How Do You Deal With Feast Or Famine In Dating- Identity: Part 1
Reid: One of us is drinking coffee and one of us is not. Can you guess who?
Cathy: [Laughing] it looks like a lot I can see from here.
Reid: It does. This is Cathy Vartuli from http://theintimacydojo.com/ that I’m sitting right next to.
Cathy: And I’m here with Reid Mihalko from https://reidaboutsex.com/
Reid: And we have a question that one of you wrote in which one should we gone up? Gone up?
Cathy: Alright, I love, I love all the questions. Someone said I love getting quote unquote having or parentheses having question mark my sex info with Reid and Cathy in stereo. I love that. So the question we’re going to answer is how come dating life is feast or famine? How can you nurture yourself when you’re in the famine stage and not lose your head when it’s a feast?
Reid: Oh, that’s a good question.
Cathy: Yeah
Reid: So not….I mean I have an idea of what the question means but the way that I would make it mean because I might be wrong is how do you get through the lean times
Cathy: Yeah, I think that’s what it means.
Reid: And I’m a big fan of getting your social needs met when you don’t have sexual partners like getting your monkey needs met from your communities
Cathy: Yeah
Reid: which doesn’t have to be your friends like you can get a lot of social needs met from strangers when you start stacking “Oh like here are the things that I’m interested in, here are the things that bring me joy can
Cathy: [Inaudible 00:01:24] He’s not necessarily talking about having sex with strangers.
Reid: but that could be
Cathy: It could be but that’s not I don’t think that’s where you’re
Reid: Yeah
Cathy: generally aiming but it came across the way
Reid: Okay, to you maybe but the idea of being like
Cathy: You, let’s do this thing
Reid: you’re…you geeked out about wine
Cathy: Yeah
Reid: and you love wine and you love when you have somebody to date and then you go share wine experiences together and maybe you don’t have a lot of friends who enjoy wine, there are meetups you can go to https://www.meetup.com/ or check out Facebook groups where there are people who are into wine and then show up at wine tastings and things like that and be social in a way that might be scary because you might be introverted or shy but you’re leveraging this thing that you already know about yourself that you love and so then you kind of stack going out and getting some social needs met. Maybe you have a lot of touch needs but you have nobody in your life for touch you know the easy fix, fix is go get a massage
Cathy: Or pedicure or go to cuddle party
Reid: Yeah or like go to a…and this is not the same as massage but like do you have nieces and nephews
Cathy: Go
Reid: and…and get in like you know play the human jungle gym with…with some kids you know not the same as adult touch but it’s touch and socializing which go a long way to help make starving those lean times when you don’t have somebody to date easier. The analogy for me is if there’s no food but at least there’s water, you can take care of the thirst
Cathy: Yeah
Reid: which will help you hopefully sustain yourself until you find the food.
Cathy: I think that’s really important because I think a lot of adults are socialized to think that all…if you don’t get sexual touch you’re starving whereas versus like playing innocently with your nieces and nephews and kind of tussling and wrestling, their those skin hunger can get fulfilled like we can actually and it’s fun for them. It’s good for kids to like have hugs and cuddles and snuggles and read a book together and I think that a lot of times we as adults collapse that if I’m not getting sex and I’m as adult I’m not getting my needs met. When people don’t actually die if they don’t actually have sex they just sometimes get grumpy.
Reid: Answer the question.
Cathy: So, I think that you know
Reid: I swallowed it wrong, that’s what I get for being a jackass
Cathy: It’s coffee, its coffee. And notice lean times like what are you doing during those times, are you I’ve created them for myself not even consciously where I was just kind of waiting for someone to appear in my life I wasn’t going out as much, I wasn’t I wasn’t telling my friends “Hey, I’m looking for fun people to hang out with a date. Can you invite me to things, can you introduce me to cool people you think I’d like?” So you know and then the more the times that were less leaning in general for me I was going out more, I was telling people I wanted to date, I was on OkCupid and there are certainly times where you’re like “I’m just not meeting anyone” but I think when we’re hungry it’s harder to meet people.
Reid: Yeah
Cathy: It’s like we’re like “aah” and people are scared because you’re like “Oh my god” and I got out on a lot of dates with people that are just like they were so hungry it was like I feel scared to open up so
Reid: Yeah, I mean again, these are all just ideas
Cathy: Yeah
Reid: you’re not broken if these ideas don’t work for you and generally…generally speaking, getting your social needs met from lots of different sources
Cathy: Yeah
Reid: rather than having one friend or one person be your like only supplier of touch or going out and trying new things. This can and this is tricky, right? Because definitely with romantic relationships, things are really screwy because the conventional thinking is you will be my only source supplier
Cathy: Yeah
Reid: of these intimate needs which is starting to become less you know like we’re talking about how that can be unhealthy
Cathy: for some people
Reid: but well and having a monogamous relationship where this person is your soul
Cathy: Oh yeah, soul
Reid: erotic support
Cathy: Yeah
Reid: but having friends
Cathy: Yeah
Reid: having community
Cathy: not having one person who’s your only conduit of all your body needs everywhere
Reid: Yeah and but we also do this for like friendships and stuff like you have your bestie and they are your bestie for everything which again is just like “Hey, totally cool that you have a bestie but are they the only
Cathy: you haven’t
Reid: supply line
Cathy: Yeah
Reid: for all this other stuff
Cathy: like you won’t go to a movie with it without that person.
Reid: Yeah. Last but not least, this is actually just popped into my head but this was I was trying to figure out I’d just say, “What is that thing?” Go volunteer
Cathy: Yeah
Reid: like this isn’t sound so like “Why is he saying this?” Go volunteer for an organization that that inspires you and go help people as a means of getting yourself out of the house, getting yourself surrounded by people and…and feeling like you…you did some good in the world.
Cathy: Yeah
Reid: This is a huge can be a huge win for people because then you’re, you’re helping maybe it’s a soup kitchen line
Cathy: Yeah
Reid: or you know cleaning up the…the park with a group that cleans up parks like who knows what it is for you but then you’re now you’re meeting new people, you’re getting out there and you feel like you contributed to something that you cared about, that can be huge.
Cathy: Yeah, I also…I’d like to come back and do another video on identity because I think sometimes the feast and famine can feel really strong when we’re acquitting our identity with having people to either have sex with sex with or a relationships with. So we’ll be right back.
Reid: Video 2
Cathy: Please leave comments below.