Relationships | Naked Recovery Online - Part 2

Pt1: Tale of two singletons

By Adèle Théron

Part One – You Don’t Know What’s Good For You

We all have that amazing friend who’s perpetually single, and we just can’t work out why. You know the type: she’s smart, brilliant, beautiful and tons of fun. She dips her toes in the dating pool – perhaps she’s even the type who always seems to have the next date lined up. And yet, nothing seems to stick.

This wouldn’t be a problem if this was 100% her choice and she was actually very happy with the situation. But the trouble is, you’re painfully aware that she would really like to be in a serious relationship. Worse, the longer this goes on, the more she worries that there’s something fundamentally wrong with her. Something lacking. Or unlovable.

Sound familiar?

Perhaps you have a best friend like this. Or a sister. Or perhaps that perennial singleton is you.

So why on earth is this happening? What’s the great mystery?

I’m going to get to that. But first, I’d like to tell you a story.

Case study

Anna is a very good friend of mine. On paper, she’s top girlfriend material: she’s gorgeous, she’s funny, she’s warm and generous, she has a degree from a top university and a fantastic job that she excels at and which pays her very well indeed.

Everyone loves spending time with Anna. Ask her what she’s up to next week and you’ll get a packed itinerary of post-work drinks, theatre and cinema trips, weekend minibreaks, and, of course, dates. Anna’s a Tinder fiend. And she has no shortage of admirers.

But here’s the thing: Anna hasn’t been in a serious relationship since university. And even then, it wasn’t a relationship that she, or anyone she knew, could really picture ending in forever-after. Despite everything she has to offer, despite all the attention she gets, despite the fact that I know for a fact she wants to do the whole marriage-and-kids thing in the foreseeable future, she never seems to meet anyone right for her.

…Or so she says.

It’s like watching a car crash in slow motion

Because here’s the other thing. I’ve been out with Anna when guys start hitting on her. I’ve watched her scroll through potential matches on dating apps and sites. And often, it’s like watching a car crash in slow motion.

Looking for the wrong qualities

Because the things that Anna truly values – the things that she’d logically need to look for to have the kind of relationship she wants – are precisely the things she’s most dismissive about when she comes across them in real life.

And (Shock! Horror!) the traits that caused her the most pain in the men she’s dated before are precisely the things she finds most attractive.

Anna used to joke about this. She knew that the men she was attracted to were totally unsuitable. That they were arrogant. That they didn’t challenge her intellectually. That they exuded unreliability and would let her down.

So when she decided it was time to start looking for something more serious, she made a concerted effort to pick differently.

She recognised that feckless party boys with minimal ambition are probably not a great prospect the future. But instead of identifying the core personality traits that make these men so wrong for her, she superficially changed track. Now, for example, she’ll actively seek out someone with a decent job and academic record – who, on paper, looks like the polar opposite of her usual type.

It didn’t work. Why? Because these men are not any different.

No difference

Inevitably, these guys are simply the same arrogant, insensitive personalities, transplanted into a more respectable context. They might have made it out of their parents’ basement, but they’re essentially showy, self-involved types with over-inflated egos – they just have a bit more cash in the bank.

And, of course, they treat her just the same.

And these days, this scares her.

Because when Anna used to date guys she never expected to want to stay with forever, it was easier to shrug off the situation when things when wrong. Sure, she got hurt a few times, but deep down she was never really surprised.

But now that Anna is actively looking for something long-term, she’s horrified that this is still happening. She doesn’t know how to find someone who doesn’t behave like this.

Her responses to these traits have become so ingrained that she’s instinctively attracted to the kind of men who end up hurting her – even when she thinks she’s doing the opposite.

What Anna needs to do now is stage an intervention with her own instincts.

You control who you fall in love with

Many of us assume that sexual attraction is some great mystery that you have no control over. You can’t help who you fall in love with, etc. etc. That’s just not true.

Researchers at Jaunty explain attraction as a pyramid, in which different elements are weighted differently. At the base you have health and status. The next layer is emotional. At the tip is logic.

At the base you have health and status. The next layer is emotional. At the tip is logic

Here’s how it works. When you meet someone in person (or on Tinder), the first things you are aware of are the health and status factors. Health is everything from decent personal hygiene through to good skin or a buff body – the obvious things that we usually associate with whether we find someone hot or hot.

Status

Status is far more complex and affected by personal and cultural values. There are external indicators, of course, like wealth, power, a great job, etc., but it also covers things like confidence, the ability to make others laugh or to command an audience, skill sets and belief systems. And, of course, it relates to the context you’re in right now. That means that status-based attraction could include from fancying your super-smart university lecturer to being impressed by someone’s ability to fix a shelf, nail a pub quiz question or even competitively down a pint.

Both of these things are kind of frivolous or fickle. Someone who commands status in one context might easily pass under the radar in another. And obviously, someone who has a great body now might not look so hot in 15 years’ time. As indicators of a successful, long-term relationship, health and status are shaky at best. Yet research shows again and again that they are fundamental to attraction.

Emotional connection

Okay, let’s move on to the next layer, emotional connection.

There are four types of emotional connection: feeling that you trust someone, having the emotional intelligence to put someone at ease and make them feel comfortable, recognising a person’s uniqueness and spark, and a sense of uncertainty or mystery that intrigues you about this person.

Finally, at the top of the pyramid, you have logic.

This is there most of the really important questions lie. Is this person really “right” for you? Do they have the personal traits you need to feel happy and supported? Are they nuts in ways that you can cope with?

Whatever flaws this person has now are highly unlikely to change. Is this something you can live with forever? Do you want the same things? Do you share or respect each others’ beliefs and values?

This is all very interesting, you might be thinking, but how does it affect who we fall for?

Most of the time, when we meet someone in a social setting (or swipe right on a dating app), we allow ourselves to start at the base of the pyramid and work up.

If we’re attracted to someone based on health and status, we might start talking to them and search around for an emotional connection. If we have an emotional connection we go on a few dates to try and establish, logically, whether we have enough in common for this relationship to work.

The trouble is, by the time you get to the logic stage, you’re already kind of invested in this person. You fancy them for the most flimsy reasons of all – health and status – and then you’re looking for ways to make the rest fall into place.

Flip

What you need to do is to flip this on its head. To:

Narrow your pool based on whether there is a logical basis for a relationship
Find out if you have an emotional connection
Then, when everything else seems to fall into place, decide whether or not you’re also attracted to this person on the more superficial grounds we usually begin with.
Okay, it’s not always the easiest task to figure out in a first conversation or limited dating profile whether someone is perfect for you. But if you’re looking out for the right signals, you can get a pretty good picture, pretty fast.

For example, do you have similar interests? Are your jobs or life goals compatible? Do you have a broadly similar outlook on life? Find ways to sound out some of the bigger questions faster and you’ll save yourself serious heartache later.

And more generally, is this person conscientious? Do they keep to the plans and obligations they make? Can they exercise self-control? Because if they don’t do these things, they will probably cheat on you, use you, or do things to hurt you, no matter how much they love you.

Conclusion

Let’s jump back to Anna for a moment. Anna used to be attracted to men who were good-looking, super-confident, a bit wild and always the life and soul of the party. In other words, it was all about health and status.

When she decided to take her dating choices more seriously, she relied on external indicators like job titles, a university background, signs they were making money – things that sound like they belong at the top of the pyramid, but are actually just external status markers.

Many of us do this. We want to make sure we don’t repeat our mistakes, so we go for someone who superficially seems very different. Last boyfriend was a bit of a waster who always needed to borrow money? This time I’m going out with a lawyer who can presumably afford to pay his way. Previous girlfriend an incredibly self-absorbed model? Next time I’ll pick someone less obviously glossy and presume that means they’re more down-to-earth.

What we’re doing here is using status markers as stand-ins for real issues.

You can’t just ask what job someone does and then try to figure out if this makes them more manipulative, more generous, more sensible, more whatever. You have to delve a little deeper. You have to ask plenty of questions. You have to pay attention to how this person actually thinks and treats you (and other people) as a predictor of future behaviour.

In other words, you have to retrain your instincts to pick up on the things that can genuinely hurt you or make you happy. The things that will get you out of your rut and into a relationship you want.

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This is the first in a two-part series on getting out of the singledom trap. Click here for Part 2

Second marriage mistakes…

By Adèle Théron

Starting a Second Marriage? Don’t Assume You’ve Learned from Your Mistakes.

No doubt you already know these depressing statistics: nearly half of all marriages in the US and the UK end in divorce.

What you might not realise is that this number doesn’t decrease as we get older and wiser and (theoretically) better at figuring out what we want in a life partner. In fact, it goes up and up every time people try again.

In America, divorce rates for second and third marriages stand at 67% and 73% respectively.

How can this be?

Let’s just think about that for a moment. It’s scary enough to imagine that, statistically speaking, your first attempt at lifelong commitment is equally as likely to fail as it is to succeed. But for your third attempt to be three times more likely to screw up than to work out…? That people actually get dramatically worse at keeping a marriage together the more chances they have to get it right?

It’s a common and entirely natural compulsion to leave a relationship swearing to yourself that you will never, ever, fall for someone like that again. That, next time, you’ll go for someone utterly different.

And then, in your rush to prove to yourself that you won’t fall into the trap, you find yourself charging headlong into a relationship with someone that, on paper, is the polar opposite of your ex.

Becomes a purely superficial exercise

Now, I’ve talked before about how the main problem with this way of thinking is that, far too often, this becomes a purely superficial exercise.

That’s because the thought process tends to go something like this:

“My previous partner was a total workaholic who never had time for me and it made me miserable – so now I’m going to go for this super-carefree-seeming person who is mostly interested in having fun, and I’ll be so much happier!”

Root of the problem

But this doesn’t get to the root of the problem. It doesn’t address the communication issues or the self-defeating psychological habits and kneejerk reactions to problems and conflict that, in all likelihood, dominated the decline of your relationships.

It doesn’t help you to recognise the destructive cycles of behaviour that you and your ex were exhibiting. It doesn’t help you to heal and change.

Instead, it externalises the issue in a way that almost dooms you to fall into the same traps, time and again.

Let me explain.

Take the example I gave above. No one really divorces someone because they work long hours and are deeply involved in or passionate about their job.

You might divorce them because you feel feel hurt, neglected or even jealous that your emotional needs seem always to be secondary to something else in your partner’s life.

Or perhaps because you hate feeling shut down or belittled when you try to make demands on your partner’s time.

Or maybe because your partner is actually pretty miserable and resentful about having to work so hard to pay the bills – and that’s translating into aggressive or unpleasant behaviour at home.

Or even the real reason your partner is pouring so much energy into their work is because there’s been a breakdown in communication between you, or there’s a fundamental lack of connection in your relationship, that neither of you have been willing to address.

In which of these cases would it help to avoid a career-focussed partner and opt for a carefree hedonist instead?

Zero, is the answer to that. Zilch.

Just because the hot party animal bartender you’ve hooked up with on the rebound bears no obvious resemblance to your investment banker ex doesn’t mean that your problems and hang-ups will magically disappear. That they’ll treat you or relate to you any differently. Or that either of you will be better equipped to handle conflicts when they inevitably arise.

You aren’t going to feel less hurt and neglected because they’ve ditched you to go on a 5am bender than you did when your ex called to say they had to stay in the office until 10pm.

You aren’t going to be any less upset when they tell you you’re being clingy, dismiss your feelings out of hand or start taking out stress and frustration on you, whatever the cause.

And you aren’t going to be any better at expressing your emotions in ways that are healthy and productive. Or preventing either one of you becoming domineering or bullying in the way you communicate.

Change or expect the same outcome

In short, unless you do the hard work of interrogating your own feelings and behaviours, figuring out where and how to draw boundaries and facing up to the ways that you, too, might have contributed to your breakup, you will not begin to heal. And until you heal, you are dooming yourself to repeat (and to accept) the self-destructive behaviour or coping mechanisms that killed your first marriage, again and again.

And each time you do, you’ll wind up feeling even more helpless. Even more confused. Even more fearful, on some level, that you are unlovable

And each time you do, you’ll wind up feeling even more helpless. Even more confused. Even more fearful, on some level, that you are unlovable.

And even more likely to start pre-emptively sabotaging your next marriage before it has even had a chance to succeed.

This is a seriously important issue. These days, nearly a quarter of people in the US who are currently married have been married before. That’s a quarter of married people potentially carrying around the baggage of a previous marriage. A quarter of married people who, based on divorce statistics, aren’t learning from their mistakes.

A quarter of married people who, if they don’t get their act together and start taking control of the situations, are 67% likely to end up going through the pain of another divorce.

Divorce is traumatic

Divorce is a truly traumatic event. It is psychologically devastating. It harms your physical health and wellbeing. It’s financially catastrophic. And while, when divorce is necessary, you have to find the strength to survive it, you never, ever want to put yourself through that pain for reasons that you can absolutely avoid.

No matter how left of field you think you’re being in your dating choices, there is only one person in your new relationship that you can ever be sure will behave differently this time around – and that’s you.

Focus on how you will do things differently

So focus on how you will do things differently. Instead of shifting all responsibility for making the relationship work onto your next spouse, focus on how you yourself will grow, change and adapt your behaviour.

Be honest with yourself

Work on pinpointing the specific ways you react to problems that might escalate and exacerbate them, or on the other hand, that allow them to fester unchecked. Work on recalibrating the instinctive behaviours that are hurting you and the people you love.

Focus on figuring out what you really need from someone and how you will communicate that to them.

Think about how you’ll really figure out if the next person you fall for really meets the criteria you need – and how, if they don’t, you’ll spot the danger signs and change course long before you find yourself walking down the aisle.

And then, listen to yourself. Learn from the past. Break the cycle. Give yourself a chance, this time, to really be happy.

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3 ways you’re dooming your relationship before it’s began

By Adèle Théron

Have you been single since what seems like forever – and miserable about it? If so, you may be falling into one of these common self-defeating traps.

1) You Raise the Wrong Bars Way Too High

I’m not suggesting you settle for something or someone that just isn’t right for you. I’ve talked before at length about why it’s so important to know what you need in another person.

… But read that carefully: not, what you want.

What you need.

Because this is where things get muddled.

Remember the Attraction Pyramid I mentioned a few posts back? How in most situations we automatically approach attraction the wrong way around, by starting with health and status markers (how they look and signs they are dominant in a particular context), then whether we have an emotional connection, and then exploring the more logical basis for a relationship, i.e. whether we are really compatible for the reasons that genuinely matter?

Well, this is part of the same problem.

Sometimes, this is straightforwardly shallow. Obviously, if your priority near physical perfection or a certain size of bank balance, rather than someone with whom you connect and share values, you’re unlikely to have a meaningful relationship any time soon.

But usually, it’s more insidious than this. The way we draw up lists of things we’re looking for in a partner tend to be woefully superficial because our needs are incredibly complex – too difficult for us to put into simple terms. Instead, we end up using stand-in symbols that are far from perfect because we assume they mean the same thing.

For example, you might decide that you want to be with someone who works in a similar profession as you, so that they ‘get’ what you do.

But the underlying need could be that you have someone to whom you can unpack your day – who makes you feel safe and supported and able to express your worries.

Equally, it could be that you need someone who motivates you – someone to bounce ideas off, who is really interested in what you do, fuels your excitement and is more likely to suggest a solution to a problem than complain that it’s keeping you at work until 10pm.

Or it could be that you simply assume your shared experience will equal shared outlook, interests or passions.

Simply going out with someone who is also a teacher or a doctor or an actor or who runs their own business or whatever it you have on your list might mean that they understand where you’re coming from and can give you what you need. But that’s no guarantee.

Much better to look out for signs that they are that kind of person, rather than just presume it goes with the territory of a certain career.

The same goes for those little imperfections that crop up in the early stages.

People say things that are a bit awkward or embarrassing sometimes, especially when they’re nervous. A mildly annoying habit or trait, an anecdote that doesn’t quite come off, a slight personality flaw that means they’re not, in fact, perfect – for the most part, these are just signs that you’re not out for a drink with a robot. They’re not reasons to throw in the towel.

And obviously, anyone you have a relationship with will inevitably have different opinions on everything from books, film and music, to politics and philosophy, to the latest iPhone model. You don’t have to agree on everything, all the time.

… Instead, you need to have clear in your head what it is that you do absolutely need to agree on.

If a sense of adventure and exploring new places is what makes you tick, a relationship with a total homebody who prefers routine and certainty is unlikely to work. Alternatively, if you know that the most important thing for you is stability and closeness to your family, there’s little point kindling things with someone who clearly finds that stifling, no matter whether they tick all the boxes when it comes to having a safe, well-paid job and a mortgage.

It’s not about lowering or raising your standards. It’s about figuring about which “standards” are absolute essentials for long term happiness and which are simply the icing on the cake.

2) You Go On Dates with People You Don’t Like and Are Upset When They Reject You

This is probably the most common type of self-destructive behaviour that long-term singletons slip into, and it usually makes them feel like they’re at their very lowest point.

It sounds like the other end of the spectrum to demanding perfection, but the two often go hand-in-hand. Why? Because once you’ve decided that your perfect person doesn’t exist, the next stage is often to say, f*** it, clearly beggars can’t be choosers – I’ll give anyone a chance.

Then, when it doesn’t work out, you’re so horrified by the you’ve been rejected by someone you didn’t care about anyway that this pushes you into another whole layer of depression. Even your “last resorts” don’t want you! Are you really that undesirable?

This is incredibly unhealthy for so many reasons.

Firstly, this is no way to view other people, male or female.

It’s sad that language we hear day in, day out (“You can do better” “S/he’s punching above his weight” and so on) reinforces this idea that there’s some magical scale out there somewhere that everybody’s positioned on. As if the goal is to land someone further up on the scale and dating someone further down it means they should be somehow grateful.

What an ugly way to see the world. And, just as importantly, what a load of nonsense.

Yes, you need to know what it is that you need in a person. What you are attracted to. What the deal breakers are for you, personally.

But this isn’t a universal scale. It’s a list of things that matter to you.

And that other person you’re meeting with? They don’t simply exist to bolster your ego. They can probably tell that you’re underwhelmed and are understandably put off by that.

Meanwhile, they have their own list. A list that might look startlingly different to yours.

This means that, where you might naturally assume that you are the more desirable person in the equation because you’re more conventionally attractive, have a better job, are smarter or wittier – whatever – these might not be the criteria they are really concerned about right now. They might be looking for things that are totally different.

All you’re doing when you go out with someone you’re already unenthused about is put two people through the misery of being judged on rules they can’t meet, don’t care about or don’t understand.

And you wonder why this leaves you feeling crap about yourself?

3) You’re Trying to Turn a Perfectly Fine Fling into a Disastrous Long Term Thing

This is not about slut-shaming or telling you at what point in your relationship you should sleep with someone. You’re a grown up and can make these decisions for yourself!

I’m also not talking about one-night stands that are fun in the moment, but that you never expect (or try) to take anywhere.

I’m talking specifically about a dalliance that’s so obviously founded on physical attraction, will only ever be about that, and should really have run its course.

… But now that it’s started, you feel like you need to keep it going.

The trouble is, even if you think you’re cool with just keeping things casual for now and seeing where things end up, that’s rarely what happens.

Let me explain.

I have so many friends who are jaded about dating, because they say their new flings fizzle so fast.

Mostly these are women who say that, even if they aren’t sure yet if they’re looking for something serious, the guys they’ve been hooking up with go quiet all of a sudden for reasons they don’t understand.

One friend told me recently that she was left feeling pretty crappy about herself and annoyed with one man she’d seen a few times.

She’d made it clear that she wanted to keep things casual for now and, at first, he seemed okay with this – but then he bailed.

My friend couldn’t understand why a straight, warm-blooded man would behave like this. After all, isn’t that what all men want? Was she that unattractive that even a “fun fling” was turning her down?

Here’s how I see it: we live in a culture that constantly tells women that men are always after sex. That, if this on the cards, they’ll never say no. And if they can get it without emotional investment or commitment, so much the better.

(This works in both directions, by the way. Men grow up hearing that women ultimately want a relationship out of them, and that sex is, on some level, a tool used to “land” one. Many men are thrown when a woman they’ve been sleeping with says no, they don’t want to take it any further after all!)

But is that actually the case?

Okay, the desire to get laid drives a lot of people’s impulsive decisions, whether they’re male or female.

And while many relationships are passionate from the outset – which can be amazing – passion isn’t the same as just wanting to get someone naked. It’s being excited their company, about having a spark, about finding unexpected things you have in common (or don’t) and how that heightens your attraction to them.

If you’re going to spend any amount of time in each other’s company, you need to know that you have more to talk about than what’s below the waist.

If you don’t have the other elements in place, no matter how much fun the sex is, you’ll both get bored pretty damn fast, or, worse, you start projecting more meaning onto the situation than it deserves.

The longer this drags on, the more you retro-rationalise your conquest by telling yourself (and your friends) that maybe you do like this person. That they make you laugh. That they’re quite sweet really. That hey, maybe it could turn into something longer term.

Even when you know in your heart that you’re clutching at straws.

Even when you know that, if you were being rational right now, you would never have gone for someone like this.

Even when you know that they only reason you’re getting attached is that they’re here now and hey, it’s a hassle to get to know someone knew or you feel bad about upping your “number”.

Right?

No one likes to be rejected, whether it’s on an emotional or just a sexual level. Whether they wanted a relationship with this person or not. It’s a blow to our confidence. And if you know you’re going to get hurt, it’s just not worth putting yourself through this for something that’s meaningless in the long run.

Because the problem with trying to shoehorn something all about sex into something more substantial is that makes you emotionally vulnerable without any of the upsides.

To go back to the attraction pyramid for a moment: you’re taking a fling based on the flimsiest part of the pyramid – health and status – and allowing its failure to hurt you, when the only relationships you should be investing that kind of energy in are those that have firm foundations.

Relationships that have a logical basis in the things that matter to you – and that you need to feel happy, supported and safe.

This isn’t about moralising. This isn’t about making you feel bad.

It’s about taking a good look at the kinds of relationships you have in your life and asking yourself why you’re trying to keep them alive. Whether it would make you happy for them to succeed. And if not, whether it’s worth the potential pain of having them fall flat.

Then, using these questions to figure out what kind of relationship or person would be worth the potential heartache – and making sure you don’t get sucked in by ones that aren’t.

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