5 Steps to Date from Main Character Energy
How often have you dated out of a fear of being single? How often have you hung onto the first person who gives you a shot? Ignored red flags because you’ve got to make something work?
When we’re single and on the brink of turning 30, there’s so much pressure on finding a relationship. We feel anxious about whether we’re ever going to meet someone, and it feels urgent that we find someone because the clock is ticking. So we end up dating out of desperation, staying in relationships that aren’t right or contorting ourselves to become someone who we think will be easier to love.
But this won’t land us in the loving, secure, deep, committed romantic partnership you deserve and truly desire, deep down. Instead, we need to shift into dating from confidence, dating from main character energy where we are the center of our lives and only entertain people who truly match our energy and are a good fit for us.
Here are 5 steps to dating from main character energy, so that we can enjoy the process of dating, feel good in our own skin, and manifest the partner of our dreams.
Be clear on what you want
We all have that list in our head about what we want in a partner. We want someone good looking, smart, funny, outdoorsy, who’s got a great job and a great family, etc. That’s all nice to have, but none of those things tell us what kind of person he is going to be inside the relationship and how you are going to feel dating him. You could meet a guy that checks all the boxes, but is an awful partner who leaves you feeling anxious and doubting!
So, instead of that list, ask these 3 questions:
1. How do you want to feel in a relationship?
Make a list of how you want to feel in your relationship. And as you’re dating, connect to your body to discern how you feel when you’re around this person. A big sign of a toxic relationship is that you feel anxious all the time! A big sign of a healthy relationship is you feel calm, stable, loved, secure.
2. What kind of relationship do you want? Do they want the same thing?
If you want a committed, monogamous relationship, ask if that’s what they’re looking for too. If you know you want marriage and/or kids, ask about that too. You’re not asking them to marry you! You’re asking if marriage is something they want, so if it’s not, you can say bye and move on! If they do want the same things as you, that sets the groundwork right off the bat and creates a container for the relationship to grow, as you continue to assess along the way if this is the right person for you.
3. Do they have capacity to self-reflect, grow, and take feedback?
Are they willing to hear what you have to say? Do they prioritize how you’re feeling and care about how their actions impact you? Are they defensive or are they flexible and open? If you want a life partner, these characteristics are so key because a committed relationship requires a partner who’s willing to work on the relationship with you and takes responsibility for their own personal work.
2. Ask for what you need
One of the most important things we can practice in dating is asking for what we need. Especially when we tend toward people-pleasing, saying what we actually want can be so challenging. But if we diminish our true wants, needs, preferences, and desires, we only sell ourselves and our partners short. We don’t give them the chance to step up the plate and meet our needs so that we can feel fully met, seen, understood, and loved. And we also don’t bring our authentic selves to the relationship when we hide our needs.
Practice staying through the discomfort of saying what you actually want, and experimenting with what happens as you date different people along the journey.
Some examples to try:
“Actually 7 PM works better than 6 for me.”
“I actually would prefer to eat at home tonight. Want to cook together?”
“I think I need Sunday as a day to myself to reset for the week. Can we do dinner this week instead?”
3. Learn to say no
One of the first signs I see of women moving toward more aligned relationships are when they gain the power to say no and end a relationship that’s not working.
I remember when I was in my single-and-30 season, there was a time when I met a guy who I had great chemistry with and got really excited about. We dated for a few weeks and were having a blast, but when things started to get real and I started showing my needs and emotions, he didn’t meet me with validation and support. He actually stood me up one night when we were supposed to meet for salsa dancing!
I was so mad and hurt, but still, it was hard to let go. We finally talked on the phone and it was tempting to try to bend to what he wanted to get him back, but I stood my ground and ended things. It was such a painful experience and I had to let myself cry, go through the heartbreak, and write angry messages in the notes app on my phone that I never sent.
But that experience built my trust in myself that I do have the strength to say no to what’s not right for me. And looking back now I can see that that step moved me into alignment with my true soulmate partner, my now husband.
4. Listen to your intuition
We hold so much wisdom, knowing, and information in our bodies. Yet, for most of us we have been trained away from listening to ourselves and conditioned to look for external validation and answers outside of ourselves. On the dating journey, as long as we assess a person from what others will think, we can be sure that we will not be creating an aligned, authentic, relationship. Tuning into your body and your intuition will give you the feelings, sensations, pulls, pushes, and nudges that will guide you toward what’s truly right for you. Find what supports you in staying connected to your body and grounded in your sense of self along the dating process.
5. Heal your inner child
This is the root work of dating. Everything connects back down to your inner child. The fear, the anxiety, the people pleasing, the lack of boundaries, the tendency to end up in relationships that aren’t right for us - this all goes back to our attachment wounds from childhood.
When our inner child is still terrified and alone, we’re going to viscerally need to hang onto relationships, even when we know logically that they aren’t right for us. Or perhaps we deep down don’t believe that we really deserve love, that we really deserve a real relationship, that we can really have the healthy relationship that others have.
It’s only when we have the support to help us connect with the vulnerable parts of ourselves and learn to offer our inner child the care, compassion, and love she’s always needed, that we can date from our conscious, adult selves. When we’re caring for the inner child, even when dating is painful or vulnerable or scary, we can stay the path, hold our boundaries, say no, ask for what we need, and move into alignment with a partner who can love us fully, for all of who we are, exactly as we are right now.