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203. Ready to Date After Divorce? How to Know for Sure & Avoid Old Patterns · Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce

• 0:49
  Speaker 1: I wish I would have started my healing immediately post-divorce.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: I wish I would have reached out and had the community, had the support, the people, the professionals to help me.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: I just disassociated for 10 years and thought that I was magically healed because I had created this beautiful bubble for myself to live in.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: And that was not healing.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: It was protecting myself from the world because I was not ready to face all of the things myself from the world because I was not ready to face all of the things.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Hi, love, welcome to Dear Divorce Diary, the podcast helping divorcees go beyond talk therapy to process your grief, find the healing you crave and build back your confidence.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: I'm your host, dawn Wiggins, a therapist, coach, integrative healer and divorcee.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: Join me for a fresh approach to healing grief and building your confidence after divorce.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: Coach Tiffany, it's so good to have you today.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: Yes, I'm so excited.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: Hello, so we have been chatting with listeners right in our email.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: If you don't get our emails, we want to send you emails, right?
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: So if you've ever downloaded Post Divorce Roadmap or the Loneliness Roadmap, you get our emails.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: If you've ever been, I don't know you could be getting our emails for lots of reasons, but we've been getting listeners submitted questions about dating through our email list and also through our community right, where women are taking our courses and doing the journaling and the various things.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: And so you've been chatting with women in the app.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Yes, and we just knew it was time to record an episode.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: Right, answering all these great juicy dating questions.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: It's like one of the trickiest things post-divorce, right, rebuilding your self-esteem.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: But like, oh, this is so hard and confusing and then when you go to like just even be on an app or whatever, it triggers all this anxiety and all this stuff.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, let's, let's tackle the questions.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: So there are three big themes, I sense, that are coming up for our listeners, and it's sort of this idea of how do I avoid repeating past mistakes, how do I not abandon myself, how do I know if this person is safe, right?
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: So there's this, we're going to talk about the repeating past mistakes concept.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: There's also this sort of theme of dating with kids.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: How do I tackle, you know, is it time to introduce, is it not?
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: Do I move in?
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: Dating with kids?
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: How do I tackle, you know, is it time to introduce?
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: Is it not?
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: Do I move in, do I not?
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: How do I go slow but still really get to know a person as much as I need to get to know them?
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: And then there's also this sort of inquiry about how will I know when I'm ready and, if I am ready, where do I find people, right?
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: So these are sort of the three themes that you know, themes from all the submissions that we're seeing here.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: So, coach Tiffany, let's dig into the first one, this idea about how do I not repeat the same mistakes?
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: I have a super hot take on this, but what's yours?
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that my biggest fear when I started getting back out there was I didn't trust myself to make any sort of a decision at all.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: I did not trust that the people I was meeting were good people.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: I always had issues really like I don't know leaning into who this person was right, trusting myself that this was going to be a good person for me to end up with.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Are they lying?
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Are they not lying?
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Do they like me?
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Do they not like me?
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Why do they like me?
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: And so why do they like me?
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: You have some yeah, you have some thoughts about that.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: And so when your confidence is shot and you start trying to date, the caliber of men that you will attract from a place of low self-esteem is not great, it's not.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: And so you have to kind of sift through this process of hit and miss for quite a long time until you find more of yourself through your dating and you get better and better at it.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: I love that because it's a feedback loop.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: Right, you try something and you're like, oh, that didn't work, oh, I liked that part.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: So I actually my hot take is it's a guarantee You're going to repeat your same patterns and mistakes.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: It's a guarantee.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: So let's just like remove that friction that, oh, I can't date until I'm till I'm no longer repeating my mistakes, because we're all born with certain liabilities and certain habits and patterns.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: And yes, we're here doing this sort of healing work if you want to call it work, I'd rather call it play.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: But we're doing this healing stuff right, so that we can respond to our patterns differently, we can approach them from a different angle.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: But let's just take that pressure off right here, guaranteed you're going to repeat your patterns.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: So then it's more about like, how are you going to meet yourself differently when those patterns happen?
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: So you know, talk to us about that, tiffany.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: Like you know, when I'm observing myself doing a pattern with a man and I want to historically run away or shut down or suppress what I'm feeling, what are your thoughts about how to do the patterns differently?
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the way that you can figure yourself out is if you realize that you're in the same game with different players.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: I found myself in this loop where I would date the same kind of guys.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: They even look the same.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: My friends at one point were laughing at me and saying don't even send us a picture because we already know what they look like.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: That's hysterical, I know, but I was stuck in this loop of I wanted the same types of men and so it was my comfort zone and it kept producing the same types of problems.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: They were men that time and time again would lie, step out of the relationship, weren't that committed, had their own issues, their own trauma, Men who weren't working through their own divorce.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Right Like I, finally had this cardinal role and maybe that's a great way to explain it.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: It's kind of a free-for-all when you're first in the dating world and then all of a sudden you start creating these rules and boundaries for yourself and dating Like.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: One of my biggest rules was I never dated a man or would agree to date a man who was not divorced for one year, not separated for one year or the divorce wasn't actually final for an entire year.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: And that was a big changer.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: Yes, I hear that so often, oh God I was the rebound girl so many times, and then I would get the oh, I'm not ready for the level of commitment.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: I cannot tell you how many times I heard that.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: So I think, as you throw yourself out there, you're going to start having a rule book, and the rule book becomes very important to be looking at when you're assessing each guy that you're considering.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: So but what does that say about our listeners who maybe started dating before their divorce was finalized for a year?
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: I did it.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: Are you kidding me?
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: I was in a relationship very quickly after, like, my separation.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah a relationship very quickly after, like, my separation, yeah.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: So I'm not saying it's not a bad thing and I'm not saying that you can't meet your soulmate that way, but it's just more rare, it's very rare and adjust your expectations of how it's going to go Right.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: I think one of the patterns I had the hardest time with in dating was I was always coming from an energetic perspective of that I was being interviewed, that I had to be chosen by this person and not that I was interviewing them.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: And that was just how shot my self-esteem was, that I didn't feel like I could choose.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: So I was just sort of always trying to get chosen, which means I wasn't showing up as my fully authentic self.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: I was just sort of always trying to get chosen, which means I wasn't showing up as my fully authentic self.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: I was doing everything I could to become chosen rather than to determine whether or not this was a healthy relationship.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: And so that was my pattern.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: Right Was to, you know, suppress my needs, wants true expressions in order to just and that was all this anxious attachment crap coming up.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: And so it wasn't that I stopped dating per se.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: I did.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: I did take a hiatus, a very long hiatus, a year plus, from dating at all.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: And then, when I did date and I felt that pattern coming up, I would take it to my therapy group.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: Right, I would take it to the women that I was in this healing journey with.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: I would take it to my therapist.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: I would take it to the healing spaces where I could get feedback and make sure that I was in touch with the times when I was abandoning myself or betraying myself, or I was in touch with how I could navigate conflict differently.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: I was getting resourced right around it rather than being sort of underground about my behavior or my dating choices yeah.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: But like how do you know?
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: Because when you first get out of a marriage, so much of your identity is caught up in your husband and being a wife, and so it's hard to figure out what you like to do.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: And so I remembered being on the apps and men would ask me like what do you like to do for fun?
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: I have no idea, I have no clue.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: And so it was really sad because I remember when I would be messaging somebody on an app or on a first date with them, trying to figure out in my mind how can I change myself to be accepted by this person?
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: How can I magically start loving all of the things that this man likes so that he'll choose me?
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: Because I can't stand and not be chosen even if he's not what I want.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: Right, right I still need him to choose me, because I need to feel validated in that moment.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah and listen.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: I think that's a tricky, like you know.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: However, many years later, there's a homeopathic remedy for that.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: So, like, if you're noticing that that's your pattern, like hit me up Cause there is a solution, I think that if you're noticing that that's your pattern, like hit me up because there is a solution, I think that if you're noticing that you're having this waiting to be chosen versus doing the choosing pattern, that is really something to dig into before you continue dating.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: I think there's this piece also about how do I know if this person is safe?
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: How do I know if I can be vulnerable with this person?
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: What would you say to listeners about that?
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: How do I discern this person is worthy of me taking the risk?
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: I would look at the things that you failed to notice when you married your ex-husband.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: There are red flags and there are yellow flags, and I say this a million times women do not listen to the yellow flags.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: And if you came from a very traumatic marriage where there were huge things like infidelity or physical violence or emotional abuse, those are clearly red flags that you recognize.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: But what you don't recognize are the yellow flags, the more subtle things, the way that you argue with him, the way that he handles conflict the way that he's telling if he's being dishonest with a boss or with a friend and he's going to way that he handles conflict.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: The way that he's telling if he's being dishonest with a boss or with a friend and he's going to the way that he treats waiters and waitresses.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: This was like I would literally study the way that my dates would treat people who could do nothing for them in the moment.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: Were they respectful?
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: Did they expect things back in return?
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: That was huge for me.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: So I would pay attention to the very subtle yellow things, and it's not going to be this siren feeling in your gut like one of the big red flags.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: It's going to be something that just is a little off and what you want to do is you just want to put it to the side to consider for later.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: And if you start seeing a lot of those yellow things add up to where your body's like Ooh, like that was kind of a rude response, or why would he ask me that question?
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Or it sounds like he's being a bit controlling with that text, asking me where I am all the time.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: Those are all of the things that add up to the big things.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: Eventually, so, paying attention to the subtle signs, when your body is telling you that something is not right.
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: You know, I certainly relate to and I think I've heard many women over the years say like, well, just because he did it there doesn't mean he'll do it with me, and I think that feeds right into our need to be special and unique, right?
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: If?
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: If no, he wouldn't treat me like that.
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: Maybe he you know he was, he had a bad day at work, he was super frustrated with X, y, z, right.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: But absolutely, what we do in life, we do in life and if I'm going to treat somebody else that way, I'm going to treat myself, I'm going to treat you that way.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: It doesn't matter who it is, it's coming for you eventually.
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: I think that's a genius feedback.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, to really be keenly tuned into the yellow, yellow stuff I'm going to add to that.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: And some of these things might feel sort of judgy, but I think when we start to get to know someone in their story, if they've had significant traumas or they haven't been to therapy, like those are pretty significant flags to me at this point.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: I know too much about the power of trauma and how it affects the brain and how someone can have trauma and they can say I'm fine, I've worked through that and that's really just the voice of dissociation talking.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: It's just that trauma is dissociated and that doesn't mean that they've solved it or resolved it or gotten curious about it, and that is just not something I would want to take a risk with.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: So I definitely have a policy at this point that if someone hasn't done something to really get in touch with themselves and their feelings and their relationship responses like just because they say that they're over it doesn't mean that they are.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: I also think how somebody self cares, are they?
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: Do they really look at the way they treat their bodies?
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: Do they exercise?
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: Do they?
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: How do they eat?
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: I think that oftentimes the way we live and take care of ourselves says a lot about our self-esteem without actually saying it.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: And I think when we look around at, like how do they keep their home I don't mean neurotic, right but like do they put care into their?
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: Do you get into their truck and it's a disaster?
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: Or you know, how do they take care of their own body, these things say a lot too, and I think they're important to look at because they're indicators of a person's self-esteem or their overall wellness, and some of the things I'm calling out they're things we need to be looking at about ourselves too, right, if there are these swaths of life where we're not taking good care of ourselves, like we're going to attract the same back right, so we probably want to consider that, as we're going to attract the same back right, so we probably want to consider that as we're dating.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I feel like in past relationships, especially in my marriage, it was kind of this thing where I said this is me, accept me for who I am, I'm not changing.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: And that was kind of the recurring theme, and so if a man used to push me to change too much or call too much attention to the unhealed parts of myself, it was a turnoff and I was over him and done.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: And so as I started moving into a secure attachment style and my first actual healthy relationship, what I realized was that both people need to take accountability for their unhealed parts and they need to be able to do something about that.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: And I think that I had the completely wrong idea in my mind that when I met my person, that everything was going to fall beautifully into place, but quite the opposite.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: It called into the spotlight the parts of myself that weren't healed and he supported me very much in pushing me in that journey and I do the same for him.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: So you know, the point of a relationship is not to be stagnant.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: It's not to find this perfect person that you guys fit in every single facet, but I think that it's about finding a person that you want to change for for the good.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right, I often say that that one of my I don't have a lot of prerequisites for, for what makes a good partner these days, but one of the top ones is certainly like willing to collaboratively problem solve when there's wounding, right, when there's some sort of pain in the relationship.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: Like life is a hairy rollercoaster ride.
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: So you know, if you are like planning to do life with someone, you got to think about like how you're going to handle it when you get in a car accident, when you have a miscarriage, when you lose a job, when you when a tornado comes through your neighborhood, right, like how do you two respond to those types of the hardest life experiences?
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: Because it's easy when it's easy.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: How many people got divorced because it was easy when they had kids, but then, as soon as you added kids this complicated thing right, they couldn't navigate conflict or problem resolution at all with children.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: They couldn't navigate their belief systems about how to raise kids, or you know.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: And so I think you really got to think about how do we handle these toughest things in life and are we willing to come to the table and be curious and gentle with each other about this stuff?
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: That doesn't mean not conflict.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: Conflict is wonderful, it's a healthy part of a relationship.
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: But how are we willing to navigate this conflict and can we do it from a place of openheartedness, open mindedness and be willing to try new, hard things?
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: Right, because we're going to tackle things as we're raising children, and right that are going to be complicated and the answers aren't going to be straightforward or simple and we're going to have to be willing to try new things, get outside of our comfort zone and so those types of flexibility right, flexibility is such an important element of someone you're considering dating.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: And I think I'm surprised by a lot of the serious conversations that don't happen prior to committing and to getting married.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: I think so many people get caught up in the dream of wanting to be married that they spend more time planning the wedding than the actual marriage part right.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: So it's all coming back to.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: In order for you to recognize those things, you have to first know yourself what you want, and there are going to be deal breakers and there are going to be things that you will be flexible on.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: But not knowing what those things are, on a lot of those hard issues, whether it's children or morals or anything like that Money Think that you're ready to enter into dating somebody and to marry them.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: Well, that's scary.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we got to be willing to consider that if there are major areas of life where we haven't at least dug into those insecurities, we're going to be attracting something very similar, and if we're avoiding it in ourselves, then we're definitely going to avoid having a hard conversation with the other person, right, and that's only going to lead to downstream disaster.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so look at the places where you might be avoiding or denying.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so look at the places where you might be avoiding or denying.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: Okay, cool, let's talk about dating with kids, right?
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: I think there was a lot of really great insight from our listeners about slow and steady is probably the better way when you have kids, but how do you fully get to know someone if you're going really slow?
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: What are your thoughts about that, tiffany?
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm going to shout out to my mom on this, because she told me that the cardinal rule should be that you should date somebody for at least two years before you move in with them.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: I train wrecked that for the first part of my dating life and so in several relationships and even in my marriage, I did not follow that rule.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: But in this one I did and I can honestly say that it prepared me for all of the things and all of the ways that he handled conflict and he handled difficult situations, and so I think giving yourself two years to be slow, to really watch, like is the person.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: Have they dealt with the death in the family?
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: How are they dealing with that?
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: How do they deal with work day to day?
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: Are they coming home and they're just explosive on the phone with you about their job?
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: Do they seem depressed a lot?
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: Are they looking to you to sort of be their new hobby?
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: Or do they have a life outside of you?
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: Like there's all of these questions that kind of come up and you're figuring out like who this person is Right.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: So over those two years, you know I'm a big proponent to have not getting physical with somebody too soon and I'm not saying that's wrong, but you lose your mind and then after that point, once you get physical, you can throw everything else out the window.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: So taking a chance to really getting to know someone and how they react to life is such a huge part of it.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: I did not introduce my daughter to anyone that I was casually dating.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: I wanted to keep my dating life and my parenting life completely separate.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: It was very important to me to figure my shit out before I brought my child around.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: You know these random people that were in my life, and so I think that you know it's okay to not have your kids as involved with your potential partner.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: It's okay to set a six month or a one year timeline on meeting your kids, because I think that it's also important to see how your child gets along with your partner prior to moving in.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: But there needs to be a timeline that you give yourself to where you feel good about starting to bring kids.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: You know, what I've observed, both in my own dating life so many years ago, but also with the women that I've worked with, is that when you're introducing kids early, there's usually a lot of codependency going on there.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: Right, it's like there's not this clear sense of identity about what's good for me and what's good for them, and having those two things teased apart, it's like you may be subconsciously it might be below your conscious level of awareness you want your kids to approve of your choice or of them, or you just want it to feel good and easy and you don't want to tackle some of the problems that come up from introducing kids too soon.
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: I think that most of the time, we're moving too fast and slowing everything down is the answer when you're dating with kids In general, when you're dating kids is just.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: It just underscores that right.
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: Slow it down.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: How people respond to that slower pace will tell you so much about their capacity to delay gratification.
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: One of the greatest indicators of addiction-related issues is the inability to delay gratification.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: So I think when you slow dating down, especially with kids, it tells us, shows us, it reveals some of the things that we may or may not be addicted to, which is having something outside of me soothe what I'm struggling to work through inside of me.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and then it's also being able to listen to your children too, when they're bringing concerns to you about stuff, because it's not going to be roses, especially in the beginning.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: It's just not when you're involving children and they have all these questions and all these things that are going on.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: And there's so many questions too when you start co-parenting, it's like you know, are you the disciplinarian?
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: What role do you want me to play?
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: with your kids.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: Like there's all these conversations that you need to have about you know, is the other parent present?
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: Do I have to fill a role that is too big for me?
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: Like what do I want in this relationship with your kids?
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: So many people aren't clear on that and it really brings up issues, and that was one of the biggest mistakes I made post-divorce is I had been diagnosed infertile, right, and so I started dating this guy who had a young daughter, and it, like was a puzzle piece for all my woundedness around the potential of never being able to have my own kids, and that was so codependent, right.
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: That was the two of us working our shit out on that poor little girl, and do I think that I was a strong role model for her?
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: Do I think that I was a present person for her?
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, but at the end of the day, like I didn't belong in that relationship.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: I learned so much from it and no regrets, right, but it was predictable that it was going to end the way that it did, and so I think that's the thing, right.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: I came to that relationship, I did all my patterns and it ended poorly, and that you know, had I predicted it that way at the beginning, would I have cut it sooner?
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: Probably Right.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: And so I think that's the key is, the sooner you can catch it, the less shrapnel, the less collateral damage, especially with children, the better.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: But I think that means really having a strong recovery program for yourself.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: I don't expect people to not make the mistakes that I made?
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: Not at all, but sort of be honest with yourself along the way.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: So, tiffany, do you think that women often women, especially with children do you think they often date too soon because they're so overwhelmed with single momming and then they invite someone in to try to get some relief from that?
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: And I don't know what are your thoughts there?
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: Right, like, cause, single moms, I think sometimes we're just like they just will take any support that they could get, and maybe they don't mean to do that.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: But subconsciously it's like I'll settle for something in the dating world because I need help making the dinner, you know, picking the kid up, whatever right.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: They're just these things that we have not figured out, how to figure out.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: And then here comes a man, like a Prince Charming, it would seem, because we just so desperately want to be rescued from how heavy the world feels.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that every single mom is going to have a reason for why she's doing it For me.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: I still had to be very independent in my marriage, so the bulk of things fell on me because of his work anyway.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: So for me it wasn't that.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: But I dated really quickly after because I missed the family.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: I wanted the completeness of a family and to have someone there, family, and to have someone there, and so I was reaching for anything that looked good, anything that looked like I could slide the puzzle piece back in.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think a lot of women they, they.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: It is very overwhelming.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: It's overwhelming to have to figure out how to do everything on your own, and so it would be much easier if there was person ABC just right there along the way that we could just very easily come in and rescue you and play the part.
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: And so then, okay, if that's you and you're making that choice, just know that it's predictable that there are unresolved issues in there.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: And just know that.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: You know we're talking about being ready for dating.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: When you're truly ready for dating, you are seeking a man as a companion and partner, not as a savior, not as a Prince charming.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: So if you're looking for someone to rescue you, you're not ready yet.
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: I don't think I was ever ready.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: I've been saving myself a little more every year of my life, right, like since since I got divorced, cause I feel like getting divorced was the moment where I was like, oh shit, nobody's coming, I have to rescue myself.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: But then it's been a year after year, sort of steady process of becoming more and more self-supporting and I don't mean that in isolation, I have more support than I've ever had, also Right, but it's like the more I support myself, the more I can let in good, healthy, functional support and, yeah, the more I can really confidently know that I can meet my own emotional needs.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: And then the people in my life are bonuses and, yeah, I'm not completely dependent on any one particular person to fulfill my well-being.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: So that's scary right, yeah, and I think that it's also scary for a man who is mostly conditioned to be the rescuer with most women out there when you approach it from a place of are you okay with me just wanting you and not needing you, Because that will stir up a lot of insecurity in men as well.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: I've seen that happen over and over again in couples counseling Absolutely yeah.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: Okay, let's dig into.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: How will I know I'm ready?
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: How do I find the people?
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: And, and assuming I am ready, right, how do I not abandon myself?
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: This concept of self abandonment is so powerful in the healing journey.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: But how do I know I'm ready?
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: And and how can I go about not completely suppressing or denying my own truths in order to maintain something?
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: And I think often you know that that not abandoning self like gosh.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: It's like maybe, maybe you really are ready and it's, and you're going to attract some really great guys, but but you're still going to have to walk that path.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: It's like the fantasy of attracting the guy and not having to to have the card conversations or not having to have it be vulnerable or scary, like no, that's not it.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: Actually, when you're you are ready to date and you start having these harder conversations, it's like you're still going to have to confront the tendency to self-abandon and you're still going to have to feel those uncomfortable feelings in self-advocacy.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: But he will respond to it differently than someone from a previous chapter.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: Right, and that's the healing magic, right there?
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what is your?
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: You know some of your thoughts on.
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: How do you know when you're ready?
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: How do you not self-abandon?
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: Where do you find the people?
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to be good at answering where to find the people, because mine was always dating apps.
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: That's all I ever had time for and I have a great response about where to find the people.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: Okay, okay great, so you handle that.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: Okay, cause I met my my healthy relationship on Bumble, so I can't say anything.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: So, as far as knowing when you're ready to date, I think when you're feeling this pool of again wanting to truly find a companion and a partner and not someone to just save the day when you feel like you are in a healthier state of mind to start sifting through.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: And let me tell you what the higher your vibration is and your healing, the better quality men you're going to attract.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: And what I started to notice is that I was attracting good quality men at times, but they were making it very clear that I was not ready for what they were asking for.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: So a lot of times, these higher quality people will identify to you or be able to tell you look, I still don't feel like you're ready.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: There's still something in you that is not healed or traumatized parts inside of self.
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: One part may be feeling more confident to attract somebody, but there may be still a wounded part of self right that is not fully integrated, is not done enough clearing that.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: It depends on which vibration is dominant on the day.
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: So you may attract some more solid people in a day where you're feeling more solid, but then in a day where you've been triggered or you're in that wounded looping, maybe you're attracting less healthy people.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: So, yes, very often we have split energy inside of ourselves and it depends on how well we're working towards bridging those sort of internal conflicts right, that we can sort of consistently manage something.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: And I think for me because I had massive trust issues what I would start to see is my dating relationships all started out the same Everything was roses, it was great, it was vibrant, and then, all of a sudden, there was a turning point where something would happen that would trigger me tremendously because I had not worked on myself in the way I needed to, and it would result in them saying you're not ready, this is not something that you're ready to deal with yet.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: And I know that a lot of it was codependency and my attachment style and the way that I was anxious and avoidant and all of the things.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: So for me, I think that knowing when I was ready to is when I was the one doing the choosing, and when you're not used to that and you have to tell someone, even a really nice guy, hey, like I had a really great time tonight, but you're just not it, you're just not the one and then hear that backlash from them Cause some guys were jerks, let's be honest.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: Like I got some pretty rude text messages back sometimes when I'm like, hey, you were great, tonight was great, but I was just not.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: This isn't what I'm looking for, right?
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: Um, and I think women have a hard time doing that.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: We feel like we have to latch on to anybody that looks at us and seems semi-normal, and that's not.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: That's not it.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: It's not it.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's beautiful.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: Okay, let's talk about how to find the people, right.
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: So I want you to notice, when we talk about where do I find good guys, I want you to notice what this is for the listeners comes up inside of you.
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: So, like Tiffany earlier on in your dating thing, right, if I had said to you, where do you find good guys, what would have bubbled up inside of you would have been like there are no good guys, the good guys are all taken.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: Or would it have been like scarcity stuff, like, or would it be like well, the good guys don't choose me, like whatever energy we have that bubbles up inside about where to find the people, the doubt, the lack of faith, the lack of belief in oneself.
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: That's what's actually blocking from finding the good people.
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: It's not actually whether or not you're using the app or you're going out in the world, right, it's the energy.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: What would your energy have been early on?
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: While I think about what my energy would have been, I was not confident that there were any good men out there, or if I was, it was the fact that I was not in a place to obtain them, that I did not have what it took.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: I did not have the confidence.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: I was not in a great place for these men to even look at me twice.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: So it was a lot of self-esteem issues that I wrestled with in the beginning of like I see them out there, I see this professional men that have great jobs and you know they're very sweet and they treat women nicely.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: Part of the reason was and this is going to sound crazy, but part of it was am I good enough for them?
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: And the second part is am I going to get bored with them?
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: Does normalcy bore me?
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: Does the good guy bore me?
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: So I resonate with a lot of that.
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: I definitely doubted in the in the first year or two after divorce or like around divorce in the year after, I definitely had doubted that true love actually existed or like, yeah, like unconditional love or like a love that could have a type of fidelity to it.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: I definitely doubted whether or not it existed.
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: And I would sort of ask everybody who was willing to have the conversation with me if they knew anyone who had like a lasting relationship or this type of true commitment.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: So I definitely think that when I would have thought of like how do I find people to date in this space, it would have come with a huge serving of cynicism and probably resentment and victim consciousness around it.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: And so then the people that I would have attracted would have been mirrors of that for me, right?
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: So they would not have been the types of guys and then it would have been easy to tell myself like, oh, they just don't exist.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: And I will tell you, my now husband was one of those boring guys, right, he was the guy who was always steady in my life and that was not something I could tolerate.
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: And so I think that when you're asking yourself.
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: How do I find people?
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: I want you to first take a look at.
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: What do you feel?
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: What's the vibration inside of you when you think of it?
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: Cause that's the thing that needs a little massaging.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely.
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about.
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: What does self abandonment look like?
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: Like if we could slow a moment in time down.
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: What would it look like and catch ourselves abandoning self?
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: If we could play it on slow-mo, what would it look like?
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: What would it feel like?
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: How would I know that it's happening?
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: We've actually been talking about this a lot in our team right and just on the my coach John team and the Dear Divorce Diary team like how to not do that in team.
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: Super interesting.
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: How do we slow that down and recognize it when it's happening?
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: It's those subtle again yellow flags, the tiny little pools of yourself that think was that text message meant to check on me or was that being a little bit controlling in that moment?
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: And the crazy part is, I think, that you know inside of your body, but we have become so used to not listening and hitting the snooze button on all of those alarms that are going off in our body that we don't recognize it anymore or we don't trust ourselves enough to say this is a true concern.
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: You know, look, let's take football for an example.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: Guy tells you he loves football, it's his favorite thing in the world, and you hate it.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: You know, yeah, let's talk about the fact that, hey, maybe we might have to be a little bit um, giving in some areas, right, but let's not go in and buy 50 jerseys and act like we're the biggest fan in the world.
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: It's almost like there has to be a little bit of give and take in a relationship.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: But when you feel like you are starting to move away from the future that you envisioned with this person, if he tells you, hey, I want five children, and you know in your heart of hearts you want none, that's a no so, but you also have to know it too, right?
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right.
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: So I think so often it's around the suppression of expression, emotional expression, gut instinct suppression, right Like self-abandonment, happens the moment we have a strong body awareness that something's off and we don't express it.
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: And that doesn't mean weaponize it, right, and it doesn't even mean I have to express it to you know, joe Schmo, it's like maybe I need to express it to my therapist, or maybe I need to express it to my best friend, or maybe I just need to sit with it and feel it and express it and acknowledge it to myself and then get curious about what need is not being attended to.
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: Right, but it's anytime.
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: I'm avoiding acknowledging what my body is telling me, and so that opens a whole nother can of worms If you're not good at if you can't right If you're like, I don't know what my body is telling me, dawn, but I think that we don't slow down enough to really hear, right that gut instinct.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: Or there's resistance, or noticing that I'm leaning out about something, or noticing my tone of voice, or noticing that I just don't even want to tell the people in my life about this thing.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: I would just rather pretend it doesn't exist.
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: And then, yes, all of that is self-abandonment.
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: And I think that the more that you date and get out there, the better you will get at this.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: So, instead of wasting a year on somebody, next time, maybe you'll only waste six months next time, maybe you'll only waste three months, maybe you'll recognize in the first date that this person is not a fit.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: It's about getting better at staying true to who you are and what you want, and not allowing someone to lead you down a path that you just know is not meant for your life.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, I will never forget I was on a dating site.
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: I was on eHarmony, for God's sake, and that's expensive, and I, I.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: There was this guy and he was a local lawyer and you know, very good guy, like whatever.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: But he told me in a conversation that he had political aspirations.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: And I thought, oh my God, that is my worst nightmare to be in a political spotlight, to have all of the skeletons just.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: And I just told him.
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: I said, if you have political aspirations, I'm not the woman for you.
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: I'm just not, and I knew it in my gut, but I was afraid to say it, you know.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: So it took a couple of weeks till I could actually get it out, but again, you know it.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: Think about when you met your ex-husband, all of the yellow and subtle red flags.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: When I have coached divorce women, they have all told me the same thing that they recognized before the marriage that this may not have been the person for them.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: What are some of?
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: the tools we use over here on the podcast and in our coaching program that you wish you had to use while you were dating back then, like, what are some of your favorite things that we use now that you can just see making a difference for people that you wish you could have used then?
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: Honestly, I think that the breath work, a lot of like the inner child stuff, the IFS, therapy parts, um, recognizing when I'm being triggered, recognizing when I can trust myself.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: But for me, the tools that have done the most for me that I would have appreciated back then would have been a lot of the breath work and the EMDR, the things that are really processing the heavy stuff.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: And I was different in the fact that I didn't really work on my healing until I was in my first normal relationship and then that started calling out all of the things that I hadn't healed about myself.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: And so then that's when I started EMDR.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: I wish I would have started my healing immediately post-divorce.
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: I wish I would have reached out and had the community, had the support, the people, the professionals to help me.
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: I just disassociated for 10 years and thought that I was magically healed because I had created this beautiful bubble for myself to live in.
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: And that was not healing, it was protecting myself from the world because I was not ready to face all of the things.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: Right, okay, Coach Tiffany, where can our listeners get more of you?
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: Right Like you are, you are the lead coach for all of our programs and you know where can women who are listening, who maybe haven't hopped into our space yet and gotten to like, shoot you a DM inside of the heartbeat chat like what would you tell them to do next?
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: Absolutely so.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: I would love to hear from you.
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: You can shoot me an email at coach Tiffany.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: It's T I, f, f, I, n.
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: I at mycoachdawncom.
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: Please feel free to reach out to me, email me If anything that we said today resonated with you.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: If you need support, if you just need somebody to listen and understand in a nonjudgmental space, I would absolutely love to connect with you.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: This type of episode is so fun for us, right To have listener questions and then for us to have a conversation about just what the wisdom of experience has taught us over the years.
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: So if you have other podcast ideas that you wish we would talk about, shoot Coach Tiffany an email, shoot me a DM, send a carrier, pigeon, smoke signals, you name it.
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: We love unpacking your inquiries.
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: So so good, all right.
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: Have a beautiful day, peace, dear.
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: Divorce Diary is a podcast by my coach Dawn.
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: You can find more at mycoachdawncom.