The Psychology of your 20s - 281. Reclaim your power in dating

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

Dating right now can feel like a minefield - in today's episode we break down exactly how to reclaim your power in today's dating climate, including:  The 3 reasons we lose our power The consequences of becoming defeated with dating  My 5 tips for reclaiming your agency  Why we need to STOP playing games  What to do when you get attached too quickly + so much more  Listen now!   PREORDER MY BOOK: https://www.psychologyofyour20s.com/general-clean Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast For business: [e-mail]    The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world. It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we, of course, break down the psychology of our 20s. There is really no easy way to say this. Dating in your 20s is hard, especially right now. It feels like a bit of a minefield of people who won't commit, people who seem way too good to be true and it turns out that they actually are. Incompatibility, getting ghosted, dates cancelled last minute, just to name a few experiences

that I'm sure a lot of us have currently been enduring. when this has kind of been going on for a while and these experiences definitely dominate our dating story or our dating narrative, we can become very detached and very defeated and very passive. And to put it simply, I think we lose our power and our agency in dating. We're no longer as picky as we would like to be. We don't call out disrespect or bad behavior. The whole activity becomes a lot more anxiety.

inducing than it is fun. And I think we get into this really negative headspace of expecting people to disappoint us and then not being surprised when they actually do. I think the biggest way to counteract this mindset and this defeatist reality when it comes to dating is to really come back to ourselves and focus inwards, not just for the sake of our love life, but for the sake of actually loving our own life. And I was speaking about this on mantra recently. mantra for those of you who don't know is my other podcast. It's a lot more spiritual. We talk about a specific affirmation, grounding, saying or mantra every single week. Recently I did an episode on I nurture relationships that enrich my life. And I talked about how something I wish I'd learned sooner

was that dating is meant to be a enjoyable and B, it's meant to be a selfish activity. Truly, dating is actually meant to be rather selfish. We are taught to always be ready to compromise and to be flexible and to be good and to meet everyone's needs. And that's great, fair enough. But I don't think that shouldn't be the case when it comes to trying to find your life partner. Very few decisions are as important. And I think compromise now in the early stages of dating is misery and frustration later on. I wish I'd known that at 21. I wish I'd known that maybe even at 23. But when we really do start to focus on what do I want, how do I want to be treated, what is my vision for love and what would it take for that to be meant, we experience

such a huge and powerful shift that not only makes dating fun, it makes it intentional, and I think it makes it fruitful as well. So today, I want to give you my formula for reclaiming your power in dating and also talk about why it is that we do lose our agency, why repeated rejection and relationship trauma and a scarcity mindset are some of the reasons dating feels so personally hard. And I want to talk about some of the dating dilemmas that you guys have been facing as well. As people in their 20s, some of you reached out with some pretty epic stories,

some pretty frustrating stories to read from my perspective. So I want to talk about exactly how you can bring back your own own control, how you can be in control of those situations. So without further ado, my lovely, lovely listeners, let's get into my guide to reclaiming your power in dating in your 20s and beyond. I want to start out by talking about a time in my own life when I completely abandoned myself to who I was dating, essentially because I thought that their approval and if they liked me and if I was good enough for them that that could turn into love and that could make me happy. And spoil the alert, in reality, it actually took me to a very low point. And I'm sure a lot of you could probably

tell me a similar story. So back in 2021, I was dating like my first really serious boyfriend. And long-time listeners will know that that breakup is really what created the psychology of your 20s. But you know he was great he was a nice guy it just didn't work we broke up and he moved on really really quickly like very quickly and it was this whole story where i was still somewhat under the illusion slash delusion that we were going to get back together and one of my friends had to be like hey he actually has a new girlfriend i think it just put me into the real painful part of relationship grief very, very quickly. I was like, oh, I thought that maybe I would have time, that maybe we could still have this shared experience of grieving and missing each other. And suddenly,

he's moved on. He's on the next, he's onto the next person. Like, he's, he's all good and fine and dandy. I think that created a bit of a chain reaction in me where I looked at my own life and I was like, how come it was so hard for me to find someone else? I was very, very lonely. I'd been with this person for a while. It was still in Australia. COVID lockdowns. So, you know, I didn't get to do all the fun things that you would normally do post breakup. I didn't get to go out and party with my friends. I didn't get to go out on these days. I didn't get to, you know, just be alive and present and out and about. And so I was feeling very, very rejected. I was feeling very poorly about myself. I think my self-worth was definitely

not an asset that I had at that time. And it was during this period where I thought, okay, maybe I should start dating again. Insane. It was an insane decision because I was four months out of a heartbreak, probably like my most significant one to date. I really had a support network, but it wasn't readily available to me. We had this like little break from lockdown where, you know, everything kind of went back to normal for a couple of months and I went dating. It was almost like a sport for me. I was going on sometimes two dates a day, meeting all these people. And the thing was none of them were particularly nice to me.

And yet, I don't think there was a single date that I went on where I thought, oh, he's not interested. I should leave this. every single one I was like, potential, potential, potential. I'd basically, I'm going to say it as it is, I'd lost my power. And I met someone during that time, which really, any semblance of agency and control and autonomy I had in this process, any slither of that I had left,

that was finally taken away from me. Because basically, I fell in love with someone very quickly who, had absolutely no interest in loving me back. And everything about our relationship became dictated by what he wanted. We would only hang out at his house. We would only do the dates that he wanted. We only had the label that he wanted to give the relationship, which was not the label that I wanted.

And it was very, very painful. And I basically sat in that relationship that wasn't quite a relationship. that wasn't quite a relationship for six months, and it was like I was looking at myself from a high up place, just losing who I was. I was just in this relationship, and I used to be such a forthright advocate for myself. You know, if someone didn't treat me right,

I was going to call it out. And in this situation, I just absolutely did not. I just sat there and I just let him say, you know, sometimes really mean things about me, and I let him just be, do, I just let him take control and get whatever he wanted out of the relationship. Whilst I was very clearly sitting there miserable, not getting what I wanted out of the relationship, and you best believe I was not going to advocate for myself because all I wanted

in that moment was love. Really, I was not in the place to be dating and I was so fragile and I was so insecure. All I wanted was someone to just like hold me and say I was special or at least, kind of treat me like I have a special a couple of days a week. Needless to say, this relationship, if you can call it a relationship, did not work out. It most certainly did not work out. And we kind of ended things.

And if I thought that I had been in a low place before, the six months post that relationship was so painful and almost like in so, Like, I think about it and I feel so bad for that girl. Because I've spoken about it on the show before, but I couldn't even, like, speak to someone. I just moved to Sydney at the time as well. And obviously, I had to try and meet all these new people. I just didn't feel special at all. I was like, why would anyone want to be my friend?

Why would anyone want to talk to me right now? I'm just wasting their time. I'm boring them. I have these distinct memories of being at parties that my friends had invited me to, like, the two friends that I had in Sydney at the time. and just not being able to hold a conversation with someone and just being like, oh my God, they're bored, they're bored, they don't want to talk to me anymore, and then leaving the conversation and self-sabotaging. And I just really felt absolutely terrible about myself. And it all stemmed back to the fact that I had let myself be, I don't want to say take an advantage of, I'd let

myself be treated badly. Now, I say that, and I don't want people to take that out of context and think that I am saying that anyone who's been through a terrible relationship or even an abusive relationship is responsible for their treatment. Really not the case. Like, really not the case. But I can say in terms of my experience that I knew very clearly and I could feel it bubbling up that I was not being treated right, that I had lost my agency, that I was not happy, that I was not confident and I continued to almost subject myself to that environment and to that emotional environment and situation because I did not feel like I deserved more and the idea of having to go back out there and be single when I had no power as a person who was dating just felt

absolutely terrible obviously I made it through I made it through and now I'm with someone really, really amazing. Obviously, I've skipped an important chapter here, and that's the chapter that we're talking about today. You know, how did I go from having that terrible relationship, which genuinely broke me, and which I still sometimes sit and think about and think, ooh, out, to where I am now, I've been with my partner for two years, and he is wonderful, and he is spectacular, and he treats me so well, and he is just like genuinely, it's like we are two complete people coming together making each other more whole. Gemma, you know, five years ago would not have imagined that could have occurred.

And it's because when it came to dating, I became incredibly selfish. I became independent. I became so focused on what I needed and what I wanted because I really realized after those experiences, no one else was going to advocate for me. you know, everyone else in the dating scheme, in the dating sphere, was putting themselves first. So it was my turn to put myself first. And it was my turn to be bossy about what I wanted. And honestly, it's funny because I think I almost went a little bit too far. My current boyfriend, I almost didn't go on a date with him. It's like a funny story we tell now whereby he like hadn't confirmed plans the day of. And I was texting.

my friends being like, no, a real man wouldn't treat me this way. My soulmate wouldn't treat me this way. I'm not going to go on this date. But I give him a second chance. I'm so glad that I did. And here we are now. So my experience aside, what is it that makes us lose our power in dating? I think the first reason why you may end up in a similar situation to me, kind of dating losers with people that don't treat you right, is because of repeated rejection. Being rejected by someone you like or admire, it stings on a very deep interpersonal level. A great deal of human emotion is going to come from rejection and is going to emerge in the face of real anticipated, imagined, even remembered rejection by other people. We are socially primed to experience rejection as a painful experience,

almost physically painful and then as a result of that turn inwards looking for answers as to why we were the ones who were wrong we were the ones who were different we were the one who couldn't make this person happy or couldn't fit in a consequence of that is that we believe that we must be the ones who have to change or who have to adapt in order to be accepted so there was a 2000 study that found that the more rejection you experience, the more you actually do begin to cope through avoidant strategies. So this was actually a study done on academics, university academics, who were told that their papers and manuscripts had either been rejected or not. And they found in the experimental condition where, you know, certain participants were having papers rejected left, right, and

center, the more rejections they received, fake rejections, the more they received, fake rejections, the more they withdrew, the more they became quite hostile, but in general, the more they actually began to doubt themselves. Now, obviously, this was an experiment. These rejections actually had nothing to do with the quality of their work, but they ended up really believing that just because this random person told them that their paper was terrible or that they didn't deserve some kind of accolade, it must be true. And very few of them said, oh, I don't actually think you're right. I think your criticisms of me are wrong. It's so bizarre how we as humans are so quick to trust other people's approval or judgments of us, but we are so ready to dismiss or not even think about our own,

not even think about what we think. And rejection will do that to you. Another piece of research from the University of New South Wales here in Australia, also found that, you know, repeated rejection is one thing. Sometimes, for some of us, all it takes is one really profound, emotionally salient rejection to change you. So according to this doctor who ran the study, Dr. Zimmerman, if we experience a really unexpected romantic rejection early in life, this can actually be a catalyst of.

for a lot of trust issues and it's very hard to understand why it's happened but it's because this experience of really committing to someone and wanting them to like you and then feeling rejected is so painful that your brain almost promises to itself for that to never happen again now if your self-worth has been depleted by a number of dates not working out a few instances are being ghosted or turned down or just even a significant one-off. You may firstly try to avoid those feelings, but then you'll begin to change your attitudes and your actions. And one way that we do that and one way that we respond to romantic rejection is that

we lower our standards and we settle. We do this because we have likely developed an actual fear of rejection at this point. So we want to prevent it from happening again. and the way that we can prevent it from happening again is either A, completely withdrawing, or B, shaping ourselves to constantly be what someone else wants, because that will ensure that no one will ever make us feel the way that we've already been made to feel. The second reason we may have lost our power in dating is because of a really unfortunate and painful experience of relationship trauma.

This is going to come in a lot of forms. But some examples of relationship trauma include being cheated on, even repeated instances of micro cheating, being in quite an emotionally volatile relationship where you never knew where you stood, being betrayed a traumatic breakup, just some examples. Something that many of us don't know is that relationship trauma in our late teens and our early 20s does actually have the ability to reshape our attachment style. We often tend to think that our attachment style is somewhat locked in after childhood and that the only thing that influences attachment style is our parental relationships and our attachment to them. That is not true.

A 2017 paper titled Adult Attachment, Stress and Romantic Relationships, I actually discovered this piece of research when I was researching my book, but it found that there are three. types of negative events in adulthood that can actually rewire your attachment style. So there's negative external events. This has nothing to do with your relationship but still makes you feel unsteady. So may have been the death of a loved one or the death of a partner or an injury or a really traumatic, dangerous situation you went through with someone. Then we have negative relational events. So conflict, separation, abandonment, breakup. And then, cognitive or emotional events. So this may be that your attachment style has been rewired because you as a person have started

experiencing heightened levels of anxiety due to some biological change, due to some cognitive change. You start seeing everything with anxiety, including your relationship. The biggest one though is the second. Relational events, specifically negative relational events. So much trust and vulnerability. goes into caring for someone and goes into loving someone. And when someone takes that trust and vulnerability and treats it like it's nothing,

that does leave permanent damage. And it may explain why we can enter a relationship entirely secure and in an entirely healthy place only to leave it anxious or avoidant or insecure and with a whole new perspective on love. So finally, the third reason we lose our power in dating is because we begin to adopt a scarcity mindset. In other words, we let whoever it may be, the media, our married friends, our parents, we let them convince us that we are running out of time to find a quote unquote good one. The scarcity mindset, it's actually an economics term, and it refers to the belief that a resource is limited and that results in us making irrational decisions.

It's why, say you're at the grocery store and you're trying to buy your favorite yogurt and suddenly there's only two of these yogurts left, like it's almost sold out. You only need one yogurt, but you're going to buy two because this idea of scarcity is making you make irrational decisions. It's the same reason why if someone tells you that a bag is one of a kind or exclusive, you're more likely to want to buy it because they've created scarcity within you, where if something seems less available, it actually feels more worthwhile to have. Yes, the scarcity mindset usually refers to a consumer good. It can also refer to love and why we feel

that a good partner is becoming a lot harder to find. So the other important part of this concept is that it can actually be artificially altered. So basically, in economics, people can make you think that something is scarce and can make you think that something is less available. And they do that as a way to make you want to buy it. There are a lot of ways that we are made to feel like a good relationship is quite scarce at the moment, whether it's dating horror stories, whether it's, you know, how dating apps are structured, whether it's all the hit pieces people are writing in magazines that it's harder for millennials to find love, etc., etc.

It's all making us very, very scared. I want to remind you, people come on and off the market, the dating market, every single day. People move cities. People suddenly come back on the market and are ready to date again. People break up.

There is someone perfect for you out there thinking exactly what you are thinking right now. Oh my gosh, there's no good. people left. And here you are thinking the same thing. And I think that's part of the story that you're going to tell each other one day of like, oh my God, I'd really given up hope and here you are. But in the meantime, don't let a scarcity mindset take over and cause you to miss out on meeting that person because you felt like you had to hurry up and settle down. I don't think that's, I don't think

that's the healthiest decision for you right now. And I always say, you would much rather be single for another 10 years and find your person at 35 or 39 or 32 then spend the next 10 years with someone that you settled for and have to break up anyways and be back in the same spot but now just with more emotional damage so we lose our power because of rejection relationship trauma and a scarcity mindset to name the big three what are the consequences of this well we've already spoken about a few i think the biggest one is self-rengthy abandonment, abandoning what you need in a relationship, ignoring your needs just for the idea and the promise of love. This can mean that we often let others make decisions for us. We ignore

what we need from a situation. We ruminate constantly about whether this other person likes us rather than whether we like ourselves or whether we even like them. And we also, we also begin to tolerate behavior that we never imagined for ourselves and we never imagined would be part of our love story. Another consequence of abandoning ourselves or lowering our standards, losing our power, is that I actually think we begin to feel, feel it in our body, feel a lot of discomfort, distress and emotional pain. When you're dating someone or when, you know, you're in the process of courting people who are treating you poorly where you feel like you have no agency, you have no control. I often find that that creates a lot of bodily tension. It creates real signs,

physical signs of emotional distress, like crying a lot, like feeling sore in parts of your body, feeling nauseous. There's a really fascinating paper that was published in 2014 and it attempted to map where we feel emotions in our body because typically we do feel emotions physically before we feel them consciously and mentally, we just don't realize it. And what this paper found was that when we feel discomfort, stress, anxiety, emotional tension, we tend to feel at first in our face, behind our eyes,

in our throat, in our stomach. When you lose your power in dating and you are dating people who make you feel terrible, you are going to feel terrible. Your body is going to let you know that it's not happy with these, emotional circumstances. I remember a friend telling me how she went through this period of dating the wrong person and she felt nauseous and ill the entire time. She went to the doctor, she thought she may have an ulcer, she thought it was something serious, maybe like a really bad bacteria. When she

left the relationship, that illness cleared within weeks. And I know that sounds, quite, I don't know, serendipitous or convenient or like a coincidence. I promise you it's not. The emotional and social interactions that you're having, specifically ones that feel so intimate and vulnerable, if they are not right, if they don't sit right with you mentally, they're not going to sit right with you physically. And I think love and dating is not something that we can play games with, especially if you are someone who is rather sensitive and rather romantic because it does influence you. It influences your mind. It influences your body. It influences your soul. Okay. So now to the juicy bit, what can we do about it? We're going to take a short break, but when we return,

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On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is going to sound so cliche and I'm sorry for it in advance, but it's not you, it's just dating. It's just the way that dating is working at the moment. it's a battlefield where the way we have been socialized to date in the 21st century and to treat others especially these days is in a very transactional way, a very flippant way and also in a way that I think essentially assumes that someone better is always going to come along. And it means that you have to have stronger boundaries and be a lot more intentional about what you want

from a relationship. If this doesn't come naturally to you, it didn't come naturally to me. If it's been scared out of you, don't worry, I'm going to give you the formula for how to really reapply agency and control when it comes to your dating experiences. Now, some of these

may sound kind of obvious. You may have heard them before, but I think the reason I'm saying them again is because they are very, very important. So even if they're not new to you, I do hope that you still absorb them in the same way. Let's start with my first tip. My first tip is that you need to take a dating detox.

You need to take a full big step back from dating before you can dive in again. Half the reason I finally start cutting corners with dating or giving up control is because we are simply emotionally exhausted and our ability to uphold our values has been slowly whittled away over time. If you are feeling more tired than excited to go on dates, if you are dragging yourself to dates, just wanting to get it over with, hoping to find someone good enough,

so you don't have to be single anymore, pause and just stop dating altogether because this is a very straight and narrow path to settling. You're probably experiencing dating burnout. And it's very similar to career or workplace or emotional burnout. And it's very similar in the sense that it's going to get progressively worse and worse until you do a full reset. Now something I see with people who are experiencing dating burnout is that they'll take a step back for like a couple of weeks. That doesn't give them the chance to fully fill up their cup and to restore all their depleted emotional resources.

I think you need six months minimum to get back to yourself post-dating burnout before you are ready to date again. And I'm going to give this my most profound big personal endorsement ever. I actually did do a six-month dating detox before I met my partner Tom. And I'm not saying that it magically made the love of my life appear. What I am saying is that I was able to really see clearly. when he showed up and I was able to kind of push through all the garbage and the chaos of other people who weren't meant for me but if I hadn't done a dating detox I would have overly invested in them. My second tip, you need to have a list of non-negotiables.

This list is going to be your best friend and it will allow you to shift from seeking validation to seeking self-approval. it will allow you to stop asking yourself, oh, do they like me? Are they enjoying my company? Do they want to go on a second date with me? To, do I like them? Did I have fun on that date? Is this someone I could see a future with?

I think what it really does is it recenters something that we've lost along the way. What it recenters is our own opinion at the center of our life. This really is the judgment and the opinion that matters the most. Be as selfish as you want. I don't think we hear that a lot in life. I think there are very few instances where society is okay with telling us to be selfish, but I'm going to tell it to you right now. Be selfish and assume that everyone else is dating with their own best interests at heart until they prove that they can be a good partner, until they prove that they are worthy of compromise or of selflessness, I think you need to keep the focus squarely

on you and what you want. And this is where this list of non-negotiables becomes really, really important. Because if we just say, oh yeah, I'm not going to compromise and we don't have a list or we don't have some idea of what we don't want to compromise on, essentially we just end up doing it anyways. It's like, imagine going to a financial planner and saying, I want to be rich, but you don't know what you want to spend that money on and you don't know what you currently spend your money on and you don't know what your essential financial needs are, your financial planner is going to sit there and say, so what exactly do you want for me? Like, you're not going to be able to achieve what you want in money, in life, in relationships without already having a vision. I'm going to give you actually

my non-negotiable list. I pulled this out of my notes app archives. I used to bring up this list after every single first date or sometimes second date that I'd had with someone, just to be very clear with myself, is this person matching my requirements or am I being delusional? So this was my list. They must be someone looking for monogamy. They must be someone who I respect and admire. They must have a career, job or hobby that they're passionate about. They must have time for me.

They must openly communicate with me. They must want to live overseas and they must want to have a family one day. These were all things I knew I needed to feel emotionally secure and to have a future with someone. But they were also things that I knew that if I overlooked in the present, they would be relationship ending in the future. And I saw dating as something I couldn't just have exclusively have fun with anymore. I was still having fun, but I knew that I was someone who got carried away very, very easily. I got attached very, very easily.

This was my insurance. You know, whose advice was going to take out of anyone's? I was probably going to take my own. And so this was a way to say, hey, your past self thought this was important. Why are you neglecting it now? So make a list. It should have at least five things on your list.

If you can't think of five, I think you need to be more picky because there are most certainly five things that you can think of that would make a relationship perhaps not work for you. So make sure you know what they are, you're clear about it, you reflect on past experiences, and you use your list. My third tip for reclaiming your power in dating

is to stop playing games, stop playing games and set the example for how you want to be treated. Dating is hard enough. You don't need to make it any more confusing for yourself. The kind of games, talking about include things like not texting them back for the same amount of time that they didn't text you. I'm guilty of doing that once or twice. Pretending not to be interested at parties or when you see them, making them jealous deliberately, ignoring them or expecting them to read your mind

or testing them without them knowing it. All of this just puts up further barriers between you and the other person. In all honesty, I think that the games we play in the early stages of dating, they are a defense mechanism. I think it's a way of feeling more in control, or of keeping people at a distance because of previous times that you have been hurt or you have been let down. And so pretending not to be interested keeps this nice buffer between you and them where you can pretend to yourself as well. Or ignoring them allows you to ignore the fact that you are actually really invested in them as a person. And you do really like them. And that's okay even if it doesn't work out. It's really just a healthy sign that you know what you want and that you are brave enough to

feel deeply about someone else that I think is, I just think that's a good sign for future relationship health. So don't wait to text them. Don't pretend you're not interested. Show up the way that you would want someone else to show up for you without the games. I think in the same vein if someone is playing games with you, I want you to remember that a mixed signal is still a signal. If they are making you feel anxious or uncomfortable, if they are causing you to doubt yourself, I need you to detach and pull all of your energy back. I need you to show them very clearly this kind of behavior will not get my attention and it will not get my respect and it most certainly will not get me. And honestly, I actually don't think it's a bad thing to just say that to someone, to just say,

I don't like these games. And I'll be honest when I met my partner, when I met my boyfriend Tom, he's a lawyer. I don't think I've said that before, but he's a lawyer. And so he's very, very busy. And when we first started dating, like we would text a lot and I wouldn't hear from him for like, you know, four hours and I'd be like, oh my God, he's playing games. And so I said to him, I was like, hey, I need you to text me back quicker because this makes me feel really insecure and it makes me feel like, you're not interested. So if you're playing games with this, like, I'm not interested in it.

And if it's something else that I need to understand about your communication style, let me know. And that's how I found out that my boyfriend actually has a really healthy relationship with his phone. And I perhaps do not. But yes, please prioritize. self-respect over temporary feelings. If someone is disrespecting you, playing games, or they don't align with your standards, walk away. I don't think your self-worth is up for negotiation. The way they treat you in the beginning is the way they're going to treat you for the

entire relationship. It's not going to get any better than the early days when they're trying to court you. Please remember that. If you're someone who does still find that they put the rose-colored glasses on, This is my litmus test. This is the question I would ask myself. Is this the story that I would tell about my soulmate? If in the future we had children and our children asked about how we first met and how we first started dating,

would I want to tell them the truth about this story? Because if someone is not giving you a good story or a good narrative or is not treating you in a way that you would be happy to tell your children or your parents, or your parents or your friends how they were treating you. No, they're not the one. Okay, so my fourth tip is actually to do with the first date and how to really make sure that you are stepping into the room, the bar, wherever you are meeting this person, feeling confident, feeling like you can advocate for what you want, feeling like you have the power. So before I would go on first dates, I used to have three or four affirmations that I would

always tell myself. I would get ready. I would listen to a specific playlist that I had made filled with like music that was over 100 beats per minute. So like high energy, exciting. And then before I would leave, I would repeat these four affirmations, three to four affirmations to myself in the mirror. The first one, I already have everything I need in life. Love is just a bonus. That was my favorite. The second, I am enigmatic. The third, I am masterful. The fourth, I'm confident. The words that you speak to yourself become reality.

We see that time and time again in studies and research on positive self-talk. You can let yourself and your sense of self be dictated by external judgments and other people's opinions, or you can take all of that information and say, None of this is as important as what I have to say about myself, the judgments I have of myself, how well I feel in my own body. Right before I would go into the date, like I had done my positive self-talk, I had done my music, I had done all these little small things that made me feel like I was going to have fun. I would do this physical exercise where I would stand outside and I would, right before I would go in, put my chest up, shoulders back and I would just like shake everything out. I do this like huge smile and I would just imagine all this energy lifting from my toes all the way to my head. And I would just be ready to have a fun time.

And I would go in being like, this could be the worst date I ever go on, but at least it's going to be a good story. And at least there is nothing that this person can say or do that is going to make me feel bad about myself because I've already kind of put on this emotional armor. I used to call this like the high value person mindset. that. Basically, I was doing everything in my power to convince myself first and foremost that I was valuable. I was deserving of love, respect, effort, that I was magnetic. I needed to make sure I believed that about me before I was trying to convince someone else. Often because if you really do believe that about yourself, someone else is going to immediately feel drawn to you. As humans, we love when other people, when we can see other people respect themselves and when they are

confident and when they know that they're the shit. So my final tip for reclaiming your power in dating is to reframe rejection as filtering. Research on rejection sensitivity shows that we obviously personalise rejection and we immediately assume that it's always coming down to something about us rather than about someone else's preferences. This is not a you problem. If someone doesn't like you, I need you to understand that it is their way of doing exactly what I'm asking you to do, which is advocate for yourself. And the thing is, if they know that you are not the right match for them,

it's actually a real gift that they have made that clear early on. Instead of convincing you and trying to convince themselves that this could work, this is all just a form of filtering. Rejection is a way of weeding out incompatible partners before you invest too much, too soon, too early. And the fact that someone else has done it for you is great, because eventually you would have found some reason to reject them and you may have felt pretty awful about it. They've saved you the pain. They've saved you the stress.

They've also saved you the cognitive and mental effort of having to figure that out for them. The right person is going to come along and all of those rejections are going to feel worth it. And I just want you to be someone that your soulmate would fall in love with. You know, I know this sounds bizarre, but when I, went through that really terrible period, I remember saying to myself, I just don't think my soulmate would fall in love with me right now because I have no love for myself and because I'm not, I wouldn't, I wouldn't be in this situation ready to see them for who they are. They could, anyone could give me the smallest amount of interests and I would confuse them as a soulmate. So I'm not actually able to

delineate or tell. And most importantly, they could show me all the love and the way. world and at some level I would crave it but at another level I would think I didn't deserve it. So seriously, the focus has to be on you at every single stage until this person proves them to prove themselves to be a partner. Like you will find so much more success in dating when you make it a completely selfish activity. When you focus on yourself and when you realize once again, you already have everything you need in life. This is just a bonus. All right.

We're going to take another little short break before we come back with our listener questions and our listener dilemmas around reclaiming power in dating. So stay with us. 2%. That is the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter.

And on my podcast, 2%. I break down the science of, mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. I'll be speaking with writers, researchers, and other health and fitness experts, and more to look past the impractical and way too complex pseudoscience that dominates the wellness industry. We really believe that seed oils were inherently inflammatory. We got it wrong. Many of the problems that we are freaked out about in the world are the result of stress. Put yourself through some hardships, and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person.

Listen to 2%. That's TWO% on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tap Little Kim's boobs at the VMAs? Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people. I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do with Little Kim? Well, you can find out on the Look Back at it podcast. I'm Sam Jay. I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick it here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it.

Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill, waxing all about crack in the 80s. To be clear, 84 is big to me, not just because of crack. I'm down to talk about crack on day, but just so you all know. I mean, at this point, Mark, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack. So I'm starting to see that there's a through line. We also have AIDS on the table right now. Thank you for finishing that sentence.

Yes. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Really? Yeah. For me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to my new podcast, Learn the Hard Way with me, your host, and your favorite therapist, Kear Games. And in recognition of mental health awareness month, I'm bringing over a decade of my own experience in the mental health field and conversations with so many incredible guests. I'm talking. Trip Fontaine, Ryan Clark. Sometimes when we're in the pursuit of the thing, we get so wrapped up in the chase

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You doctored this particular test twice in so-ins, correct? I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case. I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for. Sunlight's the greatest disinfected. They would uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg O'espian and Michael Marantini.

My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trap. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges. This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never. mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends, oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he

deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. So question one from a listener, I get attached way too quickly, but I like that I love people deeply. How do I balance those? I want to firstly say I actually don't think that it's a bad thing to get attached too quickly. I know it can like feel kind of painful for us, but if the reason you don't like that you get attached too quickly is because other people shame you for it or because you feel like people get scared off, I don't think they're the one. I don't think that they're the one if you put everything on the table and they go, oh, that's awkward. So the shame around getting attached too quickly, I'll never understand. What I do understand is the

difficulty that comes with seeing people for their potential and not for what they're actually going to give you or for their actions or for who they are. So I would say for the first month, if you get attached too quickly, just roll back the emotional investment. So you're not completely cutting them off. I've often had this problem in the past where I know I can get attached really, really quickly. So I kind of deny myself any access to that person thinking that it's going to stop things. No, what we want is a balanced access. So limit how much you see them. Don't try and rush the timeline. In fact, create milestones for you now that you have to have to stick to. So basically create like a calendar for yourself that, you know, this person isn't allowed

to meet your friends before week six. No overnight stays before. week four. No weekend trips before week eight. Don't meet the parents before month three. Basically, despite everything that you want to do, I want you to commit to these previous limits that you have put on any relationship that you are in such that you don't end up speeding down this road and it ends up being a dead end street and you crash at the end and you feel you know, a bit embarrassed for having introduced them to family or having made such an investment of time and energy in them before they prove themselves to you. So spend as much time as you can getting to know them before you progress to that next stage of a relationship. All right. So

question number two, should you hold off on sex to reclaim your power? This is an interesting one because I feel like this idea of holding off sex kind of comes from like a purity culture perspective, but I do also think that sometimes we use sex as a way to like make someone like us a little bit too soon. When I was single, I found that when you slept with someone didn't really matter because if they were going to respect you, they would regardless of when you chose to be intimate. If you slept with them on the first date versus the 10th date, if that person was real and if they really liked you, it wouldn't scare them off. Also, they were involved as well.

You know, it's not like they're thinking you're giving it up too early and that's a sign that like you're this impure person or like that you're loose because they are equally doing it. So that logic like never really made sense for me. For me, I think reclaiming my power was deciding that if I wanted to have sex on the first day, that was fine. if I wanted to have sex on the 20th date, that was also fine. My power came from deciding for myself. My power came from not being rushed into it and making sure that I examined my intentions

so that the only reason I was doing it wasn't just to, you know, keep them for a little bit longer because I thought that's what they wanted for me. I just think, properly evaluate what tone you want to set, what you're after, and whether you feel like emotionally prepared for that vulnerability, whether you would be okay with sleeping with them and not wanting anything serious, whether you feel like you need to have sex with them just for them to like you. Like if that's your only reason, definitely don't have sex with them. But if it feels like a natural progression of the relationship and if you want to do it, you should totally, totally do it. I think again, it comes back to playing games.

If someone isn't going to respect you or isn't going to make you feel in control or you're not going to feel powerful if you have sex with them, don't do it. But yes, I don't think that, I don't know, I don't want to say it doesn't really matter because it does matter, but I think that if it's going to change someone's opinion of you, then they're probably not the right person. All right, question number three, how to put yourself out there when you've never been in a relationship before? This is actually a question I get quite a lot. I think there are a lot more late bloomers in our 20s and in this decade than we imagine there is a huge focus on dating and sex and having these romantic experiences as like a

ride of passage if you're not quite there yet honestly i'm excited for you i'm really am quite excited for you because there are so much really amazing stuff to come and the experience of falling in love for the first time and having your first boyfriend or girlfriend or partner like it is actually it's just a really fun experience so don't feel like you've fallen behind feel like you've fallen behind feel like there is just so much opportunity ahead of you. I wish sometimes that I could go back and experience falling in love again for the first time all over again because it is so beautiful. But in terms of dealing with the insecurity of going out there and feeling like, oh my God, everyone, like I've never dated before. This is a new thing. Shift your mindset to think of it

like an experiment and it makes it feel less serious. So commit to like a three month experiment of asking people out, being forward, getting on the app, getting on the apps, making the first move, asking friends to set you up and just go on as many dates as you can. Whether it's amazing, terrible, awful, it's all data. It's all research. Each experience is an important one, even if it's bad, because it's all about getting comfortable with being visible and being seen and building up those dating skills. Because it really is such a skill to be able to talk to someone that you don't know and find out the information that you want to know and it is a real skill to be vulnerable and it is a real skill to have confidence

in these situations and to be self-assured so I think you just need to move past firstly that mental barrier and then the social barrier and just get more experience up oh I'm actually just so excited for people who are in this situation I feel like not being in a relationship feels like a burden especially if you're at a certain age but actually it's kind of a blessing because you get to be more mature when you step into your first relationship. And you've saved, like, such a beautiful thing to come a little bit later so you have more time to really savour it. So I don't want to be, like, toxic positivity on you.

I do just want you to see, like, the grass has grown a perspective, you know, as someone who's been in quite a few relationships, who started dating really early. Like, sometimes I do look at the experiences of people who have waited a bit longer and have just been like, wow, I'm really excited for you and it's quite a magical time. All right. Fourth and final question for today, how to come back from a horrible date that you feel completely defeated by? One word and one word only, it's humor. It's humor. Laugh about it with your friends. Treat it like a good story. Even write like a funny story about it in your notes app, like almost in the sense of this is a story that could go in like your biography or whatever. And just remember that we've

all been there. These are the stories that I think really exhaust us, right? We've all been through a really terrible date where we thought it was going to go really, really amazing and this person has just been rude. They've not been what we expected. It just hasn't turned out right. It's all for the plot. And the first thing I would do is call your friends, laugh about it with them, write about it, post like a funny private Instagram story, just anything so that you can turn away from despair and to laughter because I think if you let those bad dates really get you down, you're going to start expecting a bad date from every single person and then you start acting like they've already disappointed you and then you both end up disappointed. So keep it light, keep it fun,

keep it airy. And remember that if this person has problems that they've projected on you and if they've treated you poorly or just been like a dick, that all comes down to their insecure. please don't let them drag you down as well. Don't let them make you think that you don't deserve love and don't make them think that the next day isn't going to be better because I promise that it will be. Sometimes it is just a numbers game. I don't know, there's so many theories about this.

It's a numbers game. It happens when you least expect it. There's one soulmate for all of us. I think the defining theme of dating in your 20s and reclaiming your power during this period is just to go out there and have fun and be open to the opportunity of romance, even if you've been burnt before. So I want to thank you all for listening if you made it this far.

Drop a little rose emoji down below. I love knowing how many of you listen to the full episode. It always makes me feel so, so special. If you have further dating dilemmas or questions about reclaiming your power, also drop them in the comments. I'll be around answering some of them. make sure that you are following us on Instagram so that if you have your own listener question for future episodes you are around to ask them and you know when they are going up.

If you haven't already, make sure you subscribe to us on YouTube. We have video coming out very, very soon and follow along the podcast right here, where you are now. Give us a five-star review, join the community. We'd love to have you around and we'd love to let you know when we have new episodes dropping twice a week every Tuesday and Friday. But until next time, stay safe. Be kind, be gentle with yourself, especially in today's dating climate.

And we will talk very, very soon. 2%. That's the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter. I'm on my podcast, 2%. I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. Put yourself through some hardships. and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%.

That's TWO.% on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the Look Back at it podcast. From 1979, that was a big moment for me. 84's big to me. I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a hear, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. With our friends, fellow comedians, and favorite authors.

Like Mark Lamont Hill on the 80s. 84 was a wild year. It was a wild year. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to learn the hard way with your favorite therapist and host Kear Games. This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing.

many men carry a suit or armor. It signals to the world that you not to be played with. And just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to, listen to learn the hard way on the I-Hard radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. In 2023, Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins. But the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. You doctored this particular test twice, Ms. Owens, correct? I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg Gillespie and Michael Marantini.

My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, They take matters into their own hands.

I vowed I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.

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