Single And Celebate For Years… Is There Anything Else To Try Around Dating?
Cathy: Someone wrote in and said, “I’ve been single and celibate for years. I’ve tried online dating, approached men, lost weight, joined a gym, joined a church, dyed my hair, volunteered in my community and still never got asked out even though I have done everything society wants me to do. I gave up dating and sex. Now I just throw myself into my degree and started living my life without dating. Is there anything left for me to try?”
Reid: This is Cathy Vartuli from http://theintimacydojo.com/ that I’m sitting here with.
Cathy: And I’m here with Reid Mihalko from https://reidaboutsex.com/
Reid: So first of, congratulations. I’m just going to change this completely. In that, you’re living your life it says good for you rather than not living your life to try to hold on to some relationship that’s a bad fit. And what we’re about to talk about next is very complex because society has given us a bunch of bad messaging and a lot of bullshit advice.
Cathy: Yeah, I want to just appreciate your vulnerability and how courageous you’d been trying over and over all the different approaches and doing what society said. I’ve been there done that. What I’d encourage you to do is instead of trying to do what society says, notice what feels good for you. It may be that you’re following what society says and just never meeting the demographic of people that would be a good fit for you like I know when I tried to conform a lot, I was very bland because I was always trying to be a good girl and so I was afraid to show my personality, I was afraid to show who I was because I…I was pretty sure that wasn’t good. When I started learning to gradually to relax and be more myself, I think I became more interestingly people seem to engage more deeply with me because I was actually showing who I was and including my flaws and people tend to tend to notice us more as people when we’re showing who we are. Does that make sense?
Reid: hmm
Cathy: So, throwing yourself into your degree if it’s something you love and living your life is a wonderful thing. I don’t know that that means you have to give up on having a partner. I was celibate and single for 14 years and I was really I’d given up, I was pretty convinced nothing whatever happened and I do have… I have lovers now, playmates, I have people in my life that I really enjoy and I date. I don’t know if you tried things like did…you tried online dating. What Reid helped me the most with because I called him because I was not dating, my dating profile was so innocuous, it was so like I’m trying to be what I think you want me to be so that you’ll go out with me that it was totally boring and what Reid said, I was complaining about not dating and he said “Well it sounds like your biggest fear is that you’re too big for people to date” and I’m like “Yes” and he said “Put that at the top of your dating profile that you’re a big person.” I’m like “Then no one will go out with me” and he said…he’s making faces, he said “Well, isn’t you’re afraid of dating anyway if you put that out there and no one call, no one reaches up and you’re safe” and I’m like “Yeah, that’s true. That’s a good point” and I put it at the top of the dating profile and I had so many people email me like “Oh my god, I love how honest you are, how open you are” and I was like “Oh, okay I can start being the real me, the part of me that I’m pretty sure no one would love” and start sharing bits of that and takes courage and time to grow into it but that’s what actually let me connect with people not me trying to be perfect.
Reid: No and I’m going to jump in and…and this video may never see the light of day for what about I asked Cathy next, do you have the relationship that you wanted?
Cathy: No, I’ll share this.
Reid: Okay
Cathy: I am not in a romantic relationship and that I would love to have more relationships that I would love to have
Reid: Okay
Cathy: I have worked through a lot of things and I’m still I mean I’m dated a lot, I get a lot of dates now for my profile more than I actually have time to go out on. I have not met people that I want to be in a long-term relationship or I see them every day or live with them or something like that and that sometimes very frustrating for me.
Reid: Okay
Cathy: That doesn’t mean that I haven’t come a long way from where I was.
Reid: Okay and let’s say like it was some other five years like this
Cathy: I’ll hunt you down and slash your tires
Reid: Well at what point
Cathy: It’s a joke
Reid: are you are you in a similar I don’t want a car so at what point do you would you feel that even though you have friends and stuff you’re still not like you’re not celibate
Cathy: The food’s there, can you grab it?
Reid: Okay, alright I’m getting food
Cathy: Yeah sorry we had food delivered even though I’m not yeah I’m not celibate, I think that there’s part of me that would really like to have more and I don’t want to record the video guy, we’ll cut this little section. I can cut this section out.
Reid: No, keep going it’s real [Inaudible 00:05:07]
Cathy: [Inaudible 00:05:08] the steaks have arrived. Yeah so let us know below if that is annoying because
Reid: Alright
Cathy: Yeah so did I answer your question? Like five years from now yeah, I might be frustrated, I continue to do work and
Reid: But…but will you have will if…if five years from now you still don’t have the romantic relationship that you’re wishing for
Cathy: Besides slashing your tires
Reid: Besides slashing my tires, will
Cathy: on your non-existing car
Reid: In my non on my non-existing car. Five years from now looking back, will all of this had been a waste?
Cathy: No, I mean I’ve had some amazing experiences and met some amazing people and I happen to be very…very picky about who I’m going to have a romantic relationship with like I have very specific things that I would want to have to make my life better by having someone in it that that full-time
Reid: Okay
Cathy: or somewhat
Reid: so if ten years from now, there’s still nobody will you be second-guessing yourself around how picky you were?
Cathy: Maybe, I don’t know. It’s hard to know we make the best decision we have at the time and go with what feels right to us I think. Yeah, I don’t know it’s…it’s easy looking back to make you know hindsight’s 2020 but maybe it isn’t like we often remember things a little different than we were like I remember my first boyfriend and I are really good friends and now I remember things very fondly and then when we get on the phone I’m like “Oh yeah, I forgot about that quirk. That would have been really annoying 20…” because we dated 24 some years ago like I’m like “Oh we’re such…” he’s such a sweetheart, he’s an amazing person but like when we start talking on the phone going “Oh yeah that was really annoying. I didn’t enjoy that very much.” So like we can make anything, we…we tend to paint pictures and…and remember things a little bit differently than they were um I don’t know if it if you know we make our best guess
Reid: Yeah
Cathy: there’s a lot of things
Reid: So this is and I’ll end on this this is where this is the biggest tricky spot around relationship coaching and giving people life advice when it comes to relationships, no one talks about what’s good advice for when you end up alone
Cathy: What do you mean?
Reid: like no one talks about and I’m not going to cut a video on this yet
Cathy: Okay
Reid: but for me and you know I’ve been in a relationship for ten years now with Allison and if you’ve been watching these videos you know that I’m very promiscuous and you know Allison’s okay you know not just okay with that, she wanted to date somebody who was promiscuous and so I get to have my cake and eat it too and that’s its own amount of work to do that well and to leave everybody you know the campsite better than I found it but all the advice currently tends to be calibrated for follow this advice and you will have your relationship and not only that it will be the relationship of your dreams. Where this is tricky is what if we’re all wrong? And as a nerd that’s one of my worries and so I always try to think about “Well is my advice going to be worth it you living your life for the next 40 years and maybe never having, never finding that person or you’ll find them and then they die three years later or so…whatever tragedy or…or non-happening happens, what actually allows you looking back on your life years from now regardless of what happens feel like you had a life well-lived?” Look there for answers and because I think you finding somebody, changing your hair color and finding somebody and then being in a not great relationship for 40 years, I think that might not be the best use of the life but I could be wrong.
So I just want to put that caveat there that I think when we talk about this dynamic, we’re actually talking about something way bigger and deeper and important and I don’t know that I have words for it yet.
Cathy: Yeah, well and just years ago a friend shared advice relationship advice with me and at the time I hated it but now I think it’s really accurate and she said “You just wake up each morning and you’re with this person and you decide if it’s a good fit and you do your best and if at the end of your life you found you spent the whole life together, great but if you spent shorter time with each other, great you just it’s not about making your life around somebody.”
Reid: And now I’m going to take it even deeper as we end this very long video, what if that person is you? The one you wake up with every morning is actually you, are you turning yourself into that person? I felt really deep end it now. End it now.