Imagine you’ve gone on a couple dates with a nice, cute, normal seeming guy you’ve met online. You’ve wanted a relationship for a while so you should be excited right? Your friends sure are and he does seem to mostly match what you are looking for. The dates have been nice–not mind blowing but you’ve had a good time. He seems to want to see you again.
But maybe, instead of feeling excited, your body and mind are full of uncertainty. You may be thinking “he seems nice but he’s still basically a stranger! How am I supposed to know if he’s the one for me?!” Instead of excitement and anticipation, you feel dread at going out with him again because you’ll be faced with this uncertainty and pressure to know what you want. Maybe you conclude that you must not really like him if you feel this way. Or maybe the uncertainty stops you from getting closer and the relationship fades out.
If this sounds familiar to you, then you are not alone. Many women have a hard time identifying what they want in a relationship and with settling into a long term partnership.
There are many different reasons for this common pattern. Our culture is full of messages that love should be immediate and obvious. Rom coms and romance novels give us unrealistic expectations of what early relationships feel like. Friends may insist they knew their husband was the one for them after one date. You may hear the advice that you just know when you meet the right person. These messages may make us worry that something is wrong if we don’t know what we want after a couple of dates with a new person.
Past life experiences can also lead to anxiety and uncertainty in a new relationship. If relationships haven’t been a source of safety and security, it can be really hard to identify when we are in a good one–and even harder to open up to a new person. When you’ve been hurt in the past, it is likely that you are on the lookout for problems with a new partner–rather than focused on their good qualities and getting to know one another.
So what’s a girl to do if this pattern keeps repeating? Psychotherapy can help you better understand what this pattern looks like for you and what’s keeping it going. Therapy can then provide you with support and practical strategies as you make changes to stop this cycle and to date with more clarity on what you want and deserve.