Too Much, Too Soon Ruins Your Chance to Get to Know Someone

the way people date in our culture it reminds me of just throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks it's driven by attraction it goes very fast towards sex and then especially if you have attachment wounds because of neglect in your childhood you're left totally dependent on the other person to come through with the steadfast love and commitment you were hoping would find you but it's actually very rare that real love finds you this way what trauma may have taken from you is the clarity and the discernment to know what kind of relationship you want and then to use dating not spaghetti to help you find it dating my letter today is from a woman I'll call Janie and she writes dear Anna I can't really say I was brought up in an abusive household all right I've got my fairy pencil I'm going to circle things I want to come back to in a second reading but let's see what Janie's got going on in this letter um I think my parents aren't emotionally available and I often felt not heard not understood and sometimes not loved the way that I am this definitely carried over into peer groups where I always felt excluded even to the point of bullying in the fifth grade I've been diagnosed with ADHD and autism fairly recently and that helps in maybe understanding some of the differences and the attachment trauma I have and that I continue to have with my peers but I still feel trauma is a big part and I'm often so confused as to whether it is just all in my head and I'm too sensitive or easily triggered and that's what drives people more away than closer kind of like being clingy and asking for too much oh yeah Janie that is a dilemma so many people with childhood trauma have is when we're unhappy in in our relations with other people we literally cannot tell if it's because we're expecting too much or we're putting up too with too much all right so you say I have reached out to friends in the past and asked for some advice or input as to whether there is something wrong about me that always has this happen and so far nobody has said there was I keep hearing things like there's nothing wrong with you and you're not doing anything wrong but why then is it that I always feel so discarded and left out and not cared for is it really just my own problem and I'm just too sensitive about these things and then build resentment and that's what they pick up on that's a good point it could be that am I really the one that is emotionally unavailable and I can't let people in sometimes it feels like that and I used to get the feedback that I can come off as intimidating or standoffish until people actually speak to me and notice that I'm nice uh I sometimes still get feedback that there's an aura of don't f with me and or an aggressive guardedness around me I especially hear that from men as I have had so many bad experiences I just refuse to be treated in a way that I find disrespectful and I'm not afraid to say that out loud okay that's a lot and I get it currently I'm going through some heartbreak that really makes me doubt whether I'll ever I'll ever be capable of finding real love and connection whether with friends or with love it always starts out with people being interested and then it recedes quickly once I get I'm getting attached it's always uh you're nice but you're nice but I don't see you as a relationship as relationship material and um from friends they say you're nice and I like you and an implicit but because they still are rarely the ones reaching out to me this is a quality problem I know a lot of people on this channel have experience exactly this with this current guy it was the same we met through a mutual friend at a party got along well and found we had a lot of things in common and he tried to dance close to me which I evaded and then later he asked for my number he asked if we should go to the gym together 2 days later so we met up talked while we trained and then he walked me to my workplace and we got coffee on the way and asked if I'd like to meet up again a few days later we went to the gym together in the e in the evening and he asked whether I'd like to come to his place to cook something to get together it was a lovely evening and we spent chatting and getting to know each other and I stayed at his place because it got late whoa wait wait wait wait getting to know each other stayed at his place because it got late all right you know I'm going to come back to that you know that right it was clear he wanted to have sex but I really tried to Stand My Ground and not do that because I didn't want to be used again and he said he's also just very happy that I'm here of course a few days later we eventually did end up sleeping together but I did tell him beforehand that I'm not looking to be someone's hookup and that I'm looking for something serious and want to actually get to know one another stupid I know and I'm angry at myself that I gave into that even though it felt good in the moment this went on for another two weeks and we even went on a date to the cinema which was really nice so wait one date to the cinema but 2 weeks of sleeping over H he asked me a lot about my future plans I'm currently finishing my degree and wasn't sure if I was moving to another city for a job afterward how my last relationship ended so all Etc so all questions that I would only ask if I'm feeling out a person and then Christmas came around and I didn't hear as much from him as I would have liked to I noticed I had already grown attached maybe not in love but definitely had my hopes up because he was checking a lot of boxes and he seemed emotionally aware and mature and caring and essentially like all the things I would want in a partner all right not all not all I'm going to come back to that okay you started to see some things that you would want in a partner but not some crucial ones not yet nobody could in a short amount of time I got really anxious because I thought he was pulling away while I was crushing hard and wanting to hear from him he didn't seem to want that and while he wasn't texting nothing it also didn't seem like he was falling in love or at least developing a crush my friends told me that I should watch out to not just hook up with him after the gym and go on actual dates to not let things slip into a friends with benefit situation I suggested doing that once we were back from visiting our families and he said he'd really love that and suggested going ice skating okay good date right the New Year came around he still didn't make as much of an effort to see me as before Christmas and called off our date because he wasn't feeling well but suggested we go on a walk a day later I already felt there was something up mhm good you have intuition he then broke the news to me that while he liked getting to know me and enjoy spending time with me he wasn't feeling like this was going to develop into something serious and he doesn't want to string me along but he would really like to be friends with me as he likes me a lot and loves our post gym cooking sessions oh you young people being friends I was devastated here I was catching feelings for someone I thought is truly a great guy and he doesn't like me enough okay but you know what that doesn't mean he's not a great guy he's dating he's going on some dates to see if he feels like you're the one and he didn't he didn't have that feeling he gave it a shot that's what dating is all right I'm going to talk to you about that I'm talk to you about how you can adopt that attitude too not being callous towards people it's not a bad person not to come through with a serious commitment to somebody you've been dating for a couple weeks totally normal we had a long conversation and he couldn't tell me what it was that made him not feel enough for a relationship he said it's nothing about me since he likes me but he doesn't see himself with me in 10 years and it's kind of like the same feeling he had with his ex he told me they broke up after 2 and A2 years and are still friendly but figured they' Just Vibe better as friends I'll get back to that friend thing I really didn't like that comparison and and told him as much okay I'm calling you out right here you asked him to do something that's very awkward and hard for somebody he was briefly dating you I'm going to go right into talking to you about this he was briefly dating you he took some time he did give it a chance to see how it went and he just wasn't feeling it this thing where you wanted to know but why why did you not feel it for me there's not really a reason like that we're not in love with everybody sometimes we get attracted and then gradually we can just feel like the it's not this one and the right thing to do I I just like how he broke up with you that he you know that he told you very he made a time to tell you and he didn't see it come you know I don't see this becoming something serious and then bringing up his ex I don't know I'm guessing that got brought up because you kept asking you wanted reasons and in your mind it's like there must be something wrong with me but you know what's happening is your trauma mind is thinking I like you therefore if you don't feel the same way something is wrong with me but I want you to be realistic about all the people who are actually really cool around you how many of them are you actually attracted to or would want to be in a relationship with he was attracted to you but it it only went so far and that's how it works that's how every person is every person is like that and this is why there is so much pop music about getting your heartbroken because sometimes it's one way one of us Falls totally in love and the other one doesn't or the other one does for a while and then doesn't and it just it's it hurts but this is why we date in a structured way especially if you had trauma growing up it's so important important to give yourself some guard rails so that you don't become 100% invested that this is your whole emotional life you know this is everything you ever hoped for so that you have a way to stay grounded in reality that you are getting to know somebody and what you're getting to know is are they going to become into to you are is that going to happen are they going to stay into you are they good people how do they act under stress so that's what dating is for so really what happened here is no harm no foul um one thing you know if you end up sleeping with somebody fast and you have an attachment wound or really you don't even have to be wounded it's pretty common and natural to bond around sex so you don't want to do that too soon because then your mind starts to believe that you're together it can't help but your body believes you're together your mind believes you're together your heart believes you're together and yet then you get this like total disappointment that you're actually not together and it feels like they made a promise right that's what it feels like that's what kind of sex is supposed to feel like a promise but that's not what happened and so we're changing those terms we making those terms into something much lighter than that when it happens quickly so I like that you went on some dates you did do that so here is also where I think you lost your boundary and I said I would come back to lovely evening the first time you you know you went to the gym and then on the second date you went you you went to his house to cook and chatted and you had such a nice time you stayed at his house cuz it was late never stay at a guy's house cuz it's late unless he's your boyfriend you don't stay at as don't date like that that's not a date it's not it's not realistic to expect that sex isn't going to happen and um you know what if you are serious about wanting to slow things down you just don't hang out out at his house or your house you go and do stuff in public places it's better in early dating you can learn this in my dating course if you take it it's better in early dating to keep things short you start with coffee work your way up to dinner you don't do big all day things right away the only exception would be as if they live very far away and you've been communicating online and this is this one weekend when you go visit somebody online by the way people you don't stay with them you don't stay with them you want to be able to get to know them without the fog of sex coming in and distorting your perception and activating your horrible trauma wound and all the stuff that happened with exes and all of that you want to just be like your pristine self sitting on your throne observing what is happening and deciding if later you might want to go a little closer with this person that's the secret okay everybody that is the secret and I did not have a great lasting relationship until I figured that out so I'm always telling people there's there's something you can do so then you got mad at him because he compared you to his ex but you I I why do I have a feeling what you were insisting that he explained and I think when somebody is breaking up the right way to break up with somebody is with as little criticism as possible you don't tell them why the answer is at that stage of a relationship yeah I just didn't I didn't really feel it I wasn't having the kind of feeling that I could see us together and that's a responsible caring thing to do to break it off and not just keep using the person for sex or somebody to hang out with so um it hurts but that was I think he handled that well all right so it was 6 weeks okay so it was six weeks and so you you were arguing well we were only getting to know each other and six weeks is not a time where you think 10 years in the future and I would have liked to continue dating him and see where things were going and he said at this moment I don't think my feelings are going to change so he's telling you as nicely as he can he's not feeling it and I we we we always must be as nice as we can and be as gentle and say as little as we can to make it clear no it's not going to go forward I'm not feeling it so you told him that you would have appreciated if he had been more transparent with you because it was clear you said it was clear I didn't want something casual but you know what it wasn't clear you didn't want something casual you stayed at his house on the second date so I want you I want you to try using my daily practice tool so that you can Comfort yourself as you go ahead and face the reality of the situation that you were a participant in deciding how to do this I'm not hearing from your story anyway that he dragged you kicking and screaming you know toward his his bed I don't I didn't I don't hear that it was a mutual decision and that me that means your part in that decision is your you just get to own it you get to own it you get to change your mind about how you want to do it in the future you can handle this but you don't get to blame him that it happened and and I'll just on behalf of everybody you date in the future I'm going to be transparent for you they don't know they don't know how they're going to feel about you nobody does and you don't know how you're going to feel about them and that is why you date and you said you found it weird that his apparent feeling subsided so quickly that I would have wished he didn't pursue anything sexual so soon so he was okay so just a thing you know some people certainly men in my experience you know they they are often more comfortable with things being casual you don't know you don't really know until you meet the person but you know if you were not coerced into this it's okay you get to have your boundaries we can't it's not fair to be angry at other people for not protecting our boundaries when we didn't and when you decided oh it's late I'll just stay here what I'm guessing is you know just part of you you didn't want to leave you just you really liked him you kind of wanted to sleep with them you kind of wanted to you know have a boundary but you also didn't and you know PE people are complicated we all are we're like that and so then but sometimes we get hurt and if you have childhood PTSD the getting hurt part can just be so harsh that it's worth being much more careful about how you handle this and you can you can do this with good tools and with a community of people to help you I'll talk about that in a minute so um you wish he hadn't pursued it if he wasn't sure he wanted to keep seeing you so you know a guy takes a long time um my husband took 3 years to ask me to marry him all right so all that time until that happened and even after even when we were Eng we were engaged for a while even then you know I couldn't really be sure we would get married until we got married and then what happens to people who are married you can't really be sure it's going to last right so there's no certainty in here we have to just really like stay with ourselves and be like how can I use my best judgment and um only go forward when I have the information I need now the way you grew up I'm guessing you didn't really get a lot of guidance on how to structure this but I can help you with that I can help you with that that's what my my programs are about um so I'm just looking at what else you said he looked a so he looked very defeated when you said this and he had tears in his eyes and said he was very sorry and that he should have maybe thought more about how that made you feel and everything so okay he had empathy for how you felt you said in the beginning this whole thing that you have difficulty connecting you have some autism you have ADHD you know those are factors that make it hard to read people and that sometimes people perceive you as being too um brusk or aggressive or defended or something and so we have to give people the benefit of the doubt that if we're not completely explicit in our words that if we act tough and be like that's fine I don't care CU I do that too uh they don't know they don't know that we're vulnerable they don't know that we have expectations and a lot of times I think we're afraid to express our expectations and our boundaries because that childhood PTSD the wound there the abandonment trauma the fear that the person's going to walk away if we have a boundary that we don't want to say it you know we don't want to wreck everything and so we're sort of like tiptoeing along using magical thinking to just hope okay I'm just going to dive in and hope it works out but here we are sometimes it doesn't I know it hurts I know it does um you know you you may get hurt many more times in your life it doesn't mean that you won't eventually be loved and if you can start to date wisely it's going to be less of the bad kind of experience and more space in your life for the good kind you're going to know what you want you're going to know how to like mention it and put it out there and not cross the line into arrangements and behaviors that cancel out what you want and I will say well I don't know some people say you know that if you sleep with somebody quickly they might think that you don't respect yourself and I think every case is different every person is different but that's something to think about that if you need boundaries you kind of want people who like that you have boundaries right so to be afraid to express them if for losing somebody that's kind of how you could end up down this path with somebody who still like a year from now doesn't respect your boundaries doesn't get it doesn't understand your vulnerabilities so if people are going to leave because you say I need to go slow let them you know don't let the door hit you on the way out no there's no reason to be mad at them everybody's just expressing who they are and what they're looking for and it's okay to separate it's you know so people only come together if it's working for both people and then some of us get together anyway when it's not working but we don't want to do that anymore he said oh we can just be friends so I'm I'm just going to tell you like I grew up and my generation also had this idea oh we can all just be friends and we can hang out and I was all too good at being cool girl and being like no that's cool yeah we're friends and just like dying inside with somebody I was still into you know know going along with the game and pretending and oh it just really took a lot out of me I don't recommend it to anybody be like my grandparents when it's over it's over stop seeing that person so you did you blocked him and he accepted your decision that you didn't want to be friends so that's okay so it's been a little while but you can't stop thinking about it uh-huh and you keep asking yourself if he'll change his mind I don't think he will I don't think he will I think that he's been very very direct with you in the nicest way he can and the best thing you can do is face and accept this and it's hard because there's this like high that comes when you think you found somebody who's going to love you it's like all the loneliness is over and the anxiety and the um you know dread of the future like oh good can we just end this now oh no we can't so it's a little bit of a hard pill to swallow and um but remember that when a relationship ends what we're losing is our hopes of of what it was going to be but that was like an idea not a reality dating is how we see who people really are and who who he really is as a person who is not there and that's not a good match for you and it's just you know it's just a fact a person who is good for you is with you wants to be with you and you're you're still sitting there wondering what did I do wrong but I don't I don't hear anything you did wrong I hear nothing that you did wrong um except for maybe got in over your head attachment wise but I have no evidence here that that bothered him or maybe it maybe it gave him a clue that he better say something now because things were not as casual as it may have seemed see when you act like you're cool with everything you're sending the signal that you're cool with everything so they don't really know there's a boundary there and you see him and you think he'd be a great partner and yeah maybe for somebody but not for you because you need the guy who really loves you so how can you heal from this and stop grabbing itting to unavailable people and actually become attracted to and attractive to people that I really want I think you did great with this guy he gave it a chance you gave it a chance this one didn't work out it's to be expected in dating that there are going to be several of those and then sometimes it does work out so in the meantime until love comes to town again you keep working on yourself you keep working on your trauma build up a life that is fun and connected for you like you said in the beginning you have a hard time connecting with people so you know what I I want to recommend to you and invite you I think you would really like my connection boot camp it is talks about how to gradually become somebody who can do connection if you can be connected with people in general it puts you on a much better footing to date somebody because then it's not like all or nothing it's not like if this doesn't work out I'm going to be alone forever every day it's not like that you have your friends and you can call them right away and text them in the middle of a date and go I feel like he's pulling away whole different thing right to have your friends so if you don't have those yet well I welcome you to come into my membership program we have it we have a bunch of people who have childhood PTSD who are working on themselves and supporting each other you get access to all my courses you can come to all my monthly webinars for free and um a lot of other things that we do one of them is a secret Facebook group for the members where there's peer-led daily practice calls every day multiple times a day it's a pretty cool group when you have friends who are walking the same path as you that's like twice as good as just friends you know but friends who are walking the same path other women who you can connect with and talk about dates coming up or having trouble getting over and you guys can support each other in applying the principles of this healing method I teach and this can accelerate your progress towards becoming more yourself more free from the past more free from the patterns and more able to try and F fail at things you want to try and then to try again and succeed next time all right so if anybody is thinking that they would like to take that connection boot camp there is a link Down Below in the description section if you just are wondering like did your childhood affect your ability to connect with other people I've got a quiz for you right here it's free and you can download it and I will see you very [Music] soon [Music]

Channel: Crappy Childhood Fairy

Views: 21,207

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Id: PWBzLfbpyOM

Length: 24min 35sec (1475 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 23 2024