The Key to Overcoming Dating Fears and Finding Genuine Connections

What if the key to a fulfilling love life lies not in cunning tactics but in embracing your true self? This episode tackles the overwhelming fears that often plague our dating lives, such as rejection, loneliness, and the dread of never finding the right person. Join me, Lily, as I guide you through strategies to process these fears and nurture genuine connections based on mutual acceptance. By refusing manipulative techniques and fully embracing your unique strengths and weaknesses, you can reduce the fear of rejection and pave the way for authentic, unconditional love.

In the second part of our discussion, we dive into the vital role of self-awareness and emotional acceptance in the early stages of dating. Understanding your emotions and comfort levels can help you navigate relationship complexities with clarity and confidence. We'll explore how recognizing fears, trusting your intuition, and identifying red flags can protect you from unhealthy relationships. With practical advice on self-talk and self-reassurance, you'll learn how to better accept and understand your needs, setting the stage for more meaningful and satisfying connections. Tune in to transform your dating life by building a foundation of self-awareness and emotional authenticity.

Website: www.LoveWithIntelligence.com

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Chapters

• 0:00 Overcoming Dating Fears and Mistakes
• 11:55 Navigating Fear in Relationships

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:56

So let's talk about fear, because fear comes up so much when it comes to dating. Whether it's the fear of being rejected, whether it's the fear of not meeting the right person, the fear of being alone there's so many different things that tend to come up, and if you're in that place where you're single and you're afraid of what might happen when it comes to dating, I've got your back. Okay, we're going to be diving into all things fear today and also how you can overcome that and feel a lot more confident when it comes to dating. So if we haven't met before, my name is Lily. I'm a relationship and dating coach and I support hundreds of people like you to be able to heal from past relationships, heal from past trauma and go on and enjoy healthy, loving, long-lasting relationships. So we are going to really dive in today. So the first thing I want to say is it's okay to be afraid, it's okay to have fear. So many people have it. No one really talks about it, and we want to dive into the fear and also how to accept it, how to release it, how to process it and how to feel stronger when it comes to dating, because then you can enjoy dating, you can enjoy being able to meet different people and also enjoy a healthy, loving relationship, because fear really takes a lot away from the dating experience. And I also just on another side, though, I also think there's a lot of tactical advice when it comes to dating, especially in the men's industry, which is really interesting. You've got the pickup artist industry and all those different things. Can I just say relationships and dating is not about manipulation or tactical advice. Okay, I really, really despise that. The reason I despise it is because if you're having to create a connection through manipulation or through techniques, how do you know you want, you want people to fall in love with you, not your technique. So, saying those 10 words to make you know to these 10 things to make them fall in love with you, they're falling in love with the words. They're not falling in love with you, okay. So, please, any tactical advice that you've learned in the past, please let it go, because it's going to put more pressure on you, um, to be able to meet someone who is right, and it's going to take you more away from being able to create a genuine, authentic connection. Okay, because the truth is you know real love, you're going to be loved, flaws and all okay. That's what it's all about. So let's dive in after my little rant there.

Speaker 1: 3:37

So often, when we have a look at fears, I'm going to talk about a lot of different fears and I'm going to go through different things that you're going to be able to learn to be able to overcome these things, because I see this again and again and again. So, first off, is that fear of rejection okay? Because the truth is, it's not the fear of not being able to necessarily meet the right person, it's the fear of not being accepted. It's not the fear of not being able to necessarily meet the right person, it's the fear of not being accepted. It's the fear of being rejected. It's the fear of just not finding what you're looking for or not being enough for that kind of person. So, with rejection, rejection's got a very interesting element about it, because we can only feel rejection if there's something that we don't fully accept. So, for example, if you are screaming out and you're saying two plus two equals four and someone goes no, that's ridiculous, that's not the answer, you're not going to feel afraid of that, whereas if you're saying two plus one equals four and someone goes, that's not right. I don't accept that answer. You're going to feel odd about it. You're not going to feel good about it.

Speaker 1: 4:55

I think, with rejection itself, there's got to be a good level of acceptance for who you are as a person. You've got to feel good about yourself. You've got to accept everything about yourself Because as soon as you do, you have a truthful view of you as a person. You've got an understanding of your strengths. You've got an understanding of your weaknesses. You've got an understanding of the weaknesses. You've got an understanding of the neutral bits in between, because it's not all strengths and weaknesses, um. And when you've got that and you fully accept that, everything's okay. You know you're not interested in the people who are going to literally pick away at your weaknesses and say you're not good enough. You're not going to be interested in those kind of people. You're going to be interested in the people that accept you for who you are.

Speaker 1: 5:44

And this is really important, because I see so many people when they go in, when they have that fear of rejection, they go into relationships and they're working hard to earn love. They're trying to love, they're trying to compensate for their weaknesses. And the thing is, if you're in a situation where you feel like you've got to earn love or you've got to do things for love. You're always going to find yourself in those patterns of being in a conditional love kind of relationship where everything is transactional or the relationship feels draining or you don't feel seen or appreciated in that relationship because everything's focused on what you can do versus who you are. I know I'm giving you lots of insights here, but it's good to be able to understand this, because in a relationship where you fully accept yourself and your partner fully accepts and embraces and loves you for who you are, you know you're in that place of unconditional love.

Speaker 1: 6:46

It's not about you know what you can do, it's more about who you are. Okay, and that's where relationship feels easy. It doesn't feel like, oh, I have to work at this or I have to be, you know, mindful of this. Doesn't feel like, oh, I have to work at this or I have to be, you know, mindful of this. Everything comes natural because you've got a desire to create that. I don't know like desire to create that connection. It's I'm trying to think of the words to be able to explain it. It's not because you have to, it's because you naturally want to. It's also a byproduct of just who you are as a person, where you want to be able to enjoy that relationship, give to that relationship, but there's a balance, a natural balance, to it, and that's what you want to be able to achieve. It's not about oh, if you do this, you're going to do this for me. It's not about that at all.

Speaker 1: 7:35

So if you're going to go into something that's transactional, you know you need to be really aware about how much you accept about yourself, versus feeling like you need to compensate by doing things and showing how useful you can be in a relationship. And this also falls back into feeling like you're not enough. You don't want to be in that place where someone is trying to figure out ways to manipulate you to be able to do all these different things, where you end up drained and you end up worse off after that relationship finishes, because often those relationships finish quite quickly, usually after a few years, or sometimes people can stay in those patterns for a very, very long time and it can be emotionally, mentally, physically damaging. Okay, and the reason I say physically is because, even if that person is not physically abusive, your body will produce so much cortisol that it will have an impact on your body. Okay, now we're going to talk a little bit about the fear of repeating past mistakes. So, when we think about fear of past mistakes I see this so often where people come out of toxic relationships and they literally try to go for something completely different and they convince themselves because they're going to go through, they're going for a relationship that's completely different. That's enough to change the pattern. It's not, because, when we think about that's like dating patterns, people have dating patterns for a reason. It's like a mini routine. It's not something you're necessarily conscious of. It's something that you almost subconsciously recognize and you just end up falling into that pattern and falling into that routine. It's like a role that people tend to fall into and this is where you get the overcompensating and all these different things. So, when it comes to past mistakes, it's being aware of what are you doing, what happened and how can you prevent that. And I'm going to shift the topic slightly because sometimes, when we see things from a slightly different view, it can help us apply this to something different.

Speaker 1: 9:52

So, for example, um, for me, I have ended up going to a coach that helps me with my nutrition and also helps me with exercise and helps me to lose weight. Yes, I know about calories. Yes, I know about exercise. Um, yes, I get the fundamentals of it, but the intricacies and how to make it easier and how to make it fun and how to make it doable and how to make it sustainable and make it part of my routine, that was the support I needed. That was the support that needed to be tailored and personalized to me. So, from past, I was going through toxic patterns with my diet, so I'd be doing, you know, serious calorie yo-yo dieting, sticking to it for a couple of weeks and then, you know, going backwards, which is not fun, you know. And as a result of being able to dive into and working with a coach, I've been able to sustain weight loss. I've been able to enjoy exercise. I've been able to even drink wine and go on lovely weekends not worrying about what I'm eating, and still lose weight. And that's the power of having more than just the fundamentals, of understanding what's going on.

Speaker 1: 11:04

Okay, so when we apply this to dating, it's having a look at what patterns have been coming up, what's the type of partner what patterns have been coming up, what's the type of partner that you've been attracted to in the past. What are the common patterns that you tend to notice in a relationship? You know? Things like have your past partners been emotionally intelligent or cared about your feelings, or cared about your goals or supportive of you? You know, have a look at these things because this is what needs to be dived into in order to change it. Because the thing is, when you think about dating, you know, no one turns around and says, hey, I'm emotionally unavailable. No one turns around and goes, hey, I'm going to make your life a living hell. Or hey, I've got, you know, past domestic violence tendencies. No one puts that on their dating profiles, no one shares that straight away.

Speaker 1: 11:56

It's all the honeymoon period, in the beginning, and it's so important to know what you're looking for in the beginning stages so you're able to see this quickly and, you know, make a very good, informed decision. So you're not wasting your time, you're not damaging your emotions, you're not damaging yourself mentally. So, where to begin? Of course, you know I'm here, you can work with me, but I'm going to give you a few things to be able to go through. So you've got a bit of an understanding of where to begin through. So you've got a bit of an understanding of where to begin.

Speaker 1: 12:36

So, to start off with, I want you to think about you as a person and I want you to think about how comfortable are you with being you? Okay, how comfortable are you? Because I tend to find that people tend to go one or two ways. They either go through the thing of saying straight away that no, I'm not comfortable. There's these things I don't like about myself, there's this about my story I'm not where I want to be in life. You know, they tend to be very open and honest about where they're at. And then you have the other people who tend to be like yep, I'm fine, I'm happy with who I am.

Speaker 1: 13:18

And it's the fear of going into emotions, okay, the fear of being able to go. Okay, what's actually going under the surface? Yes, you can be logical, yes, you can be. You know, focus on these different things and say the right words, but what happens when you go deeper into the feelings? So, to start off with is taking your time to understand who you are, and do you fully accept yourself and notice those feelings? The next part is actually allowing yourself to emotionally check in, because when we think about fear. It's not necessarily the fear itself that tends to give you the most burden. It's more about how do you process it. How do you embrace the fear to the point where it's not damaging your life, where it's not holding you hostage anymore, and this tends to be a major thing.

Speaker 1: 14:09

So it's not just fear that tends to come up in life. You know know, life has so many different emotions, um, and it's so important to be able to process these things. It's so important to process, um, those emotions so you feel comfortable, because, when you think about it, emotions are like a little guidance system. It tells you when things feel good, it tells you when things feel bad. The problem is, when you've gone through things that feel painful, often people go right okay, I'm not, I'm not doing this anymore, I'm not feeling this anymore, and they push those emotions away, thinking whatever they're feeling isn't right.

Speaker 1: 14:47

And this is a pattern I tend to see with people who tend to have, like, a lot of fears when it comes around dating. They've been told so many times that you know they're too sensitive when they're children or even in their relationships. They're too needy, they're too clingy, they feel too much, they're so emotional and they get labelled as all these different things, but the truth is it's more about your emotions are absolutely perfect, they're absolutely valid. It's how do you start to listen to them? Because often a lot of people who have gone through that kind of level of name calling of being too sensitive and to this and to that, they tend to try and mask and hide their emotions and they often fear them because they're afraid of what could happen if they listen to them and how they could go in the downward spiral and all these different things. But the truth is the emotions are actually key. It's a part of vulnerability that allows you to understand what you need, understand how to communicate those things.

Speaker 1: 15:49

But here's the kicker in a healthy relationship, you're you're going to be accepted. Your emotions are going to be accepted. In an unhealthy relationship, you are told your emotions are completely out of line. You need to prioritize the other persons, and this tends to be another pattern of the fear of repeating those past mistakes in relationships, because often a lot of people will go ahead and find an emotionally unavailable or not very emotionally intelligent partner that can't understand their emotions, because they're always expecting to be prioritized, um, instead. So, before I digress, because I'm going through a lot here and I'm I'm mindful that I want to be able to share enough for you to be able to work on and to be able to work with without overloading you. So, to start off with, I want you to think about how you are talking to yourself. Okay, how can you give yourself that reassurance? How can you start accepting yourself, accepting your emotions, accepting the fears? And the other part of with fear is it's what do you need in order to feel safe?

Speaker 1: 17:01

For me personally, I love to be able to have knowledge. Okay, my safety is within having knowledge and having an understanding, and this is one of the reasons why I support people who also have that tendency of needing that knowledge, needing that understanding, needing that understanding of how relationships work, not understanding how to date, understanding how to trust that gut feeling, because often I used to find like I had really good intuition when it came to dating, but I was crap at trusting it, and one of the things that I really love about what I do is that I help people to have to have that knowledge, to understand what their intuition is picking up on and how you can logically see it in real time, because it's so easy to know that, it's so easy to have that feeling of going oh, something feels off right now. But what tends to happen is our bias tends to get in the way and we tend to go oh well, maybe they're just a bit nervous or you know well, you know it's the first day, let's just see how it goes and we ignore's going on. But if you're able to go oh actually no, I noticed he was rude to that waitress, or actually I noticed that, um, he was talking very negatively around about lots of different people or you know various different signs you're able to go. Ah, okay, I can see why I was having that feeling and how I can start to trust it, and this will also support you to stay away from those bad relationships. So the main thing about fear.

Speaker 1: 18:39

Okay, I'm going to finish on this note. The main thing about fear, it's not about not feeling it or not addressing it. It's about understanding what do you need to be able to fully stand in your power to get what you actually desire? The thing with fear is it will never disappear until you face it dead on. So if this is something that you are ready to tackle now, book a love life analysis. I'd love to see what we can do to be able to support you to break through those together, and the nice thing is I have all the techniques that are going to support you to break down these things really easily, with very little pain and in a way that you're going to be able to create and enjoy a very healthy, loving relationship in the process.

Speaker 1: 19:29

So let's kind of go back. So, first off, I want you to be able to start to recognize how you feel about yourself. I want you to start to accept all those amazing things about you and even not they're not so amazing things about you. I want you to start to think about past relationships. What were the main issues that happened in those relationships? And then, if you wanted to book a love life analysis, go through the patterns that you've experienced and I can share a few things on how you can overcome them. So I hope this has been useful and if there's any questions, feel free to just drop me a message or talk to me on the love life analysis and we can go through those together. Right, so take care. Thank you so much for listening and I'll speak to you all soon. Bye for now.