Finally Figured This Out After Months of Dating…

Life is like a train station that services a whole lot of different trains that take you to various places.

For every area of life, we typically have a familiarity with a certain kind of metaphorical train.

Maybe you have a knack for finding particularly supportive (or unsupportive) work environments.

Or perhaps you repeatedly find yourself in situations where folks talk your ear off when you’d rather just have some quiet time.

Or maybe you’re skilled at taking charge of any room you walk into, whether it’s requested or not.

It’s like we have our own personal air traffic controllers guiding us to the train platform we know about and encouraging us to get on it. (Sorry for mixing travel mode metaphors, but you get the idea.)

From about November of last year to April of this year I kept getting on the wrong train in my dating life. (The context is that I'm divorced from someone I knew from high school, so dating has been a big learning curve for me. It has been fascinating.)

I was succeeding at finding people that I liked – win!

Doors were opened. Days were asked about. Plans were made easily. Boundaries were respected. Good conversations were had.

I liked that these men engaged with me consistently and thoughtfully – another win!

Until they didn’t.

They realized a little way in that they weren’t ready for a relationship and ended things.

I’m looking for a long-term, healthy relationship, so – not a win!

At first, I did not understand what was going on.

I want to be in a relationship, so I thought people engaging with me and behaving considerately and relationally was a great sign.

Now I understand that people who behave like you’re in a relationship from day one before taking the time to assess a connection and build something slowly are shortcutting healthy relationship development.

It's like trying to jump to the tenth story of a building without having laid the foundation for it.

In these instances folks are using the dating process for a short term hit of something rather than moving into a relationship. (Could be validation, entertainment, emotional support, or physical connection – most of which are fine in general but problematic when the overall intention is not clear upfront.)

I started to see what was going wrong with my approach after reflecting a bunch on this pattern and feeling one particularly painful instance of it. (Oof! It really sucks to have something nice and then to have it taken away abruptly. An emotional drop from a ten story building is no joke.)

I realized I was being too available and giving a lot of time and attention to men I didn’t know very well. I was getting overly caught up in hopefulness and giving folks too much grace. And I was matching these guys’ more intense pace of connection instead of taking a more measured approach. (I initially enjoyed and felt drawn to getting attention. And I wanted to be reciprocal and show interest, which led to me getting sucked into a faster pace of connection. No more!)

All of this led to a roller coaster ride of getting a lot of attention early on and then that attention going away quickly as well.

It’s a super common pattern in dating that I knew about intellectually, but it took experiencing it a few times for me to internalize it.

One of my favorite lines of poetry is from Hokusai Says by Roger S. Keyes. The line goes, “He says get stuck, accept it, repeat yourself as long as it is interesting.”

This pattern was losing interest for me, so I reflected on the signs that pointed the way to this type of relational train and set an intention to avoid getting on it in the future.

I learned to watch out for wishy washy language around dating intentions, the speed and intensity of an early connection (fast is the red flag) combined with a lack of thoughtfulness around vetting me as a partner (which is something you’d be doing if you were genuinely ready and looking for a long-term connection).

Beyond these things there’s just a feeling associated with this flash in the pan type of connection that my system now picks up on.

Equipped with the ability to pay attention to these signs I was better able to sense when folks had different motivations around dating than I did.

When I got a read that someone wasn’t dating with the intention of a relationship, I had to expend extra effort not to bite on the familiar signs I used to focus on - nice, smart, capable people who I enjoyed spending time with. I do still want all those things, but if they are in a context that isn't likely to lead to a relationship I now make the new choice of disengaging early instead of giving something that looks problematic a shot.

Making this shift was uncomfortable. I noticed a big drop in the level of attention I was receiving, which initially felt discouraging, unfamiliar, and like a loss.

Until I realized, oh, it’s because what I’m doing is working! Not being in an unhealthy relationship (or one that isn't going anywhere) is a win.

I’m not engaging with the short-term, roller-coaster type relationship trains, which means life is both a lot calmer and I’m sitting at the metaphorical train station longer.

This opened up a ton of space in my life to focus on other endeavors. A happy byproduct of filling my life more with non-dating things is that it positions me to be more judicious and take things slowly with folks because I’ve got other things on my plate and mind.

And by not being distracted with guys who aren’t a good match in terms of dating goals I’m making myself available for men who are in better alignment around dating intentions.

I got a proof of concept for this when I went on a date with a guy who was genuinely ready for a relationship – win!

We took things slow. He was open and super direct about his relationship intentions without my even asking. I could tell he was giving a lot of thought about whether we were a fit. He ultimately decided we weren’t and told me that directly. (I agreed with him.)

The thing I most noticed about my brief interactions with this man is how peaceful it was to have him in my world. There wasn’t a flurry of texting energy. And he was conscientious about not leading me on when he realized it didn’t feel like a match for him. Dreamy! I was able to do my work and my life without getting caught up with the distraction of another roller coaster of a train ride.

In all areas of life when we’re on autopilot it can look like the train we’re getting on is the only train in existence because that’s what we’re repeatedly experiencing.

I could have looked at my experience of just a few data points and extrapolated that all men are using online dating for things other than finding a relationship.

Instead, I looked at my behaviors and the signs that were leading me to have this type of experience repeatedly and tried changing things up to see if I could get a different result.

I did.

(And then I promptly got bored/ the effort it had taken me to get to this place in my dating learning curve warranted some downtime, and I took a break from online dating. :P)

There are a whole range of trains we can start to see if we decide we’d like to go somewhere different than where we’ve been in the past.

It does take conscious effort to shift these patterns.

Maybe you're always taking the first job that gets offered to you out of a sense of lack or urgency.

Or you're hoping to connect more with people, but you always hang back and wait for someone to approach you.

For my dating example, I had to work harder to pay attention and say no to things that felt good but weren’t a good fit. I also had to work harder at engaging in other areas of life to make myself less available for connections that were too intense early on. And I have been adjusting to the calm of sitting at the train station, which is great and unfamiliar and uncomfortable all at the same time. I've been reading a lot more.

If you’re finding yourself in places you’d rather not be, take a beat to reflect on what’s happening. Open up to the possibility that better exists. Try something different and see if it gets you closer to the results you want. It’ll be uncomfortable at first to do new behaviors but stick with it. You’ll probably find that the world has some sweeter destinations than you’d realized.

This has repeatedly been my experience when I’m willing to change my mind and approach in life. Curious if you've ever "switched trains" in some area of life. Hit reply and let me know!

This is one of the coolest things about life to me - that we can change, improve, and grow over time if we're just willing to explore.

PS. And to tie this to the ever-present promo of the upcoming Friday Field Trip - this will be a great opportunity to look at what's going on in your life, to get clarity, and then to create a new path forward that gets you more of what you're wanting. Registration for the in-person event closes August 4. Sign up today!