Things We Dive Into In This Episode:
What does “attractive” mean to you and how to navigate the pressures of wanting and/or needing to feel attractive in dating
Dealing with body image triggers that come up while dating
Tangible tips that have helped me process relationships and my dating experiences
📘Resources
📌Episode Highlights
Q&A
Can I be successful in dating if I don't like what I look like? I really want to be attractive and I really want to feel attractive, but I'm not there. And I'm not sure if I'll ever be there because it also kind of feels like a patriarchy or consumer trap of sorts. I don't even know why I need to feel attractive all the time. Maybe attractive isn't the right word. What do you think?
There's really nothing wrong with wanting to be or feel a certain way, but it would be so valuable to define what feeling attractive actually means to you.
Is it based on the way other people respond to you? Is it based on how you feel internally? Is it based on what the measurements of your body are? Is it based on what you can visually perceive your body to look like?
And when you think about all of this, is attractive really the way you want to feel?
Being attractive is not an objective thing!
There isn't an objective definition for attractive. Someone is not objectively attractive. Someone could be subjectively attractive. Someone might be found attractive by certain people, but not by others. That part is a trap. The standards are always changing.
If you want to feel energized and radiant and sensual and you want to feel maybe even magnetic is an okay thing to say. If you want people to feel drawn and comforted by your energy, that's amazing!
While you're working on this relationship with being "attractive" and you're focusing on feeling the way you want to feel, the best thing you can do is show up anyways.
We don't have to feel perfect or feel like we've got everything figured out before we choose to show up.
We need to do things scared. Pretty much everything in our life that's new is uncertain, so we can't wait until we're fully, completely objectively ready.
Dating always triggers body image issues or the urge to diet for me. I feel like I'm fine until I start dating.
I totally understand why it feels easy to stay out of the dieting mentality until you start dating. But staying out of the dieting mentality is key for finding healthy, romantic connections! Here's why:
When you're zeroing in on your body shape and size in that way, you're more likely to end up with someone who does that too. And you know that you don't want a partner who loves you under the conditions of your body being a certain shape or size. You want someone who loves the person that you truly are, who aligns with your true values and cherishes your presence. And you're going to find this when you focus on finding yourself and on taking actions that are in alignment with your values and fueling your body for energy, not fueling your body in accordance to what you think is going to make you lose weight.
Your relationship with food can mirror your relationship with people. So it's very important to have a good relationship with food while you're dating. If you're on the dieting roller coaster, you are likely to feel this very extreme relationship with food full of highs and lows. And if you're used to saving up so that you can go all in at brunch or the high of eating a lot after you rebound from your rigid diet plan, you might also get drawn to that roller coaster like relationship with people. But a healthy relationship is not a roller coaster. A healthy relationship is calm.
The intuitive eating framework is actually a good framework for intuitive dating. Intuitive eating is a peaceful interplay between following your instincts. What does my body say? What does my hunger say? What does my fullness say? And following your emotions. Emotionally, what feels good and satisfying for me right now. And your rational thoughts, thinking about nutrition science, thinking about the fact that you need vegetables and you need carbs and proteins and fats and balance. You can also do that with dating.
Focusing on how I feel instead of how I look seems like a logical idea, but what about people who judge me based on my body? Don't people judge me based on what they see first? I feel like I'm never gonna find a romantic relationship because of my body.
People do make judgments based on what they see. And because an alarming number of people have body dysmorphia or internalized idealization of thinness, they might judge your body.
This can be a tough reality to accept because accepting that truth requires grieving that truth and being pissed off about that truth and feeling some vulnerability and some heavy emotions.
Three things that are equally true:
You don't actually know who is going to find your body desirable and attractive.
You don't have any control over what someone perceives to be desirable and attractive.
Trying to control that is an exhausting hamster wheel. Sometimes when we accept that we don't have control over something, we can tap into this positive side of it where we take our hands off the wheel.
Being desired and admired and approached based on body looks is not nearly as life-giving as being known and being loved and being approached based on how you make someone feel.
An individual who's attracted to your sense of kindness and your sense of authenticity and your sense of self-expression and your sense of self-confidence or just your energy is the person that you're more likely to have a strong connection with. Someone who approaches you based on what they sense instead of what they see is much more likely to be someone who comes to know and love you.
So focus on your senses! Work on, how can I be in my body a little bit more, rather than objectifying my body? You can work on your sense of authenticity being yourself), your sense of kindness (being kind), your sense of self-expression (your sense of energy).
Our bodies are not objects that need to be fixed, molded, sculpt-shaped. Your body is you. So can you shift from focusing on getting more in touch with your senses and rewiring your own body objectification, your own fat phobia, your own weight stigma?
Tangible Dating Tips:
Approach your life with the same passion and enthusiasm as you approach your dating life and romantic relationships.
Can you take the love that you can't give to a romantic partner right now because you don't have one and spread it around to the people who are already there and to the areas of your life that are already a part of you?
Bring that same romanticism, that intention, that excitement.
It's okay to want love and please keep approaching your pursuit of the romantic partner with romance, if that's what makes you feel good. But remember that romance really is just noticing all the little things and celebrating all the little things and making rituals and making things intentional and letting there be a little bit of mystery.
Lean into the romanticism of uncertainty.
When you approach romantic relationships, don't be afraid to be the one who sets the tone.
Don't be afraid to be the one who says, here's what I want, here's what I need, here's what I'm looking for.
Find that beautiful gray area like we do with everything else.
Don't delay expressing your needs and your wants and yourself. Expressing yourself is important!
Don't be afraid to be the one who texts first. Don't be afraid to be the one who calls it. Don't be afraid to be the one who sets the tone.
Create a life that feels good and true and aligned for you.
Know that your partner will meet you along the way and that you don't have to veer off the path that feels like your best, your truest, your most aligned life to meet your partner.
Do practices that help you develop a strong sense of self trust and connection to your intuition.
For as long as you source your sense of self-worth from whether or not you're in a relationship, you will take everything personally and your dating life will be very difficult.
If your sense of self-worth is contingent on whether or not a certain person chooses to be in a relationship with you, or whether or not anyone is choosing to be in a relationship with you right now, you will take everything personally and dating will feel like a soap opera instead of just part of your life that you're working on.
Have feelings when we date and don't pretend that dating isn't vulnerable.
Don't attach to people. Don't start writing the, we met page while you just matched on hinge.
But feel your feelings all the way through it. You matter. So cry, grieve, scream, vent. Throw up stuff, be angry when you need to remember that even though rejection stings, it doesn't have to dissolve your sense of self-worth.
Sometimes you don't get what you want because you deserve better, because you deserve someone who's also been working on themselves, because you deserve someone who really sees and appreciates all of you, because there's someone else waiting for you down the road and you might as well trust divine timing.
Time and patience is important.
Dating is a practice in letting go of control and vulnerability and rigid timelines.
Thanks for listening! 💖 Stay tuned to my website for more episode updates and other exciting programs and resources.
Transcript
Caitie: What if no one ever finds me attractive enough to date? I really want to work on my health and focus on my strength and my stamina and my energy instead of focusing on losing weight and controlling my body size. But what if no one ever finds me attractive and what if no one ever wants to date me as a result of that? How do I navigate making peace with my body and dating? And also, once I find a relationship, how do I maintain a sense of self-confidence in that relationship? How do I not let insecurities sabotage the relationship? These are questions that I discuss with clients on a pretty much daily basis.
I, as you may or may not know, this might be the first podcast you're ever tuning into from me. I am a registered dietician-nutritionist and a body image counselor and a confidence counselor, a spiritual and practical self-care guide. So I really help people make peace with their bodies, nourish their bodies and live a life with a sense of self-worth and a sense of self-confidence. And dating and relationships and whether or not people find you attractive comes up in so many of my sessions, naturally. And I would say this conversation of whether or not people find you attractive comes up not only in relation to dating, but also in relation to just posting photos of yourself on social media and putting yourself out there if you're like a business owner or someone who needs to be in some sort of public eye.
So that is what I'm going to talk about today. I'm gonna talk about navigating this anxiety about whether or not people will find you attractive and how to make peace with your body within that. And I will talk about that in particular with dating, but I think you can kind of apply it to many other areas of your life. And I'm also going to talk about just navigating that sort of insecurity or anxiety that can come up even after you've been in a relationship with someone or you're in a relationship with someone. And I will speak from a personal place today as well because I'm more committed to doing that in this unfiltered era of my podcast. Now the podcast has always been unfiltered, but I'm trying to be just like even more open and deepening into a sense of, I don't know, no filter lately because that is something that I feel really called to do lately.
Anyway, welcome to another episode of Whole, Full, & Alive, the podcast helping you feed yourself, feel yourself, and be yourself. I think this is also the podcast helping you make peace with the fact that life will never be all figured out. We're not going to arrive at this point where life is just everything sorted and everything's organized and everything's certain, but we can still find what we need within us and cultivate what we need within us to feel whole, full, and alive.
This is another unedited episode. I just really wanted to get this episode out as close to me recording it as I possibly could. So I'm not sending this one to my editor. This is another unfiltered, just candid off the cuff episode. And I hope you enjoy it. I did one of these two weeks ago and I got a lot of positive feedback on it. So I don't know. I mean, I love my little theme music that my editor adds. I love my little jingle. So I definitely want to get that back, but yeah, I really am enjoying speaking to you in a completely unfiltered way because I think that that is what we need right now. We need more humans sharing what's really going on for them because we all need to feel, I think, a little bit less alone, a little bit more connected. Yeah, so.
Let's start today's episode with a deep breath. Wherever you are tuning in from today, I invite you to take the deepest breath you have taken all day. Take a nice deep inhale through your nose. Feel your back expand as your lungs fill up. And then exhale out your mouth, let something go. One more time, breathe a little deeper. Inhale through your nose, feel your lungs expand, feel your back expand, go deep, deep, deep, and then out your mouth. See if you can let a little pressure off with an exhale.
Thanks so much for being here to chat with me today. I know I'm chatting at you for 40 minutes, but I want to invite this to be a conversation after you listen to this episode. Please don't hesitate to send me your thoughts, your feelings, your questions. I'm going to be opening up this podcast episode with three questions that I got from you who listened to the podcast. So I guess this is already a conversation, but let's make it even more of a conversation after you listen. Please tell me what you're thinking and what you're feeling while you're listening to me.
So before I dive into those listener questions, I also want to remind you with my whole entire heart that you are invited to join my next retreat, which is coming up this New Year's Eve here in Portugal. I am hosting a retreat here in Portugal from December 30th until January 4th. And it is going to be an incredibly transformative healing, energizing, nourishing, revitalizing experience for everyone who comes. I absolutely love hosting retreats. I love being in the room with people, hugging people, chatting with people, exercising, breathing, eating, exploring with people in real life. That in and of itself is so amazing, but we will also in between all of the breathing and eating and the exploring Portugal and being together. We'll be doing some healing workshops. I have some amazing workshops planned on nutrition, body image and self-confidence. And this is going to be an amazing way to end 2024 and start 2025. If I'm speaking about this and you're feeling something, you're feeling a little pull, you're feeling a little nudge, please do not hesitate to DM me on Instagram @caitie.c.rd. I spell Caitie a little funny, so check that out in the show notes. I would just love to chat with you and see if we can make it work for you to come and have interest-free payment plans available. I am trying to make this offer as accessible as I possibly can, given that it is a retreat that includes all of your meals and all of your transportation and your accommodations and excursions and a lot of amazing things. But let me know if you're feeling interested and you're not certain. I'm not going to pressure you into coming, but I seriously want to invite you to come because retreats are magical. And especially if you resonate with the stuff I talk about on this show and the vibe we have here on this show, I want to invite you to join us. This world needs more women who are fully awake and alive and not spending any of their head space bashing their bodies and picking apart their shape and size.
This woman, this woman, this world needs more women who are at peace with their bodies and nourishing themselves well so that they can come up with creative ideas and spread love to people around them and just feel fully worthy in themselves. We just deserve to feel good about ourselves. I want to help you feel good about yourself because you are good. You are worthy. So if you're at all interested, DM me about the retreat. I'm here for a conversation. I'm a very accessible person. I'm not a big scale influencer. If you're listening to this show, come to the retreat.
All right. Back to the program. Let me dive into today's listener questions. And again, we are talking about body image and when whether or not people find you attractive and dating and relationships today. So I'm going to do three listener questions and then I'm going to do just a little, a little riff on some things I want you to know about body image, love and dating.
Question one, can I be successful in dating if I don't like what I look like? I really want to be attractive and I really want to feel attractive, but I'm not there. And I'm not sure if I'll ever be there because it also kind of feels like a patriarchy or consumer trap of sorts. Like, I don't even know why I need to feel attractive all the time. Maybe attractive isn't the right word. What do you think? This is such an incredible share and such an incredible question. And the first thing I want to say to you, amazing human is that I see you and I feel you. I am you. And I want to acknowledge how beautifully and candidly you expressed what you're struggling with because that is a huge and important part of healing. Truly.
So many people walk around with internalized body shame or body hatred, and they let it just run their life in the background. Never once expressing it to anyone or never once like bringing it to the forefront of their mind. The expression of what you're struggling with is the only first step forward to breaking free from it. So I think that's a really important piece of the puzzle. And another thing I wanna say is that, yes, this has a lot to do with the patriarchy and it being a consumer trap of sorts. You are so right in that, but let's dive in a little bit deeper.
There's really nothing wrong with wanting to be or feel a certain way. But I think it would be so valuable to define what feeling attractive actually means to you. Is it based on the way other people respond to you? Or is it based on how you feel internally? Or is it based on what the measurements of your body are? Is it based on what you can visually perceive your body to look like? And when you think about all of this, is attractive really the way you want to feel? It might be. And it might also be something else. You might actually want to feel energized. You might want to feel sensual. You might want to feel radiant. You might want to feel aligned.
And as I'm saying this, I want to point you to the podcast episode that I actually released in January and then re-released last week because I talk about how we need to remember that so much of how we want to feel is a feeling. It's a sense. And, you know, if you want to feel confident, if you want to feel sensual, if you want to feel energized, you want to feel radiant, all of this is like something that you can sense in your body. So what you're really looking for is you want to feel a certain way rather than objectively being attractive because that's not an objective thing. That's where the consumer patriarchy trap of sorts comes in, right? Because there isn't an objective definition for attractive. Someone is not objectively attractive. Someone could be subjectively attractive. Someone might be found attractive by certain people, but not by others. That part is a trap. The needle is always moving. The standards are always changing.
And every year, especially in the last like five years, it seems like the standards are becoming less and less human. Botox is becoming more and more normalized. Ozempic is becoming more and more normalized. And so it's very important that we acknowledge like, yeah, if your goal is to be attractive, you might not get there because attractive is, people are always redefining what attractive means. But if you want to feel energized and radiant and sensual and you want to feel maybe even magnetic is an okay thing to say. You want people to feel drawn and comforted by your energy. That is amazing. So that's the tip of the iceberg to this question. I hope that feels helpful.
And what I want to remind you is that I host a monthly body image support group. It's called body image breakfast club and it is $33. Anyone can join and we do a combination of tangible practices that you can use to rewire your relationship with your body and also just community connections that we all feel a little bit less alone in this because I think that so many people, so many people ask this exact question and I actually received this exact question from a business owner who asked, can I show up in my business, even if I don't feel attractive, and be successful in business, even if I don't feel attractive? And yes, the idea is that while you're working on this relationship with being attractive and you're focusing on feeling the way you want to feel,
The best thing you can do is show up anyways. We don't have to feel perfect. We don't have to feel like we've got everything figured out before we choose to show up. Like you can use your discretion and you're allowed to decide that you're not ready to date right now. And that is okay. But I encourage you to really consider if that is a necessary precaution to be taking.
We need to do things scared. Pretty much everything in our life that's new is an uncertain is something that we have to do scared. can't wait until we're fully, completely objectively ready. Hope that feels helpful. And remember that even if your body feels like, you you feel this like little nudge, like, it's too scary to start dating. Like remember that your intuition doesn't always feel good to follow, your intuition will ask you to step out of your comfort zone in a way that supports positive long-term growth. I think, I know. I feel confident to say I know that. And so it might feel scary to start, but keep going because that might be your intuition telling you to keep going. It's not necessarily that you shouldn't keep going.
Question number two. Dating always triggers body image issues or the urge to diet for me. I feel like I'm fine until I start dating. Nice, concise. So that makes sense. You make sense. I totally understand why it feels easy to stay out of the dieting mentality until you start dating. But staying out of the dieting mentality is key for finding healthy, romantic connections. Here's why.
When you're zeroing in on your body shape and size, which is the definition of the dieting mentality, right? The dieting mentality equals I behave, I engage in certain behaviors to achieve a certain body shape and size rather than to achieve a certain level of health. So when you're zeroing in on your body shape and size in that way, you're more likely to end up with someone who does that too. And you know that you don't want a partner who loves you under the conditions of your body being a certain shape or size. You want someone who loves the person that you truly are, who aligns with your true values and cherishes your presence. And you're going to find this when you focus on finding yourself and on taking actions that are in alignment with your values and fueling your body for energy, not fueling your body in accordance to what you think is going to make you lose weight.
The second thing is that your relationship with food can mirror your relationship with people. So it's very important to have a good relationship with food while you're dating. If you're on the dieting roller coaster, you are likely to feel this very extreme relationship with food full of highs and lows. And if you're used to saving up so that you can go all in at brunch or the high of eating a lot after you rebound from your rigid diet plan, you might also get drawn to that roller coaster like relationship with people. But a healthy relationship is not a roller coaster. A healthy relationship is calm. Love is calm. That has been one of my biggest learnings this year, being in the best relationship of my life. It is calm. So it is important that you get yourself accustomed to calmness and peace in other areas of your life.
And the last thing I want to share for this question is that the intuitive eating framework is actually a good framework for intuitive dating. So intuitive eating is a peaceful interplay between following your instincts. What does my body say? What does my hunger say? What does my fullness say? And following your emotions. Emotionally, what feels good and satisfying for me right now. And your rational thoughts, thinking about nutrition science, thinking about the fact that you need vegetables and you need carbs and proteins and fats and balance. You can also do that with dating. So you can follow your instincts. What is my body saying right now about this person? My emotions? What does my soul desire? And rational thoughts. What makes logical sense here? Does this person actually rationally logically fit with the life I want to live?
So I hear you, beautiful human who gets stuck in the dieting mentality when you start dating. And I want to remind you that it's important to stay out of the diet mentality to have a good dating life truly.
So last listener question I'm going to answer today is, focusing on how I feel instead of how I look seems like a logical idea, but what about people who judge me based on my body? Don't people judge me based on what they see first? I feel like I'm never gonna find a romantic relationship because of my body. This is such a tough place to be, to feel this way. I want to hold space for that because we also live in a world that kind of tells us that we should feel this way, that it's justified to feel this way. And yeah, people might not want to update you because of your body and it's your fault. And I just, I spoke about this a little bit in the re-release that I posted last week. I have experience with living, with feeling this way, with being rejected for my body size by partners, family members, doctors, and I also hold a lot of privileges. I want to mention that not because I feel like I have to, but because I want to.
I really do feel you though. And I get this question from clients like a few times per week. So a lot of people feel you. And we don't have to sugarcoat the truth, right? People do make judgments based on what they see. And because an alarming number of people have body dysmorphia or internalized idealization of thinness, they might judge your body. This can be a tough reality to accept because accepting that truth requires grieving that truth and being pissed off about that truth and feeling some vulnerability and some heavy emotions.
That said, and also, there are three things that are equally true that I want to share with you. The first is that you don't actually know who is going to find your body desirable and attractive. Really? You don't. Two. You don't have any control over what someone perceives to be desirable and attractive. Trying to control that is an exhausting hamster wheel. So sometimes when we accept that don't have control over something, we can tap into this positive side of it where it's like, that's not my job to control. I can take my hands off the wheel. Okay. And number three, being desired and admired and approached based on body looks is not nearly as life-giving as being known and being loved and being approached based on how you make someone feel. So in my point of view, we might as well stop aiming to be desired and admired and start aiming to be known and loved. Being desired and admired isn't nearly as life-giving as being known and loved.
And you might be thinking as a lot of people do, but if someone desires or likes me first, then they will eventually come to know and love me. isn't it so important that they find my body desirable? Here's what I think. An individual who's attracted to your sense of kindness and your sense of authenticity and your sense of self-expression and your sense of self-confidence or just your energy is the person that you're more likely to have a strong connection with. Someone who approaches you based on what they sense instead of what they see is much more likely to be someone who comes to know and love you.
So focus on your senses. Work on, how can I be in my body a little bit more, rather than objectifying your body? And that's not like a throw your hands up in the air approach. That is work. That is work. It's important to work on your sense of authenticity, being yourself, your sense of kindness, being kind, your sense of self-expression, your sense of energy. And it's not a catch-all solution for navigating the difficult phobic culture that we live in. And we can hold space for the truth that we live in a world with some weight stigma, a lot of weight stigma, especially in the United States of America, in a way that doesn't, we can hold space for that truth without denying how beautiful and completely possible it is to be really loved, really known, and feel really confident.
We can hold space for an uplifting reality in a way that doesn't deny how annoying our thin-centric world can be. We deserve to feel anger, grief, sadness, all of the things about all of the ways people are discriminated against for their body shape and size. However, we are all better off to practice stepping out of objectifying our bodies. We're all better off to practice nourishing our bodies, celebrating our bodies, and collaborating with our bodies. Our bodies are not objects that need to be fixed, molded, sculpt-shaped. Your body is you.
I personally spent way too much of my life looking at my body like an object or a project that needed to be fixed and shaped and toned. And I was constantly looking at my body from the outside, analyzing it, treating it like an accessory instead of a part of me. And then I swung to like completely avoiding my body, which also deprived me of a sense of confidence, a sense of joy, a sense of energy, because there was no senses at all. And body avoidance definitely felt like a safe place to live, but I was unhappy, unhealthy, and I had zero access to my intuition because I had no access to my gut feelings because I wasn't feeling my gut. So can you shift from focusing on getting more in touch with your senses and rewiring your own body objectification, your own fat phobia, your own weight stigma, while not gaslighting yourself because it's important to be like, wow, there is a lot of fat phobia and weight stigma in the world. Like, of course. And I'm here to hold that space for you to process that because it's important and it matters. You matter.
Okay. Thank you so much for these questions. I hope that you found some of these answers helpful. Again, let's keep this conversation going and tell me what you think and what you're feeling as you're listening to this. And I'm going to spend the last 15 minutes just sharing some random tips, but very tangible tips that I've learned through the process of my own dating life and my own being in different relationships, life.
Self-esteem and body image has been a really big part of my own dating journey. My self-esteem and my body image has certainly impacted the way I've shown up to date and be in relationships. And also my own control issues have shown up in my dating life and my relationships, my struggle to like let things play out without knowing how it's gonna go was a really big part of my own dating and relationship life. also my parents' divorce and the way romantic relationships were portrayed to me growing up was also really big. And I share that because I think when you're exploring your body image and your sense of self-confidence and all these things that I'm telling you to work on, you're gonna bump into, you know, your family history.
You know, at some point, body image does end up being about family dynamics a little bit. At some point, body image does end up being about what experiences of safety and lack of safety have I felt throughout my life? What's been my experience with rejection in the past? And was I rejected by my parents, was I accepted by my parents? Like all of that stuff ends up coming up. And I would say that those are like three really big things that kind of made dating really complicated for me throughout my life. So I'm just sharing from like a really human place.
And just to give you a little timeline, like I'm coming from a place where I am in an amazing relationship right now. Like it's so amazing the relationship I'm in right now. It feels healthy, feels calm, it feels committed, it feels like I can see a future, but I'm also not attached to a future. And it's so amazing, but the timeline of getting here has been so muddy, so muddy. I mean, I was, I can go, just I'll give you a quick overview. I mean, prior to college, prior to university, I was only ever in situationships, like in high school as a teenager, like I was in really painful situationships where I basically was just like kind of played a million times. And then in my second year of college, I entered my first actual real relationship and that lasted for four, nearly five, I'll say four and a half years. So was with the same guy from my second year of college all the way through my first year and a half of grad school.
And when I look back at that relationship, I can see that at the start it was the best I could have had it. It was a little bit intense and love bomby. And when I kind of read between the lines as an adult, I'm like, eh, that probably didn't probably had some red flags in the beginning. But it was the best relationship I could have been in at the time, I think. and there was a lot of ways that that partner showed up in the best way that he could have at the time. but when that relationship ended, it was really bad. I should have left it probably a year and a half earlier than it ended and ended with cheating and betrayal and it was really sad. It was really difficult.
And then I entered an era of like messy dating after being with the same person for four and a half years, four and a half, very formative years. And then I attached to a guy that I talked about on the first episode of this podcast for about two years. And then when I broke up with him, I moved out of New York City. And I talk about that on the first episode of this podcast, like that breakup and my entering my nomadic era and another era of some fun and healthy, but also very messy dating. And then I met a love bomber who wanted to lock me down. And I fell for that hard because I feel like prior to meeting him, I like, was only ever maybe to buy people. Like I was with a lot of guys who I think just kind of treated me as like a nice option, but never expressed the same certainty about me that I would express about them. And they didn't celebrate me in the way that I had celebrated them. And that is where I think my self-esteem body image and then parents divorce, especially played a role in my love life because I was, I just was settling for like just not everything I deserved because that's kind of what my body perceived love to be. And I really had to rewire that. And when I met this love bomber, I was like, wow, someone's soaring about me. Someone's choosing me. Someone's saying they want to marry me. Like, OK, cool. But as all love bombing stories go, that crashed and burned. And as soon as I realized he was a narcissist, I was out of there like, very proud of myself for just squashing that like faster than he might've squashed it. So yeah, then I had to like really pick up the pieces after that breakup and had some more fun, healthy, but also very messy dating.
And then I met my current partner. And when I met him, I was ready to accuse him of love bombing me just because he was certain about me, but he was just being certain about me. He wasn't love bombing me. But I was really, I was really cautious. I entered the relationship with a lot of tenderness still and wanted to be really patient about it. And I'm so grateful that I was, I didn't, you know, plunge myself into the relationship because where it is now is just steady and healthy and wonderful. Yeah, I share my dating timeline because I just want you to know that that's where I'm coming from. And now that I've shared my dating timeline, I am going to share with you the top things that I've learned as I've made my way towards this healthier relationship. And I will talk to you more about this healthier relationship at some point on this pod. And I see a world in which my current partner is gonna come on my pod too. He knows that because his story is absolutely incredible and I want you to hear it. He is an amazing human being and I will talk more in depth about that.
But for now, here's the top tips I wanna share with you. My first tip is approach your life with the same passion and enthusiasm as you approach your dating life and romantic relationships. I have been longing for a romantic love story for as long as I can remember, truly. And I've always felt passionate and enthusiastic about that. And I always found these partners in the beginning who weren't enthusiastic and passionate about me, but I had no problem throwing all my passion and all my enthusiasm towards them because I'm just romantic and I love that. But it's been so helpful to apply that romanticism to the rest of my life, to apply that same enthusiasm and gooeyness and presence to my business and to my friendships and to my home and my family and pouring that same love into the people who are present for me always, even in the eras when I'm single. Can you take the love that you can't give to a romantic partner right now because you don't have one and spread it around to the people who are already there and spread it around to the areas of your life that are already a part of you. Can you approach your music taste with the same enthusiasm and passion, your workouts, your cooking for yourself? Bring that same romanticism, that intention, that excitement.
It's okay to want love and please keep approaching your pursuit of the romantic partner with romance, if that's what makes you feel good. But remember that romance really is just noticing all the little things and celebrating all the little things and making rituals and making things intentional and letting there be a little bit of mystery, right? So leaning into the romanticism of uncertainty, like I was saying earlier and that's part of life no matter what. It really is. So that's my number one tip for dating in romantic relationships.
My second tip is when you approach romantic relationships, don't be afraid to be the one who sets the tone. Don't be afraid to be the one who says, here's what I want, here's what I need, here's what I'm looking for. Find that beautiful gray area like we do with everything else. You don't have to be super intense about it on like conversation one. But it's also really important that you don't delay expressing your needs and your wants and yourself. Expressing yourself is important. Don't be afraid to be the one who texts first. Don't be afraid to be the one who calls it. Don't be afraid to be the one who sets the tone. I think that's all I want to say about that. And I think that working on self-confidence is a really important piece of that.
Third thing is create a life that feels good and true and aligned for you and know that your partner will meet you along the way and you don't have to veer off the path that feels like your best, your truest, your most aligned life to go and meet your partner. My friend Diana and I were talking about this one time. We were like, we feel like we were on this path. And we were feeling so good and juicy about it. And then our, we've met these men who like were on the side of the path and they were like, Hey, come off the path, come hang out here, pull over, stop walking. And it like put us behind and it's not necessarily even shade to the men we dated. It's just that they were doing something else over on the side. They were doing their own thing in their own path and it wasn't compatible with ours. And the relationships ended up being in some ways, not always, but in some ways, a veering off from our path.
And if you feel like you're gonna settle for someone who's taking you off the path that you really wanna be on, just question that a little bit because it really is important that you feel like you can be your fully expressed self in a relationship and realize all of your dreams in the relationship that you're in. And it's important that you don't need love and romantic relationships so much that you'll sacrifice other things that you really want for it. My mentor Mark Groves told me, instead of being in need of love, can you choose love? Meaning your life is already good and you could live without the relationship, but choosing it feels really great and even more expansive, but you could live without it. That's a very important piece that I learned.
Mark Groves has been an amazing like personal mentor to me. And I will never forget that he really taught me when I was going through that first breakup, especially in like what that first like five year relationship that ended. If you can't live without a relationship, then you can never exist as yourself in the relationship because you're molding and changing yourself to make sure that you don't lose that relationship. Like if you are like, okay, I, I won't be able to survive without this relationship, then you're going to change and shift and contort and chameleon and do whatever you need to do to make sure that the relationship doesn't end. And you're not really being yourself. So it's important to know that like a relationship is between two people who feel free and feel liberated to be with or without the relationship, but they're choosing it because it feels really expansive.
My next tip is do practices that help you develop a strong sense of self trust and connection to your intuition. Because when you start dating, it's really good to have a strong connection with your inner knowing. My inner knowing literally made me physically sick when I was going too far down the wrong path or I was veering off the path for a little too long. Like as I was saying before, like that is very, very true to me. My body like starts feeling bleh when I am with the wrong person. And I never wanted that to be true, especially in moments when I was like, but I love him. But it's just true. And I had a really strong connection to my intuition, especially in the last five years that I've been dating. And when I was with that guy who was love bombing and narcissistic, my body image was on fire. And I was like, oh maybe it's because this is the wrong relationship for me, but I was like, no, it's not, it's not, but it was. So do practices that help you develop a strong sense of self trust. And if you need help with that, I'll give you some practices, let me know.
Next tip, for as long as you source your sense of self-worth from whether or not you're in a relationship, you will take everything personally and your dating life will be very difficult. If your sense of self-worth is contingent on whether or not a certain person chooses to be in a relationship with you, or whether or not anyone is choosing to be in a relationship with you right now, you will take everything personally and dating will feel like a soap opera instead of just part of your life that you're working on and it's experimental and you learn from it. And dating is so much more fun when it's experimental and a learning experience, not when every date is like a, they going to choose me or are they not choosing me? And if they don't choose me, I'm going to feel bad about myself, right?
We're allowed to have feelings when we date. And actually that is my next tip. So I'm just going to go into it. Like don't pretend that dating isn't vulnerable. Feel your feelings all the way through it. Don't attach to people. Don't start writing the, we met page while you just matched on hinge. But feel, it's important. You matter. So cry, grieve, scream, vent. Throw up stuff, be angry when you need to. I truly tried to pretend that I was like fine too many times when I was rejected, when I really wasn't fine. But at the same time, remember that even though rejection stings, it doesn't have to dissolve your sense of self-worth. Those are two different things. It can hurt when someone rejects you and you can feel grief when someone rejects you, but it doesn't have to be the thing that makes or breaks your sense of self-esteem. In fact, letting yourself feel the pang of rejection and surviving anyway is something that will build your self-esteem, truly.
Okay, two more quick tips and then I'm gonna wrap it up. Second to last tip, I don't know where I read this, but we've gotta trust that this is true. Sometimes you don't get what you want because you deserve better. Sometimes you don't get what you want because you deserve better, because you deserve someone who's also been working on themselves, because you deserve someone who really sees and appreciates all of you, because there's someone else waiting for you down the road and you might as well trust divine timing. When it comes to dating, it's the only thing that has ever made me have peace in this process.
And the last thing is in relation to that. Time and patience is important. Dating is a practice in letting go of control. We cannot control other people. That will always be true. Whether it's our mom or our sibling or our partner or someone we're dating, we can't control anyone. And so dating is a practice and vulnerability and letting go of control and time and patience is so important and patience is the thing that like filled in the gaps for me with dating. I felt like I had done so much work on self-confidence and self-worth and processing how my parents made me see relationships, but then I was still so stuck for so long and I realized it's because I wasn't being patient. I wasn't letting things play out.
And that is something that my therapist said to me when I first met my current boyfriend. I was feeling like, what this and what about that? And, you know, maybe I'll do it. And like after like our fourth date and she goes, let this play out. Let's let this play out. And yeah, whatever you need to feel safe and nourished while you're letting it play out is the key.
And when I was letting this relationship with my current partner play out, I needed all the self care practices that are on my Alive in October tracker. So that is my last thing for today is if you haven't downloaded the Alive in October tracker yet, download that take the Alive in October challenge. It's October 15th. We are halfway there is not too late to join us in doing the things that help us feel more alive. This is totally just a free for fun challenge. You can get $200 off the retreat if you do it, but that's, you know, only if you want to come on the retreat. Otherwise just join us and tell me how it goes for you. You can listen to the Alive in October episode I published two weeks ago. If you want to learn more about that.
And if you enjoyed this episode, I love you. I hope that you have a peaceful rest of your day and dating life. Take care of yourself. Leave this podcast a five star rating, written review on Apple if you enjoyed it. And I'll be back here next week, because I love podcasting and I feel better when I'm doing it. I'll be back here next week. All right, bye.
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