My response to: 18 Ugly Truths About Modern Dating That You Have To Deal With

http://thoughtcatalog.com/christopher-hudspeth/2014/04/18-ugly-truths-about-modern-dating-that-you-have-to-deal-with/

My response to this article above. Read the link first, and then my response. I was moved by this article because these are frustrations which are SO common, and I know a lot of people feel this way. Over the years, some of my clients have expressed these same concerns.

It can make a person feel very powerless, when they view the situation in this way. But it's also understandable, because we all feel disappointed and sometimes get hurt in dating situations. 

There is another way to view what's going on, which I feel is more accurate, and also will help you feel more powerful and secure in your dating! Read on. 

1. If someone is not that interested in you, it’s going to hurt your feelings. Get out of there fast. Love isn’t about power. If there are power games, get out of there, and get into something functional, where you are adored and admired right back. And if you have all the power because you care less? You don’t really care about this person -- they aren't exciting to you. How boring is it to date someone you’re not crazy into? Boring! Get out of there and stop hurting someone’s self esteem to ease your boredom. Get a hobby instead. Make new friends. Find other people to date. Don't idle away your time trying to feel better about yourself from the attention of a person you're about to hurt. It's not right. 

2.  If someone takes hours or days to text back, they might have an insecure attachment style — anxious people (who are overly clingy) like to pretend they don’t care and test someone’s intentions by waiting to respond, and pretending to be more independent than they really are. Avoidants (afraid of closeness) will test others by ignoring them, to see if they’ll put up with their distancing techniques without rejecting them. Why not date a secure person instead, which is a person who will not see the point in playing games. They are direct and straightforward. People with personality disorders may also enjoy being cavalier or hurtful to others, due to a lack of empathy. If you want to learn more about which of the 4 attachment styles YOU have, and what to do about it, video here. 

3. It definitely does take a little while to get to know someone and find out their intentions. However, if you’re consistently feeling let down, confused, or disappointed with someone, chances are they aren’t showing enough interested in you, and it’s best to hit the road and find someone who is crazy interested. There are signs a person is genuinely interested, such as prolonged eye contact. 

4. Most communication these days is over text, especially to set up online dates. It’s the norm in society these days. But if you prefer the phone, simply ask this person if they’re comfortable with phone calls. It’s an easy request, and many people will be open to it! Bam, you’re able to communicate, request, and find people who share your outlooks and are willing to speak on the phone. That said, it may be better to get to know a date in-person a few times before jumping into phone calls, or you may get some awkward dead-air silence if you haven’t first established some rapport. The phone can feel intrusive or awkward to many people these days — since phone calls typically happen with your closest people: your mom, best friend, or the love of your life, not people you don’t know that well. So try to be respectful if your date doesn’t want to jump into the phone right away — definitely don’t demand that a Tinder match give you a phone call, for example. Wait until you're at a level of emotional intimacy that matches that phone. 

5. If a person is telling you “maybe’ or “I’ll let you know,” drop them. You deserve to find a person to be one-another’s priorities. If the interest isn’t strong enough, look elsewhere. 

6. People who lack empathy can do horrible hurtful things to others, and it does appear that they don’t suffer, because lacking empathy means they don’t feel guilt or remorse for what they’ve done. Narcissists, sociopaths and other personality disorders won’t flinch at devastating someone, and may even get an ego boost from it — however, all people who lack empathy have been severely damaged in childhood, and I mean severely. Their emotional system is shot. Life for them feels insecure, based on ego only (no deep happiness or security for them), and it’s often quite boring due to their inability to truly connect with other people (which empathy is needed for). It feels like a junk food shallow life, or a video game full of cheap thrills (that dissolve into boredom, depression, apathy), and these people often suffer from depression, jealousy of others, extreme emptiness, and rage attacks. 

7. Probably true.

8. If you have the sense someone is inviting you to hook-up, versus taking a serious interest in dating you, and this feels bad to you, decline those invites. It will boost your self-esteem to see yourself only spending time with people who value you. If you're accepting hookup invites (when you'd prefer a relationship) because you can’t be alone, work on that. Learn to screen people out until you find high-quality, and learn to nurture healthy relationships, instead of seeking to fill a pit of emptiness by using people, heal yourself and any issues you have —then you will seek to share with other people and connect with them on your terms, instead of being a slave to filling the emptiness pit. 

9. There are always people out there who will lie, cheat, steal, and deceive others for their own shallow gains. See #6. The problem is, some of these people will put in longer-term effort to score the prize, so delaying sleeping with someone may not always screen them out. Use your judgement, and know that some people may still hurt you, despite you getting to know them slowly. Don’t take it personally and deal with your wounds. Unfortunately there are only laws to protect deceptive acts in business, not in personal matters. Maybe that will change someday? But for now, it is a personal risk, just as it is in business, to get screwed over in dating, and unfortunately, there's no way to sue them! Though that may change in the future, as new laws are made, of course. 

10. Most of the time. There are a few, very rare, cases where texts don’t send properly especially in iPhones. I’ve had it happen to me, where a guy sent me a text I didn’t receive. He sent me one more text a few days later, just to confirm I was blowing him off. And he found out I hadn’t gotten it. When I met up with him, I didn't know if I could believe him that he really had texted, or if it was a white lie, and he was saying "uh ya sure I texted you..." But he insisted it was true, and he was worried I had rejected him. He thought maybe I was making a white lie, pretending I hadn't received it. So we looked at our phone text histories side-by-side, and sure enough -- the text clearly showed “sent” on his phone (on the date he’d told me he’d sent it) but it didn’t show up on my phone at all, in our text thread. Especially shortly after software updates, phones can suddenly turn black or lose cell reception. And when reception is restored, texts don't always come through properly. 

Before walking away from someone you were crazy about, wait a few days and send one more text. If you're in danger of being like that guy from Swingers, who left an endless trail of phone messages, stop yourself -- simply ask if they got the text, and make it clear you won't continue texting if they aren't interested -- but you thought they were cool so you wanted to double check. It's the risk you take -- clarity, versus putting yourself on the line. You might feel stupid asking "Did you get that text? You did? Okay, so you just didn't want to continue dating." You will feel silly, but "thanks for the info and best of luck," is not such a horrible thing. But you might feel really silly if you missed the love of your life because you assumed she got the text, and she assumed you never texted! 

11. Yes if you want a relationship, communicate that. If the person isn’t willing to commit and on the same page, let them be on a different page, somewhere else, with someone else. Again, this can be due to people with attachment problems, or a lack of interest (usually along with a lack of empathy — most people with empathy feel guilty using someone and stringing them along when they aren’t truly interested in them, and that typically doesn’t go on very long). People with reduced or no empathy will hurt other people in this way, and those aren’t the kind of people you want around. 

12. Social media, or in real life, people who lack decency and don’t care about harming others will selfishly take what they can take, and do whatever they can get away with. But do you want a sociopath-type-person in your life? Someone who is capable of committing to a relationship will be focused on that, and won’t start behaviors to try to lure others. Watch a quality, attractive guys who is in a relationship and watch his eyes in a bar — even as attractive girls make eyes at him, or try to talk to him, he ignores them completely, as if they don’t exist. Because they aren't important to him. His girlfriend is important to him. Girls react the same way with guys, when they're in a relationship and emotionally healthy. 

An emotionally healthy person will act that way in a relationship. They will give their partner attention, and they won't seek attention from other single people to boost their ego. A healthy person may "like" some Facebook photos of friends, or things they truly like, but there is usually a "vibe" going on that tells you if this is decent behavior. There is a line between friendship and flirting that won't be crossed, and it will seem sincere. A guy liking pictures on Facebook of other girls is probably seeking ego-attention and might have a personality disorder like Narcissism, maybe is a sociopath, and again, a lack of empathy.

13. There’s nothing wrong with having a lot of options! The world is full of them. Single people should be sizing up potential options everywhere they go. If someone in a relationship is doing this, see #12.

14. This is always true in that, it takes a while to get to know anyone. But a healthy person doesn’t have much to hide. Though they will get to know you slowly, their actual personality won’t change much. They will simply reveal more personal and intimate information to you. A disordered person wears a “mask” or a false persona, and it can be shocking if they remove that mask to show you they are not that person at all! The mask they wore may not even exist in reality -- it can be a totally made up persona that isn't like them at all. This is where you get into those Jekyll  and Hyde situations. If you’re concerned about this, learn about the signs of personality disorders, what the red flags are, what healthy boundaries are, and take those warning signs seriously. Google is your friend and can save you time and heartbreak. You're not a fortune teller but small signs do exist from the beginning. If you are tricked (it can happen to anyone as con-people are charming and convincing) learn the lesson for next time. 

15. Commitment and rejection are both universal, human fears. If you feel overwhelmed by the fear of either rejection or commitment, self-development or therapy can help you. For example, if you keep attracting unavailable people, it can mean that you are actually afraid of commitment, so finding people who it “can’t work out with” can keep you safe, as painful as that is. Other people may truly fear drowning in another person, so they may push that person away, while also making sure to keep that person “hooked” because they’re also afraid of abandonment — but these are all in the “not emotionally healthy” category. A healthy human will express any fears openly (for the most part) and communicate what they need (whether that is more time together or more time apart), and you can discuss them openly. If you can’t yet do this, work on yourself and heal your past, until you can learn to. 

16. This is called being indirect, or possibly, passive aggressive (saying one thing and doing the opposite). While in the beginning, people may be a bit sheepish to openly express themselves, you should see signs soon on that they are warming up to you, and honestly telling you how they feel directly. If you have to search through cryptic social media messages, this person may be too afraid of intimacy to date.

17. People who overstep boundaries are not emotionally healthy people. If your partner is a functioning person (versus a person who has dysfunctional relationships), he or she will enforce the boundaries and protect your relationship. If someone can’t treat other people with respect (and respect boundaries), they aren’t a healthy person, and you should question if you are okay having dysfunctional people in your life who will do emotionally damaging things to you. If your partner is allowing this behavior, despite you communicating that your feelings are hurt, and they aren’t willing to have boundaries, they may be dysfunctional and/or not have empathy for you. 

18. There is no easy way to be dumped. We all have our preference of our perfect and ideal way to be dumped, but even a fairy tale dumping (full of respect for you and regret the relationship is over) will leave you with a large amount of pain to deal with. 

Wanting your break-up to be different, is sort of like wanting the car that hit you and broke your leg, to have hit you in a slightly different way, that still broke your leg. Your leg is broken, either way. The car being more polite and respectful about hitting you, is still going to break that leg. And the guy who texted that it's over, or emailed, or asked a friend to tell you, or told you in the middle of a party where you started crying in public, or came over to tell you and you grabbed hold of his leg and wouldn't let him leave, or his new girlfriend called you with the info -- it's all bad. It's all a broken leg that now needs to heal up. 

It’s not up to our ex to make us feel better. We need to own and deal with our feelings with the people who still remain in our life — friends, family, people who care. Your ex may or may not have empathy for you, or express remorse about your pain, but it doesn’t matter. Because they don’t have to. The relationship is over. The communication is done. Your ex feeling bad about ending things with you, or even expressing guilt, is not going to ease your painful feelings of the relationship being gone. The broken leg is broken, and it needs time to heal. The driver saying they're sorry, and sending it on a calligraphy-written note card, and presenting it to you in person, with trumpets, is really nice, but it doesn't heal that broken bone any faster. And if they broke up in a particularly mean or brutal way, remember, they’re a person who does things like that, and it’s better it’s over now. 

These are all my personal opinions, not written by a psychologist! Anyone wanting to learn more about this, I suggest you read books, google, or get therapy -- learn about boundaries, functional versus dysfunctional behavior, and the warning signs of disorders like codependency, narcissism, sociopaths, as well as the four attachment styles and how they are compatible (or not). 

What I do as a coach? Coaching can help you clarify your strategy and you'll select your weekly action items for dating, which I will hold you accountable for taking action on, as well as address any un-true limiting thoughts you have about yourself. Only a therapist can talk with you about diagnosing a person with a disorder, and help you heal up your past pain. See a therapist for psychology stuff. And coaching for dealing with the present-moment. 

www.yourdreamslifecoach.com for rates.