,
it might be really scary, it might be really uncomfortable,
and well, it also is the path to meeting people, right,
So you can sign up for events, join a club,
join a new gym, start chatting with people in public. Oh,
if we use if we would talk to people the
(12:06):
way that we used to talk to people, and myself included,
I am the first one to admit that I will
look at my phone to avoid conversation with people, just
because I mean, I think at this point we're kind
of accustomed to that. We have kind of been calloused
to this idea of not making eye contact with people.
(12:29):
So you're gonna have to make little changes that those
can be. Some of those changes. You can start with
just making eye contact with people in public if you
want to, but you're going to have to do something
that allows you to experience more people. I named a
couple that doesn't have to be that, but something that
really gets you out there and allows you to meet somebody.
It might not be that person that you date, but
maybe they know somebody, you meet somebody through them. You
(12:50):
never know how kind of like chains can react, or
you can join a dating app. And I know that
people say that they don't work, and there has been
so much stuff online about how they were created to fail.
And that's not a debate that I'm going to get
into today because I actually don't know how they were
created and I don't know the algorithms. I do know
(13:13):
that they make money, and they have to make money somehow,
and they want people to use them. So sure, I
can understand why people have come up with these theories
around how they are created to not work, so you
stay on them longer. I can understand that I don't.
I don't know if that's true. But what I do
know is that they do work for some people. They
(13:33):
have worked for a lot of people, and maybe they
have not worked for more people that they have worked for. However,
they still have worked for people. And so that is
an opportunity for you to put yourself out there in
a way that sometimes can feel a little bit less
vulnerable than showing up to a new club or group
(13:54):
or meeting or place or space where you don't know anybody.
You just have to go out there and show up fully.
You can tiptoe into it this way. Now, I'm not
saying that if this is going to work for you,
dating apps are going to work in a timeline that
you will want. I can't predict that. I can tell
(14:16):
you I was on dating apps for years. I think
I got I downloaded my first one in like twenty
fifteen or something like that. It could have been a
little bit before or a little bit after. And I
didn't meet my partner until twenty twenty two, and I
was off and on them, sometimes dating somebody, sometimes not
using them, but I use them a lot. Was not
(14:38):
in the timeline that I would have chosen if I
got to choose my life. But if we go into
them already thinking that they're not going to work, then
I do know that you are more likely to experience
and have a negative experience using them, And so I
really want to encourage you. Just like I said, you
have to be open to rejection. I would encourage you
(14:58):
if you're going to put yourself out there in any
of these spaces, including using a dating app, allow yourself
to walk into that space feeling hopeful. There needs to
be a part of you that actually believes that this
can work, or you are going to actually position yourself
to set yourself up to fail, and it's not going
(15:18):
to be your fault. You're going to have reasons to
blame that. However, there may be things that you subconsciously
do that sabotage your experience because you already don't believe
that it's going to work. And I am not saying
just like manifestifesting something will create what the desirable outcome.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it's placebos whatever. However,
(15:42):
if I do not believe that something is going to work,
I am less likely to actually have a positive experience
from whatever it is I am doing. Think about sports,
I know that when I was really down on myself
and I was really nervous, and I was anxious about
making a mistake. Guess what I would go out there
and do. I would make the exact mistakes that I
(16:03):
was worried about making because I just those times believe
that I was going to do it, So my body
just ended up just taking over and doing it. So
our brain and how we position ourselves and these experiences
does have a big impact on what happens. It's not
the end all be all, but it does have a
big impact. So it's going to be in all of
our best interests to allow ourselves to show up to
(16:24):
these spaces feeling hopeful. Now. To do that, sometimes we
really have to create boundaries with ourselves. And I'm not
just talking about dating apps. I'm talking about anything that
puts us out there. If I'm going to do something
that takes a lot of energy and also comes with
a level of rejection that is very uncomfortable, then maybe
create some boundaries and maybe create some goals for yourself.
(16:48):
Like if I go on three dates, then I'm going
to take three weeks off of dating, allowing yourself to
go out and put in the effort and then also
rest and recuperate and think about what you want to
do differently, think about what went well, just have space
to not think about it at all, rather than I'm
just going to go out there and do every single
(17:08):
thing that somebody suggests, and I'm going to spend all
my time and energy on it for three years, and
then after those three years, I'm never gonna want to
date again because it's going to be so exhausting and
so tiring and so horrible. Let's not create it all
or nothing experience for ourselves. It's also how I feel
about when we go on social media, like we go
on breaks and then we try to redownload it, but
(17:29):
then like we haven't taught ourselves how to actually use it.
We just allowed ourselves to not have it, and then
we have it. So we have these extremes. Allow yourself
to build in this process, some slowness, some rest, some
recovery time. Because you mentioned it feels like a chore.
Dating sometimes just does feel like work. I will be
(17:51):
the first to say that dating isn't fun for everybody.
Some people really enjoy it. I actually did not. I
can look back and laugh at certain memories, but in
the moment, I didn't always enjoy it until I was
removed enough from certain experiences that I could actually put
some humor into them. So in summary, I would really
(18:12):
really encourage you, the listener that wrote this email, on
anybody who's relating to this, to just be really really
direct with yourselves. If you want a partner, acknowledge that
and ask yourself, how much am I willing to push
myself in order to find what it is that I'm
looking for? Be realistic, show up with the reality that
(18:35):
dating can be exhausting, and it might be exhausting for you. However,
when we identify why a goal is a goal, and
we really allow ourselves to sit in that as this
is something I really want, we can better rectify why
that exhaustion might be worth it at times and what
I will need to be able to continue to go
out into the world and feel that exhaustion. So be
(18:58):
very direct with yourself. I would also encourage you to
look at what it is you're actually looking for in
a partner, especially, I'm talking to the listener that wrote
this email, thinking about your past relationship and how you
felt in it. If you're going to put all this
effort in, I would be so sad to hear that
you sold yourself short at the end to stay with
(19:20):
somebody who feels distant or who you actually, when dating,
feel lonely with. So really identify what it is that
I'm looking for, not just a partner, but what it
is that you're looking for in a partnership and in
a relationship. I hope that there are some nuggets in
there that that could be helpful for you, But really,
(19:41):
what I'm saying in all of this, if you want
to just like not listen to this ever again, or
just say, hey, I want to send this to a
friend and I want them to hear real the point
of what you're saying, what I am saying is you
are allowed to both enjoy your life as a single
person and also want something more or want to add
(20:03):
something to your life. Those are allowed to exist at
the same time and can exist at the same time. Two.
Dating brings up a lot of feelings, and those feelings
sometimes are really uncomfortable, and it's just part of the process.
So if I want a partner and dating is the
process that I want to find that partner through, I
(20:23):
need to take time to accept the fact that rejection
will be part of this process. And that does not
mean there's anything wrong with me. However, that does mean
sometimes I might need to be really gentle with myself
in this process. Three. If I want to experience something
different in my life and find something new in my life,
I am most likely going to have to then do
(20:46):
something different. I'm going to have to put myself out
there in some form or fashion, and so that's something
I need to choose. What I'm willing to do and
how I might choose that is talking to myself about
how much I really do want this and why this
is important to me, so then I can actually have
some data to support why I'm going out there and
doing these things that might feel really challenging and exhausting
(21:11):
and for hopeful maintain a posture of hope. If it
becomes difficult to do that, then I might need to
set up some boundaries and again go back to that
gentleness in order for me to not totally abandon what
it is that I actually already identified I want, because
when we abandon things that we want when they get hard,
(21:33):
we remove ourselves from actually experiencing the gift of what
hard work can actually bring us. And I could keep
going on, but I think I've summarized everything enough and
I'm going to leave it there. If you have any questions, feedback, concerns, thoughts,
helpful things that have helped you in the dating world,
please please please feel free to send them my way
(21:55):
Katherine at therapy at podcast dot com. You can follow
us at You Need Therapy podcast on Instagram and me
at Kat dot Defata on Instagram and connect with us
that way as well. Until Monday, when I'll be back
with you guys with a new episode. I hope you
were having the day you need to have and I
will talk to you soon. Goodbye.
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