Toxic Relationships Can Be Hard To Spot Until It Feels Too Late!
We've all heard the phrase, "love is blind," and unfortunately, it often holds true in the context of toxic relationships. Our emotions and our need for love can make it difficult to recognize red flags and warning signs, leading us to stay in unhealthy situations far longer than we should.
In this blog, we'll explore why we might find have found ourselves staying too long in toxic relationships, offer insights into breaking free and share some strategies for building healthier connections in the future.
Understanding The Stay: Reasons Why We May Stay Too Long!
➡️ Fear of Loneliness:
It's common to fear being alone, and this fear can be a powerful motivator to stay in a toxic relationship. The comfort of having someone, even if they are detrimental to your well-being, can outweigh the uncertainty of being on your own.
➡️ Low Self-Esteem:
Many people suffer with low self-esteem and may believe that they don't deserve better or that finding a healthier relationship is an impossible task. This belief system can trap them in toxic dynamics.
➡️ Sunk Cost Fallacy:
The more time and effort invested in a relationship, the harder it becomes to walk away. The "sunk cost fallacy" makes it challenging to accept that the time spent in a toxic relationship won't magically improve the situation. It’s hard to give up on something that we’ve put so much energy into!
➡️ Manipulation and Gaslighting:
Toxic partners often employ manipulation and gaslighting techniques to make their victims doubt themselves and question their own needs and emotions. This psychological warfare can make it challenging to see the relationship for what it truly is.
How to Break Free:
✅ Self-Reflection:
The first step towards breaking free is self-reflection. Understand your own needs, values, and boundaries. This self-awareness lays the foundation for recognizing when a relationship becomes toxic.
✅ Seek Support:
Don’t isolate yourself and shut people out of your life and keep what’s going on in your relationship a secret. Share your experiences with friends, family, or a therapist. Having an external perspective can provide clarity and validate your feelings, helping you understand that you deserve better.
✅ Establish Boundaries:
Clearly define your boundaries and communicate them to your partner. You have to speak up for what you need and what is healthy for you. This can be challenging especially if your partner is making you doubt yourself. But if you set boundaries and they are consistently violated, it's probably time to move on.
✅ Prioritize Self-Care:
Focus on self-care to rebuild your self-esteem. Do the things that make you feel good. Engage in activities that bring you joy, surround yourself with positive and supportive people and prioritize your mental and emotional well-being.
How To Build A Healthier Future:
🦋 Learn from the Past:
Reflect on the lessons learned from the toxic relationship. Identify red flags and trust your instincts on what feels right and wrong when entering new relationships.
🦋 Set Healthy Standards:
Establish clear standards for your future relationships. Recognize and address any signs of toxicity early on, and be willing to walk away if those standards are not met. Take your time getting to know someone new, this will ensure that you notice when something may not be right and you can tackle it early on.
🦋 Continuous Self-Growth:
Embrace personal growth as an ongoing process. Cultivate a mindset that values self-improvement, ensuring that you are continually evolving and becoming the best version of yourself. Learn by any mistakes and forgive yourself for making them.
🦋 Choose Wisely:
Be selective in choosing your partners. Prioritize compatibility, mutual respect, and open communication. A healthy relationship is built on a foundation of trust, understanding, and support.
You Can Break Free
Breaking free from toxic relationships and past negative patterns is a challenging but necessary step toward reclaiming your happiness and well-being. By understanding the reasons behind staying in such relationships, learning from the past, recognizing what you do and DON’T want and focussing on building healthier connections with people in future relationships, you can create much more positive, fulfilling relationships. The journey will also contribute to your overall growth and happiness in the long-run too.
P.S. If you are single and want a healthy relationship, you may really like my NEW program: 💕Solo to Soulmate: Finding Love Offline: A fun & empowering path to organically attract your partner without dating apps.💕
❤️ 🦋 In this course you’ll go from feeling discouraged, stuck and like love is passing you by to feeling empowered, inspired and confident that you can enjoy the freedom of an organic path to meet your soulmate, without the time-consuming frustration of dating apps. You can also choose to include a one to one Rapid Transformational Therapy session with me as part of the program, which will help you to address and heal the root cause of problems and past negative patterns you may have experienced in your love-life.
We’re starting in February and places are limited. The first 10 people to enrol will get a special rate in return for their feedback as founding members! If you want to join us on this life-changing 4 week course please get in touch by writing "First 10" in the message box here!
When Dating Some Rejection Is Inevitable
Embarking on the journey of dating can be both exciting and challenging. It's a time of self-discovery, new connections, and perhaps even finding a lifelong partner. However, along the way, you may experience some rejection. While rejection is never easy, it's an inevitable part of the dating process.
In this blog, I want to give some strategies for dealing with rejection in the world of dating. If you have tools and the mindset to take any rejection in your stride it will make dating more sustainable, which ultimately will mean you will meet someone to share your life with.
7 Ways to Deal with Rejection
1. Try to Think Positively:
Maintaining a positive mindset is crucial when facing rejection. Remember that rejection doesn't define your worth or value. It means nothing bad about you! Approach dating with an open heart and an optimistic outlook, but view rejection as a redirection, guiding you toward someone more compatible with your goals and values.
2. Reflect and Learn:
After experiencing rejection, take some time for self-reflection. Analyze the situation and consider whether there are aspects of yourself or your approach that you could change or do differently. Is there any learning from what has happened? It's not about changing who you are but evolving and growing from your experience.
3. Don't Take it Personally:
Rejection often has more to do with the other person than any shortcomings on your part. Understand that everyone has their own preferences and reasons for making romantic choices. If someone doesn’t choose you, it means nothing bad about you, it’s just part of the process. You don’t feel really drawn to everyone do you? We can’t expect everyone we are interested in to always feel the same way about us. So don't internalize any rejection; instead, recognize that compatibility is a two-way street.
4. Build a Strong Support System:
Having a supportive network of friends and family can be invaluable during challenging times. Share your experiences with people you trust, and allow them to provide encouragement and perspective. Sometimes, an outside viewpoint can help you see the bigger picture. Lean on the people that are there for you, just as you would do for them if they were struggling with something.
5. Focus on Self-Care:
Dating can be fun but it can also be emotionally taxing, so prioritize self-care. Make sure you include in your day or week activities that bring you joy and relaxation. Whether it's reading a good book, practicing meditation, or enjoying a hobby, taking care of yourself will contribute to a positive mindset and resilience if you do have to face rejection at times.
6. Keep the Faith:
Maintain faith in the process of finding love. Understand that rejection is a natural part of the dating journey and that the right person may not have crossed your path yet. Keep an open heart and believe that every rejection is a step closer to meeting someone truly compatible.
7. Adjust Your Expectations:
Expect it to take time for you to meet someone special and don’t expect to meet someone quickly. If you catch yourself feeling impatient, try to be flexible and change your expectations a bit. It can make dealing with the good and bad parts of dating a bit easier. Just remember, being open to adjusting what you expect might bring you closer to finding the right person for you.
I hope these strategies and mindset shifts will help you feel less alone and that whilst rejection doesn't always feel good it is normal! Don't let it stop you from believing that you will meet your person! I believe every rejection you experience gets you closer to what you want!
P.S. If you are single and are wanting a relationship, you may really like my NEW program: Solo to Soulmate: Finding Love Offline: A fun & empowering path to organically attract your partner without dating apps.
In this course you’ll go from feeling discouraged, stuck and like love is passing you by to feeling empowered, inspired and confident that you can enjoy the freedom of an organic path to meet your soulmate, without the time-consuming frustration of dating apps.
We’re starting in February and places are limited. The first 10 people to enrol will get a special rate in return for their feedback as founding members! If you want to join us on this life-changing 4 week course please get in touch by writing "First 10" in the message box here!
When it Comes to Dating, Our Mindset is Important!
Many of my 40+ clients who are single and want a relationship, tell me that they are daunted by dating. By the time we get to our 40's we have normally collected some baggage.
Some have been really hurt by past relationships or break-ups and just don’t want the same thing to happen again. Others have been single for some time now and feel so out of touch with dating and relationships.
These wonderful women tell me they’re scared to put themselves ‘out there’ and that the dating scene is difficult.
Common limiting beliefs that I hear when speaking to women (particularly those over 40) is that there is a shortage of compatible single men out there, that they don’t believe they will ever meet anyone, it’s too late or that they feel they may be destined to be alone.
These fears from the past and limiting beliefs about the present and future can play a part in just stopping us from even trying to meet someone new!
This type of thinking does need to be worked on and changed for us to be happy and successful in love and this is a big part of the work I do with my clients in my programs. Once we challenge these often false, unhelpful thoughts and embody the belief that we can find our partner and be happy and secure in a loving relationship, then we’re ready to open up to dating. So how to go about dating when we’re over 40?
Dating Apps /Internet Dating are not the be all end all!
Whilst to most single people in their 20’s & 30’s dating apps are the norm as a medium for meeting potential partners, people in their 40’s upwards remember that there was (and still is) another way! Whilst there is no doubt that dating apps can be successful for helping people couple up (and I know a couple of people who met on dating apps and are now happily married or in a stable relationship), they don't always work or are not always an enjoyable experience! Many people tell me they would rather meet their partner in real-life and not have to bother with internet dating.
In my view there are both challenges and positives with both approaches. In this blog I wanted to explore the pros and cons of both using dating apps or choosing a more organic route to meeting your match so that people can decide what is right for them, when looking for love.
Here are the pros and cons of both internet dating and meeting a partner in real-life situations:
Dating Apps:
✅ Pro: Dating apps can offer a convenient approach, efficiently connecting you with potential matches based on shared interests, values, and preferences.
❌ Con: However, the power of the algorithmic may still miss the intangible chemistry that we can only really feel when we meet someone face-to-face!
✅ Pro: Dating apps open the door to meeting more potential partners, broadening our horizons beyond local haunts.
❌ Con: You may 'meet' more people but quantity doesn't always equate to quality, and sifting through profiles can be a daunting and time-consuming task.
✅ Pro: For those juggling a busy career and life, dating apps provide a convenient way to dip your toes into the dating pool without rearranging your entire schedule.
❌ Con: Many women tell me that the last thing they want to do after a busy day at work is jump onto the apps for more screen time.
❌ Con: Are they really who they say they are? Out-dated photos (say no more!!) and exaggerations or bending the truth: It beats me why people still think they can get away with putting old photos of their (much) younger selves on their dating profile. Or exaggerating hobbies (they may have hiked a mountain or sky-dived many moons ago but if you haven't done something for 10 years plus don't make it look as if you're super-active every weekend!) The other classic thing is height exaggeration. Again it baffles me that people state that they are taller than they actually are. I guess they do this because the dating app or site gets you to tick a height box and if you're a guy and under a certain height you may not get as many matches.
❌ Con: The way some apps and sites are set up can be limiting. For example many women over 40 do not look their age they look a lot younger. They would also like to meet someone who is around their age or older, but if older they would like someone who is fit, healthy and takes similar care of their appearance too. Its a common complaint that these women are either attracting younger guys looking for short-term fun with an attractive older woman, or much older guys who these women are not physically attracted to or compatible with either.
❌ Con: These are all comments I've heard from women about talking to people digitally. "It can be so time-consuming to be messaging back and forth with potential dates, just to meet them and not feel any connection." Running out of ideas for keeping conversations going with people who don't ask questions." or "Potential dates wanting to be in constant contact via message otherwise they drift off."
❌ Con: Ghosting!!! I know this can happen if you meet someone in real life too but the structure of dating apps makes messaging &/or dating and then ghosting so much easier! One woman told me that she'd been chatting to someone online for a couple of weeks when he announced that he really wanted to see her as he felt they had built a real connection. She replied back saying that she would love to meet up too. Then guess what?!! She heard crickets!!!!
Meeting in Real Life
✅ Pro: Nothing beats the authenticity of a face-to-face meeting. Real-life meetings allow you to gauge chemistry, body language, and that elusive spark from the get-go.
❌ Con: Initial nerves may cloud judgment, and missed opportunities can happen if we or the person we like, don’t pluck up the courage to make the first move. A way to tackle this is to just chat to people as if they may become a friend, this can minimise nervousness or shyness as it takes the pressure of and you're just having a nice conversation.
✅ Pro: You can meet through shared social circles. Meeting through friends or shared interests provides a built-in network, giving you a common ground from the start. It also means you know more about them and can trust that they are being authentically them too.
❌ Con: The dating pool may feel more limited, and your ideal match might not be within your immediate social circles. You may have a larger quantity of potential dates if you join a dating app, but as we've already discussed above, quantity is not the same as quality!
✅ Pro: Real-life connections often follow a more natural trajectory, allowing relationships to evolve organically and at a natural pace that you both can feel comfortable with.
❌ Con: The pace of meeting someone in real-life might be slower, and impatience may set in.
✅ Pro: If you really didn't enjoy using dating apps, you can just free-up your time to do more of the things you enjoy doing. Life is too short to do something you hate!
✅ Pro: If you're out and about being naturally yourself and not really looking for love (at that precise moment), that is the ideal positive energy to meet someone who sees the 'real' you and is attracted to you just as you are.
✅ Pro: Meeting someone in real-life may require you to do new things, go to events or start new hobbies that will challenge you to get out of your comfort zone. This is all great news as personal growth always come when we do new or different things!
Choosing What Feels Right for You & Striking a Balance
If you’re reading this and you’re over 40 and would like a relationship, finding the right approach often involves striking a balance between the potential convenience of dating apps and the genuine connections that you can make when you meet someone in real life.
There are pluses and minuses for both, as pointed out above! The key lies in navigating them with intention, patience and self-awareness, knowing the benefits and what may be not so great with both paths!
Whether you're swiping right in the digital realm or are more ‘set on’ meeting your match in real life, the journey of dating after 40 can be fun and sometimes frustrating all at the same time!
My best advice is to embrace the adventure, enjoy the journey, stay true to yourself, and who knows—you might just find love where you least expect it.
Remember, whichever route you choose it may take some time to meet a soulmate, but if you’re enjoying your life now as a single person, that isn’t so bad!
P.S. If you choose the real-life approach to finding ‘your person’ you may really like my NEW program: 💕Solo to Soulmate: Finding Love Offline: A fun & empowering path to organically attract your partner without dating apps.💕
❤️ 🦋 In this course you’ll go from feeling discouraged, stuck and like love is passing you by to feeling empowered, inspired and confident that you can enjoy the freedom of an organic path to meet your soulmate, without the time-consuming frustration of dating apps.
We’re starting in February and places are limited. The first 10 people to enrol will get a special rate in return for their feedback as founding members! If you want to join us on this life-changing 4 week course please get in touch by writing "First 10" in the message box here!
