EP 395: How to Date When It Hasn’t Been Going So Well with Rocio

This is episode 395. How to date when it hasn’t been Going So Well with Rocio. Welcome to Over It and on with it. I’m your host Christine Hassler and for over a decade I’ve been a life coach, speaker and author. Each week you’ll hear me work directly with a caller as I coach them through a goal they wanna accomplish or an obstacle they may be facing.

I’ll provide a blend of practical and spiritual advice as well as tangible actions you can apply to your own life. Now let’s get on with the episode. Hi everybody. Welcome back to the show. So we’ve had two weeks in a row where I’ve coached someone on love and relationships. Maybe it’s spring love is in the air, people are feeling it. But I love coaching on loving relationships because it is one of the areas in life that I have struggled the most,

most of you know my journey of calling in love and definitely went through a lot of heartbreak, a lot of frustration and a lot of wondering if it would ever happen, but it did. And for many of you who are calling in love, it will happen for you as well. It just will in one way or another. It does. I,

you’ve heard me say before, our deepest longings are psychic knowings of what to come. And what can be really frustrating is we feel something but this whole time in space thing and waiting for it to happen and that in between time can be really difficult. And it’s also helpful to look at where we are in patterns, often subconscious that maybe slowing down the timing of thing,

maybe not really getting us closer to what we want. And that’s the case with Rocio today. She’s in a bit of a pattern that is, for lack of a better word, maybe blocking her from calling in the love that she truly desires. And that’s what we break down in today’s episode. So as you’re listening, consider are you frustrated with dating And just really wanna know how you can shift.

It was the last person you dated or maybe someone recently you thought everything was going well and then it just didn’t work out and you were surprised. But if you look back, you might have missed some or ignored some red flags. Did you have a parent who you craved more from? And you can see potentially how that wound is impacting how you date.

And finally, are you willing to be vulnerable and emotionally available and not just with the wounding that you’ve had but with the knees that you have and with honesty about what works for you and what doesn’t. Cuz emotionally availability is not just about pouring our guts out and opening our heart, it’s also about being super clear about what we need and want. So keep those questions in mind as you listen to my coaching call with Rocio.

Before we dive in, I wanna thank my sponsor for this episode, which is caraway. I actually just finished cooking dinner with a caraway pan. I am obsessed with these products. It is the best cookware I have ever had. All caraway products are made without any toxic materials. Like all those hard to pronounce chemicals, their ceramic naturally slick surface means minimal oil or butter for slide off the pan eggs and easy cleaning.

So I cook my daughter, I feel like a Las Vegas buffet because I have to make so many different things to see what she really likes. But one thing that she likes, at least for the past few weeks, we’ll see if it changes, is oatmeal pancakes. I soak ground out boats and breast milk overnight and then I make her pancakes and a little bit of butter.

I put some wild blueberries in there and she loves them and I kick them on my caraway pan. There’s no sticking even with like sticky oats and breast milk. And I can feel confident that I’m giving her food that doesn’t have any of that non-stick gross stuff and is non-toxic and it just cooks so cleanly and clean so easily as well. And I’m not the only one.

Over 40,000 people have raved about their CaraAway kitchen and now it’s the time to try it for yourself. So you can now save 10% off the full suite of caraway products from their internet famous cookware to their newly launched food stored set. Here’s your call to action. Just go to caraway home.com/over C A R A W A Y H O m e.com/over it to take advantage of this limited time offer for 10% off your next purchase.

The deal is exclusively for our listeners. So visit caraway home.com/over it or use code over it at checkout caraway. The non-toxic cookware made modern. I love it. Go get yourself some today. It comes in lots of beautiful colors as well. They’re pots you don’t mind leaving out. All right. And now on to my coaching call with Rocio. Welcome to the show.

How can I help? Hi, thank you for having me. I had a question. It was all in regards to dating. So I feel like just in general career-wise, work-wise, I feel very aligned. I feel very in just aligned with my purpose. However, I feel just with managing dating life, it’s very hard for me to understand how much it is necessary to put myself out there versus also how much it is to just trust timing and trusting intuition.

Okay, what’s, what are you finding hard about it? Yeah, I don’t know. I think it’s just the people who I’ve been meeting or the guys that I’ve been meeting I feel like just are not emotionally available or yeah, there’s just not anyone. Or for example, like there was this guy that I felt like I did have a connection with but then nothing really happened.

So just like kind of navigating that. Okay. And I’m sure you’ve looked at your end of this because you know, what we tend to attract and draw in is reflective to where somewhere we are inside. So let’s just use the emotionally unavailable thing. A lot of the times we think we’re emotionally unavailable because we want love and we want connection and we’ve done work on ourselves so we can be vulnerable.

But often there’s this hurt part of us and it’s a protective mechanism that makes us have a guard up where we aren’t completely available. Does this make sense? Completely. So where do you think you might not be emotionally available? Yeah, I think, well it definitely has been like one of my biggest life journeys is just fearing being vulnerable. So like opening myself up,

definitely fear of rejection as well. And yeah, maybe even just like focusing a lot on my career but not putting that much time into love and relationships. Yeah. Well there you go. So I’m all for trusting divine timing and all of that, but we also are co-creators in our life. So I like to think, and this is something I learned in grad school,

is that spirit or the divine makes us, meets us at the point of action and intention. So yes, there is the divine and there there’s so many things that happen in life because they are spirit led. But if we’re not actively participating or we’re kind of half-assing it, we’ve got one foot in, one foot out, then we’re not fully meeting the divine at the point of action and attention.

And if we have fear, that can be a big thing that stops us. I’ve said on this show before, I’ve been coaching people for nearly 20 years and people tell me all the time what they want, but they actually spend more time and energetic energy into avoiding the things they don’t want. So in a lot of ways you’re putting more time into avoiding love cuz you’re afraid of rejection,

you know, with work and whatever than you are into really, really opening yourself out and putting yourself out there. Can you see that? Definitely, yeah. I think because this all comes from this situation that happened to me a couple weeks ago, but basically I felt like I did meet a person that I thought was very interesting, very aligned with kind of everything that I’ve,

yeah, just interesting and, and baseline has the things that I look for in a partner. Thought we had a connection and with that it’s just been struggling of like being open, being the one to reach out. But then it’s also a point of being like, okay, I can’t be the only one that’s continuously doing this, you know? And and feeling it kind of one sided,

therefore I say like the whole emotionally unavailable thing and, and it definitely has been hard, but I do feel like I’ve been putting myself out there, especially like in this connection. But then also it’s, you know, understanding that, yeah, that I don’t like it’s too much sometimes, you know, like I don’t want to do extra and maybe just like it is just really just differentiating between trusting my intuition or is it out of fear of rejection and kind of managing the two.

So going back to this last situation, to sum it up, you thought it was something that it turned out not to be. Yes, Exactly. Okay. But going back with hindsight, were there any red flags or even orange or yellow flags? Well, yes, at the beginning, just texting wise definitely. What’d you see? What’d you notice?

Very hot and cold. And what made you continue to pursue that instead of going, you know what, I’m really looking for consistency and this just isn’t really working for me. Thank you. It’s nice to know you. Or something like that. Because I thought that it was, I guess maybe even just being more in my masculine energy, like in relations.

And then I thought that also it could be like fear of rejection. Then it’s also necessary to put myself out there and, and I don’t know, give people time to, to get to know one another. True time is great, we don’t wanna come in, you know, all guns a blazing. However you felt the inconsistency, which probably triggered a little anxiety in you from the get go.

Correct? Definitely. So one of the things that I want you to be aware of is that you still leaned into that even though you felt bad. So growing up, did you have any parent that was hot and cold? Did you have an inconsistent parent? Let’s just put it that way. Yes, but not in the, yeah, I guess my dad,

just in the sense of he like every single time, let’s say that if I wanted help in a project or something, he’d be very much the person that would be like, no, like do it on your own. Like I did this on my own and like you have to be independent. So how would you say he was inconsistent? Mm, inconsistent.

I wouldn’t say, but just that it was just all on me like that, that he just wouldn’t help. He wouldn’t be there to help. Okay. Ever with anything? Yes and no. Like I think he was kind of like, obviously like I, I do know he, he loved me and everything, but he was always away at work and when he was at like,

he loved spending time with us and everything, but when he like, I don’t know, especially like with work things or when he was at home sometimes like he would just kind of like sit on the couch, like do his own thing. And my mom was really the person that was always with us, always taking up us places, et cetera. Okay.

So do you see the inconsistency like yeah, sometimes he’s there, sometimes he’s not. You have moments with connection and then moments of not that, that’s like sometimes when he is home he’s engaged with you, sometimes he is watching tv, that’s the in and out. So whenever we have any, and this is basic, you know this, you’ve listened to the show.

When we have a parent that created some kind of anxious attachment style in any way, which that degree of inconsistency will do, we will draw in people that trigger that feeling inside of us because we’re attempting to heal it. So as children we really can’t advocate for ourselves the way that we can as adults. So that’s why I’m so adamant on when you experience that inconsistency and that anxiety and the get go,

I want you to be a stand for yourself right away. Ask for what you need or, and or end it sooner because that’s what’s gonna start to break the pattern and that’s what is going to start to really enforce action and intention and really calling in what you really want. Because again, if we’re putting out to the universe, I will tolerate this inconsistency.

I will tolerate this hot and cold because subconsciously what’s going on is maybe this person who sort of makes me feel like my dad makes me feel will love me and then my daddy wound will be healed. That’s the generalized fastest way I can say it. But what we’re broadcasting, well you tell me, what do you think your broadcasting energetically when you continue to engage with someone who’s being inconsistent with you?

Yeah, that I’m not fully healed yet and not not providing space for that emotionally available person to enter. Right? That you’ll, this is okay for you that you’ll tolerate this kind of inconsistency. And so that’s why I want you to, as soon as you notice that to to call it out or to stop it to either say something like, I notice I,

I don’t know the whole texting conversation, but I notice it goes a couple days that I don’t hear from you. I make that mean you’re not really into dating seriously right now. If that’s true, cool. It was nice knowing you. If it’s not true, let’s have another conversation or let’s go out again. You know? And I said that in kind of a masculine way,

but it’s not necessarily masculine, it’s feminine to take care of ourselves and to be really discerning one of the, the superpowers of the feminine is to be super discerning and have this mama bear energy, not just for our children, for ourselves and be like, hey, this is what I need. Are you available for it or not? Cuz that is emotionally availability.

Emotional availability is not just being vulnerable. Emotional availability is also being a stand for what we need emotionally because that’s honesty. Sometimes we think emotional availability is just like airing our wounding and airing our like, you know, tenderness. But it’s also really being grounded in our fierceness too and saying this is what I need, are you available for it or not?

Does that make sense? Yeah, definitely. I think just a lot of it resonates with me. But I also had a question on just like fears, you know, like overcoming that fear of maybe coming across as too much, you know, and I know it’s like a condition, like a con like we’re conditioned that way as women, but Right.

Yeah. Just like really navigating in a way that’s not like for me it’s like super scary to, to feel that I would say that in in the response and and everything that it would trigger. But yeah, I dunno if you have any advice around it or, Yeah, well usually things that matter and things that are gonna be the game changers scare the living daylights out of us because we’re going against our survival instincts.

We’re going against our protective patterning. Your survival instinct is just to adapt and to appease and to just hope someone eventually gives you what you need. And what I’m asking you to do is to move into a healthier pattern, which goes against your survival pattern. So it’s gonna feel scary. So one that my first tip is just normalize the heck out of it.

Just normalize it. Just normalize that it’s gonna feel a little bit scary. And the second piece is communicating honestly about what you need or what is or isn’t working for you isn’t overbearing, isn’t masculine, isn’t wrong. And if someone can’t, if someone rejects you because you’ve expressed yourself honestly and vulnerably, then you’ve really dodged a bullet. So this is where you tap into courage,

which is moving forward in the face of fear anyway. And so like an example, just using an example from your dad helping you with your projects, you know, as a little girl you really wanted his help. One because you wanted to bond with him. That was one of the ways you thought a good bond with him. And two, you wanted to do well on the projects and you just,

you wanted to have that experience with your dad. I mean I remember sitting and doing papers and projects with my dad and homework and it was a really bonding special time for us. So that was a beautiful request you had and you got rejected. You were told no, do it on your own, which you know, I guess is funny, resilience and independence.

But you missed out on having this bonding moment after, you know, after making a request. And so it’s gonna feel scary for you to make requests, especially of men because you’ve been rejected in the past. But I don’t want your fear of rejection to stop you from actually doing it because you end up getting rejected anyway. That’s what happened in this last relationship.

Whereas if you had just spoken your truth in the beginning, it wouldn’t have gone on for as long and you would’ve seen where the person was a little sooner. Can you see that? Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I know it’s not easy. I’m not, I I, I’ve been there. Rejection is my biggest core wound. So I, I get it,

get it, get it, get it. You know, it’s still something I have to work through. But I’ve learned over the years that if I don’t speak my truth and if I’m not honest and if I just allow someone else to not communicate clearly or be flaky with me or whatever, one, I build resentment, which is not good. And two,

I end up getting more hard. So I’ve learned over the years that it’s just, it’s just so much better to be honest. And if I don’t necessarily get the response I need, at least I’m not going down the road of getting hurt later. So this is a huge thing for you to really advocate for yourself and advocate for your little girl in terms of dating.

And I think it will make dating a lot easier because once I gave myself permission to be really honest in dating and say what I want and say what I needed and not try to please and not try to appease and not try to quote unquote be in my feminine, but just be me. Just be honest. Cuz often being in my masculine was just a protective behavior.

Dating got so much easier and so much more fun because I wasn’t wearing all the masks and I didn’t have these walls around me. Because the reason you have walls around you right now is because you are like not advocating for yourself. Like if you trusted yourself to say what you needed to say in any situation and express your needs in any situation, do you think you’d have as many protective walls up?

No, Exactly. So how do you take the walls down and be more emotionally available, Like leaning into fear and, and doing it anyways. And kind of what you’re saying, just advocating for, for myself and what and my truth and what’s true to me. Yep, yep. Exactly. So let’s talk practical. How do you think you could take some steps now to,

cuz it sounds like calling in a relationship is something that you really want right now. Yes, Definitely. Okay. What do you think you could do a little differently? I think my approach even, so just be very honest from the beginning. I think also just like alignment. So being more aligned in social environments, people and, and the events that I’m going to as well.

What else? Potentially even just getting very or even more clear on like any patterns that I may have felt in the past or any patterns that I’m witnessing that I have done like in dating in the past. What are some of those patterns? Just a lot of being in my masculine out of fear of rejection. So immediately when I think that like, just with what you’re saying with like anxious attachment,

immediately when I think that I’m getting the slightest little bit rejected, I’ll completely shut off and I’m a runner. Like I’ve always been a runner and that’s something that I’m really working through like this past year is just kind of healing the masculine within. So kind of not being afraid or just not, not not being afraid but leaning into that fear of, and just starting to get okay with rejection.

So even just like starting to date or go on a lot of dates with different people, with no attachments, no expectations, but just also just training this ability of not being scared of rejection. Yeah. Could we define rejection differently? What is rejection and dating really? Yeah. Just not compatible. There’s so many people out there. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. Did you have Tootsie Pops when you were a kid? Did you ever have those? No. No. Oh, what about I didn’t grow up. Oh shoot, I can’t use that analogy. Well, what I was gonna say is you, you had to like had this like tootsie roll filling, but you had to lick the whole sucker in order to get to the good part.

And my, the metaphor I was trying to make, which was an epic fail, but the metaphor I was trying to make is that you are trying to get to this sweet spot and you have to remove a lot to get there. So rejection is really about removing what’s in the way. It’s a process of elimination to get you to your love. That’s what it is.

What’s happening is it’s triggering a deep wound from dad and it did feel like rejection from your father cuz he’s your father and you wanted him to prioritize you and he was your only one. So what you also have to remind yourself is these men are not your dad and you have to remind your little girl of that, that this is different and that and honor that wound that you did feel rejected by dad.

That’s legitimate. That is the true rejection wound. These guys that you date for a little while that aren’t a fit. That’s, it’s not, it’s the process of elimination. It’s not compatible, but do you see how you’ve collapsed the two? And it’s gonna feel really, really, really, really awful because it’s triggering a big owie inside of you.

So it’s so important to separate, to really separate, okay. Like I do have this wound, I am sad about how I wanted more of my dad and he wasn’t available of it and I’m gonna deal with it and I’m gonna put it in this compartment and I’m gonna not bring it into dating. I’m gonna be really conscious of it so that like dating isn’t so exhausting.

And of course you run because you don’t wanna experience the same kind of wounding that you did as a little girl. You know, every time you want your father’s attention, he was watching TV or he was at work, he was told, told you to go figure it out. It was like, ow, ow, owow over and over again. So this thing that you’re calling your masculine,

it’s really more of just a protective pattern because of masculine wounding. So we’ve gotta separate the two and really see, okay, all these men are not my dad dating. It’s a different dynamic than father and daughter. I’m not a little girl, I’m not looking for my dad, I’m looking for my partner. And so I want a fierceness and I wanna rule out what doesn’t matter and if someone doesn’t want me,

I don’t want them either. So that it, it doesn’t feel as big as it did when you were little. Does that make sense? Yeah, I I just love everything that you’re saying. It’s also helpful. So thank you. And I love the analogy of just really even just being conscious that I’m not dating my dad or I’m not No, I’m just really separating the two because even just like as you’re saying that it alleviates a huge kind of barrier even that I feel around you and it just makes everything feel a lot more light because it is true,

you know? But I guess just when you’re going unconsciously and, and dating with these wounding and yeah, not just not being conscious of the difference, it can get a lot heavier. It can get a lot harder because your body just doesn’t know how to separate. So that’s kind of like where anxiety would come up or where my running would come up because I would just So like intermix both of them.

Exactly. Exactly. So when this airs next week, I want you to re-listen to it. I want you to take some notes. I want you to really feel into this separation and, and really like tell your little girl, you don’t have to date. Like, I got this. And one of the big things we do in our Be the Queen program,

which is all about women calling and men is we, we work deeply on the parental wound because when the parental wound is active consciously or subconsciously in dating, it’s gonna feel like it feels for you, it’s gonna feel like it’s not working. It’s gonna feel like red light, green light, meaning you wanna do it, but you don’t wanna do it.

It it just starts to feel exhausting and it’s, it starts to feel hopeless because you want something so bad, but the process of getting it feels exhausting and frustrating. And it’s what I’m so passionate about is helping people not have that experience when it comes to calling in love. So how I want you to liberate yourself from that is, is separating the rejection and wounding you had from dad.

Like, not bringing that into your dating life anymore and really, really speaking your needs, being honest and when something starts to feel like it’s not a fit, you, you call it sooner. You call it immediately. Got It. I love that. Yeah, I love that. I love that so much. Thank you for, for your help and just for being an inspiration for so many of us around the world.

Oh, it’s my pleasure. So thank you Ria, for bringing a question forward that I think so many people can relate to you and for being so coachable and open. I I just really wanna acknowledge all of my listeners and everyone who’s ever been on the show, you’re just so coachable and open. So first, I, I know you guys probably you people probably get tired of me connecting dots to the past,

but, oh, I just can’t help it when I see it. And it’s not about blaming our past or constantly digging it up or dredging it up, but if our past is impacting our present and our future, we need to look at it. And that was the case in Marcia’s case. There was some wounding with father, an unmet need of not feeling wanted,

a feeling rejection, you know, a rejection wound. It can come from peers that can come from dating, but it often can come from parents as well. You know, that’s often where that core wound can come from. And it doesn’t mean your parents necessarily had to abandon you or just outright said, I don’t want you. But if we ever felt like we wanted more than they were willing to give us as kids,

we take everything personally and so it can feel like rejection. And so that father wound of feeling like rejection, of wanting him to help her with her, his her project felt like he was rejecting her. And yes, we can say, well, you know, he really taught her how to do things on her own, but come on, every kid wants mom or dad to help with schoolwork.

Sometimes it’s a, it’s a bonding thing. And so that’s where that core wound is coming from and this whole masculine thing that she thinks she’s in of running and all that, it’s not necessarily masculine, it’s just her protective behavior because she’s been wounded by the masculine. So I really encourage her to do two things. Number one, pay attention to the red,

red flags sooner and be really, really honest about what works for her and what doesn’t. Because when we have wounding from a parent where we didn’t get really what we wanted and we always wanted more, we often develop a pattern of settling for breadcrumbs. So it’s like if we just get a little bit, we keep leaning in and we keep leaning in.

And as adults, we have to tell our inner child, no, we deserve the whole cake, not just crumbs or the whole piece of bread. If I really want, or to link this metaphor, we deserve all of it. I was really failing in my metaphors for this episode, like the the Tootsie Roll thing, not Tootsie roll, Tootsie Pop thing.

Like I, anyway, it, it didn’t land with her, but maybe it landed with some of you, but I digress. When we are used to the breadcrumbs, we often settle for them. And as adults and especially in dating, we need to reparent ourselves and say, Nope, like I was saying, we deserve the whole piece of bread and be vocal about that.

Like, I’m not settling for breadcrumbs and it’s not about going on the first day and being like, this is who I am and this is what I need and sign this contract. If you, you agree is not like that at all, but it’s when you start to notice inconsistent behavior when someone says something or does something that is confusing to you or creates anxiety or you’re not sure where you stand,

ask for clarity, be honest. That is a part of emotional availability. And then the other piece that was so crucial in this episode was to make sure that all parts of her consciousness were clear. This is not dad, I have my dad wounding. I’m not bringing it into dating. These men are not dad. These men are not necessarily rejecting me.

And, and pulling those things apart, teasing them apart. Because if we can keep our like inner child and parental and all that past wounding out of our present and we can really discern, okay, I’m being triggered right now. I’m time traveling, I’m projecting my father onto this person. This is not that. Back then, yes, I did feel rejected by my father,

even though he probably wasn’t rejecting me. That felt really like that at that time. That is not this, this is, this person isn’t aligned and really, really being mindful in our consciousness of separating the two. All right everybody, that’s the show for today. Sending you so much love and many blessings. Until next time, thank you for listening to Over it and on With It.

I love hearing from you. So please post your comments or questions at christinehassler.com/podcast. That’s also the place you can sign up to receive coaching from me in an upcoming episode. And if you love this show, please share it and subscribe in iTunes. You can find all my social media handles and sign up to be part of my community at christinehasler.com. Until next week,

here’s to getting over it and on with it. Much love and many blessings.