188. Relationship Anxiety - The Source of Most Dating Woes

Are you struggling with relationship anxiety? In this episode, I share my insights on how anxiety can cause a fluctuating sense of self when we're around people and why it can be hard to pinpoint the root of the issue. Listen in as we explore how relationship anxiety can manifest as fear, anger, or annoyance and how it can lead to jumping into relationships too quickly or putting up barriers to avoid vulnerability. We also discuss how to evaluate for compatibility and character without putting the other person through hoops.

Additionally, we explore the cultural messaging and conditioning that can cause anxiety around relationships for women. Join me as we discuss how this affects our sense of worthiness and can lead to feelings of not being enough. I challenge you to look at how this messaging is impacting your own life and consider ways that relationship anxiety might be manifesting. Don't miss the opportunity to learn more about navigating relationship anxiety and finding the love you deserve.

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Transcript

Sade Curry: 0:39

Hi everyone, hi, happy Wednesday. So today I just wanted to talk about a conversation that has been coming up over and over with my clients, which is relationship anxiety. Try this again, since I'm not live. Anyway, the main thrust of this is that, from working with women over and over and over and over again for years now, going through my own relationship journey, it's just become super evident that most dating issues other than your basic hey, how do I use this app if you're new to the technology, or what's the best way to go about this Most dating issues, things that I coach my clients on over and over and over again tend to boil down to relationship anxiety.

Sade Curry: 1:34

And this shows up in a lot of ways, because in that moment, the anxiety itself seems justified, and that's always such a tricky thing. The relationship anxieties that I have observed tend to come from just having a fluctuating sense of self when you're around people, and this is why I think it's going to be hard to pinpoint, because sometimes, when we're around one group of people, we feel good, we feel great, we feel like we belong, we feel like we're doing things right. Sometimes we even feel superior. We might even feel like, okay, we're the ones who know what's what in this area. So then you feel good, right. And then in another area, maybe sitting across the table at dinner with a stranger, you feel a whole lot of anxiety and that can cause a lot of confusion about what's going on. You can also make you think that the anxiety is caused by the fact that you are on a date with this person, and I see this a lot in the dating world, where it seems to be like the men out there. There's a whole narrative around the men out there and what they're doing And it's you know how they show up on the app. So all of those things And the reason and the big sense because if you're super confident at work, giving a speech in front of hundreds of people, you're running your business. You are like super confident leader in your family, like whatever it is you're like no, i'm good, right, you might even be an extrovert. You don't have to show anxiety. It can be very confusing when it's relationship anxiety shows up. Especially if relationship anxiety doesn't feel like fear to you, if it doesn't feel like a loss of confidence, you'll feel you know you don't show back.

Sade Curry: 3:21

Sometimes relationship anxiety can show up as anger. Annoyance is one that I hear a lot from my clients. They get really annoyed a lot of the time by things the men do on the apps, right. So relationship anxiety is the feelings that you have, the feeling that you have based on how you feel or how you think about yourself in that situation. So it can be very, very nuanced. It can look very, very different for different people.

Sade Curry: 3:51

An example that I'll give you is one that I've seen with some of my clients where they become concerned Well, not concerned They would jump into a relationship too quickly because this person that they've met is just super amazing. Like this person is awesome, this person is great. And when that happens, they might like waver on some things that they decided ahead of time. Like at the beginning of the journey, we usually lay out the principles by which they are going to run their dating journey. Like this is how I'm going to do it, this is the timeline that I feel give or take is comfortable. These are all the things that are true to me. This is my authentic self, this is what I want to put out there, and they need someone And, based on how that person shows up things that that person says, they might shift into anxiety that that relationship won't work out or that if they stick to their principles, that person will leave or not.

Sade Curry: 4:50

Wait for them to go through their entire process of figuring out if this is the right person, and that sense of relationship anxiety could make them jump into the relationship too quickly. And then I have some other clients that will slow down and not um, yes, you could say not, not commit or not, they're not willing to be vulnerable. So you have what you might call the avoidance side of things. Hang on, let me fix my microphone. I don't even know. If it was, i think I might have been talking to the air the whole time.

Sade Curry: 5:25

Um, where they're not willing to come in. And this is where you see, you know, playing hard to get maybe some power games, um wanting to make the other person work for it. They need to work for it, they need to show me that they are serious and really putting barriers in the way of the relationship on and on, because of the anxiety that this person might be lying to me, this person might um not be who they say they are And then waiting for the other person to prove that they are the right person. And this is different from evaluating for compatibility or evaluating for character, which we 100% do. But that's sort of like a process that you take on, not a process that you hang around the other person's neck to prove themselves. It's about you observing, you evaluating and you making decisions about what's right for you. It's not about putting the other person through hoops so that they can prove that they are who they are. It's a little bit of a difference there.

Sade Curry: 6:21

Putting the other person through hoops, making them work for it, making them, um, show who they are from a place of relationship anxiety, it just never ends. Like I've just seen this over and over, it never ends. I've had clients who are like okay, months into the relationship and they're still like I still don't wanna do this. So I don't want to say that I don't want to give them this part of me. I don't want to reveal this part of me because they're anxious, because they're worried that they can't keep themselves safe, because they're worried about how they will be perceived by the other person. So when I've had this conversation, what they say is well, if I make it too easy for them, then they won't value me, they won't work for it, they will stop seeing my value, they'll take me for granted. And obviously, for that person being taken for granted, having someone else not see their value is so, so painful, and it's that pain that is triggering, or the anticipation of the possibility of that pain, that triggers the anxiety that that might happen again. And so then they're putting all these hoops in front of the other person to make sure that they never experienced that again. And for the other person, they are jumping into a relationship too quickly. Or they are people pleasing the person they're dating or they are tolerating people they shouldn't tolerate, to alleviate, in the moment, the anxiety that that person won't wait around for them if they don't go exclusive right away, that that person won't like them if they tell them who they really are, that that person won't choose them.

Sade Curry: 7:54

If, like so many, there's so many ways that relationship anxiety shows up And many questions that I answer like I mean, i'm definitely very much a how, i'll tell you how, when. If you work with me, like if you say, hey, should I click here or there, i'll be like, listen, click here. I'll answer that question first. Like, which app should I be on? I'll ask you a series of questions about what you're looking for and I'll tell you kind of like what app to be on, but I always am looking for what's the underlying challenge that's showing up there And sometimes there just isn't, because there is the tech part of it, which is how does the algorithm work on Bumble versus how the algorithm works on Hinge, like? those are just practical, neutral things that you need to know, and so if you work with me, i tell you those things. But what? the deepest work, the work that accelerates your journey the most, is understanding your own relationship anxieties, and there are different models for doing this.

Sade Curry: 8:59

Attachment styles is one model for understanding relationship anxiety. I'm not I don't like to promote. I think the attachment styles are useful, but Sometimes I've heard them being used as kind of like a personality type, like this is your personality type, based on how you've been raised. This is your personality type Instead of, hey, these are some behaviors that you might be exhibiting. Now let's get to the root of where those behaviors are coming from so that we can shift them, we can adjust them And we can show you that you actually have power over that if you think differently about who you are And your own intrinsic value. So there's a little bit of nuance to the attachment styles, which is why I don't deliberately like, or typically, put that front and center with my clients.

Sade Curry: 11:10

Another thing about the attachment styles is you have the avoidance, you have the ambivalence, you have the avoidance, you have the anxious attachment. But working one-on-one with my clients, i have seen clients who will exhibit all of them like, depending on the situation. I have some clients who are, in fact, i have clients who are in some areas, completely avoided, like, totally like. When they meet people who from the apps, maybe they meet someone new, they will be totally avoided with those people. And then if someone from their past shows up and sends them a DM, even if that person is like completely non-compatible, they are all for it. They are like so anxiously attached to it.

Sade Curry: 11:54

And so I don't like to pick one attachment style and then I'll coach you on that because I think the relationship anxiety can show itself in so many ways, and so one of the first things I will do with the client is say how is this anxiety showing up for you? And of course there's so many different ways to phrase that and to say that. But what are you feeling? Why did you make that choice. Well, what are you afraid of? What are you afraid of in that situation? And there are some clients who are like going at it on the apps, like they're doing all the things, and sometimes that's also from relationship anxiety. And when you go, when you sort of do the numbers game like I'm going to go on you know 300 days and I'm going to meet beyond, it's going to be a numbers game. Sometimes you can see that the energy behind it is coming from anxiety And when you approach it from that place, you actually don't typically meet your partner because you will tend to hyper focus on picking, on finding the person or on hitting the numbers that you need to hit. And often I find that people who do that will not evaluate the people that they're meeting correctly or they will not continuously improve or increase the quality of people that they're meeting. So there's so many ways that this trips us up and relationship anxiety is like everybody has it, like it doesn't matter who you are.

Sade Curry: 13:17

Now, women in particular and people socialize as women particularly have this because just beyond our human brain and you know, our natural sense of survival is world. We also then have messaging. We have messaging from the media, we have programming from the culture, we have conditioning from our family systems All of these layered on top of it to create even more anxiety, for women are. Value is often attached to our relationship status, and that is just the water that we're swimming in, it's just the air that we're breathing in, like it is a thing.

Sade Curry: 13:58

If you've ever been asked also when are you gonna get married and when are you gonna have children? and have you met anyone yet? If you've ever been asked those questions, chances are you were socialized as a woman, whereas a man might get questions at Thanksgiving dinner around. so are you getting a promotion? When are you gonna make partner? Things like that And of course, this is on a case-by-case basis, but overall, women get questions around their biological clock ticking. They get questions about being partnered. There are just so many ways that we get mirror to us that we're not quite there. We're not quite enough. We haven't quite achieved our purpose if we're not in this relationship as defined by whatever culture that we are in in that moment And that messaging is you've been getting it since you were born.

Sade Curry: 14:53

You've been getting it since you were born.

Sade Curry: 14:54

You were getting it through the toys that were bought for you. You were getting it at school, you were getting it through the movies, the media. now that we have social media, those messages And they continue to come Like as society hasn't changed enough, that you're not getting those subtle messages all of the time. And so you can see that beyond your own personal anxiety, there is the anxiety that somehow that keeps getting messages in subtle ways, that somehow you're not measuring up. And if you're not aware of that, you might not recognize where that tightness in your chest is coming from.

Sade Curry: 15:29

When you are going on a date or when you haven't had dates in three months and your biological clock is ticking, or you've been divorced and you've tried a couple of times to meet someone and you ended up jumping out there from that place, some things you didn't want to do. You may not realize that this is all just coming from this message that my existence isn't what it's meant to be. My value as a human, my worthiness to be here and to thrive and to be happy, isn't there until I succeed in this area. And so if you are not aware of that, then there's an added suffering that's on top of everything because, like, i want a partner but I can't find a partner, i feel terrible about it. There must be something wrong with me.

Sade Curry: 16:17

That's usually the bottom line sort of statement that might be going around in your head. Maybe there's something wrong with me. There's something wrong. Why can't I get this right? I've gotten all the other things right, i've got the money, i've got the job, i've got the business, i have friends, i travel, i've invested. Why can't I get this part of my life right? And even the question itself assumes that it's a part of your life that you have to get right and that somehow there's some kind of right way to get that part of your life right Now.

Sade Curry: 16:49

This doesn't mean you shouldn't get a partner if you want one, and that's the other part that creates a catch 22. It's often when I approach this question with my clients about like listen, i'm sensing like there's a lot of anxiety about making this happen and that's not serving you, because it's taking a lot of mental energy away from enjoying the journey and even having the creative energy to have a journey that works really well. It can be hard for me to introduce it as a concept, because the fear is if I release the need to be with a partner, if I actually explore truly enjoying my life without a partner, then I won't be motivated to have a partner and then I won't have a partner and that will be terrible because I have to have a partner. So you can see how, like that, catch 22, you know can go round and round and round and, of course, reinforced by family systems, reinforced by society, reinforced by the media, reinforced by the way we I was talking to a client Earlier about how we treat single people single people are just like y'all have a matey, yeah, you all have a high school diploma. When you get partnered, we'll consider you having a college degree and then you can be invited to the big kids parties. Right, like, overall Images of success do not include the single person being successful and that being yeah, done. It's always like, oh, yes, the single woman who has everything and Still has to then find her partner, and all of our hallmark movies and all the movies are based on that, and so that messaging is just there and I want to Challenge you to consider how that's impacting you.

Sade Curry: 18:32

Again, I can't give you all like a. I can give you a list of ways I could. I don't have a list of ways listed today, but I think that is something that you know, just to give you examples of Ways that relationship anxiety could be showing up for you. So maybe I'll do that as another podcast episode and just rattle off a hundred ways relationship anxiety might be showing up for you. But I want to challenge you to look at your own journey, like Decide to like just log how you feel all through the day. So just say, okay, today I'm just gonna keep my relationship status on my mind. Or, if you are partnered or dating someone, like, okay, i'm just gonna keep this relationship on my mind and then Have a sheet of paper, a little notebook, with you throughout the day and then just write down all the thoughts that come up for you throughout the day. Right, because if you have relationship anxiety, those thoughts and feelings will fluctuate depending on who you're talking.

Sade Curry: 19:30

So when you're talking to your friend who's maybe still single, you might find yourself, oh, i feel a little like superior. I feel like I've achieved something that they haven't. I was like, oh, isn't that interesting to see that I'm putting in a lot of effort and I'm not sure what I'm doing. I'm not sure what I'm doing To see that I'm putting my human value on the fact that I have a relationship and Lowering my friend's human value on the fact that she doesn't. Or if you are single and you walk into a room where everyone is talking about their partners and their children and their Picket fans and then you're like Shrinking and feeling less than because of that It would be interesting to say, oh, look at that, i didn't realize that that's how I Process this, that immediately I walk into that scenario, my sense of value Lowers, i start thinking there's something wrong with me. It starts to remind me that, oh, there's something I still haven't achieved, that there's still this way, that I am not enough, and only you can really get to that place. Now.

Sade Curry: 20:27

Of course, exploring this with a coach will always be helpful, because a coach can help you ask questions and poke holes at areas that your brain might stay in the catch-22 or areas where your brain might resist looking at it because of the feelings that come up. So of course, i'm a coach, so I will definitely recommend doing this work with a coach. I have done my best work with coaches And I know that this has been very useful for my clients, but you could also do some of it. Just by that. Self-reflection is always useful in any context. It's always the best thing to take the time and the space to truly know yourself, to truly look at yourself and find out what's going on with you. And what you really want to look for is not to judge any of the thoughts because, guess what? we all have them.

Sade Curry: 21:14

Our society is built on this practice of attaching people's value to these external factors. I was talking to a client earlier today and we were talking about. I was telling her, as I explained this concept, i said what happens is when a person is, when a baby is born, they're like oh, i'm perfectly valuable. Every baby will tell you that they feel perfectly valuable and that the whole world is their oyster, right. And so we continue age one, age two, but then by the time they get to kindergarten, they're all of these requirements now for them to be valuable, we now start placing these requirements on children. Well, now you have to learn to read by age five, and if you're not reading by age eight, oh my gosh. What's wrong with Johnny? What's wrong with Susie that they're not reading yet? What's wrong with Alex? that they're not speaking yet, they're not walking yet, they're not as whatever as their peers. And that just continues and the requirements become more and more and more. And what all of those requirements are are external indicators. They're arbitrary external indicators that we begin to use to determine our value. Now, relationship status is only one, but it is a big one, it is a gigantic one.

Sade Curry: 22:32

Others are you know how much money you make, how much money you don't make, how thin you are, how you know curvy you are, whatever the beauty standard is for that day and age, and geography becomes something that society starts to attach your human value to, what, whatever that thing is. And then we internalize this and then we become the jail, the jailkeepers. Is that the right word? I think so. We become the person who we lock. Our society sends all of these messages and then we become the ones who keep ourselves inside the jail of those messages, because there's no one in your, in your home, in your apartment or in your house telling you that, hey, you have to look like this or you must. You know, no one else is coming and dragging you to. You know, do whatever it is, or no one else is in your head repeating those messages over and over, and not for some people, yes, they're very active people in society or in your family who are reminding you every day, but the real jailkeeper is the individual, and that's why I think this work can be so useful, done on many, many different levels.

Sade Curry: 23:44

What keeps you from feeling 100% valuable, 100% lovable, 100% complete, 100% accomplished in your life right now, and why? Why is that thing a determinant of your value? Okay, i just wanted to talk about that a little bit. When you find what that list is, know that those things will cause you anxiety. So, if you experience anxiety, if you experience, you know, stress or you know any form of like wanting to distance yourself from a situation or desperately chasing a situation or acting out in any other anxious ways, those things are probably the reason. And so you can start to take a look at that work. And if you want to do that work with a coach, please feel free to just DM me here. On whichever app you are listening to this on, whether it's Facebook, instagram or on the podcast, you can set up a consultation call and you can ask me questions. So you can simply just ask me questions via email or DM as well. All right, that is today's episode. I want to thank you for your time and attention and I'll see you next time.