Is this my fear of intimacy–or is this just a bad match? Stay tuned to this episode to learn the tools to help you tell the difference.

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Listen For

• 06:20 What are two things that happen simultaneously within us that are almost antithetical to each other?
• 08:19 What is the single greatest saboteur of healthy new love?
• 12:21 Why do you need to drop down into yourself?
• 18:19 Why should you assume there is something valid to your feelings?
• 24:00 Why you should be wary of your reflexive responses?

 

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Is It Fear Of Intimacy – Or Just A Bad Match?

Is this my fear of intimacy talking or is this just a bad match? How can you learn to trust your intuition and your nervous system in your dating life but also protect yourself for making the same mistakes you’ve made before. Stay tuned to this episode to learn tools to tap into your own innate wisdom in your dating life.

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Hello everybody, and welcome to the Deeper Dating® Podcast. I’m Ken Page. I’m a psychotherapist and the author of the bestselling book Deeper Dating. This is the first time I am going to be announcing this. I’m the Founder of the Deeper for Good app. This is an app that helps people meet online in a way that is decent, compassionate and thoughtful for people with deeper values. It links up with events that make a difference in the world.

You can go to DeeperForGood.com and become a founding member. It is free. We never gatekeep messaging. It launches in June. If you get on our waiting list, you’ll receive discounts, bonuses and some free classes, too. I encourage you to go to the website. It’s a magic new app that breaks the old patterns of how people can connect online. I’m so excited to be offering it.

Trusting Our Nervous System And Doubting Ourselves

In this episode, I want to talk about what is one of the trickiest questions that people experience as they try to bring more consciousness to their search for love and not keep enacting the same old patterns again and again. Here’s what that is. It’s the question of, I’m not feeling great about this connection or this date. Is it me? Is this my fear of intimacy? Is it my intuition that something is really not right?

How can I tell the difference since I’m becoming more and more aware of the fact that I have enacted patterns that have kept me in bad relationships? Maybe it drew me to bad relationships or not the best relationships again and again. How can I trust my intuition? Where is the fear of intimacy? Where is intuition when something doesn’t feel right on a date? The same question, when something feels right on a date and you’re a little bit worried. Maybe this is not a good sign that I am this attracted and crazy for the person.

We’re going to be talking about all of that and I’m going to offer you some tools to help you discriminate more wisely in your dating life. First, I want to say that in this episode and every episode, my commitment is to offer you the insights and the tools that I find most helpful to help people find real healthy love and keep it flourishing. Heal their life in the process because the skills of dating are the skills of intimacy. The skills of intimacy are the greatest skills of all for a rich, meaningful and happy life.

Let us jump in. In my intensives and in my work, I’ve worked with so many people who want to bring more consciousness to their search for love. Who feel as I felt for decades, “Why is this not working? Why are the same patterns happening again and again when I try so hard? Why do the same failures keep happening?” When we ask ourselves that question, it invariably leads us back to our reactions, our patterns, our attractions and our behaviors as we search for love. Also, as we build new connections with people as we date.

That happens and we begin to notice patterns that are not the best and have not helped us. Either being attracted to people who aren’t good for us and being drawn to those same qualities again and again. There are deep and profound reasons why that happens. When you start recognizing these patterns, you have gold. You have the raw material to change your future in love. I teach about that in many different ways.

 

Continuing on, the other one is you go on a date with someone. Maybe they look good on paper but somehow, you’re just not interested. You’re not desiring them. You’re not attracted to them or they’re things that make you feel funny. You want to get away or get out of the date. You wonder, “This seems like a nice person. Am I having these doubts because they are a nice person? They might be available or because they might be right for me? I’m just used to relationships that aren’t right for me? Is this my intuition telling me something is off here?”

“Should I trust that and honor it? Which way to go? I’m trying to change patterns but I don’t want to dishonor what my body is telling me, what my nervous system is telling me. At the same time, my nervous system has guided me into really not good relationships and out of really good relationships. How do I know? How do I know to trust myself?” That’s what we’re going to jump into here.

As we do this work on our own growth, two things happen simultaneously that are bewildering because they’re almost antithetical to each other or they feel that way. One is, we start trusting our nervous system. If something feels funny, more and more we start trusting. “This feels funny for a reason. I’m not going to override my intuition. I’m not going to override my nervous system. I’m not going to override the fact that something doesn’t feel right and doesn’t feel great here.”

That’s one thing that happens. It’s a beautiful and powerful thing. You can learn lots more about my work. I talk about Attractions of Inspiration and Attractions of Deprivation. Both of which can feel like attraction and love. It gives you your best shot at happiness and love. The other leads to pain almost invariably. I talk about that in lots of different places and in my course, find the good ones, as well in my Deeper Dating® course. That’s one thing that happens.

The other thing that happens is we start doubting ourselves in a certain way. Noticing our patterns that we’ve lived and relived again and again, which have led us to pain, unhappiness, relationship ends, leaving relationships that in retrospect were really good, and staying in relationships that in retrospect were not good. This is antithetical because this is like, “I can’t trust my attractions. I can’t trust my intuition in some way that well because it’s gotten me into trouble. How do I know which is which? How do I know if this is a healthy intuition or is it a fear of intimacy?”

 

I’m going to pause here and talk about what I think is the single greatest saboteur of healthy new love. It is what kept me single for decades. It’s what I call the Wave of Distancing. I would say more than half, between half and 2/3 of people that I talk to experience this and struggle with it. That is, you meet someone. You’re attracted to them. You’re potentially attracted to them. There’s a spark. They seem decent, they seem available. All of a sudden, they start getting boring to you or irritating to you and you don’t know why. That is often because your deep psyche knows that they are really available.

There’s almost nothing more scary than that. Someone who is attainable and sexy and all of those White hot things is exciting. That’s like the thrill of the chase. It’s almost like those cartoons where someone is chasing someone. All of a sudden, that person turns around and the person stops and says, “Why am I chasing them? I didn’t even want to chase them.” It’s because they were running and that made them chaseable. This happens for us so many times and in so many ways. It’s a hard one and it’s often called the “Ick.” Which is an incredibly unsophisticated and unhelpful way to understand this dynamic.

Often, it is nothing more than a spasm of fear that we can get past. How do we get past it? Maybe that’s for another episode. It’s something I’ve talked about but essentially, if you find that happening that it’s someone who looks good on paper and has attraction and interest. As they become available, you get more and more turned off disinterested or bored. If that’s the case, don’t call it the ick and run away. You could actually be close to something wonderful here.

In fact, when people experience this, they should celebrate because they’ve often met someone who’s available. Availability with lack of drama is challenging for those of us who are used to unavailability and drama. This is a side subject but if you find that happening to you in your dating life the two keys are do not flee. Do not call it the ick and say, “This is intractable. I have to get out of here.” Give it space and don’t flee. The second thing is to give yourself space. Assuming it is a spasm of unconscious fear. The best thing you could do is let yourself off the hook.

Give yourself breathing room. Don’t go on a super romantic date. Don’t have sex at this point. Even if you have before. Give yourself more space. Maybe you want to go for a walk in the park with your dogs. Maybe you want to go to a movie and do nothing more than holding hands. Maybe you want to go to a museum. Maybe you want to go to a comedy club. You give yourself space and you start remembering the things that are fun about them, attractive about them or the things physically that attract you without forcing yourself to do anything.

Dropping Down Into Yourself

Almost invariably, the attraction will begin to come back if you can do this. With that, a clearer sense of if this person is right for you or not. I call it the Wave of Distancing because it hits you like a wave and it knocks you off balance. It passes. Most of us flee before it passes. That’s what made the difference for me. I would have fled my husband if I didn’t have those tools. What are the tools that can help you figure out, are these old patterns being re-enacted and making me feel like I want to get away from here? Might this be my intuition or my nervous system saying, “Something is off here?”

The first tool, my suggestion is to do something a little bit different to get actually out of your head because God knows when we’re dating, we are in our head. Is this person this? Are they like that? Do I have spinach on my tooth? Am I dressed right? What about their taste in music? What would my friends think? The mind goes on endlessly and it’s like a service road off the highway of your intuition that leads you down so many different paths. Which are mostly essentially quite useless.

You want to get back onto the highway of what your real experience is. How do you do that? You drop down into the weather that you’re feeling in your belly, in your gut, and your kishkes. In your head you might be saying, “He’s too old or I don’t like the clothes he’s wearing. Does he like me? Does she like me?” Whatever it is. That’s like what’s going on spinning endlessly in your head. If you drop down into your feelings, you often notice something quite different like, “I feel this warm feeling inside with this person or I don’t know if I’m good enough for this person or I feel slightly judged or why am I feeling like I need to keep proving myself?”

That might not align with the fact that this person is exactly your physical type. It’s another reason you have to drop down because all of us have types. Those types can hypnotize us. We have to drop down into our nervous system and say, “Do I feel warm? Do I feel humorous?” This is something that someone in one of my coaching groups said that was so helpful. “Do I feel like I need to perform or do I feel like I could just be me?” When you drop down into yourself while your head might have been telling you, “This person is the cat’s meow. The bees knees. They are the one I want.”

You drop down into your nervous system and you feel, “I’m performing. I feel like I have to prove myself.” You think, “This thing that person said did not make me feel safe and seen.” This is the golden rule. This is the North Star question to help you drop down into your internal weather with this person. Does my heart or my soul feel safe and seen appropriately at the level that you’re meeting with this person? Do I have that comfort? Somebody, I know said what her mom said to her. This is a heterosexual woman. That’s a man and a woman.

Going against your gut and judgment never works very well. Share on X

My work is open to everyone and all of our work. Coaches, don’t just say men and women. Don’t just say cisgender. Please allow for the whole community that’s just not done enough. My point was, her mom said to her, “Dating is like going to a shoe store and men are like the shoes. You do not want to walk out with the shoe that pinches but looks great and tell yourself that you’ll get accustomed to it and it will stretch out. You want to leave that store with a shoe that you essentially feel comfortable in when you walk out of that store.”

I think that’s wise, beautiful, funny and incredibly true. That’s technique number one, to drop down into yourself. Now, you may need to get away to do that. The bathroom is always a really good ruse. Step away and you say you need to use the bathroom. You take a minute or two in there and you descend from your worries, fears, judgments, etc., and you say, “Why do I feel with this person?” I want to encourage everybody to do this exercise.

Even write to me and tell me what you experience. The amazing thing is that what you’re feeling in your internal weather is often different than the stories spinning around in your head. You want to develop that muscle or that capacity to drop down into your nervous system and notice what you’re feeling. Maybe you’re feeling better things than your head was telling you. You want to acknowledge that. Enjoy it. Connect with this person from that place and get pleasure from that and build the connection in that way.

I remember going on a date with someone. Who he was, was absolutely not what I was looking for but I did this exercise. I noticed that I was feeling warm, safe, good and fun. What a shock because in my head, I was like, “No,” The relationship didn’t end up working out but for other reasons, did I learn something. It’s something that I want to invite all of you to learn. It’s a great empowerment tool to be able to do that. These are examples of where what your head is saying is kind of no, but your inner weather is saying, “Maybe yes. There’s something I like here.”

Assuming That Your Feelings Are Valid

Now, let’s talk about when the opposite happens. Let’s say your head is telling you, “This is good. This guy or this woman or this person looks great on paper. They’re kind and nice. I feel safe and seen with them but I’m not interested. Why am I not interested? What is going on?” That’s a question that many people have. That’s another complex choice point. I want to offer you a tool for when that happens to you. The tool is this. Let’s assume that there is something real that is not feeling good. Do not assume you’re crazy. Do not assume it’s just fear of intimacy.

It might be fear of intimacy, but you will find that out. Going against your gut and your judgment never works very well. My suggestion is to assume that there is something valid to what you’re feeling. Let’s say you’re feeling that they are shy in a certain way. That shyness doesn’t make you feel great or feel safe. Assume that’s true. You ask yourself, “What would make me feel better here?” You think, “I would like it if this person came forward more because they seem to have retreated. They seem hidden.”

I’m on a first date with this person and I can’t tell her to come forward because she seems hidden and seems to have retreated. What do I do with that? My suggestion is, just knowing it allows you more space. My nervous system feels funny around the fact that they seem timid and not forward. When you know that, there’s a good chance that your nervous system will have a response. Maybe you will lean in more and want to get more real with them.

Ask them questions that bring them forward. Maybe you want to pull back and give them room. Maybe you want to say, “Ask me some questions about me.” That’s another thing. That’s like a separate thing but how many people go on a date with someone, and if you’re listening to this podcast, my guess is there’s a really good chance you’re a good listener because you wouldn’t be listening otherwise to these ideas that involve such deep self-reflection.

We have the right to be extraordinary. Everyone has a right to ask for a lot because you are someone who gives a lot as well. Share on X

Let’s say you’re a good listener and you’re talking with someone. They’re not asking you questions. You’re noticing that and picking that up. My thought is, be radical. Be brave. Be kind. Do not be mean, but be a little wild and ask for what you want. Say, “Do you have any questions for me because I love when there’s mutual curiosity?” See what happens. The person might respond in a wonderful way. They might get it and click and that’s good. They might gaslight you and then you know this is not where you want to be.

There’s something to be said for being a little bit audacious. When your nervous system is telling you something is not right and you think, “What would I like more of? What would I like less of?” Then actually ask for it. Maybe you might give it first. This is something that is another important piece. On dates, be kind and be generous. Let yourself do that. Don’t wait for the other person to do that because you’re giving them a welcome carpet to do that, too. If they’re the kind of  person who has curated a life where they care about those qualities. They will give that back. You lose nothing by being extra generous.

You lose nothing by being extra kind, because you do it consciously. When the other person doesn’t give it back, you know that they’re not giving it back. You say, “Is that the future I want? Probably not.” I encourage you to be audacious in terms of what you ask for, but do it in a kind way. I’ve seen again and again, people don’t do that on a date. Here’s what they think. They think, “It’s my fear of intimacy. I’m being too judgmental. I might hurt their feelings.” They’re probably not going to want to see that person again. If they do, they’ll feel like they’re going against their own intuition in doing it.

I have seen again and again when people do this, it leads to deeper intimacy and deeper clarity. That’s another piece of advice. Trust when you have an intuition that doesn’t feel great, drop down into your internal weather. Assume that there is validity there. Ask yourself, “What would I like?” See if you can make that happen. See if you can ask for what that is. We get timid and we don’t do that. We lose time, energy and doubt ourselves.

Taking A Break From Reflexive Responses

We are all extraordinary people. We have the right to be extraordinary. You have done a lot of work on yourself. You have a right to ask for a lot probably because you’re someone who gives a lot as well. Here’s something else. The dating world is cold and unkind and nobody wants to look like a fool. Nobody wants to look like an idiot. All of us have been hurt and disappointed. There’s a reflexive tendency to say, “I’m going to get out of here. I am out of here.” One of the ways that happens is they’re not attractive enough. They’re a little overweight. They’re too skinny.

When we’re afraid, we lock into our types more quickly and more rigidly so that we can get the hell out of there more quickly and not be disappointed or conversely be in this horrible situation where we knew we weren’t that interested from the beginning. All of a sudden, the other person’s interested in us and what we do. That’s another hard thing. What I would say here is, if you’re sure, you’re sure. If you’re finding your reactivity is a little hair trigger, take a few breaths. Don’t jump. Don’t make the assumption.

I always talk about the story with a mentor of mine, John McNeill, who was one of the great theological pioneers in the Gay Liberation Movement. He was such a hero to me and such a dear friend. Anyway, I was telling him about somebody I was dating. I was talking about how I just didn’t know. I wasn’t attracted but he seemed like a nice guy. What John said to me is, “Keep dating him. In a short amount of time, he’s either going to get more beautiful to you or he’s not. Either way, you will know.”

 

I loved that advice and I’m happy to share that advice with you. If you’re finding that you’re having a reflexive revulsion, judgment, pull away or get me out of here. Slow that down., I had this experience once with someone and a friend of mine said something wise to me. I was saying, “I better get out of here now because this is going to be a problem. It’s not going to be a match.” I don’t want to be in that horrible situation in the future where I’m letting someone down and hurting them and feeling terrible.

My friend said, “A) You could end up liking him more than he likes you. You don’t know yet. B) He’s an adult. As long as you’re being honest and not being dishonest to get what you want and letting him know that you want to go slowly then let him be an adult. Let you both discover because you could be cheating yourself by being so preemptively reactive.” That’s something I want to share with all of you, too.

You’ll know pretty quick but if you find that your pull away is reflexive, look at it a little bit closer. If your pull away is reflexive and for something, like there may be 10 miles away as opposed to 2 miles away, which is your limit. They live uptown rather than downtown. Those are reflexive responses. Give it a break. Give it time. Give it space and see what emerges. That’s another thing that is important. It is such an interesting mixture of trusting ourselves and questioning ourselves but not overriding our nervous system.

It always works to listen to our nervous system. If there’s a panic reaction, we’ll say, “That is a panic reaction. That is not merited by who this person is.” This is something I have to look at and work on. If it’s a feeling of wanting something different or more, that’s to be trusted. For you to be a little audacious and going for it and see what happens. You want to do it appropriately and God knows you want to do it kindly. Letting it be about you as opposed to something wrong with the other person.

Something that would give you pleasure. Something that you would like as opposed to making the other person wrong. Those things make a huge difference, so it’s this funny combination of being audacious and self-trusting but also questioning yourself along the way at the same time. That’s a beautiful and wise combination. Essentially, it comes down to trusting ourselves and allowing a little more space in the process. Thank you all for listening. I look forward to being with you on the next episode. Please go to Deeper For Good and join our new amazing app. Thank you so much.

 

Important Links

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