Finding love
Dating is challenging! With quickly changing dating norms, social app algorithms, and our isolating world, dating can feel like a game the rules are always shifting.
And if you’re new to dating after a long time of being coupled dating can feel like entered a whole new world with new language, terms, expectations and norms.
And worse, breakups might be deeply, confusingly devastating.
Perhaps in exasperation you’ve said “I’ll just be single” or you find yourself going on and off the dating or social apps with increased irritation and discouragement.
Hooked on a feeling
If you have experienced painful relationships in the past it can feel even more daunting; opening your heart up in a way that feels foreign or dangerous. A question that often comes up in therapy: “is this my trauma or my intuition?”
By learning more about your attachment tendencies you will come to a new understanding of yourself and what you really want in a relationship. Our experiential, emotionally-focused approach can help to calm the pain from the past relationships and help you begin to create new patterns in your life.
Who will truly see me?
In dating we can face:
concern about trusting yourself to pick someone safe or good for you
nitpicking as if trying to find something wrong with a partner
struggling to keep up with the intensity of a dating partner and feeling confused about how to open up in the way that is authentic
struggling to keep boundaries — quickly losing yourself in a new partners’ interests, goals and being who you imagine they want you to be
creating a fantasy that keeps you from seeing the reality of the person or relationship — “future tripping”
a feeling of having a broken “picker” and feeling confused about the people or relationships you are drawn to
