So many women come to see me when they hit their mid-to-late 30s stating that they would like to heal their issues with dating and relationships so that they can find a healthy partner and start a family. I love this for them! However, while some of us can still have children without intervention into our 40s, it may become more difficult or impossible to do so without some extra help. That extra help comes in the form of interventions such as egg freezing and IVF, which are expensive, painful, and highly involved procedures that are not guaranteed.
What these women need is time.
Why is time important for dating and family planning?
Imagine how much more time you’d have to date intentionally, find the right partner, and spend real time together growing in your relationship instead of rushing into parenthood if you started the process at age 31 instead of 37. That time allows you to have true, intentional choice when it comes to choosing a partner rather than settling for someone “good enough” because you need to have kids. That time is invaluable. That time could be the difference between a forever partnership and a divorce once the kids come along. You deserve to have the right relationship for you, not one born out of necessity.
Working out the issues that keep you stuck playing out the same old dating patterns with the same type of person that, let’s be real, is not going to lead to the future you want, can take a lot of time as well. Unfortunately, we can’t just wake up at 35, snap our fingers and suddenly we’re in this magical headspace where we’re no longer attracted to douchebags, don’t self-sabotage healthy partnerships, and show up as our best selves to the dating world. Healing our romantic issues whether it’s insecure attachment styles, relationship trauma, fear of commitment, or a litany of other issues that keep us stuck takes time. This is because in order to heal those ingrained beliefs, behaviors, and feelings, we have to do some deep work.
If you’re planning on starting the parenting journey somewhere around age 35-40, you need to do your pre-family, pre-partnership work right now to set yourself up for success. Healing work can take one to two years depending on what type of therapy you do and how deep the issues go. Then, you also need to tack on the time that it takes to find the right partner–potentially another one to two years of intentional dating. Finally, you have the time between finding that person and more formal commitment (e.g. getting a place together, getting married, or deciding to start a family together, etc). So, you need roughly 3-6 years from right now to be in a position to start a family (which can take 1+ years to conceive depending on fertility factors).
(If you’re reading this and freaking out because you’re in your mid-30s or beyond and you feel your biological clock pounding but you need to do some healing work, take a breath and skip on over to my EMDR intensive or Extended EMDR session pages and schedule a free consultation call. I’ve got you covered when it comes to healing quickly and speeding up your timeline.)
What types of love and dating issues need to be worked on?
This is not going to be an exhaustive list, but if you read this and it feels familiar in some way to you, that’s a pretty good indication there’s some work to be done.
Common Love and Dating Issues:
Difficulty Letting Go: Holding onto past hurts, grievances, or idealized versions of previous partners.
Trust Issues: Past experiences of betrayal or abandonment making it difficult to trust new partners fully.
Fear of Vulnerability: Struggling to open up emotionally, fearing rejection or judgment.
Low Self-Esteem: Feelings of inadequacy or unworthiness leading to attention-seeking behavior and jealousy in relationships.
Attachment Issues: Anxious, avoidant, or disorganized attachment styles developed in childhood leading to difficulty in establishing or maintaining a relationship.
Unresolved Trauma: Past traumatic experiences, such as abuse or neglect, impacting your ability to relate to or get close to others in intimate relationships.
Chronic infidelity: Physical, emotional, or financial infidelity. Constantly looking for the better option.
Communication Challenges: Difficulty expressing needs, desires, and boundaries leading to conflict or lack of communication.
Dependency Issues: Relying too heavily on a partner for validation, emotional support, or identity.
Fear of Rejection: An intense fear of rejection leading to avoidance of intimacy or preemptive withdrawal from potential relationships.
Perfectionism: Unrealistic expectations of oneself or others.
Codependency: Overly enmeshed relationships characterized by a lack of boundaries and independence.
Commitment Phobia: Fear of commitment or intimacy leading to a pattern of avoiding long-term relationships or sabotaging them when they become too close.
Emotional Baggage: Carrying unresolved emotional issues from past relationships into new ones.
Lack of Boundaries: Difficulty establishing and maintaining personal boundaries.
Unrealistic Expectations: Expecting a partner to fulfill all emotional needs or conform to an idealized image.
Looking for more examples of common romantic issues I help people heal from? Click here.
How do we heal romantic issues?
Now that you have an understanding of what types of issues may be getting in the way of your love life and how important getting a jump on fixing them is, let’s talk about what that process of healing entails.
Identifying romantic patterns
While it might not all seem connected, it is. I know it is hard to see the forest when you’re stuck staring at one tree, but I promise you, there are connections between past situations and current functioning when it comes to your love life. These patterns can oftentimes be operating on a subconscious level–like when you realize you’re dating someone who is emotionally avoidant and distant, kinda like how your dad was to you growing up. Yeah…
Once we pull back the veil to see all the interconnected pieces it’s like an epiphany. You’ll be saying “Wow, how did I not see this before?” And once you have that new understanding, you’ll be more able to catch yourself when you start slipping into old patterns again.
Processing past hurt
While self-awareness is great, it is simply a start to the process. Many therapies stop at self-awareness and then people are left wondering “Why do I keep playing out the same patterns if I know better?” The answer is, because you need to reprocess the past situations that led to the formation of the neural pathways that keep you stuck in these patterns of thoughts/feelings/behaviors. Once we can rewire those neural pathways, you won’t respond in the same way to these situations anymore. You will fundamentally change the way you engage in relationships.
I utilize a combination of attachment-focused EMDR and parts work to help clients achieve transformation in love. We work on processing any pains from your earliest attachment figures (i.e. the foundation of your ideas about relationships), your relationship with yourself, and your romantic relationships with others.
Building resilience and self-compassion
A fundamental part of your healing work is the relationship you have with yourself. The way you treat yourself is the standard by which all other people should be measured. Rarely will someone let another person treat them worse than they treat themselves. If people aren’t treating you with care and respect, it’s highly likely you don’t treat yourself with care and respect either. That has to change if you want anything else to change.
In my practice, we don’t shame these behaviors, we hold curiosity and seek to understand them. Often the relationship we have with ourselves is modeled after the relationship others had with us in our formative years. If we had a critical parent or primary caregiver, we likely have a very critical part of ourselves that’s active anytime we do something “wrong.” If we were given praise and attention when we were useful to others, then we likely feel we must be useful to receive love in our current relationships. If we had a parent or primary caregiver that was dismissive of our emotions, then we most likely dismiss and minimize our own emotions now. The list goes on and on.
Through my work with clients I help them cultivate curiosity and compassion towards their inner selves and reject the voices and beliefs passed down to them from caregivers. You are the most important relationship you will ever have in your life and you should be your own greatest love story. When we can shift your internal narrative to focus on building that relationship, everything around you changes.
Dating Intentionally
Doing all this deep work and wrapping ourselves up in warmth and self-compassion is lovely and feels great, but we have to put all that learning and growth into action. Dating intentionally is different from what most of us do and it requires us to be different in order to be successful. This means we’re showing up in authentic ways, stating what we actually want, and allowing ourselves to be vulnerable. All of which can be a bit intimidating at first.
When I work with clients, I help them from when they first come in wanting a relationship or future family all the way through their journey to secure attachment and partnership. The reason for this is because it’s one thing for us to heal the relationship with ourselves and it’s another to then practice that healing in intentional partnership. When we’re just starting to date in a different way than we had before we might have a few hiccups. This is normal and to be expected as it is something new for you. I’m there to help clients back up when they fall down, process any lingering feelings from the misstep, and figure out how they’d like to move forward.
Does it really take years to resolve my romantic issues and attachment wounds?
Maybe? But, it doesn’t have to. Most people don’t know that therapy beyond the traditional talk therapy format exists, so they go to talk therapy or some cognitive-based coaching or something and they see some progress, but they don’t fully heal. It’s like your head knows one thing logically, but your heart feels differently. This is because cognitive-based models cannot touch attachment wounds. So you’re left battling it out on the daily rather than being able to live freely. EMDR therapy doesn’t do that. EMDR actually resolves that conflict and the type that I do (EMDR Intensive Therapy) does it rather quickly. I’m talking days or months instead of years. Yeah, it’s that powerful.
I’ve structured my EMDR practice to specifically work in an intensive therapy format, meaning we do longer, more focused, and highly effective sessions. Whether you want to do 90 minute sessions a few times a month, Extended EMDR sessions 1 to 2 times a month for a few months, or you want to blast through an issue over the course of a few days with an EMDR Intensive Program, I’ve got you. You don’t have to wait forever to feel better, you can start feeling healing now.
Okay, so how do I get started on healing my romantic issues?
If you’re in Missouri or (soon) Florida and you want to get through these issues that have been holding you back from finding healthy, intentional partnership, check out my website and schedule a free consultation call. There’s no strings, no selling, just the information you need to make an informed decision about your future and goals.
If you’re outside of those areas here is a helpful guide to finding an EMDR therapist in your area.
I hope you all find the healing that you need to accomplish your future goals in the timing that feels best for you.
Best,
Jessica Good, MA, LPC, EMDR Therapist
Owner, Good EMDR Therapy, LLC
