May 13, 2025 • 44 mins
This week, we’re diving into dating patterns, gut instincts, and the uncomfortable truth that sometimes… it’s your trauma playing matchmaker. We break down a listener letter from someone who thought she finally found a unicorn — until he bailed out of nowhere. Was it anxiety? Or was her intuition picking up on something real?
We talk about the difference between anxiety and intuition, why emotionally available partners can feel “off,” and how repetition compulsion makes you chase familiar pain — not because you’re broken, but because your brain is trying to fix the past. Spoiler: it never works.
Plus: Fuck That Guy Summerfest continues with a sweaty mustache bro who’s out here raw-dogging the sidewalk with bad boundaries, peak audacity, and zero self-awareness.
We get into:
Trauma as a matchmaker
Repetition compulsion in dating
Anxiety vs. intuition — how to tell the difference
Ghosting, self-trust, and breaking the cycle
👀 Got a dating dilemma? A ghosting mystery? An “is-it-me-or-is-he-just-delusional?” situation? Send it in!
We’re answering listener questions on the pod, and we want yours. Whether it’s a green flag you’re second-guessing , a walking ick 🥴, or a text you need decoded —spill it. We’ve got thoughts. Probably too many. 😏 Submit your dating questions here.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:15):
Didology Coach podcast. Hi, Sarah, It is a very horribly
gloomy day here in New York City.
How is it in Baltimore? It's like 57 in May Amazing.
I'll take it. Yeah, I like, I like anything
below 70 I can deal with. I want you to do a blind react
(00:37):
for me for something that I saw in threads.
And it actually is going to leadinto one of the two
announcements that we have for the show.
So I saw this on threads. It's an author and she says I
killed a dog in my book and saidthere's no afterlife.
Then I watched a writing video that said pets can have big
roles in books so be careful. A beta reader asked me if a dog
(00:58):
dies, said she checks a site with a list of books to avoid.
Then a dating app guy said my afterlife rule was a hard pass
and I dipped. Oh and and he dipped.
Damn people. Dog culture is dire.
They're a great pet but stop acting like they have little
moons orbiting them. Your behavior is raising our vet
(01:20):
bills. They're not a child, chill.
Well, you know, you know what I have to say, Kristen.
What? No, no, no, I will not.
She is getting massive backlash for this.
Massive because she's wrong. Because she is wrong.
(01:41):
She is. And boy does she.
She did. Did she misread her audience
like this is? I It's not even like her
audience, right? It's just like people.
Right. But this, this is something that
could kill your career. Dogs are that important to
people that if you treat them oror talk like people who consider
(02:05):
them family are are silly, you're going to lose a lot of
people. Yep.
Now I'm bringing this up to makean announcement. 2
announcements. The first one is we've moved the
publishing date or the posting date to Tuesdays because we're
trying to incorporate video. And we've moved over to a
(02:27):
different hosting platform that has video.
And so it just might take a little bit longer to to edit and
Polish up. And it's just helpful for me to
have more time between episodes because I get very stressed out,
which as we know, triggers the ADHD and a whole lot of other
(02:48):
stuff. The other announcement I want to
make is Sam, the small dog that I cared for for about 5 months a
year for the past five years. She was 17.
She crossed the Rainbow Bridge on Monday.
Yeah. And it was.
(03:09):
It was something that we knew was coming.
We thought maybe there would be a couple more months.
She had gone back into the vet and they said, you know, we have
to put her on fluids, etcetera, etcetera.
And the doctor was explaining all this to me and I could tell
by the way he was talking to me.I said, wait a minute, I need to
(03:31):
call the owner in China. You need to talk to them.
I just knew this is not a me conversation, so I'm not going
to go too into detail. It's just it's depressing
because we love our dogs. We love our pets, but I do want
to talk about something that happened as a result of this.
(03:51):
And I've, I've mentioned on the show before that when I was
studying for my trauma certification, we studied
something called repetition compulsion.
And it's where we repeat a pattern subconsciously.
And it's usually we, we recreateA trauma or an experience in an
(04:15):
attempt to gain. I don't know if closure is the
right word, but in in an attemptto close the loop, to fix it to,
to heal, right? We think if we can finally get
this right, then this, this thing that has followed us our
whole life won't be true and will be OK.
(04:36):
And a great example would be go ahead.
Maybe it makes you feel more in control too.
Yes, right. And a great example would be if
you have a primary caregiver that was absent or a very
emotionally withholding, you'll probably date emotionally
(04:57):
unavailable people over and overagain subconsciously in an
attempt to, to close the loop, to finally get it right so that
you can prove to yourself, I'm, I'm, I matter and, you know,
somebody picked me. So it's, it's things like that.
And This is why I've always saidto people who talk about they
(05:20):
kind of date the same person over and over again.
I, I try to, I try to guide theminto looking back and seeing if
there's any similarities among all the people that they're
dating. And, and I asked, does this
resemble anything from any othertime in your life?
Because it doesn't just have to be childhood.
(05:42):
And you know, when a toxic dating pattern, when we date the
same person over and over again,it really isn't a choice.
And I try to make that clear. It's not a choice.
Your brain just recognizes what it knows, what it's familiar
with, and that makes it feel safe.
And so they say, oh, I know this, I can do this.
(06:04):
I can navigate this and that. But you meet somebody who is
completely the opposite, emotionally healthy, available,
etcetera, and you're probably going to be very triggered
because your brain doesn't recognize it.
Your brain, it's new and brain doesn't like new things, right?
(06:25):
The brain interprets it as as danger.
So knowing. Answers are so fucked up.
Brains, they really are knowing this, knowing about this, but
this behavior, this repetition, compulsion.
The thing with Sam was and and I, and I knew this from the
(06:46):
moment I met her. We had sort of similar
backgrounds in that her dad had to move across the world for
something to do with the family.And the plan was to relocate
her, but she was so much older. They were afraid she wouldn't
make she she wouldn't survive the trip.
(07:09):
You know, we're talking this is 11/12/13 hours.
They were afraid. And so they decided Sam would
live with the the owner of the father's sister.
And what? So when I took on Sam, I always
felt like we had something in common, which was in a sense, we
(07:32):
were both left behind. Her father never wanted to leave
her behind. And I met him because I was I
was there. They invited me to, you know, to
the in home, in home euthanasia.And I had he had Take Me Out to
lunch and we went out to coffee a day later.
And I got to know him and it wasso clear how he adored this dog
(07:55):
and and how bad he felt that in the last few years of her life
he wasn't around so. That's rough.
It, it is rough, but I always felt like Sam and I had that
similarity. We, we both felt left behind.
We both were sort of left in situations where they, that
(08:17):
maybe, at least for me, I'm not speaking for Sam here.
For me, I was left in a situation where I, I didn't feel
wanted or I, I, I always felt inthe way and I spent a great deal
of time alone. And so Sam, for me, I, I sort of
sensed something similar, which by sense probably projected my
(08:40):
own trauma onto this dog and I became very dependent on this
dog. This dog really healed something
in me. It made me feel that little girl
feel like she finally had a constant.
She finally had a protector. And so when when the the
(09:04):
inevitability of her being put down really started coming
closer, I noticed I was really getting triggered.
I was. I was.
Getting. I noticed that too.
Did you? Yeah, you don't.
You don't say. You don't say why.
(09:25):
What did you notice? I mean what?
What do you mean? What did I notice?
Well, how did you know I was triggered other than I was like,
oh this is so hard. I mean like, did you think you
were hiding it? I didn't really think about it.
(09:45):
I didn't really think about it, but I became very triggered by
the idea of, of losing her, you know, due to that anticipatory
grief, but it was also that feeling of being left behind.
And it took me. I knew, I knew by how how my,
(10:12):
all the physical reactions I washaving, I thought this is this
is traumatizing me or it's re traumatizing me.
And I thought I was, I, I thought I was in a pretty good
place and I felt like you've done this enough.
But this was Sam. This was somebody.
And I say somebody because that she's a person to me, somebody
(10:34):
that I had let in that I was completely vulnerable with that
I won't say made me feel whole, but made me feel special.
And and that's not something as a kid that I ever felt.
I never felt like I was wanted. I always felt like I was in the
way and Sam looked at me as though she saw me.
(10:56):
She if she loved me, she appreciated me.
She always wanted to be near me.She made me feel like like you
are. You are the most important thing
to me, which is something I've never really felt.
I certainly didn't feel it as a kid.
So the more I was getting upset and triggered, I started
(11:16):
thinking about repetition compulsion because I was telling
my I was telling my true crime discord.
This is not my first end of lifejob.
This was my third, I believe third.
And one of my friends said, do you think maybe this isn't
healthy for you? And you've said that as well?
(11:40):
You don't. Say, And I thought this was the
first time I really started to think, yeah, this is not just
like this is tearing open a wound for me.
And I started to ask myself, whydo you keep doing this?
Why do you keep doing this? And that's when I started
(12:01):
thinking about the repetition compulsion.
Why do I keep right? Why do I keep recreating this,
this experience, this trauma of losing somebody and feeling so
vulnerable and feeling left behind, which is exactly how I
felt when my mother died. Why did I keep doing it?
(12:21):
Because I had really thought I had come to terms with any kind
of abandonment stuff. But I, I don't even think it was
the abandonment. It was the feeling left behind,
like I didn't matter. And I'm still, I'm still trying
to work through this. I've started journaling about
it. And I I sent you my first
(12:43):
journal entry, which was a letter to Sam.
Did you like it? I mean, it was lovely.
It just, it just made me cry, right?
Yeah, and it was, but it was very, I don't know, cathartic
for me to do it to get it out. I might post it for the
subscribers over on Patreon because that's what we do with
(13:07):
the that's what the Patreon is for.
It's for the behind the scenes stuff, the more raw, the more
vulnerable stuff, you know, likethe worth the wait episodes and
things like that. But I, it made me think about
dating and how we keep dating the same person over and over
and over again sometimes. And people think that.
(13:29):
Oh, I just have a type. Well.
Know that? How about you just have a bad
picker? You.
Well, there's that too, yeah. No, I just experienced trauma.
Well, that's that's usually something men say, right?
Right. No, that's something women say
too many and women both say it, don't you think?
I hear it more often from men, but really, yeah, 'cause I feel
(13:51):
like women know that, like simplifying it in that way.
Like, oh, pick better, like where, right.
Pick better from from what pool?Right.
It it's not that you have a bad picker, it's that your brain is
your brain just wants to fuck you over.
(14:12):
Your brain, your brain gravitates towards people or or
scenarios or experiences that you know and you don't know that
something's toxic. You don't know that something is
dysfunctional. If you grew up with it, right?
If you if you experience that pattern very young and it and it
(14:32):
played out because you believe, or at least your brain believes,
this is how this goes. This is how this is supposed to
be. Yeah, that's so true.
Like how how many of us have relayed a story from our earlier
lives and the the person who's listening just is like, what,
what happened? What?
Right. And they're like, appalled.
(14:53):
And that's what you realize, like, oh, this didn't happen to
everybody. Right.
Oh, you mean you? Didn't get a thirsty page
manifesto from some obnoxious British guy.
Right. I hope we all have been there
among us. Oh, Jesus Christ, but it's it's
(15:15):
true. It's not as simple as you have a
bad picker. You don't just have a bad
picker. You have if if something keeps
hope it happening over and over and over again, you might just
be unlucky, but more likely. I know, I know, but you, you
have to take that. It's it's a possibility.
But more once as luck, right? Yeah, certainly twice.
(15:38):
Sure. Three times, right?
After that, there's a pattern. It's a pattern.
If you, if you have a pattern ofdating people who seem really
unavailable or dating people whotalk down to you or who who
treat you as an afterthought, I encourage you to dig deeper and
(16:02):
ask yourself and, and really look back, not just on your
relationship history, but on any, any relationship you've
had. Because this isn't just
something that happens in romantic relationships.
I want you to look back and I want you to identify things
about this person that is makingyou feel terrible.
And I want you to ask yourself, is there somebody or was there
(16:25):
somebody in my life or was therea relationship in my life where
I endured all of these things and, and, and never knew that it
was dysfunctional or unhealthy? Try to you, you really do want
(16:46):
to get to the root of the of thepattern because that's how you
that's how you start to break the pattern.
For me, I really do think journaling for me and and
talking about this, I wrote thisletter to Sam.
I plan on my entries will be to Sam.
I feel there's something very comforting in that.
It makes me feel like she's still here, but also I feel like
(17:08):
I can just be extremely vulnerable.
I really do want to get to the root of this feeling of being
left behind. I know what caused it, but how
do I, how do I heal this wound in a way that doesn't traumatize
me when it's right, right. But but this could happen.
(17:32):
You lose somebody that you love dearly, right?
See. And that's that it what it is
for me. I could lose a family member.
I can remember when my sister got married, I was about 12
maybe she got married 1213. And this is a sister that I was
very close to, believe it or not, it was the one we don't
speak of. And I remember watching her
(17:54):
plane leave while she went off her honeymoon.
And I was sobbing because I feltleft behind.
And I need to find a way to makeit so that when I do lose
somebody, I'm not traumatized byit.
Yeah. I, I need to do that, especially
(18:15):
because of the dogs, whether it's end of life care, whether
it's just taking care of dogs, whatever it is, anybody could
walk away at any time. They could pass away, they could
move away, whatever. And that's gonna, that's gonna
trigger it with me. Not as deeply as it did with
Sam, necessarily, but I want to.I wanna heal that wound in a way
(18:39):
that it's not an open scab, It'sthat it's not a scab that it's
that it's that it's healed. Yeah.
I mean, what makes this hard, I think is, is going to be that
you're going to have to, I guessdo this with a like a recurring
(19:00):
shitty part of everyday life as as opposed to something that's
like an outlier event that you can pretty easily.
Avoid. But in any case, Sam passed.
She lived a very, very long life.
Her dad came home from She liveda very good life.
(19:20):
She really did a lot of. People loved Sam.
They spared no expense for her. Her dad flew pretty much a day
plus to be with her. And I will say I was holding out
hope that she was going to rally.
And then I saw her, that she sawhim and she was in his arms.
(19:43):
And I went, Nope, she's tired. And I, I believe, I truly
believe she was holding out until he came home.
She was holding out to see him. So I feel very grateful that I
think she got the goodbye that she wanted, right?
I think she got the, she got theending that she wanted.
(20:04):
So you have a letter. Well, we received a letter, but
you're going to read the letter.I am going to read the letter
and I apologize for my voice. I'm I'm a little under the
weather but I'm doing my best soOK.
The letter says I've been datinga guy for a whole 2 1/2 months.
Thanks to the center yourself mindset and the fuck that guy
(20:26):
philosophy. No man has been worthy of more
than one date in several years, so the fact that I've been
seeing a guy for nearly 90 days is astonishing.
There are green flags everywhere.
It's so easy. Communication is exactly as I
like it. We have so much in common.
Same age as I am. No cat allergies.
(20:49):
Funny, smart, successful, liberal, great dad, amicable
relationship with the ex, enjoystrash TV, is independent, has
and likes tattoos, everything. So why am I writing?
Because I'm terrified I'm waiting for this relationship to
(21:09):
crash and burn even though I have no reason to believe it
will. At this point.
I'm so cynical about relationships.
My anxiety is starting to creep in and I struggle with
communicating my feelings so I don't know how to approach this.
I know I should be direct and clear but for some reason I'm
afraid. We had lunch plans on Saturday
(21:30):
but he asked for a rain check because he slept terribly the
night before and needed to take it easy and I believed him but
now I'm paranoid. This is the only time that he's
ever cancelled. We do have plans now for
Wednesday, so I want to ask him how he's feeling and I want to
tell him that I really like him and that I don't want to date
(21:51):
anyone else, but the idea of doing that makes my stomach
flip. He's given me no reason to be
afraid of this, but I am. Any words of advice?
And then she says keep up the good work.
Now, we received a follow up to this letter pretty much the day
she submitted it and she said here's some follow up.
(22:16):
He broke up with me. So, right, I feel like this is
one of those situations where you're trying to determine what
was anxiety and what was intuition.
That's what this feels like to me now.
When she says my stomach did flip flops, that's anxiety,
right? Because it's there's that
(22:36):
physical component to it. I would say.
Right. But when she said for some
reason I was afraid to say something, for some reason to me
sounds like intuition. Yeah, 'cause we don't know the
reason, right? Right, right, right.
When something makes you anxious, you usually know what
(22:58):
it is. But when you can't pinpoint what
about like when and when that adaptive unconscious is what's
triggered and what's being lit up, and you can't identify or
quantify something, that's typically intuition.
Yeah. And intuition usually happens
(23:18):
about something that's that's occurring right in right in
front of you. Whereas anxiety is AI don't want
to say more generalized, but intuition is usually about
something very specific. Like you meet a person, you're
about to walk into a room, something doesn't feel right,
things like that. So I I feel like this was a
(23:42):
situation where she was picking up on things but telling
herself, no, you're just afraid,you're just getting paranoid
because he's available. Does that sound familiar?
It does. It does.
That's what Sarah said to me when I first started dating Don,
when I originally ended things with him.
Do you think maybe he's just available and I had to sit with?
(24:04):
I don't. Know about this?
I don't know. And I sat with that and I was
like, I think Sarah's right. So I, I think this might be a
case of she knew something was off and I'm going to say the
whole, you know, I didn't get great sleep last night.
(24:25):
What is that? What is that?
I see that that didn't that didn't bother me.
I didn't clock that as a Dick move because I feel like after
three months like that is probably long enough that you
can just say like, yeah, you know, I'm not feeling up to it,
(24:48):
sorry. And, you know, reschedule, which
they did. But who knows?
You know, it might have just been bullshit.
Who knows? It's, it felt like, well,
obviously I, I think it, I thinkit was bullshit.
I think it was bullshit. It certainly looks like it in
hindsight. Right.
Yeah, I I take a nap. Take a nap.
(25:11):
You made plans with her? Do you have pneumonia or are you
just sleepy? Take a nap.
It's not that hard. You really want it?
It is. I mean, it's a Saturday.
Maybe he had his kid, you know, who knows?
Maybe he had to work. We don't know.
Right, well I would assume he didn't have his kid if he had a
date with her. Well, but I'm assuming the date
was later. You're saying he should take a
(25:32):
nap during the day, but in any case.
Well, no. If he has the has the daughter
during the day, he has her at night.
We don't know that. I would assume that don't know.
It doesn't matter. We're we're nitpicking.
We're nitpicking. Take a fucking nap.
That's my that's my answer. Take a nap.
If he really wanted to rally, hewould have.
(25:54):
That's my feeling clearly right.So now what are you thinking?
You know, I, I don't, I don't know what to think about this
other than what seems to be the most likely explanation for this
kind of behaviour, which is likethe illusion of infinite choice.
(26:17):
Because it sounds like things were going really well.
I didn't pick up on anything about this letter that made me
feel like, oh, man, they're about to break up.
If anything, I thought like, oh,maybe he's taking it slow
because he is divorced and has akid, right?
And like divorced dads, frankly,should take relationships a lot
(26:39):
slower. I.
Think right. So, you know, given that all we
have to go on is the informationwe have, my best guess is, like
I said, just the illusion of infinite choice on his part.
He probably had a good time, realized it was, you know,
getting to be 3 months and you were, you were going to have
(26:59):
this talk at some point, right? And rather than have the talk he
he chickened out. Right, right, This illusion of
infinite choice. I I wrote about this yesterday
on the Substack. A woman on Reddit was right.
Or you know, why did I? Why am I dealing with so much
rejection? Yeah.
(27:19):
And I said that if you find somebody attractive and see this
is how it when she when the woman in the letter was listing
off all these great qualities and I thought this guy's got, I
mean. He sounded great, right?
Right. He this guy's got a lot of
options, which doesn't mean thathe wouldn't look at her and be
like, damn, she's great. I'm gonna focus on.
(27:39):
Her. Yeah, he obviously did.
But the thing about then is thatthey take things for granted.
They're very entitled, right? They don't they?
They don't appreciate what they have.
They don't. Right.
So when you have somebody on a dating app who does seem like a
(28:02):
catch, if you find them attractive, you can be sure
other women do too. Which means you are going to be,
I hate the word competing, but you're going to be 1 of many.
You just are. And so The thing is, the bar is
(28:24):
so low on these dating apps thata guy who right the bar, oh, he,
he, all he has to do is not posta selfie and, you know, not talk
about sex. And women are like, whoa, he's
great. He's a nice guy, right?
So when guys do the bare minimum, you know, compared to
(28:44):
everybody else on the app, they look much more desirable than
they actually are. And right, it it, it, it, it
that's this is where the false sense of options, the endless
options comes from. But it also deludes these men
into thinking they're more desirable than they actually
are. Correct?
(29:04):
Right. And so they think, oh, I can, I
can be picky here. When in reality, they probably
could. You know nobody, you know
everyone should be picky, right?They're probably extraordinarily
picky. Inordinately.
It just ends up meaning that they don't recognize a good
thing when they have it. Right, right.
(29:26):
And remember, men in our cultureare not encouraged to settle.
No, they, they are encouraged. They're, they determine success
based on not emotional fulfillment, but professional
success, money, power. And what?
(29:49):
Yeah, what other men think. Status and what other men think
and so if they think they have achance with a woman who's quote
UN quote hotter, they're going to they're going to hold out for
her, which is. Stupid.
It's not even about hotter, it'sjust about more.
More. Sometimes it's about quantity.
(30:10):
And then they'll then they'll get on social media and Reddit
and complain about the male loneliness epidemic.
Right. Or how women are run through.
Right, right. It's everything's everybody
else's fault. So I, you know, now that we're,
we're talking about all this, there is one, there is one red
flag here that I am now picking up on.
(30:30):
OK. Divorce, OH.
Well, I don't think that's AI. Don't think that's a red flag.
Why do you think that's a red flag?
I think it's a red flag because,well, depending on how fresh the
divorce is, you certainly don't want to be the first person any
(30:52):
mandates after his. Divorce.
OK, yes, so let's have a qualifier there.
It's not the divorce, it's how recently divorced.
Yeah, I just, I, I, I would havequestions about that, right.
Yeah. How recently is the divorce?
How old is your child? What do we mean by amicable when
we're talking about the relationship with the ex, Like,
right. Yeah, these are all things that.
(31:14):
Right. Are potentially problematic.
Very. Yeah, Those are questions that
you are absolutely in well within your rights to ask
somebody. If they say, oh, I'm divorced.
When were you divorced? How long have you been divorced?
Is it finalized? Do not hesitate to ask these
questions. Women are made to feel like
(31:35):
they're being that There's a difference between being
thorough and being nosy. I feel like we typically want to
ask the wrong question in response to finding out a man is
divorced. Right, we want to.
So what happened? We want to know why.
Right, you're not. Going to get the you're.
Never going to get the truth. You're never going to get the
truth. Right.
(31:56):
So it's yeah, it's useless to ask why.
What you want to know is, oh, for how long, right?
For how long have you been divorced?
When was it finalized? Be really specific.
When was? When was it finalized?
Yeah. Were you separated beforehand?
Right. Yeah.
You're within your rights to askthese questions because you're
you want to value your time. Yep, right.
(32:18):
And somebody who's newly divorced is just a kidney candy
shop. I'm getting that kind of vibe
here. Right.
Like the fact that she was afraid to tell him she wanted to
to make it official. Yes.
I suggest she. Was picking up on something.
She was picking up on something.That was that she was, yeah,
(32:40):
picking up on a hesitation on his part.
Yes, yeah. I, I, I really plead with people
when you have those instincts ofor you have those feelings or
senses, I don't feel comfortablebringing this up.
I beg of you to sit with that and examine it and ask yourself
(33:01):
why. Why don't you feel comfortable
bringing that up? Because the person you're
dating, if this is someone you want to be exclusive with, I
would hope that you felt safe with them.
That's really something that we overlook all the time.
Does this person make me feel? They should be excited to have
the conversation. Right, right.
(33:23):
Be like, oh, great, yeah, I was going to bring this up, but you
beat me to it. I just wanted to give you time.
Right. But that is something that we
don't talk about. It is the feel.
Do you feel safe in a relationship?
Yeah. Do you feel like this person
will actively try not to hurt you?
(33:43):
Right. I mean, I, I feel like this, you
know, 2 1/2 three month time frame is it's still a pretty new
relationship. Like it's still like it's AI.
Guess what I'm saying is, it's ait's a weird, paradoxical time
because on the one hand, it's like plenty of time to know
(34:04):
whether you want to be exclusivewith someone, not necessarily
enough time to know if you feel fully safe with them.
OK, I agree. Like I, I, I would understand
having, you know, still some, some feelings of like
butterflies or nervousness. In the beginning.
(34:26):
I'm saying 2 1/2, three months still is the beginning.
Yes, and especially because of that like around this
conversation, like that's in that in particular is you're
looking at evolving to the next stage.
So it it's just a. It's just a tricky time.
Agreed. But I think I don't know.
(34:53):
I think we need to you, you needto know what what's the
difference between you being nervous or nervous about
somebody and yeah, you know, youbeing excited because your
brain's not going to know it brain does not know the
difference. But you need to learn how to
discern between the two is what I would remind people.
(35:16):
So it really is about checking in with yourself.
What do you know? What else is interesting about
this letter is that very early on she says it's so easy.
And then, and this isn't even a long letter, right?
But by the end of it she's like,I'm paranoid, I'm afraid.
What about this is easy? Right.
(35:39):
But again, write it out. I'm telling you, write this
stuff out and go back. Thorough literary analysis.
I'm, I'm telling you, do a forensic analysis of your
writing. Do walk away from it.
Go back to it. What's your word choice?
Do your emotions switch very quickly in this, whatever you
(36:02):
wrote? Is it disjointed?
Like are are you able to think clearly?
Is there clarity here? Look for all those things,
right? Because if it doesn't seem, if
there is no clarity, if the emotions do seem to, there seems
to be this range of emotions. Pay attention to that.
I'm not saying you have to immediately see it as a red
(36:23):
flag, but I am saying pay attention to it.
Sure. Right.
This is how this situation, maybe not this person, but this
situation is making you feel andyou need to figure out what
about this situation or this person is making you feel that
way. Yeah.
That's that's a $0.02. I know she's already followed
(36:44):
up, but now that now that we've gotten the follow up and she's
gotten the reply, I'd be interested in another follow up
to know whether she thinks or orhas confirmed even that it is
just the illusion of choice on his part, I don't know, I
wonder. I wonder I.
Wonder if she got any kind of explanation.
Oh, I'd, I'd like to know. That is something I'd like to
(37:06):
know. I'll message her and ask.
In any case, I just feel like this guy isn't nearly as much of
a catch as he appears at 1st andas he probably thinks he is.
Correct. Definitely.
Correct. I just have some intuition.
That's right, we and we know it's intuition.
All right, You sent me a TikTok from someone named, what's his
name, Crew Mahoney. Baby.
(37:29):
With a terrible, terrible mustache.
So let's play it. Let's play it for our We're
continuing with our Fuck That Guy Summerfest.
Nice peaceful walk today, but yet again here I am to complain
about people not even being humans anymore.
What are we doing? I'm walking towards this girl on
the sidewalk and God forbid we make eye contact or have any
(37:53):
sort of human interaction on a how's it going kind of level.
She's got the air pods in. She's got the sunglasses on.
She has her phone in landscape. Folks, we have stooped to the
level of having our phone in landscape like this.
No, please tell me you're not watching a movie just to avoid
(38:14):
having some sort of human interaction.
Guys, this needs to stop. Look around, get a little bit
uncomfortable and, I don't know,say hi to a human that's four
feet away from you. Get a little bit uncomfortable.
Sorry, you're missing the point.It's, it's, it's ironic that you
would say that because she already is uncomfortable.
That's why she had her earbuds in and her sunglasses on,
(38:39):
because she's uncomfortable walking down the street,
probably because she's a woman. I was going to say very
attractive, but this happens to every woman and she doesn't want
to deal with it. Especially look just feels
entitled right to her attention.But also, look at this guy
right? Shirtless.
(39:00):
The the fucking porn mustache. Shirtless.
Sweaty. Right, that's a key detail.
I feel like no matter what a dude looks like, if you're
without a shirt, I'm not making eye contact.
With you, right, right. It's just I don't want to see it
in your unless you're at I don'teven want to see in your dating
profile. No, I don't.
(39:22):
No, I don't. I don't either listen.
I don't know if this is a hot take or not, but I don't think
men should be allowed to be shirtless in public, I said.
We've got a couple of hot takes.Don't date addicts.
I said why? And men, I don't think men
should be allowed to be shirtless in public.
And I'm not even saying I think the answer is, oh, but women
(39:43):
could be shirtless too. No, because they would enjoy
that, right? Right.
The solution is it's summer. We should all be uncomfortable
with our shirts on, right? And again, like any dude without
a shirt on in public, like of course he's perceived as a
threat. Right.
And this is what guys don't understand, you wander.
(40:05):
Around like a gorilla dude right?
King Kong mustachioed. King Kong wants to know why
women afraid. Why King Afraid King Kong?
Friend. But also dude, that mustache
alone is creepy, right? And I know that's body shaming,
right? I I don't think so.
(40:26):
It's not part of his body that he can't change.
It's it's something he can change, correct.
So you've got the that mustache is immediately.
What do you think it's? A choice.
It's a choice. It's a porny choice.
Well. It's not porny like he has to
know women probably don't like it, right?
It's a it's antagonistic. Right.
(40:48):
It's almost as if, Sir, you're trying to prevent women from
approaching you right by with that hideous mustache.
But when you do it. Listen, I, I'm sticking by men
should not be allowed to be shirtless in public.
And I, I'll, you know, raise myself here.
(41:08):
They also shouldn't be allowed to have mustaches without
without written permission of atleast three women.
But also, Sir, you are not Tom Selleck.
No, you will never be Tom Selleck, Tom.
And that, isn't that really who he's copying?
Because who's got a fucking? Mustache.
Actually that you mentioned Tom Selleck, because the reason that
(41:31):
I am taking umbrage with the stache in this way is because
there's a there's a time and a place for a mustache as we've I
think correctly identified it's in 70's porn or on 70s Tom
Selleck, right. Right.
So, well, that was more 80s. He was more 80s.
Well, OK, so at this point, if aman has grown a mustache, it is
(41:54):
it's literally to antagonize women.
It's literally I dare you to to find me attractive.
I want to know what listeners think.
I think I'm gonna put a poll on Spotify.
Take the poll. It is.
It is a. It is a dare.
What do you think about this mustache?
Not mustaches in general, This mustache OK.
You're gonna share his photo? Yeah.
(42:16):
Oh, oh, shoot. Yeah.
Maybe I shouldn't do that. What do you think about
mustaches? Yeah, I mean, he put it, he put
it out on the Internet. I feel like it's fine to reshare
actually, but I don't. Know that I I I don't feel
comfortable doing. That well, that's fine if you
don't want to, but. But I will will ask what do you
think about moustaches and I'll do a poll on the Patreon.
I just feel like the other thingabout moustaches in 2025 is that
(42:39):
they're, they're very often a joke, right?
Men will grow a moustache, ironically.
Right. Which again is like, oh dare you
to date me? Right it it is right.
It is only men have the luxury of making their appearance a
fucking joke. Right, right.
Agreed. All right, that's why mustaches
(43:01):
piss me off. There we exactly all right
follow us on Instagram at date ology pod and me at the Kristen
MTHECHRISTANM go to dateologycoach.com to submit
your dating questions. Follow me on TikTok and YouTube
at date ology coach and my character analysis.
And if you want the behind the scenes, more vulnerable, more
(43:25):
raw content like the other dating advice episodes were
we're a little bit more not revealing, but maybe a little
bit more vulnerable, but definitely a little bit a little
bit snarkier. Or you want the worth the weight
episodes, which I really like the new the description of it.
You know, this Worth the Weight episodes are about the, it's
(43:47):
about the weight that women carry in society physically,
mentally, professionally, socially.
To listen to those episodes, go to patreon.com/date Ology Coach.
Become a subscriber. You'll get the posts, you'll get
the bonus dating advice episodes, and you'll get the
Worth the Wait episodes. So patreon.com/date Ology Coach
(44:10):
Sarah final thoughts? Please convince any men you know
not to grow a mustache and to keep their shirts on all summer
long. Thank you, I agreed.
I don't want to see their toes either.
I don't. I don't want to see their toes.
I think that's a whole new topicfor another episode.
(44:32):
All right. Bog Witch's warlock's days.
Value your time and decenter menand center yourself.
Goodbye.
Didology Coach podcast. Hi, Sarah, It is a very horribly
gloomy day here in New York City.
How is it in Baltimore? It's like 57 in May Amazing.
I'll take it. Yeah, I like, I like anything
below 70 I can deal with. I want you to do a blind react
(00:37):
for me for something that I saw in threads.
And it actually is going to leadinto one of the two
announcements that we have for the show.
So I saw this on threads. It's an author and she says I
killed a dog in my book and saidthere's no afterlife.
Then I watched a writing video that said pets can have big
roles in books so be careful. A beta reader asked me if a dog
(00:58):
dies, said she checks a site with a list of books to avoid.
Then a dating app guy said my afterlife rule was a hard pass
and I dipped. Oh and and he dipped.
Damn people. Dog culture is dire.
They're a great pet but stop acting like they have little
moons orbiting them. Your behavior is raising our vet
(01:20):
bills. They're not a child, chill.
Well, you know, you know what I have to say, Kristen.
What? No, no, no, I will not.
She is getting massive backlash for this.
Massive because she's wrong. Because she is wrong.
(01:41):
She is. And boy does she.
She did. Did she misread her audience
like this is? I It's not even like her
audience, right? It's just like people.
Right. But this, this is something that
could kill your career. Dogs are that important to
people that if you treat them oror talk like people who consider
(02:05):
them family are are silly, you're going to lose a lot of
people. Yep.
Now I'm bringing this up to makean announcement. 2
announcements. The first one is we've moved the
publishing date or the posting date to Tuesdays because we're
trying to incorporate video. And we've moved over to a
(02:27):
different hosting platform that has video.
And so it just might take a little bit longer to to edit and
Polish up. And it's just helpful for me to
have more time between episodes because I get very stressed out,
which as we know, triggers the ADHD and a whole lot of other
(02:48):
stuff. The other announcement I want to
make is Sam, the small dog that I cared for for about 5 months a
year for the past five years. She was 17.
She crossed the Rainbow Bridge on Monday.
Yeah. And it was.
(03:09):
It was something that we knew was coming.
We thought maybe there would be a couple more months.
She had gone back into the vet and they said, you know, we have
to put her on fluids, etcetera, etcetera.
And the doctor was explaining all this to me and I could tell
by the way he was talking to me.I said, wait a minute, I need to
(03:31):
call the owner in China. You need to talk to them.
I just knew this is not a me conversation, so I'm not going
to go too into detail. It's just it's depressing
because we love our dogs. We love our pets, but I do want
to talk about something that happened as a result of this.
(03:51):
And I've, I've mentioned on the show before that when I was
studying for my trauma certification, we studied
something called repetition compulsion.
And it's where we repeat a pattern subconsciously.
And it's usually we, we recreateA trauma or an experience in an
(04:15):
attempt to gain. I don't know if closure is the
right word, but in in an attemptto close the loop, to fix it to,
to heal, right? We think if we can finally get
this right, then this, this thing that has followed us our
whole life won't be true and will be OK.
(04:36):
And a great example would be go ahead.
Maybe it makes you feel more in control too.
Yes, right. And a great example would be if
you have a primary caregiver that was absent or a very
emotionally withholding, you'll probably date emotionally
(04:57):
unavailable people over and overagain subconsciously in an
attempt to, to close the loop, to finally get it right so that
you can prove to yourself, I'm, I'm, I matter and, you know,
somebody picked me. So it's, it's things like that.
And This is why I've always saidto people who talk about they
(05:20):
kind of date the same person over and over again.
I, I try to, I try to guide theminto looking back and seeing if
there's any similarities among all the people that they're
dating. And, and I asked, does this
resemble anything from any othertime in your life?
Because it doesn't just have to be childhood.
(05:42):
And you know, when a toxic dating pattern, when we date the
same person over and over again,it really isn't a choice.
And I try to make that clear. It's not a choice.
Your brain just recognizes what it knows, what it's familiar
with, and that makes it feel safe.
And so they say, oh, I know this, I can do this.
(06:04):
I can navigate this and that. But you meet somebody who is
completely the opposite, emotionally healthy, available,
etcetera, and you're probably going to be very triggered
because your brain doesn't recognize it.
Your brain, it's new and brain doesn't like new things, right?
(06:25):
The brain interprets it as as danger.
So knowing. Answers are so fucked up.
Brains, they really are knowing this, knowing about this, but
this behavior, this repetition, compulsion.
The thing with Sam was and and I, and I knew this from the
(06:46):
moment I met her. We had sort of similar
backgrounds in that her dad had to move across the world for
something to do with the family.And the plan was to relocate
her, but she was so much older. They were afraid she wouldn't
make she she wouldn't survive the trip.
(07:09):
You know, we're talking this is 11/12/13 hours.
They were afraid. And so they decided Sam would
live with the the owner of the father's sister.
And what? So when I took on Sam, I always
felt like we had something in common, which was in a sense, we
(07:32):
were both left behind. Her father never wanted to leave
her behind. And I met him because I was I
was there. They invited me to, you know, to
the in home, in home euthanasia.And I had he had Take Me Out to
lunch and we went out to coffee a day later.
And I got to know him and it wasso clear how he adored this dog
(07:55):
and and how bad he felt that in the last few years of her life
he wasn't around so. That's rough.
It, it is rough, but I always felt like Sam and I had that
similarity. We, we both felt left behind.
We both were sort of left in situations where they, that
(08:17):
maybe, at least for me, I'm not speaking for Sam here.
For me, I was left in a situation where I, I didn't feel
wanted or I, I, I always felt inthe way and I spent a great deal
of time alone. And so Sam, for me, I, I sort of
sensed something similar, which by sense probably projected my
(08:40):
own trauma onto this dog and I became very dependent on this
dog. This dog really healed something
in me. It made me feel that little girl
feel like she finally had a constant.
She finally had a protector. And so when when the the
(09:04):
inevitability of her being put down really started coming
closer, I noticed I was really getting triggered.
I was. I was.
Getting. I noticed that too.
Did you? Yeah, you don't.
You don't say. You don't say why.
(09:25):
What did you notice? I mean what?
What do you mean? What did I notice?
Well, how did you know I was triggered other than I was like,
oh this is so hard. I mean like, did you think you
were hiding it? I didn't really think about it.
(09:45):
I didn't really think about it, but I became very triggered by
the idea of, of losing her, you know, due to that anticipatory
grief, but it was also that feeling of being left behind.
And it took me. I knew, I knew by how how my,
(10:12):
all the physical reactions I washaving, I thought this is this
is traumatizing me or it's re traumatizing me.
And I thought I was, I, I thought I was in a pretty good
place and I felt like you've done this enough.
But this was Sam. This was somebody.
And I say somebody because that she's a person to me, somebody
(10:34):
that I had let in that I was completely vulnerable with that
I won't say made me feel whole, but made me feel special.
And and that's not something as a kid that I ever felt.
I never felt like I was wanted. I always felt like I was in the
way and Sam looked at me as though she saw me.
(10:56):
She if she loved me, she appreciated me.
She always wanted to be near me.She made me feel like like you
are. You are the most important thing
to me, which is something I've never really felt.
I certainly didn't feel it as a kid.
So the more I was getting upset and triggered, I started
(11:16):
thinking about repetition compulsion because I was telling
my I was telling my true crime discord.
This is not my first end of lifejob.
This was my third, I believe third.
And one of my friends said, do you think maybe this isn't
healthy for you? And you've said that as well?
(11:40):
You don't. Say, And I thought this was the
first time I really started to think, yeah, this is not just
like this is tearing open a wound for me.
And I started to ask myself, whydo you keep doing this?
Why do you keep doing this? And that's when I started
(12:01):
thinking about the repetition compulsion.
Why do I keep right? Why do I keep recreating this,
this experience, this trauma of losing somebody and feeling so
vulnerable and feeling left behind, which is exactly how I
felt when my mother died. Why did I keep doing it?
(12:21):
Because I had really thought I had come to terms with any kind
of abandonment stuff. But I, I don't even think it was
the abandonment. It was the feeling left behind,
like I didn't matter. And I'm still, I'm still trying
to work through this. I've started journaling about
it. And I I sent you my first
(12:43):
journal entry, which was a letter to Sam.
Did you like it? I mean, it was lovely.
It just, it just made me cry, right?
Yeah, and it was, but it was very, I don't know, cathartic
for me to do it to get it out. I might post it for the
subscribers over on Patreon because that's what we do with
(13:07):
the that's what the Patreon is for.
It's for the behind the scenes stuff, the more raw, the more
vulnerable stuff, you know, likethe worth the wait episodes and
things like that. But I, it made me think about
dating and how we keep dating the same person over and over
and over again sometimes. And people think that.
(13:29):
Oh, I just have a type. Well.
Know that? How about you just have a bad
picker? You.
Well, there's that too, yeah. No, I just experienced trauma.
Well, that's that's usually something men say, right?
Right. No, that's something women say
too many and women both say it, don't you think?
I hear it more often from men, but really, yeah, 'cause I feel
(13:51):
like women know that, like simplifying it in that way.
Like, oh, pick better, like where, right.
Pick better from from what pool?Right.
It it's not that you have a bad picker, it's that your brain is
your brain just wants to fuck you over.
(14:12):
Your brain, your brain gravitates towards people or or
scenarios or experiences that you know and you don't know that
something's toxic. You don't know that something is
dysfunctional. If you grew up with it, right?
If you if you experience that pattern very young and it and it
(14:32):
played out because you believe, or at least your brain believes,
this is how this goes. This is how this is supposed to
be. Yeah, that's so true.
Like how how many of us have relayed a story from our earlier
lives and the the person who's listening just is like, what,
what happened? What?
Right. And they're like, appalled.
(14:53):
And that's what you realize, like, oh, this didn't happen to
everybody. Right.
Oh, you mean you? Didn't get a thirsty page
manifesto from some obnoxious British guy.
Right. I hope we all have been there
among us. Oh, Jesus Christ, but it's it's
(15:15):
true. It's not as simple as you have a
bad picker. You don't just have a bad
picker. You have if if something keeps
hope it happening over and over and over again, you might just
be unlucky, but more likely. I know, I know, but you, you
have to take that. It's it's a possibility.
But more once as luck, right? Yeah, certainly twice.
(15:38):
Sure. Three times, right?
After that, there's a pattern. It's a pattern.
If you, if you have a pattern ofdating people who seem really
unavailable or dating people whotalk down to you or who who
treat you as an afterthought, I encourage you to dig deeper and
(16:02):
ask yourself and, and really look back, not just on your
relationship history, but on any, any relationship you've
had. Because this isn't just
something that happens in romantic relationships.
I want you to look back and I want you to identify things
about this person that is makingyou feel terrible.
And I want you to ask yourself, is there somebody or was there
(16:25):
somebody in my life or was therea relationship in my life where
I endured all of these things and, and, and never knew that it
was dysfunctional or unhealthy? Try to you, you really do want
(16:46):
to get to the root of the of thepattern because that's how you
that's how you start to break the pattern.
For me, I really do think journaling for me and and
talking about this, I wrote thisletter to Sam.
I plan on my entries will be to Sam.
I feel there's something very comforting in that.
It makes me feel like she's still here, but also I feel like
(17:08):
I can just be extremely vulnerable.
I really do want to get to the root of this feeling of being
left behind. I know what caused it, but how
do I, how do I heal this wound in a way that doesn't traumatize
me when it's right, right. But but this could happen.
(17:32):
You lose somebody that you love dearly, right?
See. And that's that it what it is
for me. I could lose a family member.
I can remember when my sister got married, I was about 12
maybe she got married 1213. And this is a sister that I was
very close to, believe it or not, it was the one we don't
speak of. And I remember watching her
(17:54):
plane leave while she went off her honeymoon.
And I was sobbing because I feltleft behind.
And I need to find a way to makeit so that when I do lose
somebody, I'm not traumatized byit.
Yeah. I, I need to do that, especially
(18:15):
because of the dogs, whether it's end of life care, whether
it's just taking care of dogs, whatever it is, anybody could
walk away at any time. They could pass away, they could
move away, whatever. And that's gonna, that's gonna
trigger it with me. Not as deeply as it did with
Sam, necessarily, but I want to.I wanna heal that wound in a way
(18:39):
that it's not an open scab, It'sthat it's not a scab that it's
that it's that it's healed. Yeah.
I mean, what makes this hard, I think is, is going to be that
you're going to have to, I guessdo this with a like a recurring
(19:00):
shitty part of everyday life as as opposed to something that's
like an outlier event that you can pretty easily.
Avoid. But in any case, Sam passed.
She lived a very, very long life.
Her dad came home from She liveda very good life.
(19:20):
She really did a lot of. People loved Sam.
They spared no expense for her. Her dad flew pretty much a day
plus to be with her. And I will say I was holding out
hope that she was going to rally.
And then I saw her, that she sawhim and she was in his arms.
(19:43):
And I went, Nope, she's tired. And I, I believe, I truly
believe she was holding out until he came home.
She was holding out to see him. So I feel very grateful that I
think she got the goodbye that she wanted, right?
I think she got the, she got theending that she wanted.
(20:04):
So you have a letter. Well, we received a letter, but
you're going to read the letter.I am going to read the letter
and I apologize for my voice. I'm I'm a little under the
weather but I'm doing my best soOK.
The letter says I've been datinga guy for a whole 2 1/2 months.
Thanks to the center yourself mindset and the fuck that guy
(20:26):
philosophy. No man has been worthy of more
than one date in several years, so the fact that I've been
seeing a guy for nearly 90 days is astonishing.
There are green flags everywhere.
It's so easy. Communication is exactly as I
like it. We have so much in common.
Same age as I am. No cat allergies.
(20:49):
Funny, smart, successful, liberal, great dad, amicable
relationship with the ex, enjoystrash TV, is independent, has
and likes tattoos, everything. So why am I writing?
Because I'm terrified I'm waiting for this relationship to
(21:09):
crash and burn even though I have no reason to believe it
will. At this point.
I'm so cynical about relationships.
My anxiety is starting to creep in and I struggle with
communicating my feelings so I don't know how to approach this.
I know I should be direct and clear but for some reason I'm
afraid. We had lunch plans on Saturday
(21:30):
but he asked for a rain check because he slept terribly the
night before and needed to take it easy and I believed him but
now I'm paranoid. This is the only time that he's
ever cancelled. We do have plans now for
Wednesday, so I want to ask him how he's feeling and I want to
tell him that I really like him and that I don't want to date
(21:51):
anyone else, but the idea of doing that makes my stomach
flip. He's given me no reason to be
afraid of this, but I am. Any words of advice?
And then she says keep up the good work.
Now, we received a follow up to this letter pretty much the day
she submitted it and she said here's some follow up.
(22:16):
He broke up with me. So, right, I feel like this is
one of those situations where you're trying to determine what
was anxiety and what was intuition.
That's what this feels like to me now.
When she says my stomach did flip flops, that's anxiety,
right? Because it's there's that
(22:36):
physical component to it. I would say.
Right. But when she said for some
reason I was afraid to say something, for some reason to me
sounds like intuition. Yeah, 'cause we don't know the
reason, right? Right, right, right.
When something makes you anxious, you usually know what
(22:58):
it is. But when you can't pinpoint what
about like when and when that adaptive unconscious is what's
triggered and what's being lit up, and you can't identify or
quantify something, that's typically intuition.
Yeah. And intuition usually happens
(23:18):
about something that's that's occurring right in right in
front of you. Whereas anxiety is AI don't want
to say more generalized, but intuition is usually about
something very specific. Like you meet a person, you're
about to walk into a room, something doesn't feel right,
things like that. So I I feel like this was a
(23:42):
situation where she was picking up on things but telling
herself, no, you're just afraid,you're just getting paranoid
because he's available. Does that sound familiar?
It does. It does.
That's what Sarah said to me when I first started dating Don,
when I originally ended things with him.
Do you think maybe he's just available and I had to sit with?
(24:04):
I don't. Know about this?
I don't know. And I sat with that and I was
like, I think Sarah's right. So I, I think this might be a
case of she knew something was off and I'm going to say the
whole, you know, I didn't get great sleep last night.
(24:25):
What is that? What is that?
I see that that didn't that didn't bother me.
I didn't clock that as a Dick move because I feel like after
three months like that is probably long enough that you
can just say like, yeah, you know, I'm not feeling up to it,
(24:48):
sorry. And, you know, reschedule, which
they did. But who knows?
You know, it might have just been bullshit.
Who knows? It's, it felt like, well,
obviously I, I think it, I thinkit was bullshit.
I think it was bullshit. It certainly looks like it in
hindsight. Right.
Yeah, I I take a nap. Take a nap.
(25:11):
You made plans with her? Do you have pneumonia or are you
just sleepy? Take a nap.
It's not that hard. You really want it?
It is. I mean, it's a Saturday.
Maybe he had his kid, you know, who knows?
Maybe he had to work. We don't know.
Right, well I would assume he didn't have his kid if he had a
date with her. Well, but I'm assuming the date
was later. You're saying he should take a
(25:32):
nap during the day, but in any case.
Well, no. If he has the has the daughter
during the day, he has her at night.
We don't know that. I would assume that don't know.
It doesn't matter. We're we're nitpicking.
We're nitpicking. Take a fucking nap.
That's my that's my answer. Take a nap.
If he really wanted to rally, hewould have.
(25:54):
That's my feeling clearly right.So now what are you thinking?
You know, I, I don't, I don't know what to think about this
other than what seems to be the most likely explanation for this
kind of behaviour, which is likethe illusion of infinite choice.
(26:17):
Because it sounds like things were going really well.
I didn't pick up on anything about this letter that made me
feel like, oh, man, they're about to break up.
If anything, I thought like, oh,maybe he's taking it slow
because he is divorced and has akid, right?
And like divorced dads, frankly,should take relationships a lot
(26:39):
slower. I.
Think right. So, you know, given that all we
have to go on is the informationwe have, my best guess is, like
I said, just the illusion of infinite choice on his part.
He probably had a good time, realized it was, you know,
getting to be 3 months and you were, you were going to have
(26:59):
this talk at some point, right? And rather than have the talk he
he chickened out. Right, right, This illusion of
infinite choice. I I wrote about this yesterday
on the Substack. A woman on Reddit was right.
Or you know, why did I? Why am I dealing with so much
rejection? Yeah.
(27:19):
And I said that if you find somebody attractive and see this
is how it when she when the woman in the letter was listing
off all these great qualities and I thought this guy's got, I
mean. He sounded great, right?
Right. He this guy's got a lot of
options, which doesn't mean thathe wouldn't look at her and be
like, damn, she's great. I'm gonna focus on.
(27:39):
Her. Yeah, he obviously did.
But the thing about then is thatthey take things for granted.
They're very entitled, right? They don't they?
They don't appreciate what they have.
They don't. Right.
So when you have somebody on a dating app who does seem like a
(28:02):
catch, if you find them attractive, you can be sure
other women do too. Which means you are going to be,
I hate the word competing, but you're going to be 1 of many.
You just are. And so The thing is, the bar is
(28:24):
so low on these dating apps thata guy who right the bar, oh, he,
he, all he has to do is not posta selfie and, you know, not talk
about sex. And women are like, whoa, he's
great. He's a nice guy, right?
So when guys do the bare minimum, you know, compared to
(28:44):
everybody else on the app, they look much more desirable than
they actually are. And right, it it, it, it, it
that's this is where the false sense of options, the endless
options comes from. But it also deludes these men
into thinking they're more desirable than they actually
are. Correct?
(29:04):
Right. And so they think, oh, I can, I
can be picky here. When in reality, they probably
could. You know nobody, you know
everyone should be picky, right?They're probably extraordinarily
picky. Inordinately.
It just ends up meaning that they don't recognize a good
thing when they have it. Right, right.
(29:26):
And remember, men in our cultureare not encouraged to settle.
No, they, they are encouraged. They're, they determine success
based on not emotional fulfillment, but professional
success, money, power. And what?
(29:49):
Yeah, what other men think. Status and what other men think
and so if they think they have achance with a woman who's quote
UN quote hotter, they're going to they're going to hold out for
her, which is. Stupid.
It's not even about hotter, it'sjust about more.
More. Sometimes it's about quantity.
(30:10):
And then they'll then they'll get on social media and Reddit
and complain about the male loneliness epidemic.
Right. Or how women are run through.
Right, right. It's everything's everybody
else's fault. So I, you know, now that we're,
we're talking about all this, there is one, there is one red
flag here that I am now picking up on.
(30:30):
OK. Divorce, OH.
Well, I don't think that's AI. Don't think that's a red flag.
Why do you think that's a red flag?
I think it's a red flag because,well, depending on how fresh the
divorce is, you certainly don't want to be the first person any
(30:52):
mandates after his. Divorce.
OK, yes, so let's have a qualifier there.
It's not the divorce, it's how recently divorced.
Yeah, I just, I, I, I would havequestions about that, right.
Yeah. How recently is the divorce?
How old is your child? What do we mean by amicable when
we're talking about the relationship with the ex, Like,
right. Yeah, these are all things that.
(31:14):
Right. Are potentially problematic.
Very. Yeah, Those are questions that
you are absolutely in well within your rights to ask
somebody. If they say, oh, I'm divorced.
When were you divorced? How long have you been divorced?
Is it finalized? Do not hesitate to ask these
questions. Women are made to feel like
(31:35):
they're being that There's a difference between being
thorough and being nosy. I feel like we typically want to
ask the wrong question in response to finding out a man is
divorced. Right, we want to.
So what happened? We want to know why.
Right, you're not. Going to get the you're.
Never going to get the truth. You're never going to get the
truth. Right.
(31:56):
So it's yeah, it's useless to ask why.
What you want to know is, oh, for how long, right?
For how long have you been divorced?
When was it finalized? Be really specific.
When was? When was it finalized?
Yeah. Were you separated beforehand?
Right. Yeah.
You're within your rights to askthese questions because you're
you want to value your time. Yep, right.
(32:18):
And somebody who's newly divorced is just a kidney candy
shop. I'm getting that kind of vibe
here. Right.
Like the fact that she was afraid to tell him she wanted to
to make it official. Yes.
I suggest she. Was picking up on something.
She was picking up on something.That was that she was, yeah,
(32:40):
picking up on a hesitation on his part.
Yes, yeah. I, I, I really plead with people
when you have those instincts ofor you have those feelings or
senses, I don't feel comfortablebringing this up.
I beg of you to sit with that and examine it and ask yourself
(33:01):
why. Why don't you feel comfortable
bringing that up? Because the person you're
dating, if this is someone you want to be exclusive with, I
would hope that you felt safe with them.
That's really something that we overlook all the time.
Does this person make me feel? They should be excited to have
the conversation. Right, right.
(33:23):
Be like, oh, great, yeah, I was going to bring this up, but you
beat me to it. I just wanted to give you time.
Right. But that is something that we
don't talk about. It is the feel.
Do you feel safe in a relationship?
Yeah. Do you feel like this person
will actively try not to hurt you?
(33:43):
Right. I mean, I, I feel like this, you
know, 2 1/2 three month time frame is it's still a pretty new
relationship. Like it's still like it's AI.
Guess what I'm saying is, it's ait's a weird, paradoxical time
because on the one hand, it's like plenty of time to know
(34:04):
whether you want to be exclusivewith someone, not necessarily
enough time to know if you feel fully safe with them.
OK, I agree. Like I, I, I would understand
having, you know, still some, some feelings of like
butterflies or nervousness. In the beginning.
(34:26):
I'm saying 2 1/2, three months still is the beginning.
Yes, and especially because of that like around this
conversation, like that's in that in particular is you're
looking at evolving to the next stage.
So it it's just a. It's just a tricky time.
Agreed. But I think I don't know.
(34:53):
I think we need to you, you needto know what what's the
difference between you being nervous or nervous about
somebody and yeah, you know, youbeing excited because your
brain's not going to know it brain does not know the
difference. But you need to learn how to
discern between the two is what I would remind people.
(35:16):
So it really is about checking in with yourself.
What do you know? What else is interesting about
this letter is that very early on she says it's so easy.
And then, and this isn't even a long letter, right?
But by the end of it she's like,I'm paranoid, I'm afraid.
What about this is easy? Right.
(35:39):
But again, write it out. I'm telling you, write this
stuff out and go back. Thorough literary analysis.
I'm, I'm telling you, do a forensic analysis of your
writing. Do walk away from it.
Go back to it. What's your word choice?
Do your emotions switch very quickly in this, whatever you
(36:02):
wrote? Is it disjointed?
Like are are you able to think clearly?
Is there clarity here? Look for all those things,
right? Because if it doesn't seem, if
there is no clarity, if the emotions do seem to, there seems
to be this range of emotions. Pay attention to that.
I'm not saying you have to immediately see it as a red
(36:23):
flag, but I am saying pay attention to it.
Sure. Right.
This is how this situation, maybe not this person, but this
situation is making you feel andyou need to figure out what
about this situation or this person is making you feel that
way. Yeah.
That's that's a $0.02. I know she's already followed
(36:44):
up, but now that now that we've gotten the follow up and she's
gotten the reply, I'd be interested in another follow up
to know whether she thinks or orhas confirmed even that it is
just the illusion of choice on his part, I don't know, I
wonder. I wonder I.
Wonder if she got any kind of explanation.
Oh, I'd, I'd like to know. That is something I'd like to
(37:06):
know. I'll message her and ask.
In any case, I just feel like this guy isn't nearly as much of
a catch as he appears at 1st andas he probably thinks he is.
Correct. Definitely.
Correct. I just have some intuition.
That's right, we and we know it's intuition.
All right, You sent me a TikTok from someone named, what's his
name, Crew Mahoney. Baby.
(37:29):
With a terrible, terrible mustache.
So let's play it. Let's play it for our We're
continuing with our Fuck That Guy Summerfest.
Nice peaceful walk today, but yet again here I am to complain
about people not even being humans anymore.
What are we doing? I'm walking towards this girl on
the sidewalk and God forbid we make eye contact or have any
(37:53):
sort of human interaction on a how's it going kind of level.
She's got the air pods in. She's got the sunglasses on.
She has her phone in landscape. Folks, we have stooped to the
level of having our phone in landscape like this.
No, please tell me you're not watching a movie just to avoid
(38:14):
having some sort of human interaction.
Guys, this needs to stop. Look around, get a little bit
uncomfortable and, I don't know,say hi to a human that's four
feet away from you. Get a little bit uncomfortable.
Sorry, you're missing the point.It's, it's, it's ironic that you
would say that because she already is uncomfortable.
That's why she had her earbuds in and her sunglasses on,
(38:39):
because she's uncomfortable walking down the street,
probably because she's a woman. I was going to say very
attractive, but this happens to every woman and she doesn't want
to deal with it. Especially look just feels
entitled right to her attention.But also, look at this guy
right? Shirtless.
(39:00):
The the fucking porn mustache. Shirtless.
Sweaty. Right, that's a key detail.
I feel like no matter what a dude looks like, if you're
without a shirt, I'm not making eye contact.
With you, right, right. It's just I don't want to see it
in your unless you're at I don'teven want to see in your dating
profile. No, I don't.
(39:22):
No, I don't. I don't either listen.
I don't know if this is a hot take or not, but I don't think
men should be allowed to be shirtless in public, I said.
We've got a couple of hot takes.Don't date addicts.
I said why? And men, I don't think men
should be allowed to be shirtless in public.
And I'm not even saying I think the answer is, oh, but women
(39:43):
could be shirtless too. No, because they would enjoy
that, right? Right.
The solution is it's summer. We should all be uncomfortable
with our shirts on, right? And again, like any dude without
a shirt on in public, like of course he's perceived as a
threat. Right.
And this is what guys don't understand, you wander.
(40:05):
Around like a gorilla dude right?
King Kong mustachioed. King Kong wants to know why
women afraid. Why King Afraid King Kong?
Friend. But also dude, that mustache
alone is creepy, right? And I know that's body shaming,
right? I I don't think so.
(40:26):
It's not part of his body that he can't change.
It's it's something he can change, correct.
So you've got the that mustache is immediately.
What do you think it's? A choice.
It's a choice. It's a porny choice.
Well. It's not porny like he has to
know women probably don't like it, right?
It's a it's antagonistic. Right.
(40:48):
It's almost as if, Sir, you're trying to prevent women from
approaching you right by with that hideous mustache.
But when you do it. Listen, I, I'm sticking by men
should not be allowed to be shirtless in public.
And I, I'll, you know, raise myself here.
(41:08):
They also shouldn't be allowed to have mustaches without
without written permission of atleast three women.
But also, Sir, you are not Tom Selleck.
No, you will never be Tom Selleck, Tom.
And that, isn't that really who he's copying?
Because who's got a fucking? Mustache.
Actually that you mentioned Tom Selleck, because the reason that
(41:31):
I am taking umbrage with the stache in this way is because
there's a there's a time and a place for a mustache as we've I
think correctly identified it's in 70's porn or on 70s Tom
Selleck, right. Right.
So, well, that was more 80s. He was more 80s.
Well, OK, so at this point, if aman has grown a mustache, it is
(41:54):
it's literally to antagonize women.
It's literally I dare you to to find me attractive.
I want to know what listeners think.
I think I'm gonna put a poll on Spotify.
Take the poll. It is.
It is a. It is a dare.
What do you think about this mustache?
Not mustaches in general, This mustache OK.
You're gonna share his photo? Yeah.
(42:16):
Oh, oh, shoot. Yeah.
Maybe I shouldn't do that. What do you think about
mustaches? Yeah, I mean, he put it, he put
it out on the Internet. I feel like it's fine to reshare
actually, but I don't. Know that I I I don't feel
comfortable doing. That well, that's fine if you
don't want to, but. But I will will ask what do you
think about moustaches and I'll do a poll on the Patreon.
I just feel like the other thingabout moustaches in 2025 is that
(42:39):
they're, they're very often a joke, right?
Men will grow a moustache, ironically.
Right. Which again is like, oh dare you
to date me? Right it it is right.
It is only men have the luxury of making their appearance a
fucking joke. Right, right.
Agreed. All right, that's why mustaches
(43:01):
piss me off. There we exactly all right
follow us on Instagram at date ology pod and me at the Kristen
MTHECHRISTANM go to dateologycoach.com to submit
your dating questions. Follow me on TikTok and YouTube
at date ology coach and my character analysis.
And if you want the behind the scenes, more vulnerable, more
(43:25):
raw content like the other dating advice episodes were
we're a little bit more not revealing, but maybe a little
bit more vulnerable, but definitely a little bit a little
bit snarkier. Or you want the worth the weight
episodes, which I really like the new the description of it.
You know, this Worth the Weight episodes are about the, it's
(43:47):
about the weight that women carry in society physically,
mentally, professionally, socially.
To listen to those episodes, go to patreon.com/date Ology Coach.
Become a subscriber. You'll get the posts, you'll get
the bonus dating advice episodes, and you'll get the
Worth the Wait episodes. So patreon.com/date Ology Coach
(44:10):
Sarah final thoughts? Please convince any men you know
not to grow a mustache and to keep their shirts on all summer
long. Thank you, I agreed.
I don't want to see their toes either.
I don't. I don't want to see their toes.
I think that's a whole new topicfor another episode.
(44:32):
All right. Bog Witch's warlock's days.
Value your time and decenter menand center yourself.
Goodbye.
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