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Note 73: Don't Let Cuffing Season Talk You Into Less · Notes to Her

• 0:12
  Yaya: Hey, girl. Hey. Welcome back to Notes to Her, the daily pep talk. I'm Yaya, your confidence and mindset coach, here to make sure that you walk into the next season with your standards fully intact. So, Cuffing season is a knocking on the door, and I already know what's about to happen for some of you.
• 0:29
  The temperature drops, the holidays get closer, and suddenly a man who couldn't hold your attention back in July starts looking like an option in November. Girl, no. Stay with me for the next few minutes because I'm not about to let you talk yourself into less just because you don't want to be alone when the leaves start changing. With the weather cooling down, couples will be cozying up to the fireplace, shopping for matching PJs, and just spending a lot of time together trying to stay warm. And because of that, this is a very popular time of the year for people to get together, it's what we call Cuffing Season.
• 1:15
  But this is also a popular time for women to start settling. Now nobody wakes up in November and announces, I'm about to lower my standards because I don't wanna be cold and single. Said a lot like that, it kinda sounds ridiculous even to the woman that's doing it. Instead, it sounds like, I mean, he's not exactly what I want, but the holidays are coming up. I don't wanna show up alone to dinner, and I definitely want a nice gift.
• 1:40
  It sounds like, we're not that compatible, but at least I have somebody to wear matching pjs with. It sounds like giving a man three more chances than he ever even earned because scrolling through your phone alone on New Year's Eve feels worse than settling ever does. It also sounds like moving faster than you normally would. Meeting the family in week six instead of month six. Saying I love you before you actually know if you like who he is after he's had a hard day or maybe you had a hard day.
• 2:12
  I want you to know that loosening your standards doesn't just lower the bar on who you'll accept, it speeds up the clock on everything because some part of you is racing to get locked in before the holidays actually arrive. You're using a countdown clock to make decisions that used to belong to you and call it a romance, but that has not changed what it is. The desire for companionship shouldn't erase your standards, but sometimes it makes you tired enough to stop defending them and I am here to stop you from doing that. Now oftentimes the pressure to be coupled up with somebody isn't even coming from inside of you. It's coming from everywhere around you.
• 2:49
  It's coming from the family member that you know is going to ask you a Thanksgiving dinner, why are you still single front of everybody like it's an appropriate question to be asking over mashed potatoes. Just pass me the mashed potatoes, please. It's coming from holiday movies, especially those Hallmark movies, Plan On Loop where every woman finds her person by December 24 like life just runs on a script. It's coming from the group chat where your three friends just posted their engagement photos and you're genuinely happy for them, but you're also sitting there wondering what's wrong with your timeline? None of that really is about the man that you are considering settling for.
• 3:24
  It's about you not wanting to feel behind. It's about not wanting to answer one more question about your love life with a shrug. And some of this goes back further than the holiday season too. A lot of us grew up watching a mother or an aunt treat a relationship, any relationship as safer than being alone. We watched women who had every reason to walk away, stay anyway, because the alternative looked like an empty chair at every family function and they weren't going to do that.
• 3:56
  Nobody actually sat us down and taught us that being coupled up equals being okay. We picked up that idea the same way we pick up most things that we were never actually taught, by watching it be modeled as normal. But here's what I need you to remember. A season doesn't determine your worth. A page turning to November 1 doesn't change one thing about who you are and what you deserve.
• 4:21
  The only thing that has changed is the temperature outside and I refuse to let you use sweat or weather to negotiate your worth and not yet. So imagine this, you meet somebody next month, but they don't quite fit what you actually want. Despite this, you talk to yourself about continuing to date them because the season is turning and you don't want to be alone. And you spend the holidays pretending in a relationship that never fully felt right and by February or March it starts falling apart. Then you spend spring and summer recovering from a relationship you have chose out of loneliness in the first place.
• 5:00
  And then October comes back around and you start the same cycle all over again. That is an unexamined pattern that is just repeating itself because nobody ever stopped the cycle long enough to ask why it keeps happening at the exact same time every year. If your relationship history has a season attached to it, that's worth sitting with. Because once you see it, you can't unsee it. It's a habit repeating on a schedule and it'll keep running in the same loop until you interrupt it on purpose.
• 5:32
  Now let's talk about the bill because settling always comes with one. When you lower your standard for a season or a reason, you don't get to raise it back up in January like nothing happened. Every time you accept less than you know you deserve, you're teaching yourself that your standards are negotiable when it's inconvenient. And once your standard is negotiable once, it's easier to negotiate it again and again. The last year I watched a woman that I know do this.
• 6:01
  She started dating somebody in October who showed every sign of being inconsistent from the jump. Slow replies, canceled plans, the vague non committal energy that was never quite anything that was gonna become real. She told herself that it was fine because at least she had somebody brings her office holiday party. By October, she was trying to figure out what they were, if they were anything still, still making excuses for him to her friends, still hoping the relationship would eventually become what she originally wanted it to be back in October. She didn't end the relationship, she ended with three extra months of confusion and a smaller version of herself at the end of it.
• 6:45
  And here's the part that we don't talk about a lot. Every one of those months is a month that a genuinely available, genuinely compatible person could have found you instead if you weren't already occupied convincing yourself that half effort was enough to build on. Settling doesn't just cost you time with the wrong person, it costs you availability for the right one. So this isn't just about being lonely during the winter that you're protecting yourself from. It's about the version of you who trusted her own God and got overridden by a fear of an empty calendar, an empty chair or an empty bed.
• 7:23
  Now here's something that I really want you to hold on to. Being single through cuffing season or being single in any season is not a failure state. It's not something that needs fixing before new year, it's not proof that something is wrong with you. Lonely and whole will always be crowded and disappointed with somebody who never should have made the cut. I need you to truly believe that and not just nod along with me as you're listening on your phone.
• 7:56
  The women who look back into their dating history with regret usually aren't regretting the people that they said no to. They're regretting the people that they said yes to out of fear, out of loneliness, out of not wanting to spend one more season by themselves. Nobody looks back and says, I wish I had settled harder. They look back and say, I wish I had trusted myself enough to wait. You are allowed to want companionship.
• 8:21
  That doesn't make you desperate. Wanting it is not the problem. The problem is letting a season convince you that any companionship will do. There's a difference between choosing someone and settling for someone and the difference is patience. Choosing someone means you've waited long enough to actually know him, consistency and all, and decided he meets what you need.
• 8:45
  Settling means you've decided he'll do, because the calendar felt more urgent than your own certainty. One of those builds something and the other one just fills a seat. You can want a relationship and still refuse a rushed one. Ask me how I know, I just wrote about it recently, I will link the Subzak article so you can read all about it. But honestly, those two things live together just fine.
• 9:08
  What doesn't work is letting a season's worth of pressure convince you that they can't. So if you're listening to this and you're saying, well Yaya, what am I supposed to do with this? First, I want you to name the pressure the moment that you feel it. When you catch yourself thinking, I'll just keep seeing him because the holidays are coming or I don't really want to be alone right now. Stop and say it out loud even if it's just to yourself.
• 9:35
  This is loneliness talking and I refuse to lower my standards just for companionship. Naming it actually takes its power away. Second, get honest about your list. Not the fantasy list that you post on threads like the six feet six figures. I'm talking about the real list.
• 9:53
  What does this person actually need to show you consistently for you to keep investing your time? Write it down if you have to. A standard you haven't defined yet is a standard that you cannot defend. And then third, build a life that doesn't require a man to fill it. Book dinner with your girls, I know I love mine.
• 10:12
  Say yes to the party even if you were going solo. Fill your calendar with things that make you feel full on your own. So that if someone does show up who's actually worth your time, you're choosing him from a place of wanting, not a place of desperation because we do not do that here, no desperate women here. Fourth, prepare your answer for the family member who you know is going to ask. You don't owe anyone a defensive explanation for being single.
• 10:39
  A simple calm line works better than you think. I'm not settling for the sake of it, or I'd rather wait for the right one. It ends the conversation without you having to shrink or apologize for having your own standards at the dinner table, and also pass the mashed potatoes. Seriously though, if you are recognizing this pattern across multiple seasons, not just this one, that's something that is worth naming honestly. A single season of loneliness is something that you can navigate with a list and a little more self honesty.
• 11:11
  A pattern that has followed you through several seasons is usually rooted in something deeper, and that's exactly the work that I do with women inside the Confidently Her method. It's breaking a cycle for good, and it takes more than just one podcast episode. It takes someone helping you to see the patterns from the outside and building a standard that holds season after season. So if you're interested in learning more, there's gonna be a link in the show notes. Now I want you to ask yourself something honest right before I close out this episode.
• 11:43
  Is there someone in your life right now that you're only entertaining out of fear of loneliness? Someone you would have walked away from in June, but suddenly you're finding yourself giving them a little more patience in November. Would you tell your best friend to keep seeing them? If the answer is no, what is stain actually protecting you from? Loneliness a few months or a version of you that you're going to have to rebuild again in the spring?
• 12:12
  And if you're honest with yourself, what would this winter actually look like if you held the line? Not the scary version when you picture yourself alone on every holiday or major life event, the real version where you are surrounded by people who already love you, doing things that don't require a man's presence to be worth for showing up. So if this episode stung a little bit good, I am not even gonna apologize for it. Consider this some tough love from your confident bestie. And sometimes you need this thing more than the comfort.
• 12:43
  And I'm saying this because I am honestly tired of hearing stories where women are settling just to have a warm body laying next to them or just for somebody to text them good morning every day. February is gonna come whether you settled or not. The only question is, which version of yourself will be standing in it when it does. The woman who held her standards through the entire winter or the woman who was back in the same place she was last spring untangling herself from another Mr. Rom.
• 13:15
  You do not need a countdown clock to decide who's worth your time, all you need is a nerve to hold your standards even when it gets tired. So don't let this season talk you into less than you already know that you deserve.