If you every realized that you're really good at giving other people relationship advice but you seem to get stuck in your own relationship mud, then this episode is for you! Dr. Colleen responds to Hopeful Romantic Matt's question. He wonders what it will take for him to follow his own relationship advice. Have you left Dr. Colleen a voicemail with your relationship dilemma?? You can do that at LoveUnboxedPodcast.com. Get your question answered on the air!
Title: Love Unboxed Ep 007: Matt - How to Step Out of Your Own Relationship Mud
Intro to Love Unboxed Podcast
The Hopeful Romantic Question of the Week:
Unboxing the Topic:
How to Step Out of Your Own Mud:
A story to show how a person can get into their mud and also how to get out of the mud.
Closing Words:
Do you still hold out hope for finding love or improving the love you have? Welcome to Love Unboxed, the podcast for the hopeful romantic. Your host is Dr. Colleen Mullen. She's been a therapist for over 20 years and a lifetime hopeful romantic. She's been helping her clients find love and stay in love, and now she wants to share what she knows with you.
Get ready folks, because today we're diving into a brand new unboxing adventure.
Hi, and welcome my fellow Hopeful Romantics. It's Dr. Colleen here. And if you listened to last week's episode, you could probably tell I needed a little de stressing. Well, I have done that and here we are again. So today I'm going to keep it short and sweet and almost right into the unboxing. But first up, I want to give you a quick reminder that this show.
Exists because of your questions. So to leave me your specific relationship question, just go to loveunboxpodcast. com where you'll find the prompt to leave me your relationship question. I can't wait to hear what's on your mind. Our hopeful romantic question of the week, this time is from Matt. Let's hear what's on Matt's mind.
Hello, Dr. Colleen. Um, my name is Matt and my question for you is, which probably hits for you just being a doctor and a therapist of, you know, you see people's relationships, but also we all got our friend, you know, her friend, your friends who knows gives you great relationship advice. But they're terrible in a relationship.
Or you can look at other relationships and see, I wouldn't do that, that's some dumb, nah, uh, uh, uh. But then you can't practice realistic expectations in your own relationship. So my question is to you, how do you not be a pessimist or be hopeful, but at the same time, how do you kind of reality check your own relationship while you're in it?
What are, because I think we get lost in love at the beginning and then sometimes, at least I know I have, you get lost in love. And then you're like, Oh shit, I wasn't looking at this realistically. Thanks. Thanks, Matt. That is definitely a relatable question. Don't you agree? So before we get into the unboxing, I want to talk a little bit about the voicemail process.
Matt's question was thought out. He took his time. And he just said what he needed to say to set up the dilemma and then asked, and you can do that too. When you go to loveunboxpodcast. com to leave me your question, you do get five whole minutes. So please take your time. Think about the factors that play into the dilemma that you're having.
And set it up for me and then just let me know what your question is. Now in getting into Matt's question, what Matt is essentially talking about is a person that steps in what I call their own relationship mud and can't figure out how to get out because they get stuck in the mud, they get stuck in their mud.
So it's even worse. We can often see how to get out of other people's problems as he's mentioning, but we can't see how to get out of our own. So, before we get into how to get out of that mud, we have to unbox the topic and start with how we get into the mud. Because I think, myself very much included, we've all stepped in our own mud from time to time in a relationship.
And this one is one I do happen to know. Very personally, not my proudest moment in a relationship, but I have definitely been stuck in my own mud. So for me, it showed up in a past relationship with a person who just didn't want the same things that I did out of a relationship, out of partnership. But we told ourselves that we loved each other.
And yet it was not enough. I know now that we needed a lot more going for us than just these feelings that I thought were love. It turns out my toxic trait, as I, uh, call it, was insisting on trying to make a relationship work with someone who didn't want the same thing out of that relationship we were literally working on having.
Two different relationships. It was really that simple, also that difficult at the same time. So when I talk about stepping in our own mud, you can also think of it as like your blind spot in your relationship life. We often don't see it, whether you think you have solid ground and you're walking along the road and all of a sudden you're in a hole of mud, or you wake up one day and realize you just didn't see what was right there.
It's kind of the same concept. And for me, it really hit at the end of that particular relationship, and It just wasn't meant to be. We were literally working on having two different outcomes. So during that time, my inner imposter showed up. And if you didn't hear last week's episode yet, go back and listen, talking about imposter syndrome, which I call your inner imposter.
So as you can imagine, my inner imposter showed up and was. Very disrespectful to me during that time and added to how terrible I felt, which also kept me sinking a little bit deeper into my own mud because sometimes we get stuck and then we dig our hole a little bit deeper. And Matt mentions that as essentially as well.
When you can see the way to get out and you can even like, like myself, like literally my job was to help other couples. Have a better life together and I could do it and I could see the problem and I could say, Hey, if you try this or you try that, that's that can lead you somewhere positive. So I was digging my heels in deeper because I didn't want to be, you know, the proverbial failure and you'll learn from me that I certainly have changed my outlook on that.
Know that the healthiest thing a person can do is get out of a relationship when they know that there is no possible way for that relationship to come together. in a way that is going to be satisfactory for both parties. But that was a long time ago for me. It was probably about a decade ago. And I figured out what I was doing and how to undo it and how to step out of my own mud.
So now I want to help you do the same thing. All right then, so how do you get out of your own mud? How do you step out of your own way? So I'm going to give you a couple of bullet points. I want you to have bullet points so that if you're a note taker, you have a way of tracking this. So number one is to be conscious of what you want.
You need to be able to state what you want and hold yourself and the person that you're dating accountable when it comes to that. Sometimes it's about the kind of connection you want when you know what you want out of a relationship. Let's say you want to travel the world, family is important to you, financial independence is important to you, meaning having the financial means to be able to travel and have adventures and see the world.
So if you pair up with a person who says, I like to live way below my means and my goal is not to make as, you know, a big salary, but to live a comfortable life and I'm kind of a home body. And I've already traveled a lot in my life, so I don't see the point in traveling more. You and that person are not, not destined to work out.
Okay. So stating what you want, knowing what your needs are, what your wants are, and letting someone know. So that they can have a choice about meeting that need so that you also get out of hoping that they're going to read your mind and know what your needs are. So number one is stating what your needs are and holding.
others accountable, including yourself. Number two is you have to really be willing to walk away from someone if you really know that they're not going to be what you need long term. Of course, when I'm doing therapy with people, I hear all the time, of course I'm willing to walk away. Like if they're not going to be what I need, why would I date them?
But so many times I see that they inevitably don't just walk away in the early parts of a relationship, even if someone isn't going to be what they need long term, because there's often reasons that they're spending time with them in the now that become hard to let go of when feelings get involved. So I talked about this concept in episode three.
It was in the episode, Am I Ready to Date After My Divorce? That episode, I talk about people showing you who they are early on in a relationship. So it pertains to being able to walk away. But it also is just a reminder that the person will show you and if you want to avoid stepping in mud that you don't want to get stuck in, you must listen to them.
And that leads us to number three, you don't have to date them just because they are nice. So I've done a lot of dating in my life and I've counseled people for over 20 years. on the dating that they're doing in their lives. And the one thing that I have seen that is consistent in online dating is that it is very easy to have a good first date with someone off a dating app.
I am going to be doing a workshop down the road on how to date differently. And that's for setting yourself up for success online dating. But I was an early adopter, like I was in chat rooms on AOL in the late 90s. So I've seen a lot. I've heard a lot of stories. And the one thing is that you can have, it's easy to have a good first date.
And I say that because we already know that you've, you've seen each other's pictures. So you at least know that you're considering that they could be. attractive enough to want to have an intimate relationship with. So you already think that they're attractive. You have maybe chatted a little bit online, like on the texting part of the app.
Maybe you've even gone as far as having a phone call to talk about scheduling meeting up. It's easy to have a good first date with pretty much anyone as long as you've gone through those first basic moves on a dating app. So you meet in person, you're like, Oh, this person's nice. So you go on another date with them and maybe go on another and you go on a handful of dates with them.
But then you start hearing about what they want life to look like. Their idea of fun is. snowboarding and skiing every weekend of the winter. And for you, fun is going to the beach and staying in the hotter weather. Because, like me, I live in San Diego and I refuse to buy a winter coat. I lived in New York for 30 years.
I don't want to buy a winter coat. I live in San Diego. It doesn't get that cold. So, I'm not dating a guy that goes skiing because I do not like the cold. I'll go for a weekend, but if this is how you pass the time, we're not a good match. It's not how I pass the time. So I want someone I can have those experiences with and I know I do plenty of other things outdoors and if that's what this person wants to do, I'm essentially going to have an absent partner for the winter and I don't want that.
So I'm not going to date that person. But they might be super nice. And that's where it comes into play that like, just because they're nice, it doesn't mean you have to date them or, or try and have a relationship with them just because they're nice. Right? You go, but what if they're the only nice person?
Well, I guarantee you that they are not. For as easy as it was to meet that one, there will be many more to pick from if you are able to walk away from the one that isn't going to work. On that note, number four is that you must be able to check in with yourself. Do a reality check. Matt asks specifically, I think, about that.
Um, you have to check in with yourself as you're dating someone and going, am I saying what I need? Am I looking at them through realistic lenses? Am I hearing them say who they are? Am I seeing that we have matching values? Are we moving both towards a mutual outcome of this relationship together? So you have to be able to check in with yourself.
Someone can overlook something in the beginning of a relationship that turns into being stuck in the mud because they have emotions invested when they start seeing the reality of the situation. Unfortunately, I end up seeing people really damage themselves over the years by not doing the check in with themselves.
They don't check in because they don't want to feel it. I have witnessed people just get stomped on in relationships emotionally, and They will go through a rollercoaster for hours and hours of anxiety. The anxiety is due to thoughts that had an expectation on them that is now in conflict in their brain.
You know, on one hand, it could be. We were supposed to have a date tonight and they never called. Right? And they haven't checked in and they're not responding, or they are in the earlier stages of a relationship, and they talked about being exclusive, but then they found out that the person is not exclusive with them.
And instead of talking to the person, and besides the check-in with themselves to see what that feels like. They go into their head and they go into the rollercoaster of emotions and then the person that they're dating will call and say, Oh, I can't wait to see you tomorrow. And the person just puts away all the anxiety and everything calms down in their system and they say, Oh, that's what I needed.
I just needed assurance that that person wasn't abandoning me because usually we are scared of getting abandoned and we don't want to feel like we're not loved and we don't want to feel like we're not chosen, but it is not a competition. So you get in that mud by not checking in with yourself because you don't want to feel the real, the realness of those feelings.
One more item I want you to put on that list. of how to avoid stepping in the mud. Number five is the too good to be true factor. You know, my father always said, and he was born in 1928, so don't mind if it sounds old fashion, but he always said, there's no such thing as a free lunch. And he just meant if something is too good to be true, it probably is.
And that's what I want you to listen to in the beginning of a relationship. If you are getting love bombed and this person is telling you, Oh my gosh, you're so amazing. This is wonderful. This is the most special relationship ever. Have you ever felt like this before? It is so amazing to be with you.
Don't you feel it too? If you don't, don't overlook that. Listen, and go, wait a minute, I've only known you three weeks. What do you mean it's the best relationship you've ever been in? What do you mean it's the most you've ever felt for someone, right? The reality is you're essentially two strangers who have spent a few hours together over the course of a couple of weeks.
There's not much there. So don't believe something that seems too good to be true, right? Don't get caught in the moment. Listen to it and go, wait a minute, what? Question that. Okay. So quick recap, we get in the mud by not stating what we need, not being willing to walk away once we have feelings invested.
We don't listen when the person tells us who they are and we don't check in with ourselves for how it feels and we ignore the too good to be true factor. So now I want to give you a scenario that. It shows you how if you're doing these items that I gave you in the beginning of a relationship, how it can help you avoid stepping in your own mud.
All right, so you're going out with someone for a few months and as I might have mentioned earlier, it can take a few months for you to even really spend some regular time with someone. You might be, let's say you're at the three to four month mark and you're spending Uh, the better part of most weekends with this person, you've mixed and mingled the friend group and stuff, um, and you have feelings for them.
And let's say early, early in the relationship, there was a day where You were supposed to have a date and they blew it off and you texted them that night and they didn't respond at all and you got all in your anxiety. And the next morning they texted you at a reasonable time in the morning for waking up and stuff like that.
And they said, Oh gosh, you know, I'm sorry that you worried. Uh, but I just, I had a really rough day and I just didn't want to be around anybody. I'm really sorry. Well, there are definitely people out there that if this is like two, three, four dates in maybe. Might go well, you know, I don't know him that well or I don't know her that well and you know, I get it I'm gonna I'm gonna overlook this I'll say okay, but they do speak up and they say but really I need you to let me Know and they give them the benefit of the doubt.
I mean depending on where you are in life And yes, a little biased on, on age and, and relationship experience. But if you've had some relationship experience and have some weather, you know, some seasons on you, uh, don't, you're not going to teach somebody to be courteous, but if you're still young and early in relationship experience.
Go ahead and say, Oh, well, you know, like I really need you to like, let me know you can take the night off. We don't have to see each other if you need time alone or you need, you had a rough day, but at least let me know in the future. Right? So you give them that and you say, well, I'm going to overlook it.
They were in a bad space. We didn't know each other well, but that was them showing you who they are because now you're three, four months in, you're seeing them the better part of most weekends. They do it again and they go this time a whole weekend because now you're used to spending most of the weekend with them.
They don't reach out the entire weekend and they just tell you, gosh, I had this project at work. I meant to call you, but I just didn't get a chance and I didn't get to think of it when I was caught in my work mode and I'm so sorry that the whole weekend just kind of like flew by. It's easy to set aside your feelings when they have been love bombing you and it feels too good to be true and the mind wants to hold on to that idea.
So when it gets a message that, Oh no, it's very real and they're disappointing you, we want to put it away, right? So that's how we ignore the too good to be true factor. But, none of that is okay. I don't know, I mean, I hear these stories all the time. It's not okay. And so many people go, well, maybe. And in three or four months.
They have feelings and this is a perfect time where you could look at the reality of who the person is. If you're stating what your needs are and you've said, I don't care how much time you need to process your stuff or how much time your work takes up, but just let me know so that I can make my own plans and I'm not sitting around wondering what's going on.
You're telling them they're choosing not to meet that need. You have to listen. And then you, you're seeing who they are. You're having to list, you have to listen to that, right? You have to check in with yourself and be like, what did that feel like that weekend when you're doing that check in with yourself?
It's about what did you feel like when you sat in your anxiety wondering, are they calling you at all this weekend? Are they even going to send a text to say, Sorry, I messed up. What did that feel like? I'm going to guess that it felt like you weren't important enough to call or even text, that you did not, certainly didn't feel cared about and that you did not feel important to this person.
If those messages are being sent to you and you're choosing not to listen to them, you're already stuck in your mud. You're stepping in it even deeper because then what happens? Is that eight months, nine months, 12 months now have passed. Now you've spent a year with this person and you're saying things like, Oh, I love you.
And they say, I love you back. And you think that you're moving towards a future, but every couple of months you're having these blips. Where you're having the same thing and you're getting these messages for entire weekends that they are blowing off plans. It's either work or a friend's party that they forgot about or the ski weekend comes up and they said, but I told you I love to ski.
So sorry you have that thing next Saturday, but I have a ski pass and I'm going. So if that is who this person is and I'm, I'm saying it, it sounds ridiculous. But I'm telling you, I hear these stories all the time. You are then ignoring who this person is showing you that they are, and you're investing in the idea of, well, if I love them the right way, they'll see that I'm the one that they're going to pick because that has to do with you and probably your inner imposter has gotten too much.
Too much of the better of you. We have to kick that imposter to the curb and you can go back. This is episode seven. You can go back to episode six and listen to how to do that. You can see that like if you ignore something. In the beginning, you, I always say, you know, Hey, if you really think that the person wants a different experience with you, then if they, you know, do the proverbial mess up in the beginning, tell them, tell them what you want, tell them what you expect, teach them what you need, because obviously they don't need the same thing, uh, that you need, right?
Give them that opportunity. But then if they choose to continue to not. Meet that need you cannot overlook it. The more you overlook it, the more you justify, the more you give excuses for it, the deeper the mud becomes and the harder it is to pull yourself out of. So then you get out of the mud by holding your head up and saying, this is what I expect of being in a relationship with someone.
This is how I like to be treated. This is how I'm going to treat you. You show up authentically in the relationship then and you expect them to and when they don't you see them or you see them Show up authentically and something rubs you the wrong way and you listen to it, right? You say gosh, this doesn't work for me and you are willing to walk away And you check in with yourself and you do the difficult work of facing those ugly emotions when they show up, the painful ones, the ones that are fueled by your inner imposter.
And instead of adopting it and going, well, that's right, because no one really does love you. So you say, well, why would you expect this person to? They haven't really seen all that you can be yet because you know, you don't really get a chance to show people that. Don't, don't do that to yourself. Hold your head up and go, I know exactly who I am.
I know exactly how I treat this person and how I expect them to treat me. And I am willing to walk away. And if I am checking in with myself about something that happens in this relationship and it makes me feel unimportant, unloved. left behind and not thought of or invisible. There's a big problem there.
I don't know if that problem can get solved. If you're only a couple months in, why do you need to solve it? You can walk away. And I'm not trying to tell you to take relationships frivolously, obviously it's not how I look at the world, but, but that's not being frivolous. That's going, you know what? I'm just spinning my wheels.
I don't have to do that. I can expect that there is better, that there is different, that there is more of what I want out there. So I'll move on and it becomes something that you will feel so much better. about yourself that you did that you'll even feel great that you were able to end it with the person and just be genuine and say, gosh, it doesn't feel like we're on the same path.
And it's really just been a few months out of our life. Like I'm going to wish you well and say, have a good life. I think you're a great person. But you're not for me. There's nothing wrong in that. And in fact, healthy people will appreciate that you said that to them. Unhealthy ones won't, but just as well that you're walking away.
So that's where I want to leave you today. And to Matt, my hopeful romantic, I hope this helps you in your future relationship endeavors. I hope that you can use the bullet points from this episode to kind of keep in mind the things that can help you stay out of your own mud and help you then do what you need to do to take care of yourself so that you're not going, how did I get here five years from now in a relationship and go, how did I get here?
Neither one of us is getting what we want, and then you have to start over. I don't want that for you. So to Matt and the rest of the hopeful romantics out there, from your fellow hopeful romantic, me, you deserve to be loved exactly as you want to be loved. So keep that in mind as you're going through the world.
That wraps us up for today. Again, go to LoveUnboxedPodcast. com. I know you can't forget, it's the name of the show, go to LoveUnboxedPodcast. com, leave me your relationship question. I want to know what's on your mind. And if you're interested in what I had to say on getting a different outcome from dating online, I will be launching a workshop that you can join me at online coming up in May of this year.
Also, for right now, you can just go to Love Unboxed Podcast at gmail. com. And just let me know. You want to be on the wait list for that. Okay. So now in between episodes, you can find me on Tik TOK and Instagram Tik TOK is love on box podcast. Instagram is at dr. Colleen Mullen. That's it for me this time.
So until next time, let's keep hope alive.