Help! I’m Struggling With Intimacy After My Divorce

00:00:16
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, and I do Part two. This is psychologist doctor Hillary Culture taking over the pod today. So excited to be here. I've been on the show a couple of times, but as a refresher. I am a licensed clinical psychologist who's done a ton of work in the area of relationships. I help couples as well as individuals in all areas of life before marriage, during marriage, separated, divorced, high conflict, divorce, any stage of relationship is an area that I love to delvin and is part of the work that I do. And today I'm extra excited because it looks like we're going right in that arena. I'm going to answer some of your email questions and some of your voicemail questions, so let's dive right in. We have a combo of some listener email questions and some voicemails, so I'm going to go to my first listener question, and this one is from anonymous. I want to know how to stop overthinking the beginning of relationships. I find myself over analyzing texts, assuming I know someone's intentions before they've had the chance to show me who they are, and creating a version of them in my head based on my own fears or past experiences. How do you stop doing that, stay present and give someone a genuine chance to show you who they are instead of who you're afraid they'll be. This one is a good one and juicy and loaded and so relatable that early relationship angst is an inherent part of the risk profile file associated with entering into a psychological intimate connection with someone, and I have a couple of thoughts about how to manage it and how to acknowledge that it's part of the process. So, starting from where I ended, engaging in an intimate relationship both physically, emotionally, etc. Does have a risk profile, and so being able to recognize that part of it is going to be guiding yourself to accept that there's going to be nerves involved, there's going to be fraught feelings involved, and there's going to be moments where you're going to feel vulnerable. And so instead of trying to guide yourself to not feel those feelings, the question becomes how do I acknowledge those feelings, have compassion for those feelings, and manage those feelings, and how do I want to show up on the back of those feelings? And so I think I'm making a really important distinction, because the edict that somehow you could eliminate those feelings is to pressure filed. It's more about, Okay, so those feelings are here, what do I do with them? And at the beginning of a relationship, trying to remind yourself that you don't know someone, that you don't have data around them, and that you're really in an investigative kind of collective mode and you're trying to gather information about who they are, and so trying to extrapolate that data into making predictions about the future is sort of a poor use of time and energy. So I would recommend two things. One, when the feelings come of fear around what do they mean? How are they representing themselves? Do they like me? Do they pick me? Is he going to call? What does this text mean? Taking a pause and recognizing that, like right, some of this is just generalized anxiety around the natural hope and potential disappointment that comes from engaging in the possibility of finding a relationship and trying to overanalyze bits of data into making huge meaning at the beginning of a relationship is like using I don't know like the onion to get your daily news. It's just not a credible source. You need more experience and more time with someone to make meaning about who they are and how they feel about you. And the other thing I wanted to recommend it this is a big one, is that we often find ourselves in relationships thinking about how does this person feel about me? Do they pick me? Are they oriented toward me? Are they putting energy into me? And we forget to ask ourselves how we feel around them, how do they make me feel? What kind of energy am I getting from them? How do I feel about how they move through the world, How do I feel about how they treat me, how they communicate with me, how they resolve conflicticked And if we diversify our analysis of not just being around how they feel about us, but being around how we feel about them, it gives us a sense of empowerment. So it is a fraud part of a relationship that beginning so normalizing yet but realizing that you can curate internal tools so that you feel a little more empowered. All right, let's see what our next listener question is. This one is from Lyric and she's talking about her experience around divorce and so there are a lot of listeners that may be able to relate to this. She says, I got divorced last year and we've been together since high school. I immediately got into another relationship after the split, and now my current boyfriend is asking what the next steps are We aren't on the same timeline. Does this mean our relationship is likely not going to work out? How do I tell him I want to go slow with our hurting his feelings? This issue itself, the question is so important, but the answer encompasses more than just this context. And this really is about one's ability to communicate authentically and honestly in the context of a relationship. And so I'll break that down in a moment. But getting to her specific, so she was divorced, she quickly got into a new relationship with lots of people have lots of feelings about that. People like to think about whether or not getting into a relationship quickly is quote bad or okay, or that there's some clear amount of time that's right in terms of waiting until one days again after a breakup. I don't really subscribe to that. I think any experience that one has post a fraud relationship can be practice, can be playful, can be fun. It's really about being connected to your own in tensions and your own internal feeling state, rather than being overly concerned about how other people are viewing it or what your community is saying around timing. But it appears this person gotten to Lara gotten too a relationship quickly afterwards, and now her current boyfriend is asking what the next steps are and it sounds like he is wanting to move forward more quickly than she is. Does this automatically mean the relationship won't work? The answers, I don't know, and she doesn't know either, And the reason why she doesn't know is because she hasn't directly communicated to her authentic feeling state around this. And this is the key, and this is why this question is both about the thing, the divorce, and timing timing posts a divorce, but it's also about communication. It's hard to say hard things in relationships, and yet it's one of the keys to relationships staying dynamic and connected and authentic. And so recommendation here is to sit down with him and say very directly that it appears we have different ideas about timing around this relationship and that's a potential obstacle. It scares me to have this conversation because I'm afraid it could mean that we'll find we can't be together. But nonetheless, I wanted to take the risk because I care about you so much and sit down and talk about where's your head at in terms of timing, where my head is at in terms of my authentic feelings around timing, and is there something that we can come to that's a mutual compromise that's good enough for both of us. And so when people talk about compromise, this is really what it looks like, sitting down respectfully, coming from your adult centered place and saying, where can we come together on this issue that feels good enough for both of us and feels like a sacrifice, feels like a compromise versus a sacrifice, compromise versus a sacrifice, especially the beginning of a relationship. So she was asking about how she has this conversation without hurting his feelings. And it's an interesting way to frame the dilemma because I think there's a sense that we often have that we can be in relationships with others without ever hurting their feelings or ever disappointing them, and that's not really a thing we want to do. Communication that's tricky in a respectful manner, in a digestible manner, But we can't operate as if we're never going to disappoint somewhere or never going to hurt their feelings. It's really about how we say things and how we come together after something feels divisive or fraud. So my summary is to be gentle, honest, authentic, and vulnerable and have a real discussion about where there might be alignment and face the possibility that it might not work, but embrace possibility that it might. The only way to know is to have that conversation. Lyric, Okay, we're going to do one more email. Then after this I'm gonna pivot to a voicemail. So this one is from Alisa, and she says, I find myself ruminating on negative thoughts since my last relationship ended. I'm in my late fifties, don't have kids, and have been single a long time. That's in capital letters, the long What can I do when I start to negatively spiral so it doesn't offset my entire day. It's a really good question. Once again, I can answer the specific question, and it's sort of based in the realm of relationship stuff, but the tools I'm going to recommend are useful for any set of tricky feelings, which is essentially, what do I do when I'm consumed with negative thoughts that take away from my day and make it hard to move through my day with positivity or momentum. In this case, Lisa's really struggling since her last relationship and probably feeling some sense of hopelessness and sadness and pain around being single and what her future prospects look like very real and so how do we move through a day when we have very real pain points but don't want it to consume us? And so I have some very specific notions around this that I talk about a lot with my clients, and that is kind of a twofold process, and I sort of alluded to this earlier, which is it is really important when we have negative feelings to not move away from it, paradoxically, to not suppress it, to not dismiss it, deny it, minimize it. Why because if we do that, we become more symptomatic. What I mean is that if we suppress hard feelings, eventually they catch up with us, and how they catch up with us is more involuntary, meaning we get agitated, we have trouble sleeping, we eat too much, we too little, we overwork, underwork, et cetera. There's some way in which we'll have emotional rent to pay if we don't safely deal with our tricky feelings. And so I would recommend facing those feelings on a daily basis, maybe setting aside some quote worry time if it's resonant right, so that like ooh, I woke up, Maybe a Lisa wakes up and she's feeling these really negative feelings and being really gentle with herself that like, there they are again. I'm feeling that negative sense, I feel that foreboding feeling about my day. I'm going to really pause and honor these feelings. Maybe I journal about them, Maybe I sit and think about them. Maybe I call a safe other, maybe I have a therapy appointment. But I find a safe outlet to get them up and out. And it's not so much about solving them, it's about acknowledging them. I feel lonely, I feel sad, I feel hopeless about my romantic prospects in the future. I'm just sitting with these honest, real, authentic human feelings. I'm not broken, I'm not flawed, it's just real. And setting aside concrete time for worried feelings is really healthy because they don't get stuck inside. I like to recommend even putting a timer around it. Maybe we set our phone for ten minutes, fifteen minutes, twenty minutes. I wouldn't recommend more than thirty minutes, like really delving into the pain and creating sacred space for them. But here's the part that I think Alisa is mostly asking about, which is what then so it doesn't consume your whole day, then being very deliberate, very intentional, but very gentle around. Okay, so I've set aside time for these worried feelings. I'm going to gently urge myself to put them away. Does that mean they magically disappear? Of course not. And this is where the work begins, because of course they don't magically disappear. But by telling our elves that we're going to seek to compartmentalize the feelings, we start building new neural pathways. And this gets like a little tricky, but let me see if I can break it down. We have these neural pathways that repeat quickly involuntarily. We have a negative thought, we go all the way to the undesired outcome, which is I'm consumed with negative feelings and feel hopeless. And that's what she's talking about, and that can make up a pattern of our day if it goes uninterrupted day after day after day. So we need to interrupt the neural pathway so it doesn't travel quite so fast and we don't end up at that unwanted outcome of feeling like we're consumed and ruminating with negative feelings. And how we do that is we do different things. So we put away our feelings after our worry time, and then we make concrete decisions about how we're going to move through the rest of our day, one small decision at a time. And I'm a decision neutral, meaning whether it means you're going on a walk, you're calling a friend, you're going to the store to pick some flowers out for your kitchen table, whatever it is that you're finding ways to move through the world in a more expansive way, even if they're small. And when you start stringing those things together, those neural pathways I alluded to earlier on as powerful and there's more room for more feelings. And so it's one of those things you got to stick with. You're not going to feel better on day one, potentially, or day five or day fourteen. Over time, your body will start to recognize that you have internal resources to combat hard feelings, and that in itself starts to make more room for more feelings. So, Alisa, I honor the feeling state that you're having, and I also really encourage you to get as concrete as I was describing in how you approach it. This is something if you want things to be different, you have to do things differently. If you want things to be different, you have to do things differently. And it isn't about how quickly the pivot occurs. It's about the habitual nature of doing things differently that yields results over time. Let's pivot to voicemails. Let's start with Greg.

00:16:29
Speaker 2: This is Greg from Sarah soa. I'm curious, as a divorced single man, do you bring up on the first date that your divorce or usually wait and bring that up later in the second or third date.

00:16:46
Speaker 1: Thanks Greg, Thank you so much for calling and asking that question. It's so nice to hear from a guy who's trying to think through how to move through the world post di Wars. It can be fraught, and it's a really good question. And I think there's a bigger macro question around your micro question, which is like, no, seriously, do I say the thing or not on the first date? And the macro question is what is your orientation towards your journey of divorce? Meaning is it one that's fraught with shame or embarrassment or is it one that includes kind of acceptance and self compassion and empathy. And divorce is one of my areas of expertise as well. It's an incredibly painful, traumatic time and so it's never a dichotomous answer. There's lots of feelings that people feel around divorce, but I really encourage you to start deliberately embodying a sense of self acceptance around it. That divorce is part of your story and there's pain points associated with it, but hopefully now there's expansiveness and openness and hope associated with it as well. As you put yourself out there, it appears to look for do experiences and potentially a meaningful connection. So I think if you're coming from that frame of mind. The question about whether to talk about it or not won't feel as fraud if it naturally comes up in conversation on a first date. I think it's absolutely more than fine that you allude to your experience and where you are in your process, and there's a good chance that it does. I think on many first dates people start talking about their relationship history because it's an interesting point of conversation, and I think it's more than fine and even in power to say, like, yep, this is where I am. I've been through this, this is sort of the highlights of what I've learned, and you know thematically where I am now and that I'm in like a hopeful forward moving place to not feel like you have to justify or explain. And if for some reason, someone sort of doesn't feel good about dating someone who has been through a divorce stating the obvious, but that's clearly not an alignment and someone that you wouldn't want to invest a lot of time in going through a divorce. While painful, shouldn't be a source of embarrassment. Relationships are complicated, and it doesn't make you a bad relationship option. If you've made the tough decision to not stay in a relationship. So thanks for the question, Greg, I think it's a really important one. I think we have time for one more voicemail.

00:19:53
Speaker 2: I have a question. My name is Kelly. I'm wondering how you open up to man after a divorce, newly dating, or you've been single a long time, probably single a long time? What apply to me?

00:20:08
Speaker 1: And how do.

00:20:09
Speaker 2: You become intimate with somebody when you're been single a long time and you have had your heartbroken a couple of times, not necessarily by because somebody cheated, just not emotionally available.

00:20:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, Kelly, thank you so much for this question. And this is this is a big one. I think one that a lot of people can relate to, is how do you guide yourself into a potential state of intimacy when you've been hurt before. It's such an existential ask because we can't help but sometimes move into a place of self protection, and sometimes that's appropriate, but also for us to gain access to safe, playful fun intimacy, we have to have some degree of openness. So it really is a rough analysis, and my answer in some way may not feel completely satisfying because there isn't a perfect formula, but I'm hoping thematically this helps. It's really normal to feel both. You're both going to feel scared, afraid, vulnerable, and hopefully a sense of openness, expansion, possibility, and hopefulness, and those are appropriate, especially when you've been in relationships that have been painful, and painful doesn't have to mean cheating. And so I think you go slow and you build a rhythm that is resonant to you. And how do you know what's resonant to you? It requires a lot of mindfulness and it might seem overly contrived or prescribed, and that's because it is. But really continuing to ask yourself throughout the process, how did that make me feel? How did being around this person make me feel? Did I feel safe? Did I feel comfortable? How do I feel around them? And being able to gauge the level of connection and intimacy that they were helping to curate and that you were experiencing and whether or not it felt comfortable or not. Trust your intuition, check in regularly and if it's feeling like too much, it's okay to slow it down. And what is slowing it down even mean? Right? It could mean things as concrete from how often you see them, the topics that you're talking about, to how much energy you're putting into it in your mind. I think a universal relatively universal phenomenon is thinking too much about a potential relationship at the beginning and it feeling consuming and kind of cultivating feelings of insecurity. So really trying to go for emotional diversification so that we're putting energy where it belongs. If we've met someone that feels compelling and interesting and is starting to feel like a safe, interesting place to put time into, great, but also making sure there's emotional diversification. We're still spending time with our girlfriends, our family, our siblings, etc. So that you're not relying on one person or one set of experiences for your sense of value and purpose. So I think it's a combination Kelly, of both being deliberate about the pace and emotionally diversifying your experience so your sense of self doesn't come from one place and trusting yourself to be able to handle if a relationship doesn't work out. And part of how we do that is through that emotional diversification, and we still have a landscape of people and resources and potential experience behind us even if a relationship doesn't work out. You guys, thank you so much for writing in, calling in, and being so vulnerable in your questions. I think it's so helpful for people to put words to so many other people's experiences and the realm of relationships and just in the realm of managing tricky feelings. So it gives us here at the pod an opportunity to talk about things that I think are so resonant for other people. So thank you so much for writing in. Are you finding it hard to navigate your chapter two struggling and need some advice? Send us an email or leave us a voicemail. All the info is in the show notes, and make sure to follow us on socials. I do Part two an iHeartRadio podcast where falling in love is the main objective.