Maybe this is just our Disney story?

You know the main parts that make up a Disney love story right? No? Ok let me lay them out for you.

1. You’ve got the accidental (or destined) meet of the two lovers, the prince and the princess.

2. Then you have the conflict (whatever battles the two of them must try and get through together).

3. Then the evil witch pops up that stands in the way determined to rip the two of them apart.

4. And finally …. the happily ever after (or so we hope).

The moral of the love story tends to be that once they vanquish their foes, they can finally be together, and Disney will have you believe from then on that it’s happily ever after and will only be easy from this point as they walk off into the sunset (I’ll get into why this maybe won’t be the case eventually).

So, if you’re reading this as someone who has a romanticiser relationship tendency, I’m going to try and explain this story in a way you may understand, because I know how much you want to believe that the if you were with the right person the love should be easy and effort free, with no hurdles and there would be nothing trying to keep the two people apart (dumbass).

Here begins our once upon a time…..

The meet of the two characters destined to fall in love was kind of cute actually, kind of unexpected and lead to a push and pull courtship. The princess didn’t actually want the prince to begin with, she was so adamant she didn’t want love (because she was terrified of it) that she pulled away and that lead him into a push mentality (pushing towards her to fill his craving for acceptance from people who show you distain) the courtship phase was a tricky one while the prince battled the thoughts of trying to fulfil what his families wishes for him (cue how we’ve stollen part of our story from the tale of Cinderella, he had to marry a princess specifically chosen for him even though he didn’t want to but that the role the one he had to go along with as a prince) anyway, he found the princess he wanted, but she didn’t quite fit the mould of what everyone wanted for him, which created their first conflict … well mental battle kind of conflict for him to sort out.

But actually, their main conflict came into play, when the evil witch appeared in full force and stayed present constantly manipulating the prince in the story (now we’re seeing how we’ve got some alignment to the little mermaid).

The irony of how the evil witch was in his ear trying to get him away from the princess he wanted, convincing him to believe a fake reality. A reality that didn’t involve his princess at all.

The conflict section of this story ended up tearing them away from each other. Resolution was avoided. For months actually, so the evil witch won … for a while.

But of course that’s not the end of the story, because we’re telling a romantic story and in this world love will always prevail over evil (always).

They found each other again, these two people that fate was determined to pull together at some point during the course of their lives.

And this time, they tried to avoid the evil witch in their Disney story by using magic techniques (cue Harry Potter magic, yes I am aware of the fact this isn’t Disney whatever) they walked around under the nose of the evil witch wrapped in a cloak of invisibility.

All the while they were wrapped up together his princess was trying to free her prince from his demons, the ones that she saw turn him into a version of himself that he wasn’t (now we’re into beauty and the beast vibes) she saw how the expectations of those around him was draining his energy and he needed her, to bring out the side of him that he’d forgotten existed, the side that came out when he was given unquestionable love and support, although she knew he was kind, gentle and selfless, he’d lost sight of that for himself and was tricked into believing he wasn’t worthy of love because those around him had spent so long convincing him he lacked worth.

That phase of romantic bliss where they were undeniably happy all of a sudden was whipped away from them when the evil witch got a sense of someone around her being happy and she didn’t like it, she thrived on those around her being unhappy and unfulfilled like her. She was happy when the prince could be on her level. And she wasn’t happy when he was happy because of someone else. To her if he wasn’t the same as her, which was platonically unimpressed by life and things around her, she didn’t like it and would set out to destroy it.

So just like before, she destroyed it and the worst part was …. he let her, by unwittingly falling victim to her toxicity by being so used to listening to negative comments about his decisions. He was blinded by wishing that somewhere deep down the evil witch was in fact good (but she never was).

Ultimately, if we put this into modern day psychology terms, his soulmate mentality overrode his fix-it mentality and just like that, he let his happily ever opportunity slip away because he wasn’t brave enough to stand up for his princess. The one who made up his Disney story (and he loved the idea of true love).

But Disney romances never end badly, right?

TO BE CONTINUED…..

Minor set backs (we’re all good though)

A while ago I decided to write a post about relationship break up levels, how one person will start at level 10 and the other will be clawing themselves up from the lowest of lows and it’s all a process?

Well. Recently I’ve been thinking about how much easier life would be if that process was linear. But it turns out it isn’t.

You want to know why you cried over them today but yesterday you were excited to find someone new? Because falling out of love isn’t linear and as much as we’re taught how to love, we’re never taught how to stop.

We’re raised around the idea of once you fall in love it sticks, there’s no need to learn how to unlove someone. You never get taught to prepare yourself for someone walking out of your life when they were the ones who chose to be in it in the first place.

Why aren’t we taught how to walk away when we feel unappreciated, or how to stop loving someone who tells us they don’t want us? It isn’t an easy process. Your heart will always hold onto hope.

That’s why sometimes you don’t talk to them for weeks and then fall into a drunk slip up. But it’s ok, it happens. Own your s**t and move on.

You keep going back because your heart hasn’t yet caught up with your head and in most cases your head is the sensible bit, it’s the part of you that knows you’re better off without them. So when your heart does catch up you’ll be fine, but it’s a slow mother f***er. So please bear with it.

There’s a song I keep thinking of recently because there’s a line in it that goes like this “if you’re going to break my heart, do it right, don’t leave me holding on like the last time” I listen to it and I’m like, yeah you know what, if someone tells you they don’t want you, but they only partly mean it so basically, they’re saying it to push you away while they try to figure it out, how is that fair? You’re in or you’re out dumb ass. Because it isn’t helping the whole linear break up situation if you’re not sure that they’re sure, you know?

But it’s true and it’s another reason why our hearts hold onto people, because if someone hasn’t broken it properly then it just sits itself in limbo. Which is super annoying.

I don’t even know what classes as proper heartbreak either, is it being cheated on by the one person who was your whole world? Is it seeming them move on with someone you considered a friend? Or is it when you’re sat in front of the man you love and having to listen to him tell you that he doesn’t feel anything for you? All these possible heartbreak situations are pretty f***ed but is one more legit than the other? Like on a scale of having your heart broken, does one of these ending versions make the most sense when we think of what proper heartbreak is?

Because personally, I think all versions of a break up will hurt just the same. It doesn’t matter what scale of trauma they fall on, to you, it’s horrific.

So next time you pick your phone up and you’re about to message them, try to think what the outcome will be. Are you doing it just because you’re drunk, or because you want them back in some way, maybe it’s just because you like knowing you have access to them still? Whatever you want the outcome to be, just have it clear in your mind.

But whatever the way. Healing will never be linear, you’re allowed to be sad some days and happy the next. You’re allowed to cry because you miss them one minute and pick yourself up and go out on a date the next.

THERE ARE NO RULES. STOP BEATING YOURSELF UP!

P.S the song I mentioned can be found here for whoever wants to listen to it. Enjoy!

It’s all about learning what you don’t want

Ah man, it sucks that relationship didn’t work out! I know you thought they were the one, but what did you learn from it?

What a tough question to answer when you’re grieving for someone who isn’t even dead!

What did you learn?

When a relationship breaks down and this doesn’t even just have to be a romantic one, you HAVE to walk away saying to yourself “well ok, next time I know from a process of elimination, here are the things I know I don’t want in my next person” rather than taking the approach of “here’s my super long list of tick boxes I want them to fill”.

Instead I think it’s better to add to a list of things we know we don’t want next time rather than sticking to a list of absolute must haves for our “perfect” partner (who won’t exist by the way because perfect is simply unattainable).

What have you realised you don’t want your forever person to be like, or what traits have you realised you don’t think match your own for whatever reason.

Here’s the benefits of finding your perfect match from a process of elimination rather than going off of a “must haves” list.

1. We might think we know exactly how we want our forever person to be in our minds, but when we experience it in real life it feels strangely different to our expectations.

2. Finding out what kind of person you want to be with from a process of elimination rather helps build you into who you are at the same time.

3. Until you’ve experienced what you don’t want, how will you REALLY know exactly what you do what with total certainty?

4. Creating a list of expectations for our perfect match to fill actually reflects more of what we’re missing from our own life than anything else, you want someone outgoing, confident and not scared of anything? Okay cool, but are you actually bringing that to the relationship yourself? Because if you’re not, how do you expect to attract someone like this?

5. As brutal as it sounds, getting your hands dirty will make you fully appreciate the final stop. So if I’m putting this in terms of dating, until you’ve dated some s**t heads, you’ll never fully appreciate the person you’re supposed to be with. See what I mean?

6. Dating is character building. Honestly it really is. You can’t expect someone who’s the embodiment of some list of “must haves” to show up without you putting in any effort. You have to get out there and experience some crappy relationships to realise what you ACTUALLY want because our wants from a relationship change as we get older.

So honestly. In learning what you don’t want. You’ll inadvertently learn what you do and that’s a far better way around of doing things because it sill help form you into the person that you are at the same time.

Therapy session 1 – it’s a process

Sending yourself to therapy, does that make you crazy? Maybe it makes you attention seeking? Like you’re looking for a problem that maybe doesn’t even exist. You’re looking for something or someone to blame all your out of character actions on perhaps?

But your brain is an organ, and just like your liver or your heart it can get sick when it isn’t treated with care, right?

We know all about the things we should and shouldn’t eat, we know how much water to drink, we even know how many steps we should be doing a day and how many times a week we should be hitting the gym. So why do so many of us seem to falter when it comes to looking after our minds, like we don’t know how to care for that part of us, or like asking for help from people to give it the care it needs, means we feel weak and damaged.

Would you call someone who’s constantly suffering from heart attacks crazy for trying to go to a professional for help? Doubtful. so maybe more of us should shut the f***k up when it comes to giving an opinion on someone and their need to give their minds some more care and attention.

You know what the sad fact is, the people who take themselves to therapy are in most part only there to deal with the people in their lives who should be in therapy. Ironic really.

But anyway, how can I be a such a big advocate for something and be out here telling people around me that they’d benefit from going without actually trying it myself? Seemed hypocritical.

All I can say on a verdict on session one is this – we all have issues. Therapy actually takes a lot of mental strength. Most of us go into defence mode when someone points out an issue in us, so get ready to battle some demons that you’ve hidden down VERY deep. Get ready to have memories triggered that you didn’t even know existed. And for me, quite possibly the worst part …. get ready to cry in front of a stranger who’s managed to trigger an emotional response in you just by talking about what’s currently happening in your life.

Something no one knows really is this, you’re actually going to feel worse before you feel better. As memories and experiences get dragged up out of the gutter of your subconscious it feels like you have to start from basement level to work your way up.

If you’re going to therapy to look for other people to blame for your issues, then you’re probably not going for the reasons you should be, and if you come away with a victim mindset, then you’re not ready to do the growth you should be expecting either.

Therapy isn’t there to give you an out for being a shitty person. It’s there to help you understand all the things that go on in your head when you don’t understand them yourself. It’s there to give you valuable tools so you can stop falling into recurring toxic patterns and making the same mistakes.

But above anything. I think the most important thing to understand is this: therapy is not for the weak, it’s for people who want to understand themselves and are ready to stop making the same mistakes they always do.

It takes a lot of mental strength to voluntarily go through a process like this. And I’m still very much a big advocate for it, but only for those who I think have the mental competency to hack the journey it takes you on.

So tell me, what does love look like to you?

A very key and important question I like to ask anyone who sits in front of me newly in a relationship “What does love look like to you?”

Why is this such an important question you might wonder, well to put it quite simply I like to figure this out because normally the idea of what love is to someone will look and sound totally different in the head of their partner. So if the two of you have different ideas of what love is, how will you know once you’re actually in it? (and by it obviously I mean love)

Even if you’re not with someone right now, it’s still an important question to wrap your head around, because your idea of love that you have in your head might actually look totally different to what you find yourself in in real life.

In your head love could look like grand romantic gestures, passion in abundance and endless amounts of affection. When in reality, the relationship you’ve found yourself in is actually representing love in a calm, supportive and romance in every day small actions kind of vibe ….. so naturally when your built up idea isn’t matching the reality, it will be hard for you to accept that this is in fact love.

If you’re anything like me you grew up idolising your parents relationship, you looked at them and the unit they’d created as if that’s the only version of love you ever want to experience. But then …. well, we grow up. We start noticing that maybe this relationship we idolised isn’t actually as prefect as we first thought. It doesn’t mean there aren’t aspects we still adore about it, but what we can realise is that we probably won’t want to duplicate that kind of love. I like to refer to this as our rose tinted glasses falling off.

As we grow up and start experiencing our own relationships and our own heartbreak, our vision of love will begin to morph into what we know we want our “forever love” to feel or look like, it’s very rare for someone to view love in the same way consistently throughout their lives, I’ve never heard someone say they see love in the same way they did as a teenager vs when they hit their 30’s, unless of course, they haven’t taken any lessons from their relationship experiences!

While searching for lessons in break ups has always tended to be known as a more feminine trait to help us process the heart break, I think it’s very important for anyone going through a break up to sit back and take some time to understand what that relationship has taught them about love so they can take something with them going forward.

When I look back on who I was at the age of 21 and what I wanted from a relationship I can see how much I’ve grown as a person and to me that’s a great sign that I’m moving in the right direction. While at 21 I wanted to be in a relationship consumed by chemistry and a level of sexual attraction that drives two people to act in crazy ways, I’ve actually come to realise that actually what I crave in a relationship above anything else, is a sense of calm. I love knowing that I have someone who will be in my corner no matter what and always be on my side in times of external conflict, but to me that shows I’m ready for a relationship that has longevity rather than short term satisfaction.

So here’s the questions I want you to sit back and ask yourself now:

1. What does love look like to me in my head?
2. Do I really really think that idea is something sustainable in a real life relationship?
3. Have I ever experienced a different kind of love to the one I thought I wanted in my head and how did it make me feel?
4. What are the core values I bring to a relationship to make sure I give and receive the kind of love I want?
5. How has my perception of love changed in the last 10 years?

Confirmation Bias and a serious case of regression

Did you know our brains are there to protect us from things that we register as dangerous? Like it will literally send chemicals around our body when it senses danger.

And you know what we register as scary and dangerous? – the unknown. And what gives us the biggest sense of “the unknown”? Well … a break up, because we don’t know what’s next.

When a relationship ends we enter into the biggest unknown phase that we’ve been in for a while, so we tend to go into flight or fight mode.

We start going over things in our minds like, what will I do without them, how will I fill my time, what will my future look like. Etc. Etc. But all of these questions open us up to the big scary “unknown”

To our brains …. regression is the biggest form of self protection because it’s taking us back into a sense of known behaviour and our brains associate that with being safe. Our brains will literally play neurological tricks on us to make us feel like the sun shines out of someone’s back side and they can do no wrong, just because dating someone new seems too scary.

So wether you’ve just been dumped or you’ve just dumped someone, keeping a good check on your brains need to regress to your former person because they represent safety is something I would definitely recommend.

Before going back to someone you need to ask yourself these questions because another neurological issue we can be facing is falling into a state of confirmation bias.

What is confirmation bias I hear you asking?Well … you know that saying about rose tinted glasses? It’s kind of like that. It’s when our brain goes looking for memories to back up our own views and in the case of a break up, our beliefs are that the person we aren’t with anymore was the best person in the whole entire world because our desired outcome is to believe that we won’t ever find anyone that compares to them.

When we feel ourselves missing someone our brains will literally search for reasons as to why this is true, so suddenly all we can think about are the positives in an ex just so our brains can back itself up for missing them.

So when the need to regress tricks your neurological systems into a state of confirmation bias, remember that everyone has a flaw. Seriously … everyone does and I can guarantee that for every one thing you miss about someone, there will be two things that make you better off without them.

So here are the questions I like to ask myself to make sure I’m not being tricked by my own love confused brain post break up.

1. What did they bring to me that I can’t bring to myself?

2. What was a deal breaker I was happy to overlook while I was with them but not now?

3. Were effort levels mutual and reciprocated?

4. What traits that you admired in them are actually irreplaceable?

Dig deep when you think about answering these, because I can guarantee that when you really think about it, you’ll see that your brain has probably tricked you into a right f***ed up confirmation bias situation!

Why verbalising “I love you” seems so damn hard (to me)

The last few weeks have felt very self reflective for me, I tend to direct myself towards the route of self discovery and personal growth when faced with situations that I find emotionally challenging, so it got me thinking …. Why does telling someone I love them feel so unimportant to me, until people around me start asking if I’ve told the person I’m dating that I love them yet, it really doesn’t enter my head.

I really had to delve into my childhood to find an answer to this one, but really it came to me after an off topic conversation with a friend about the importance of understanding a partners love language and what we naturally gravitate towards to express our love for another person.

It suddenly dawned on me that ‘I love you’s’ weren’t something that were thrown around left right and centre as I was growing up, and I’m not saying that’s because there was no love in my family, in fact it was quite the opposite, but we knew we loved each other in different ways rather that constantly telling each other that we love them.

As I was growing up, I was shown continuously that the way someone expresses they care about you or love you is through doing things for you, from cooking you a meal, helping you with homework (one of my parents expressions of love), buying you new things or taking you on days out etc. 

Even when I look at the relationship my parents had (all be it not an ever lasting love affair) but my mum would show she cared about my dad by looking after me and my brother and not asking for help and always making sure she had home cooked meals prepared for him, it was even shown when she supported him throughout a career change. And my dads way of showing love was through financial support, he would ensure we kept a (large) roof over our heads and he would always take us on a lavish family holiday once a year. 

But this proves my point – all of these expressions of love are action based, not word based. And this was what I grew up around.

So now here’s my question I’ve had to ask myself, is this why I have such an issue with verbally expressing how I feel about someone? Quite possibly.

To me, as soon as I start going above and beyond for someone through doing things like booking weekends away, cooking for them, making the bed and making them a coffee when they want one, I’m showing how much I care or that I’m falling in love with them (because trust me, unless I really like you, I will probably always hesitate to do things for you) and it replaces the need for that all be it intimidating (to me) three word eight letter sentence.

I also tend to forget that not everyone will understand this expression of love and will need to hear exactly how I feel about them because doing things isn’t an obvious enough sign if your love language isn’t acts of service. But here’s the funny thing, I don’t want to receive love through acts of service. In fact, I want someone to tell me how they feel about me, I like having viral reassurance which is why words of affirmation is my joint top love language – so although I cant express love this way, I do want to receive it this way, which has some kind of twisted irony to it really!

But here’s the thing, the type of love you grow up around will either do one of two things to you as an adult. You either admire the love you’ve been around as a child and want to replicate that in adulthood, or … you want the total opposite because you crave what you didn’t have.

So although I can’t bring myself to tell someone how much I care about them or how much I love them, I do want them to tell me – talk about hypocritical. But it does make sense because I want the opposite of what I’ve grown up around.

My childhood also wasn’t filled with constant expressions of PDA either between my parents or towards me and my brother from my parents. We weren’t raised by overly ‘huggy‘ parents and yet for me now as an adult, physical touch is the joint top love language I want my partner to express towards me to show that they care.

So here’s the question I’ll pose to you – how did your parents express love to you and your siblings and each other?
And how do you think this has impacted what love actually is to you?

When you actually sit down to think to answer the question of ‘what is love to you’ its initially going to be hard to answer, but a lot of us will form our answer based on what we’ve seen and experienced, either through what we’ve grown up around or from the rom coms we’ve seen at the cinema. But it’s important to be able to answer the question taking out external factors that may have shaped our opinion.

KISMET; Our story by definition

Kismet; destiny; fate. Commonly used to refer to something that one believes was “meant to be”—or the reason why such a thing happened.

In a world where leaving each other has become more and more frequent, I can’t help but sit and wonder, what are the break up rules for something that doesn’t feel like it’s actually over? How do you handle going from having someone who’s your everything to suddenly nothing, not because anything has gone wrong or someone has done something unforgivable, but actually because one persons mind has gone into such a negative place that they’ve pushed you so far out of the picture they can’t even have space for you anymore.

When should you listen to what your gut is telling you and just give up on all hope of there being a potential with someone? But what’s even more confusing is when your gut is telling you not to give up. It’s saying don’t give up on a person because although they aren’t there right now somehow you know they will be in the future.

Should we be prepared to go through a long slow painful process of letting our hearts heal, or should we just throw caution to the wind and jump straight back into the dating game even though we know the person we’re supposed to be with is just missing right now.

Maybe healing is hidden deep within long conversations with friends who help you to understand where things went wrong. Or maybe it’s in the many glasses of wine consumed in front of your new Netflix binge with your housemate. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s hidden in the new self discovery path you’ve decided to take to better understand yourself and how you can make yourself feel more confident and successful.

So here’s to us, and our ‘kismet’.

I’ll always believe this …. because there was too much ‘coincidence’ surrounding me and you for it not to have been fate (or my new favourite word kismet) that we would cross each other’s paths one day.

However, I’m not sure it was actually for the reason that I thought it would be.

When we talk about fate we imagine some kind of collision of worlds, where two people who are meant to be together finally find each other and above everything else in the world they’ll figure things out, fight for each other and push through anything that life throws at them (once they’re together) because they are just MEANT TO BE.

But that isn’t what happened, in fact the twist of fate that bought us together shon a light on the aspects we needed to work on without ourselves so brightly, that the need for personal growth and reflection was almost uncomfortable and it drove us apart.

But maybe that’s what fate had in mind? Maybe all the ‘coincidental’ twists that made our lives so similar in such weird ways were bringing us together to force us to see how we needed to grow. Or at least, that’s how I like to think of it.

Do I think that’s the end of the journey that fate had planned for us? Absolutely not.

Do I think that changes need to be made before we actually work? Absolutely yes.

Do I think you’ll do the personal work you need to do in order for us to work? Again … absolutely not.

Which is sad. Because I do genuinely believe there’s a reason why me and you keep getting drawn back together. I think it’s on a subconscious level that neither of us really know what to do with.

So until the next time of being drawn back together. I’ll enjoy thinking about how our story is still unfolding.

Here’s how to know if you’re self sabotaging your relationships (and how to stop)

Healthy relationships take a lot of work, and often that can mean taking a good hard look at your own dating behaviours. There are many ways we can screw up our romantic relationships without even realising it. But it’s important to think about how we could be actively sabotaging our relationships.

So how do you know if you’re self sabotaging? If you self-sabotage, you’ll probably tend to put up barriers to intimacy, This might look like being hypercritical, unassertive, picking fights, being overly distrusting or jealous, needing constant reassurance, and so on.

The roots of self-sabotage are often from early negative childhood experiences. Often it results from parents (or other caretakers) who have been either unresponsive, abusive, or inconsistent in their responsiveness and caretaking toward the child. It triggers deep-seated feelings of being unworthy or not good enough. It fosters a negative view of oneself and negative expectations or mistrust toward others.

Are you self-sabotaging your relationships?

You can speak to any expert and they’ll explain this behaviour is really common, and many of us can be guilty of self-sabotaging our relationships without even realising it. So here’s how to know if you’re doing just that.

5 Signs of self sabotage

1. You avoid pain

This is when you allow yourself to get to a certain point in a relationship before pulling back. Maybe you’ve seen too many sad films or really took to heart the saying ‘love hurts’… whatever the reason, avoiding pain is the outcome. This can manifest in a number of ways, from creating ‘bottom line’ issues out of nothing, to convincing yourself that this person isn’t ‘the one’ (if you believe in that in the first place) so you should move on.

2. You live in a fantasy land

So many people manage to avoid falling for someone because they adhere to a strict code. This is a list of ‘must haves,’ usually created in a much younger, more immature psychological state that leads that person to sabotage any and all future relationships – based on the skewed notion that the person they’re with isn’t worthy of their affection. Fantasy land behaviour often occurs within the first six months of a relationship and offers a sense of control and power that might have to be relinquished if you allow yourself to be vulnerable with another person.

3. You listen to your inner critic (waaaay too much)

We all have one, you know that little voice that goes on at you, telling you to hope for the best but prepare for the worst. Yup, that’s the one. Well it’s our inner critic that, more often than not, is responsible for self-sabotaging our relationships. Convincing ourselves that we’re ‘not worthy‘ or that ‘it’ll all end in tears anyway so what’s the point?’ is the main reason a lot of relationships can fail. We don’t allow ourselves the chance at happiness because deep down we don’t feel we deserve it.

4. You care too much about what other people think

For some people, the opinions of others far outweigh that of their partners. This can be hugely damaging to a relationship. Sometimes hearing the opinion of other people will impact decisions you make about your relationship more so than anything your partner does/says because you’re trying to find reasons to convince yourself of why it won’t work.

5. You forget that you’re not the same

Expecting your partner to think, feel and act in the same way as you do is another form of self sabotage. Rigid thinking is an unhealthy way to live and can cause great stress and upset to your relationship. Accepting and appreciating that your partner’s experiences, understandings and ultimately the way in which they identify the world are different is the only way you can truly co-exist happily with one another.

3 ways to turn off self-destruct mode

1. Practice introspection

Notice what you’re thinking when a relationship starts to get tough or when you’re trying to take the next step. How do those thoughts connect with experiences you’ve had in the past? Are you recognising the need to pull away as something that’s happened before.

This is a great time to investigate your attachment style and whether there are things you could process so you don’t carry them into future relationships.

Think about your self-esteem level and whether there’s room for improvement. Practice self-compassion as you face fears about being vulnerable with a partner, if you convince yourself you’re not worthy of being loved then this will inadvertently make you push people away who care about you due to the fear of rejection. Especially when you’ve got a lot of feelings for someone.

2. Talk through it with your partner

Whatever you’re feeling, talk it through. While there might be a crazy mix of emotions going on in your head while you’re fighting the need to pull away, it’s a good idea to talk to the person who cares about you.

At the very least, as you examine your history and habits, communicate with your partner about self-sabotaging behaviors and how you’re working to change them. Tell them how you’ve felt like this before and how they can help you overcome it.

3. Add checkpoints to your relationship road map

Once you’re aware of your sabotaging habits, have regular check-ins with yourself and your partner to look for signs of stress in the relationship.

Are you constantly thinking the relationship will end or blow up? or are you always planning an exit strategy? When things are going well, do you do something to create distance? You may notice that you vacillate between idealising your partner and then devaluing them. Commitment and vulnerability are particularly triggering. While you want to be closer to them and build on your bond together. You’re also so scared of doing that, that you end up pushing them away instead of pulling them closer in the moment you actually need them.

Observe the feelings coming up in these moments. It’s often fear and confusion. Slow down and get curious with yourself as to the thoughts, feelings, and typical behaviors connected to those thoughts and feelings and what’s made you suddenly freak out. The more you discuss how you feel with your partner the easier the journey will be because they can help to soothe your worries.

Above all else, just remember that self sabotage happens to a lot of us. And recognising that you’re doing it is the first step in making it better. Communicate to your partner as much as you can and remind yourself that although it’s hard to break a habit. It isn’t impossible.

So let’s discuss, is flirting cheating?

This week I’ve found myself thinking about a question that’s important to understand your own answer of if you’re dating and after chucking it in the direction of various people I know, I’ll now allow anyone else to answer it for themselves.

Is flirting with other people while you’re in a relationship considered as cheating?

I think the most important thing that needs to be considered here is this – what is the intent behind the flirt, because here’s my theory that I know won’t be received well but I’ll say it anyway. I don’t believe men can flirt without there being sexual intent behind it, whereas I believe women can.

For a man to initiate flirting with a woman, there will be some kind of sexual desire there. So really when a guy flirts, the idea of that flirting to be taken further wouldn’t ever be off the table.

However for women, sometimes we flirt purely because we want to feel desired or wanted by someone and we don’t even have to find that person attractive, but it’s more of an ego boost. We can flirt to get a drink, or to get something done for us. But …. it’s actually quite rare that we do this with a sexual intent.

But does that make it any less worse? That bit I’m not sure about.

So is flirting cheating? I think it depends on the intent behind it. Because if you’re only doing it because there’s some kind of sexual desire for the person you’re flirting with then I would have to say yes, because realistically and if we’re going to be honest, it probably means if you could sleep with them you would (but hopefully your moral compass would kick in first).

All that to one side though, I think even those of us in the most secure relationships probably have our stomachs turn at the thought of our other halves flirting with people who aren’t us. So wether you consider it cheating or not, it probably isn’t morally on track, but it’s definitely a conversation the two of you should have together to make your boundaries clear and to save any feelings getting hurt in the future.

One thing I can be sure of is that flirting with other people is probably quite a big trust violation and why would you risk doing something that could break your partners trust?