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You are here: Home / 2014 / Archives for June 2014

Archives for June 2014

Falling In Love Too Fast

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A pair of heart-shaped rose-colored sunglasses indicating falling in love too fast.
Be careful with those rose-colored glasses!

When we meet that guy that makes our heart flutter, the one that gives us those butterflies, the one that we can just feel that spark every time we talk to him - it makes us completely stop even noticing any other men.

All we want to do is put everything we've got into making him ours.

But in reality, the only way this is going to work is if he’s not the only one we’re putting our time and energy into.

Here’s why:

If he’s the only one we’re focusing on, he becomes the focus of our love life. He becomes the one every other guy we might consider has to measure up to. He becomes the one we pin all our hopes and dreams on.Continue Reading

What To Do When He's Sending Mixed Signals

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A man and a woman are having what seems to be a romantic formal dinner date but he's sending mixed signals because he says he just wants to be friends.Here's a great question from Elly about a guy that's sending her mixed signals. He takes her out on what seem to be formal dates, but then he says that he just wants to be friends.

Her story:

Dear Jane,

Quite recently, my male ex-colleague turned friend had asked me out to dinner. The thing is, though he's been separated from his wife of four years for almost a year or so now, my guard is still firmly up when it comes to him only because I may be attracted to him as more than a friend for now.

I was a bit surprised when he first asked me out to dinner about two months ago.

However, what confuses me the most is that, during one point in the dinner, he said that he wasn't looking for a relationship but rather he'd have a friendship with others any day. His reply threw me for a loop was because he'd just blurted that one out to me when I didn't even probe him about his intentions about getting back into a relationship with someone else in the future.

Further to that, he randomly told me that the dinner wasn't a date and I replied, "Yeah, I know and I hear you." If that's the case, why did he have to make dinner reservations, come pick up (via a cab, as he doesn't own a car) and even paid for my dinner which was about $200++ per pax that night, although I insisted on paying my half of the share but he strongly declined it. He even requested a hug from me before we went our separate ways, which was once again a bit weird for me, because the last time I met up with him for lunch, we just went our own ways after saying our goodbyes. So all these sudden "change" of his behavior towards me is sort of bewildering me.

I understand that chivalry isn't dead; but about a week ago, he text-ed me again asking if I could meet him up for dinner to, in his words, "catch up", and yet again with the whole "I-had-made-dinner-reservations-for-us-both-tonight". And when I told him that I got to take a rain check on suggested dinner due to prior commitments; he sounded quite upset and asked why is it that I keep blowing him out for dinner?

I am all for meeting up with friends, be it male or female, but as feelings (my feelings!) get in the way of things of late, I can't help but wonder why is this man sending me mixed signals? I mean, if you're looking for a void or some kind of distractions from your feelings as you grieve over the loss of your marriage, I am more than happy to lend you my listening ear as a friend, that is, over a cup of coffee --- and not dinner for two at some tres chic Spanish counter top table restaurant. It's just not "right", if you ask me!

At any rate, I've decided to put a distance between me and him, because if it was a genuine meet-up between a man and a woman, I honestly think it's a bit out of the norm to be going the whole nine yards (re: pick me up, dinner reservations, hug request) on this, don't you think?

Anyway, can you please advise me how I should put it across delicately to this man that I can't meet up with him any longer (due to my growing feelings for him, which he hasn't the faintest idea, by the way) if he was going to make every dinner meet-up in a way that appears to be like a 'date', when in reality it isn't? That said, how should I tell him politely that perhaps we shouldn't even meet up for quick luncheons, or dinner even, in the future as I don't wish to be perceived as his buddy nor his emotional placeholder?

I honestly hope you can answer my query because I need to move on from someone whom I know who can't match what I have got to offer. At the same time, when he so much as does something sweet to me, I caved and in turn, hope that one day he will be ready for a relationship. Even though I know that's hardly the truth, based on what I heard from the horse's mouth, that is, the man himself.

Thanks for your time and attention!

- Elly

My Response:

It’s great that you’re so in touch with your own feelings here, Elly, and it’s wise to have your guard up with someone who is only separated, and thus still married, to his former wife. Only when he’s officially divorced and not just on the rebound, would you want to consider engaging in more of a relationship with him.

What you’re describing here, is someone who's doing what works for him and what helps him through this.

That’s why you’re getting the mixed signals. It sounds like he doesn’t know himself what’s right and what’s not and what the "rules" are with this new scenario of dating he’s found himself in. He’s confused, too.

So what he’s doing is what comes naturally to him and what makes the most sense to him right now.  It works best for him and so you’re seeing him act and behave in this way, even if it doesn’t make sense to you.  Recently separated, he’s not ready for another relationship and he knows this, which is why he’s acting the way he is with you.

He’s enjoying being out with a woman friend that he’s comfortable with - you - and so he obviously doesn’t mind spending the money or making it look and feel like a formal date because it feels good to him.

What you’re seeing from him, is probably exactly what you would expect from him if he could sit down and put in words exactly what you’re looking for him to clarify. He’s “looking for … some kind of distractions from [his] feelings as [he] grieves over the loss of [his]marriage.”

If you take out the “right” or “wrong” way that he’s going about this, and instead look at what you need to do for you – what is the most loving thing you can do for yourself – you can take back your own power here and find what you need in this. What’s right for you will be different from someone else. What gives you a sense of peace about this and leaves you with the least amount of regrets is also highly subjective and all about you.

You have two choices.

As I talked about in my recent post on the whole point of dating, you can simply choose to look at your time with him as simply two friends enjoying each other's company. You can take out any and all “shoulds” and allow the two of you to simply be who and what you are, right where you are now and allow things to unfold naturally in the process of getting to know each other more over time.

You can choose to just be friends with him - just make sure that it's authentic. This isn't about playing games, or hoping to win him over or hoping he'll change his mind. This is only about you accepting what he's told you as fact, and choosing to build a friendship with him.

But if you can’t allow yourself to do that (for example, if your attraction to him is simply too strong and you find that you're spending all of your time pining for him), then you can always tell him to call you when he’s ready for something more than friendship because you’re finding his actions confusing and you’re on two different pages.

You can simply state what it is you’re looking for and what page you’re on. Make it about you, and not him. There’s nothing harsh, or wrong with that; it’s simply the reality of where you are and what you can live with what you can’t.

Don’t feel guilty, don’t take on what isn’t yours to take on. If he’s not comfortable with this or expects something different from you in return, he’ll let you know. You're not leading him on.  You’re either enjoying the moment with him for what it is to you, or you’re letting him go.

But you’re always the one in control.

Love,

Jane

What do you think? Do you have any other thoughts or advice for our dear friend Elly? Tell us in the comments!

Committed Relationship - What Does That Really Mean?

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Two silver hearts are forever linked signifying a committed relationship. I hear the same thing from so many of you, and it's the same thing that I used to say myself not so very long ago.

I hear you saying that you want a guy to make a commitment to you. You want a guy to want to have a committed relationship with you. You're wondering if you'll ever find a guy who really wants a commitment.

It might be that you've started dating a guy and you want to know if he's going to want a committed relationship or if he's going to turn into a stringer (i.e. a guy who strings you along for years only to finally break it off), or maybe you've already been strung along for quite a long time and you want to know how to get him to finally make a commitment.

Or it might be that you're single, and you want to know how to find a man that IS ready for commitment, because all of the men you've met so far have turned out to be commitment phobes.

For all of these reasons, and many more, it's one of the biggest questions on our minds.

A committed relationship

My question to you is this: What does a committed relationship look like to you?

What does commitment really mean? Have you ever really sat down and thought about what it is, exactly, that you're looking for when you say you want a committed relationship? When you think that you want a guy to commit?

Most of us haven't.Continue Reading

Why Did He Disappear Right After We Were Intimate For the First Time?

65 Comments

A beautiful woman is holding her head in her hands wondering why he disappeared right after they had sex.Our beautiful friend Gabriela is wondering why he disappeared the day after they were intimate for the first time. Her story is one that I've heard all too often:

Her email:

Dear Jane,

I have been reading your blog for a few months now and it has been a great help to me and a source of comfort.

Now, here is my question: I met a guy about four months ago online and from the beginning, he started pursuing me relentlessly.

He seemed like a really thoughtful guy and I was really flattered by the attention but when we finally met face to face, about a month after communicating online, I just didn't feel a real connection and got a sense that we were not in the same place emotionally.

I told him this, told him that I was looking at the next forty years of my life, not just the next two, that I wanted a real commitment and that I just wasn't sure that he wanted the same thing. We had some long email and phone conversations about this, he said he did want the same things as I did, and that he was willing and ready to be involved in my life and have me in his.

Throughout all my hesitation, he kept calling me, emailing me, asking me out.  He was out of town for a week but he kept calling me and emailing me, we had many heart to heart conversations about what was important to each of us.

I felt like he was a guy that knew how to be "present", which to me was very important, and I decided I may have been too harsh in my initial assessment of him and that I would give him a chance after all.

When he came back he showered me with attention, in short, did everything to show me that he was really interested. Recently we became intimate. It was an amazing experience and afterwards we lay in each other's arms sharing things about our lives and past experiences.  I felt it was truly wonderful and felt grateful that he had not given up on us.

However literally, the next morning, his emails started getting a little shorter and a little colder. He wasn't making any plans for us to see each other (even though when he was away we had talked about all kinds of things that we would be doing together) and when I suggested that we might get together, he wrote me a polite but dismissive email along the lines of "it's too cold out and I just want to sit on my couch. Have a great day".

That really hurt, and it was so uncharacteristic of him, after all of his eagerness to see me and be with me, but because I have learned a few things from your blog, I decided I would not pursue or dignify his dismissive email with an answer, and that I would just wait to see what he would do.

Since that email, he has completely disappeared, no more emails, no phone calls, nothing!

Needless to say, I have not contacted him at all, but I am feeling hurt and used and like he just made a fool of me. I am angry at myself because I just didn't see this coming and I wonder if you could help me shed some light on what just happened here, how to move past this, and how to learn to read the signs in someone who seems to be so interested, and then disappears.

Thanks a lot for your help and for the great work you do.

Gabriela

My response:

Dear Gabriela,

I understand exactly what you’re going through and I so feel for you!

One of the most difficult types of relationship endings is the one exactly like you've described - the one where you're left, alone, wondering why he disappeared.

The one where you initially had reservations about whether you were on the same page emotionally, and yet you found yourself gradually warming up to him the more he went out of his way to show you that he was there, that you had more in common emotionally than you thought, and where he gave you every indication that this was what he wanted too. And so of course you did exactly like what most of us would have done.

You allowed yourself to warm up to him, to take a chance on him - because he gave you reason to believe he was there - you opened up your heart, your body, your soul, and you let him in.

You’re so not alone in this, Gabriela.

And that’s exactly why this is one of the most difficult endings to experience, because you feel it’s about you. You’re angry at yourself for not seeing this, for not listening to your first intuition and gut instincts where you sensed “that we were not in the same place emotionally”.

And so what makes this so much harder is that you see how you could have prevented this if only you hadn't let yourself believe him, if you had only held your ground and not allowed yourself to be swept up the way you did.

You’re angry at yourself because you feel  you should have seen this coming and so in the usual manner in which we’re harder on ourselves than anyone else in the world, we do so much more damage to our self-esteem and self-confidence by refusing to do the most loving thing we can do – forgive ourselves.

We all want to believe someone who goes out of their way to show us they’re there. We all want to believe in the dream that someone might be everything they’re saying they are. We all fall for it at least once – and for many of us, we find ourselves believing “it’s different this time”, and falling for it time and time again.

We all want to believe it's true!

It’s just this guy did the only thing he knew how to do when he realized he was interested in you and you asserted that you weren’t on the same page.  He decided to show you that he was there too. And whether or not he tried and couldn't get there because of his own issues that he wasn't ready to face, or because he just wanted the conquest of knowing he could “conquer” you and didn't think about the consequences for you, that’s exactly what happened, through no fault of your own.

It’s time to forgive yourself, Gabriela. You did the best with what you knew at the time.

It’s time to take out the “shoulds”. It’s time to practice some self-compassion and release yourself from your own harsh judgments and allow yourself to let go. Let go of thinking about him, about why, about what happened, about why he disappeared like this.

He just wasn't the right guy for you.

You don’t have to feel ashamed. Isn't that what this really is about? We feel so ashamed that we allowed ourselves to go there, to question ourselves, to not stick to our original intuition, to give someone a chance when we knew better! Shame on us, shame on us not for seeing this! Can’t you just hear that voice shaming you like that?

This is why we suffer so!

This is why we can’t let it go! Because it’s not just about what happened; it’s the compounded shaming effect that we heap on ourselves.  Yes, we do this to ourselves!

Because if you could see it from an outside perspective, you could see that you’ve been saved from a great deal more heartbreak if you had continued on with someone who truly wasn’t on the same page – as much as he thought he could be – who didn’t in reality want the same thing, and who had no desire to do what it took to get there for himself. His stuff, not yours, Gabriela.

It’s not personal; it never, ever is.

But we keep insisting on making it very personal!

Remember the guy I wrote about in my post I can’t make you love me? The first time we met, I didn’t even remember him. When he first asked me out – to a U2 concert of all things – I turned him down because I felt the same way.

No real connection and he didn't seem like he was on my page emotionally either. But after the emails, and lunches and flowers and little by little sweeping me off my feet, I thought I must have been wrong about him too. And after a whirlwind 3 or 4 months of this, it all came to a sudden end, too. But it was me who, because I couldn't believe I had been so wrong about him, continued to hang on for another few years.

You've been saved from investing any more simply because he disappeared with no chance of getting him back.

Consider this a gift! You now know! This is how you begin to move on. By remembering this. By forgiving yourself, by writing a letter to him that you don’t send. Tell him everything you want to say that you didn't have a chance to, but don’t sent it because this is for you, not him.

Write a letter to yourself and include everything you want yourself to know about what happened. See the judgments you have for yourself. And then release yourself and him.

How you see the signs for this is in the future is by being aware of someone who comes on strong in the beginning; if it’s meant to be, it will be no matter how much you slow things down to your pace. So slow things down - way down.

You’re not a conquest, you’re the real thing.  If he stays with you, you’ll know he’s worth getting to know better. Someone who’s not there won’t be OK when intimacy is moving along at a turtles pace! You don't say in your email how many dates you went on before you became intimate, but the key is to go out with a guy for a long, long time and go on many, many dates (phone calls and emails don't count - I'm talking about actual, physical one-on-one dates) before you become too intimate. Someone who's just looking for a fling or a conquest won't be interested in putting in that much time and effort.

Time, energy, real-person experiences with depth, and a feeling that you're getting to know a real person and not just an image or surface of one, is what separates the players from the kind of guys you're actually looking for. I go into this in a lot more detail in my program Beautiful, Confident, Radiant YOU!, but the reality is that if he's the right guy for you (which also means you're the right woman for him) then he won't disappear on you - and he'll want the same kind of commitment that you want.

This is also why I recommend waiting to become intimate with someone until you know what you have really is a committed relationship, and not just an assumption of commitment that we're typically all too ready to make.

Take as long as you need to really get to know someone; what we’re going for here takes time and can’t be rushed. Also, trust your intuition, don’t second-guess it. Deep down, you always know.

And most importantly, don’t give yourself away emotionally, mentally, or, most of all, physically. You’ll know when it’s time because there won’t be any lingering questions, there won’t be any doubt.

I hope this helps, Gabriela.

Love,

Jane

Have you had any similar experiences, advice, or words of encouragement that you'd like to share with our dear friend Gabriela? Tell us in the comments!

How Your Father-Daughter Relationship Drastically Affects Your Love Life

119 Comments

 

A beautiful woman hugs her father as she thinks about how her father daughter relationship affects her love life.
Our relationship with our dad sets the stage for all our future relationships with men.

He’s our first love. Our first example of what a man is like.

From the time we enter the world, our daddy becomes our everything.

He’s the one we run to when we need to feel safe and secure. He’s the one we go to when we have something to show the world.

He’s the one we want to know will always be there for us, no matter what we do or who we become. He’s the one we long to please.

And he's the one whose approval we're always striving for.

It sets the stage

Our relationship with our dad sets the stage for all our future relationships with men.

If he was there for us, both physically and emotionally, we learn that this is what we can expect from men and this is what we look for and gravitate toward in our own relationships with men.Continue Reading

The Whole Point of Dating

50 Comments

A beautiful woman is sitting across the table at a restaurant on a date with a man.Yes, you do have to know who you are, what you have to offer and all those things that make you confident. You need to know what you’re looking for, what you really believe about love and why you keep choosing the same types of guys and expecting a different result even though they’re exactly the types that aren't on the same page as you.

But apart from all this important work we do to find out who we really are and what we’re looking for, beyond our soul searching to find our story and discover our own unique blind spots, triggers and programming. Aside from knowing what’s ours, what’s someone else’s and what comes from our culture, there lies the practical art of dating.

It’s time to revisit this concept of “dating” because it’s holding the bridge between being alone and finding someone to share our lives with.

But most of us are approaching it completely the wrong way.

We need to see dating as more than simply a means to an end. We need to see it as an enjoyable journey, filled with adventure, new people and places, new friends and renewing old acquaintances. And the key word here is enjoyable.

Continue Reading

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About Jane Garapick

Hi, I'm Jane Garapick. I'm here to provide inspiration, support and empowerment on the journey to true love. I know what it’s like to have a broken heart, a broken dream, and a broken you. And I know for a fact, that your dreams can still come true! Read more...
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