You meet a guy.
He seems really nice, and the attention he gives you, combined with the way he calls you “Beautiful” has you swooning. You’ve been feeling a bit (or a lot) lonely lately, and finally having a man feed you some of the things you’ve been longing for, or maybe even were starved of in your last relationship…feels good…really good…butterflies in your tummy every time his name flashes across your phone screen type of good.
As you continue getting to know him though, a few red flags start popping up here and there. Some of them you see with your own eyes, others you can feel through your intuition.
Maybe it’s how his attitude changes with you when he’s having a bad day.
Maybe he’s made one too many unsettling remarks that he passed off as “just a joke.”Maybe he’s “in between jobs right now” and you find yourself paying for most of your outings together.Maybe there aren’t, and have never been any outings together, instead, he’s only interested in coming to hang out at your place during evening hours…and all y’all ever do is watch Netflix and have sex.
You want to say something. You want to address these red flags, but at the same time, you’re afraid if you do, it’ll “run him off”. So, against your better judgment (your intuition), you decided to say nothing. Maybe you even gaslight yourself into believing those red flags aren’t that big of a deal since they only pop up every now and again. Or...
Maybe there aren’t any of the red flags that the hundreds of Instagram posts told you to look out for. Instead, he says he just wants to be “friends with benefits”. It’s not something that you want though - your purpose of dating is to find someone you can move forward into a committed relationship with - but because you’ve been feeling lonely and he is giving you some of the attention you’ve been craving, you don’t want to “ruin” it. You think to yourself, “Well…at least I’ll have someone to do things with and hold me at night.” And thus it begins. Abandoning your intuition, your voice, your wants and needs. The cycle of abandoning yourself while dating.
So many of the women I’ve coached throughout the years in my classes were all doing the same thing. And as a former (recovering) anxiously attached, people-pleaser myself, who had daddy wounds that were deeper than the damn ocean, abandoning myself to hold onto a piece of a man and/or the crumbs he so nonchalantly scattered around for me to frantically chase is something that I did consistently…
until I finally decided that enough was enough.
For so long, without even realizing it, I had made the men I dated the main characters of my life, and that shit needed to change ASAP. It was time for me to look inwards, which meant: decentering men and finally making myself the main character in my own life for a change.
And if any of the scenarios you read earlier resonated with you in any way, then it’s probably time for you to do the same. Before you say, "But I don't know where to start!" - Click on the book below and start there. Thank me later ;)
Much love,
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