I recently met a man I thought might be the one.
A bold statement, I know, but I’ve reached a point in my dating life where I go bold or I go home.
This man pursued me hard at the start. After our first date, he asked if when he could see me next. At 42, I’m not into games. I appreciate honesty and directness. I love it when men express their interest with the earnestness of a teenage boy.
Two dates in and I realized I really liked him. Like, a lot.
Three dates in and suddenly his incessant texting slowed way down. Five dates in and I was barely getting a daily hello.
It went from feasting to starvation within a heartbeat.
You might ask, what happened? Did he suddenly lose interest? Well, in between seeing each other, yes. We stopped texting a lot when our in-person connection seemed to get more intimate. We spent late nights cooking, listening to good music, having heart-to-hearts, and exploring our physical chemistry. Each time he left I felt a yearning for more.
About a month into dating I didn’t hear from him for 24-hours. I thought it was odd, considering our texts would be frequent throughout the day. During that 24-hour period, I started to feel more than worried. I felt starved. I realized I had been starving actually. The day-long fast reminded me that the man I thought was so perfect all along had actually been deceiving me by feeding me nothing but scraps.
Desperate for some emotional nourishment, I texted him the next day. “Is everything okay?”
An hour or so later he texted this back:
“I’m sorry, I’m going through this court situation with my ex and it’s got me in a dark place. I just kind of shut the world out when I’m going through heavy emotions.”
Okay then. That was an answer — and maybe a red flag? After hearing this, I remember feeling compassion for him but I also felt sorry for myself. The me that survived and healed from complex PTSD was rather concerned by this man’s lack of healthy coping skills. A man who pretends the world outside of him doesn’t exist when he’s stressed is not a man I would choose to be in a relationship with. The statement, is he willing to work on this? ran through my mind like a neon sign. I told you I like bold.
Go bold or go home.
After the text exchange, we had a long heart to heart on the phone. I told him that when he shut me out like that it hurt me. I told him that I care for him and I want to support him when he’s stressed, even if that means giving him space. We were still getting to know each other, so I told him, “I’m a worrier at heart. Letting me know you need space will east my worried mind — and will make me feel closer to you and not further away. Honest, open communication is real intimacy.” During that conversation, he told me he was sorry and he didn’t realize how his actions affected me or the people around him. He told me his family often complained about feeling abandoned when he shut them out too. “I need to work on this, I do,” he said with all the sincerity in the world.
I hoped he would shift. He apologized profusely for distancing himself from me, which brings me to the second dating motto I live by:
Actions speak louder than words.
I know at this phase of the dating game, I can’t change a man. I know what I see is what I get. Yet, I can hope he will grow alongside me into a better and better version of himself, but I also know I need to love what I see in the here and now because that’s who and what I’m dating.
Sadly, it’s been two weeks after our heart to heart, and very little change has occurred. No, he hasn’t gone 24 hours without texting me (that’s growth right there), but that intense pursuit energy is gone — and I miss being pursued. Suddenly, I’m the one whose texting good morning and good night. Suddenly, I’m feeling like I’m trying to make a decadent meal out of nothing but three-day-old leftovers.
The Three Types of Emotional Starvation:
Sadly (I wish I could say proudly), I’m not new to the dating world. My on-again, off-again dating experiences in the past decade have shown me there are three types of starvers. They operate differently but have one thing in common: a propensity towards depriving you of the one thing you seek — true connection.
The irony lies in the fact that starvers are starved too, they just haven’t learned how to nourish themselves — and unfortunately, until they learn to feed themselves properly, they’re not going to be feeding you much of anything.
Here is a rundown on the starved lovers as I see them:
1. The Catch and Release type
Like my current relationship, your partner starts out strong. They love the hunt. Pursuing you gives them a rush that gives you a contact high. But watch out, once they have you hooked (literally), it’s time to let you go. Suddenly reality settles in and they can’t stomach the idea of a real relationship with you. The catch and release types blame life circumstances. It’s never them, it’s always life. They really thought they were ready for something real, that is until they got what they wanted.
2. The Feast or Famine type
This type of partner can be the most fun to be with. When it’s feast time, you are all they can think about and focus on. You are royalty in their eyes. The sex is amazing. The conversation is mind-blowing. The most mundane activities suddenly become blissful. When it’s feast time you and your partner feel like you’ve had a taste of heaven on earth. But watch out for the famine. When your partner pulls away (for whatever life stressor of a reason they give you) you literally feel like a piece of scum on earth.
During the famine, you constantly question your worth. Did I do something wrong? Am I suddenly not good enough? Is it them or is it me? What the fuck happened?
During the famine, you feel alone in a desert and what you thought was love feels like it was merely a mirage.
3. The Scrapper
This type of partner is perhaps the hardest to read. They string you along with scraps of affection. Inconsistent texts of affection. Middle of the night or early morning shares of their favorite love songs on Spotify. An email of a love poem with the subject header, “:)”. Quality time with a scrapper always has you questioning their motives. They make a nice dinner and then while you eat and drink red wine, treat you like a casual acquaintance. They make love to you and then tell you they have an important work phone call they forgot about and while hurriedly putting their pants on they say, “Nice hanging out.”
The scrappers feed you just enough to keep you coming back. They can surprise you with a spontaneous gift after days of barely any communication. Their favorite excuses are, “I’m sorry, my life is so crazy right now,” and, “I’m going through some stuff and I know it’s making me a little distant. It’s not you, it’s me, okay?” They tell you they want you just when you’re ready to walk away.
Scrappers make you think they are feeding you so little to build up your appetite for the main course. Unfortunately, there is no main course in your future, so you better be okay with a lifetime of scraps.
If you identify with one or a combination of these starving lover types, good news — there is hope!
At some point in our lives, I think we’ve all been guilty of starving both ourselves and others emotionally. In order to have a nourishing relationship with another, we must have one with ourselves (I know, that sounds so cheesy and so cliche — and it is, for good reason).
We all deserve to satiate our hunger. Today I did just that. I reached out to my so-called boyfriend and I did the thing any emotionally starved partner would do: I expressed a glimmer of my true feelings via text. “I hope you’ll do me the honor of speaking with me about this today” were the last words I sent to him.
It took me quite a while to text him a hint of my feelings today. Years of therapy and mindfulness training have taught me not to act rashly when it comes to expressing my feelings. I spent a good part of my morning processing this situation through with a close male friend. He encouraged me to reach out, despite my fears that I was being selfish because this guy had a stressful life event tomorrow.
“Your needs are the most important ones, don’t discount them” my friend texted me after I told him I shared my true feelings with my current boyfriend.
I think my friend’s statement deserves to be emboldened, don’t you?
Your needs ARE the most important ones, so don’t discount them!
I need to hear this mantra on repeat. Relationships are selfish as much as they are selfless. They require clear and constant communication. They entail two emotionally hungry people seeking nourishment from the other Now the realist in me knows that I’m not always going to get my needs met. Sometimes my partner and I are going to need different sorts of nourishment. However, opposing needs don’t have to lead to emotional starvation, not if two people are communicating clearly and open-heartedly.
Here are three tips I’ve learned to avoid and overcome emotional starvation. It’s taken me years to learn their importance. I hope it doesn’t take me years to practice them with someone other than myself. But, if I’ve learned anything in my 20 plus years journey inward, it’s that if I can’t be open and honest with myself, who can I be open and honest with?
I guarantee, if you practice these three tips daily, your inner starvation will start to wane. If you practice these tips daily, you will start to feel nourished from within — making any love food your partner offers you a bonus dish.
Three ways to keep yourself emotionally nourished in any relationship.
1. Voice your needs to yourself first.
You don’t really know how hungry you are until you speak your truth. Write out your feelings. Speak to your feelings. I used to love journaling, but now I love talking out my process with a friend, or my cat, or even in a voice memo app on my phone. And sometimes — only sometimes — I’m that crazy person in the woods that is muttering as I hike. My muttering is of course me talking out my needs to whatever tree or bush or plant will listen. My cat also hears a lot of my needs (she often closes her eyes or looks away, but I know she hears them). Once we know what we feel, we then have the option of voicing it to our partner. But before we speak our needs to our lover, we must speak them to ourselves.
2. Let go of the guilt that your needs are selfish.
Needs are selfish, that’s a fact. So digest it and let it become a mantra you live by. Selfishness is not nasty or negative — unless you truly think your voice is the only thing that matters in the whole world. If that’s the case, look up narcissism. Being selfish in a relationship can actually save you a lot of explosions and maybe even a lot of time. If I tell my partner it’s important for me to have consistent communication because it’s him telling me I matter and I’m an important part of his life and then he tells me, “Well, I’m not capable of that” — well, then I might have saved myself months or years of emotional starvation.
3. Push through the fear of speaking your needs — every time.
Even as I write this, I feel my fear hopping around in my stomach like a nervous tik on a pogo stick. Fear is a very normal human emotion. There is a primal element to fear that reminds me — this is something important and I better pay attention to it. When fear is at the forefront of a need, I know it’s got to be treated with the utmost respect. Every time we push through fear to speak what’s in our hearts, we grow a bit emotionally.
As I write this I’m having memories of every relationship I’ve been in and those moments where fear held me back from being vulnerable. The moments where fear is at the precipice of a moment where we can go bold and express our needs or go home and just eat our feelings (both literally and figuratively) have proven to be some of the most pivotal moments of my relationship past.
Recap:
When you follow the three tips to emotional nourishment, you give yourself the greatest gift. You remind yourself that you are worth it. You tell yourself that your feelings are just as important as your partner’s. You honor the one beautiful source of love that you were born with: your heart.
No one deserves emotional starvation. Ever. But at some point in everyone’s life, they feel emotionally starved. The moment you realize you’ve been starving is the moment you harness the power to do something about it. The act of feeding yourself that takes the utmost courage.
It takes courage to ask yourself:
What do I need right now?
Once you have that answer, you can speak it to yourself. Let go of that guilt you have about being selfish. Be selfish. Speak it. Push through the fear and say it to yourself. And if it’s related to a relationship, you will know the right moment to share it. It will be that moment that your stomach is jumping into your heart which is jumping into your throat pushing you to say:
Hey, I’m hungry and I matter. Here’s what I need.
Don’t be afraid to speak your needs to your partner. When you do, you inspire in them the courage to do the same. And that’s how we end emotional starvation — one heartfelt word at a time.
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Previously published on medium
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Photo credit: by Thought Catalog on Unsplash