I used to do this thing… where anytime I liked a guy I self-sabotaged the relationship potential. As I write this, I’m still reeling from a recent dating experience. This is the second of the two mentioned in my last post… After over 18 months of being single, I found the first guy I really liked in dating. I fell HARD. Every interaction with him made me smile. It also triggered a fugue-like state. I started holding back things that gave me fear; like how I can’t eat bell peppers, because he said all he knew how to cook was fajitas. I didn’t tell him when he made me feel positive things. I didn’t make space for him to be vulnerable; something I usually do easily, because I wasn’t grounded in his presence. I liked him TOO much. I literally felt like I was in a dream in his presence and I couldn’t believe he wanted to see me. I lost myself in wanting him to like me back without consideration for his ability to meet my needs. Turns out: he wasn’t meeting my needs. My trauma was triggered, and I now wish I had been able to ground myself so I could have been my best self. Part of me thinks that it genuinely could have worked if I’d been grounded, set my boundaries and needs, and opened myself to him from the beginning. That part made me incredibly sad. My vulnerability has always been my superpower, and for the first time in my life – I lost it. I think back to my thoughts in those moments and every single time I held back or second-guessed myself – the first response in my mind would have been better than the words that came out of my mouth. I thought I knew better than that, but I guess we never really know until we’re in the situation. I wasn’t healed enough, and it showed.

I was stunned by little things he did that no partner before had done. The things aren’t remarkable, the fact that my partners before were so lacking is the remarkable thing. He just did the kind of things that a decent person or friend would do: asked me how things were going when I was at dance, or how my day was. I didn’t know how to answer either question; I have no practice answering such questions with more than “good/fine/okay;” that’s all I know how to say. I was caught off-guard; “you actually want to know what happened? How I felt about it? You’re actually listening to me? Does my experience matter?” He asked me what I was looking forward to this year and I felt like a deer in headlights. “You have interest in the things I care about? My goals? My enjoyment?” I felt like I was in the twilight zone. My partners in this life shut down my recaps of my day, took my feelings as attacks, zoned out when I tried to share, and frequently denied my experiences or mansplained them. My partners tried to convince me that the things I cared about weren’t important, minimized my goals and achievements, and found my enjoyment threatening. I have been in so many terrible relationships that this was the best treatment I have ever received from a potential partner. That fact is truly heartbreaking for me. I have been so invalidated by my partners that any interest or validation is miles ahead of my expectations and experience. My weakness is kindness; I melt when someone is kind to me or in my presence. It explains why I fell so hard and why I was so scared to lose it.

I asked my therapist to help me dive into this. I managed to recognize, after the guy was out of the picture, that I’d been in a fugue-like state. I knew it was trauma-induced and I knew that it was coming from the child version of me, but I didn’t fully understand what happened. I managed to realize that my child needed an adult, and perhaps his child needed an adult, but somehow we weren’t meeting as adults; the children were coming forward and that’s why it didn’t work. My child came out because my needs weren’t being met, and my child is not a good partner. My child is selfish, scared, and mirrors immature relationship behaviors she witnessed. My child is not a good partner for anyone.

I finally formalized the reason after we started an exercise to construct “ideal parents” and my “ideal dad” was elusive. My dad was my ideal dad when I was young, in most ways. He was fun, he was affectionate, he was caring and emotionally available. He made me feel special. He made me feel loved. He made me feel heard and valued. He even gave me back massages every night at bedtime. Then, one day, he wasn’t anymore. My parents divorced when I was 9. I know it was (roughly) around that time when my dad changed.

I know I felt a lot of things when he moved out. I can’t articulate them all. I was closer with my dad emotionally, but I was staying with my mom. I knew I wouldn’t hear them fighting anymore, but I felt at fault for the fighting. I felt abandoned by my dad, but he was still my dad then. The betrayal and loss, for me, came later. I hit puberty around the same time that I moved in with my dad. He was my dad until I started looking like a woman. I moved in with my dad and he was a completely different dad. My growth had triggered his own traumas and caused a rift between us. I lost my dad as soon as I started looking like a woman instead of his little girl.

The problem is that I was still a little girl. We don’t grow breasts and suddenly have adult maturity. We mature physically before our emotional development reaches the same maturity level. So, I felt abandoned, as a little girl. I felt rejected for who I was because I was growing up. Between the divorce, his new girlfriend, and his changed attitudes – I felt like I lost my dad. It broke me; it broke us. My confidence and my relationships with men have been colored by that loss my entire life. The second I see a chance at happiness – I fear that same loss and I faceplant.

I’ve self-sabotaged every potential relationship with men I genuinely liked. From literally running away into another relationship, to basically love-bombing them, or getting hung up in my own reality without making space for them – it all stems from fear. It all stems from the little girl that lost her dad without warning or the maturity to understand why. I didn’t understand what happened then, and I don’t understand what’s happening when that state hits, either. I know it’s fear, and I know that the first step towards healing is the recognition of the problem.

I know the little girl is afraid of getting attached. She doesn’t want to lose another man in her life that makes her feel loved, cared for. She wants to know how to make it work “this time” without another fallout. But, romantic relationships are not the same. My subconscious doesn’t know the difference. I need to pull back. I need to be more intentional. I need to actively check in with my needs. I need to set boundaries. I need to face the fear of loss and learn to trust in who I am above someone else’s perceptions. Happiness comes from finding and being true to ourselves; connecting with the people who accept and love that same self. No one I’ve loved has accepted and loved me for myself because either 1) I became who they wanted me to be or 2) I self-sabotaged before they got to know me. Yet, the one thing I want in this world more than anything is to be with someone who can know me, accept me, and love me. May we all find that someday.

My whole post was a story, again. So, let’s find some humor instead of fear.

Sometimes I look back at my choices and feel pretty ridiculous. I think we all have those moments, so here is one of mine. It’s about a solo I choreographed and the costume I made for it. It doesn’t make sense to me now, but I clearly thought it made sense then.

I got a shiny blue bodysuit. I love blue, so how could I pass up a shiny blue bodysuit? I grew up in the 80s, so a shiny bodysuit fills my soul in indescribable ways. I made a skirt out of strips of tulle… and held strips in my hands, etc. I think I put on leg warmers, too. My vision was something like a robot coming to life…

I choreographed the piece to start on the floor and movements began with my hands and worked through my body up to standing, I danced until I reversed the process back to the floor, ending with my hands. It was a fun piece, but the costume still seems ridiculous. Please take some joy from me moving somewhat robotically in a full bodysuit with tulle fabric all over me. It’s my kind of ridiculous.

Be unapologetically you. Dance as ridiculously as you need to.

I love you, -S.