There are some advantages to being single, mostly when we are younger, but ultimately all of us have an innate desire to find a romantic companion to share our lives with. If you want to learn about the consequences of an absence of connection then spend five minutes asking a lonely elderly person for some insight. In fact, the concepts of love and connection are a universal need for human survival.
When we look at relationships from the outside we may see them as more perfect than they actually are. Likewise, TV shows and films often portray ideal and perfect romances. In reality it is important to note that this is not quite so; nobody is 100% perfect and we should not restrict our search with highly limiting and unrealistic expectations. Relationships can be difficult vehicles to steer but if you get them right, they will be massively rewarding.
As the title suggests, this article focuses on three different subjects, although they exist in pair combinations and also as one whole package. For example, an issue with shyness can affect dating and/or intimacy. On the other hand, you may not be shy as such, but once in a dating situation, you may well have problems with intimacy.
I think that all three are also interconnected as separate steps and relate as follows: If you are able to deal with any shyness, then the dating game will be much easier, and if you have dealt with shyness and dating successfully, then intimacy will also be easier – almost taking care of itself.
Let’s take a look at each component separately:
Shyness:
A basic definition of shyness is a version of anxiety attached to a lacking in self-confidence. Shy people will choose to remain quiet in social interactions or try to avoid them altogether.
Unfortunately, modern communication methods of e-mail and messaging services make it easy to hide behind and provide no help in overcoming shyness.
What causes shyness?
- Shyness can actually be a trait that is passed on genetically
- Shyness can be a behaviour conditioned by over-protective parents or carers
- Shyness can be a result of negative past experiences like in school
- Shyness can be due to a lack of actual experience of social interactions in real life
Are you shy? How do you know that you are shy? Probably as you were labelled as shy by your parents, teacher, friends? Moreover, you have probably carried that label on and so label yourself as shy, etching it into your identity. Like many issues, it is not just important to understand what caused the problem; but it is important to recognise what is now maintaining the problem.
Shy people tend to focus on worrying that they will do something wrong in front of others, as opposed to focusing on how they can do something better. The good news is that shyness can be reversed or unlearned. Likewise, social interacting is a new skill that can be learned. The trick, like in learning any new skill, is to learn the very basics first and then progress in small steps, building confidence as you go.
A tip for is to be an expert in just one thing, maybe a specific hobby or interest that you have. Then you have a subject that you can talk competently about in a conversation if asked what personal interests or hobbies you have. Also if there is an upcoming social event, scan the current news for hot topics that you can be aware of and so able to converse some basic chit-chat upon.
Shyness breaks down to being a fear of being criticised or rejected and thus causing avoidance of interactions, events or circumstances where you perceive that you may be judged. This requires working on your self-confidence to just be yourself – this will gain positive recognition from others as this is a trait that is mostly admired.
Rejection was once a fear based upon survival as many years ago if we were rejected within our tribe then we faced a real danger of being killed. Fast forward to today and let me tell you that although this fear gene may still exist to some extent, the danger of being killed in this context does not.
The truth is that people are much more selfish than you are giving them credit for. People are much more focused on themselves than they are on you and your life. The truth is that you are your biggest critic, and so you are the main problem. The voice that is criticising is your own inner-voice, the need to be too perfect is your own set of excessive internal standards. The generalisations about yourself are solely yours. Your mind reading skills about what others are thinking may not be as magical and accurate as you believe.
The trick in interacting with others is to release the focus from yourself to the others that you are interacting with. What is your point in talking to them? Then let that be your focus, become a good listener and keep practising whenever you have an opportunity to talk to people. Understand that virtually everybody feels a little nervous talking to others – but they go ahead anyway.
Dating:
Unfortunately, like child care and finances, dating is something that is not taught in school.
There are so many questions:
* How do you start?
* Where do you go?
* What should you wear?
* What do you do?
* What should you say or not say?
* Who pays?
* Who should contact who next?
* How long should you wait before you make the next contact?
* When should you introduce them to your friends and family?
* How soon should you be having sex?
Dating sites and gigs are designed to make things easier and fit into the modern pace of today’s lifestyle. However, my personal opinion on these is that they arouse a forced aroma to the dating process. There is simply no comparison between the chemistry of real life interactional dating and that of swiping through multiple photoshopped images and conversing with a couple of words and some emojis!
These tools may be useful as an initial step but ideally relationships should be cultivated as naturally as possible. It is far better to embark on normal social gatherings, for example a study class, interest or hobby group or sports club etc. Here you will find people that share the same interests as you and the attraction and dating process will be much more natural.
Remember that dating is a process that requires adequate time. You need to become aware of how the person is in various situations; like when they are angry, tired, disappointed, drunk etc. You need to establish if they have issues with being jealous, over-controlling, or show an over-importance towards other things. This process can also indicate ‘red flags’ in the relationship game like an inability to commit, lying, sexual motivation etc. Also you need to be honest about your own personality – be self-aware and truthful to yourself.
As covered in the section on shyness above, if you are well prepared then you can redirect any internal focus on yourself. Just let yourself be you and place all of your focus on the other person. Likewise, do not spend all your time outwardly promoting yourself, just let the other person see and find out for themselves. Furthermore, do not cross-examine the other person and fire bullets of continuous questions at them. Take your time, be casually curious and show genuine interest as opposed to being excessively inquisitive.
Ultimately, the idea of the dating is to determine how can this person enhance the quality of your life. You focus on getting the answers and allow them to do the same for themselves about you.
You must be totally present with them, they will soon know if you’re not. It is an essential tip to leave your phone alone as much as possible and refrain from talking about your ex.
You have to be open and obtainable, and this entails being somewhat vulnerable. Playing ‘hard to get’ may be a fun strategy in the early days, but if you are operating from fear of being hurt and presenting a full military assault course for anybody to get close to you, then you are destined to fail.
Be conscious of your wants verses your needs. Wants are things like body weight/shape, hair colour, occupation, wealth, age etc. and should not be ‘the be and end all’ of your selection process. Needs are more important attributes – attitudes like caring, fun to be around, sharing similar ambitions etc.
Qualities of a healthy relationship:
- Communication
- Confidence
- Consistency & Stability
- Fairness & Integrity
- Flexibility & Variety
- Fun & Humour
- Honesty & Transparency
- Trust & Respect
Opposites attract but be aware that your values should be similar. One of the biggest issues that I work on in relationship coaching is tied to values. If your values are not aligned then there will be trouble ahead. Therefore, make sure that you express your values quite early on and also aim to understand the other person’s too. That being said, it’s also important not to appear to be laying down numerous ground rules in the first couple of dates, timing is key.
Ask yourself – When you are with them, who do you become? By this I mean do you find that you are able to relax and feel a sense of freedom to just be yourself, or do you feel that you put on a mask to be somebody a bit different in an attempt to please them more. Do you become more anxious or more controlling maybe?
Be mindful that others around you may well offer negative comments towards your dating. This tends to be quite normal and reasons may differ from them being envious of your enjoyment, feeling a loss of your attention or genuinely feeling cautious about you ending up disappointed and hurt. You just need to accept this as normal and carry on. However, if a handful of people start to state the same observations about a particular person you are dating, then you should take these seriously. There will always be times where you cannot see the same dangers from the inside as others can that are around you.
Rejection
Nobody likes to be rejected and many find the job of rejecting others almost as painful. The trick in dating is to realise that it is a selection process and rejection either way is simply part of the process. It is far better to reject or be rejected early on than waste time getting deeper involved into something that will inevitably cause more issues later when the point of rejection finally arrives. Moreover, rejection can serve as a very vital tool for feedback. It may highlight a pattern which will shed insight to better self-awareness and understanding.
It is essential to acknowledge that just because you don’t fully match the criteria of the other person it does not make you bad or unworthy, and the same goes for them. Remember the Thomas Edison story – every failed attempt in making the incandescent light bulb was simply one step closer to the right one!
I repeat here from the section on shyness: Rejection was once a fear based upon survival as many years ago if we were rejected within our tribe then we faced a real danger of being killed. Fast forward to today and let me tell you that although this fear gene may still exist to some extent, the danger of being killed in this context does not.
Do not fall into the trap of feeling that you have lost time. Too often people will compare themselves to their friends and if they are not in a meaningful relationship like their friends then they feel that they are losing time, and fast. This will induce a tendency to pursue a partner too quickly. Ultimately this will normally end in disappointment further down the road and so the end result is that there was even more time wasted as well as all the other stuff that goes with it.
Take your time – you have time.
Trust needs to be built, and this also takes time. Know your sexual boundaries and understand the different sexual viewpoints of women and men – they are different!
Intimacy:
Intimacy is the next stage of the dating process which involves emotional closeness and physical interaction. This is the stage that develops as trust starts to form, together with deeper understanding and the beginning of commitment. Intimacy is a connection between people consisting of the following various elements:
- Emotional – sharing your deeper emotional and spiritual feelings with another
- Experiential – sharing interests and activities with another
- Intellectual – sharing your thoughts and views with another
- Physical – sharing close contact with another
- Sexual – sharing sexual contact with another
As I stated earlier in this article, for the majority of people, if any issues with shyness have been worked on and improved, then the dating process should be much easier and this building block usually also helps to take care of when the stage of intimacy is reached. If this is not the case then there will usually be a more serious and isolated issue on the subject of intimacy.
Primarily the problem is a trust issue usually due to one or both of the following fears:
* Fear of abandonment – a worry that the partner will eventually leave
* Fear of engulfment – a worry that the partner will control or dominate
In more acute conditions the fear of intimacy may resemble that of a phobia reaction.
Some common traits of people with intimacy and attachment issues:
- Always in a good mood – supressing opportunity to express real negative feelings
- Always being busy – no time for intimacy and hiding real feelings of loneliness
- Appearing very stable and well organised – hiding real negative feelings of instability
- Engaging in multiple relationships – ensuring one relationship cannot become more serious
- Having a lot of friends but not many close friends – ensuring closeness is avoided
- Having over-dramatic relationships – drama holds off intimacy
- Perfectionism – ensuring that no partner can be good enough
- Showing discomfort when touched
- Very critical of others – creates an obstacle to intimacy forming
The cause of these responses is almost always due to previous negative experiences, either during childhood, during previous relationships or both.
Common negative experiences in childhood that produce resistance to intimacy:
- Abuse – neglect, physical, sexual, verbal
- Exposure to disrupted or negative parental relationship
- Loss of a parent – abandonment, divorce or death
(including extreme substance addiction of parent) - Missed emotional connection – maybe due to an enmeshed family structure or parental mental illness
Similar common negative experiences in previous relationships that produce resistance to intimacy:
- Abuse – neglect, physical, sexual, verbal
- Betrayal – leaving painful feelings of disappointment & regret
- Loss of a partner – abandonment, divorce or death
(including extreme substance addiction of partner) - Missed emotional connection – maybe due to some form of mental illness of partner People that suffer from a fear of intimacy usually do actually have a desire to be intimate but just cannot seem to engage. They will execute self-sabotaging behaviours that cause problems with the forming and/or sustainability of a close relationship.
Some common self-sabotaging behaviours are:
- Attracting the wrong type of partner (ensures that the relationship will not progress)
- Engaging heavily in work or a hobby (giving it over-importance) that will lead to suffocating the relationship from growing
- Convincing themselves that they or their partner needs to be more perfect (and so is not quite good enough for this relationship)
- Producing false issues and accusations in order to destroy the relationship
- Rejecting the commitment by diving into another new (falsely more attractive) relationship and then go onto repeat the same pattern again
- Restricting the provision of support etc. towards the partner (ensuring that the partner does not develop any form of dependency or need, which would ultimately strengthen the relationship)
These behaviours portray that the person is working hard to reject their partner but the truth is that they are actually being used as a defence mechanism due to their own rooted fear of rejection. The person is unable to be vulnerable and is scared of being hurt by negative actions and emotions. It is usually at the point of where a relationship starts to progress to be more serious that the self-sabotaging behaviours will start. This is a sad paradox as a relationship that is progressing usually does so because it has healthy potential.
Dating is now a huge industry, with figures of well over $3 billion per year in the United States alone. This highlights just how important this subject is. Of course, relationship requirements will differ depending upon your background, your culture and the specific life stage that you are in. Sure it’s a little bit scary as there is no guarantee and so you need to be vulnerable and open to uncertainty. However, there are millions of people going through the process each and every day. Beautiful new beginnings are being formed and enjoyed, new families made. It is extremely common to have difficulty with shyness, dating and intimacy – but please be assured that these can be overcome.
Help is Here
Whether you feel mildly shy and could do with some help on improving that or consider your shyness to be more like a phobia, then the good news is that my coaching has tools that can help.
Dating coaching is very popular and my dating course is full of tips and strategies that can help you on your journey to finding that special person that is right for you.
Problems with intimacy are usually related to a negative history or an underlying issue that can be approached by the ‘cause & effect’ method of treatment that my coaching offers through a blend of different applications. Further to this, my coaching can also add extra strategies to enhance the quality and enjoyment of your intimacy within your relationship. Intimacy coaching can be administered individually or also as part of relationship coaching with an existing partner.
If you need some help with one or more of the above mentioned subjects then please connect with me to discuss more about your situation and how I can help you.
* You may also find the following articles of interest as they can be connected to issues of shyness and intimacy:
Abuse – Anxiety – Depression – Eating Disorders – Loss & Grief
Moving On – Self-Confidence – Sexual Problems – Weight Loss