338 - Why You Keep Choosing People Who Don’t Choose You | Divorce Patterns & Self-Worth

You don’t just “end up” in relationships where you’re not chosen.
You were trained for them.

In this VIP episode of Dear Divorce Diary, we unpack the deeply rooted pattern of waiting to be chosen—and why it doesn’t start in your marriage… it starts much earlier.

We’re talking about:

•  The childhood dynamics that quietly taught you to accept crumbs 
•  How never being prioritized shapes who you choose (and tolerate) 
•  Why “being chosen” feels safer than choosing for yourself 
•  The nervous system fear that keeps you stuck in the same relationship patterns 
•  How to start rebuilding your capacity to discern what you actually want 

This conversation goes beyond surface-level dating advice.

Because this isn’t about finding a better partner.

It’s about:

learning how to choose yourself… even when it feels unfamiliar, uncomfortable, or scary.

If you’ve ever:

•  stayed too long 
•  excused behavior you knew wasn’t right 
•  or felt like you had to earn love 

This episode will hit close to home.

And more importantly—
 it will show you where the pattern actually begins… and how to start changing it.

✨Join the Cocoon Community - your people are waiting! ✨

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Transcript

The Need To Feel Chosen

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Darlings. One of our ladies sent us it wasn't Instagram. What was it? TikTok? She loves TikTok. So much cool stuff on TikTok. Anyway, she sent us a TikTok this week about the need to feel chosen. Right. And feeling like feeling like you have to wait for someone to choose you, right? Feeling so insecure and anxious that you don't have the power or capacity to choose who you want to be in your life or not in your life. It's like you're constantly vying for someone to choose you. So she sent us this TikTok and it was this checklist. Anyways, she connected the dots that this need to feel chosen goes all the way back to her earliest days. And she was able to start sort of mapping out uh what she observed in her family with her parents and her sister very early in life that laid the groundwork for feeling like she wasn't ever chosen or cherished or prioritized or the top of anybody's list. And what was so remarkable was that she's connecting those dots to go way back before. This is actually her second divorce, right? So there's a pattern. So the ability to connect the dots to predate marriage and divorce is such a big deal because that's when we know that we're really dropping into those deeper layers and starting to shift the brain map so that it becomes impossible for you to attract the same type of relationship or same type of man. Hi, love. Welcome to Dear Divorce Diary, the podcast helping divorcees go beyond talk therapy to process your grief, find the healing you crave, and build back your confidence. I'm your host, Don Wiggins, a therapist, coach, integrative healer, and divorcee. Join me for a fresh approach to healing grief and building your confidence after divorce. How did all of that land with you?

Dating Crumbs And Love Bombing

SPEAKER_02 2:20

I relate so much. When she said that, you know, in in communication with with us, and she said that her mom loved her dad more than anything else. It's the opposite from my family, in which my dad loves my mom to a fault. Like he will look at me and say, She's wrong, I'm gonna support her anyway. And it's something that I've done a lot of work around because I was never chosen. My mom, in her narcissistic, like the the trendy word, right? But she's very, very about her. And in her in that narcissistic state, she not only and then my, you know, like she she made all these decisions, but then my dad would back her even if she was wrong. And um down to, you know, like I was sexually assaulted when I was 13. And my mom would literally tell people in Walmart. It was like this banner that she loved because it got her so much attention. And I would beg her and cry and like, I I don't want strangers knowing my business, right? And so it was one of those things, like my my whole life, it was my mom, and then my dad chose her, and my sister chose, you know what I mean? Like, so you can see the pattern. Now I can see the matrix. That's a term that we use a lot around here. Now I can see the matrix, and I can look back and be like, oh, I dated people who never chose me. All of my relationships were they were choosing someone else, and I just stood there and they were doing this, and I just stood there, and I just took little crumbs of attention or affection, or all these little things because it was um I used the guide of like, oh, he's just trying to be a good friend, or oh, he really excusing it away. Right, excuse right, right, right, excuse me in a way. Thank you for helping me find the words. And then I married a man who was a shit boyfriend. Like he was an asshole boyfriend, and I still married him. Right. Because I got those little the love bombs, and you know, he would he would cheat on me and then show up at work with a dozen roses and a bear, right? Like it was just when you look back and you can see the pattern of behavior starting when I was tiny. I mean, I don't even remember when it started because it's that far back, like pre-verbal, pre-memory is when 100%.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

And it's so interesting to consider that if a child was never given the opportunity to cultivate do I like this or do I not like this? Do I want this or do I not want this? Do I want this friend? Do I like how this friend treats me? Do I like how this person treats me? Do I like how this feels? Right? It's it's like so interesting to think of that as a muscle that needs to be grown or developed or flexed, like the capacity to discern versus never getting the opportunity to even have the felt sense. I've sometimes said, like, how would I explain to you what chocolate cake tastes like if you've never had it?

SPEAKER_02 5:45

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. How do you know who you are if you've never been able to be who you are? Because you had to be someone else to pacify. Survive your childhood, to pe to please, right.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

And while you described, I think, many of our childhoods, right? Maybe with different players on the board.

SPEAKER_02 6:09

Irrigations, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

Yeah, you know, I it was always so confusing to me that mm my mom would push such a biblical agenda, but then my dad would do all these things that were incredibly counter to the biblical agenda, but then he would back him, she would back him, right? It's like so confusing to a little brain, you know? But I also have seen ways that I've perpetuated this nonsense of like, because I was anxious uh when my child was younger that I would want to control her in order to manage my anxiety, right? So again, like that recreation, like how do you like how could I allow her to stretch into the corners of her selfness, right? If she's having to suppress in order to keep me regulated. So thank God we've tackled all of that, and that's not what's happening now. But yeah, it's so sneaky how it gets perpetuated, also, just in the name of well, gosh, I need to be able to juggle all the things I'm juggling as a modern day mother, and I just need you to do what I need you to do, and I don't have the energy or the space or the capacity for you to make a mess or make a mistake, or, you know, yeah, how quickly that can be, I don't know, recreated in subsequent generations.

SPEAKER_02 7:31

But um also I do want to say that there is too far. Right. Because I took it too far. I didn't control anything. Right.

Parenting Extremes And Attachment Wounds

SPEAKER_01 7:41

Well, I would actually argue that you get the same outcome. And I was started to say that earlier that if you do if you swing to the complete opposite end of the spectrum where all you do is cherish your children, and they don't have any again capacity to discern or to flex a muscle or to learn that not everybody in the world is gonna choose you, that you're actually going to create the same problem just through a different vehicle. Different. That they will have no resilience or capacity for rejection, and you will have the same attachment rupture, the same identity issues, the same like same, you know, not ideal outcome, but just through a different extreme.

When Approval Regulates Your Nervous System

SPEAKER_00 9:36

And that's what I feel like my experience was, you know, because when I was younger, I remember the time that, you know, my mom said that she was gonna leave the really bad relationship she was in and we were gonna move in with my grandparents. And we ended up living with them from the time I was 12 till I graduated from high school and moved out. And those were like some beautiful years because then I ended up losing my grandmother at 19, right? So I was so thankful for all the years that we had there. But there was this hope in me that when my mom got out of this relationship, that she was then going to be able to redirect attention to me and we were gonna be able to reconnect and have this great friendship and relationship. And instead, she went out and started drinking and partying to deal with the fact that she was upset about the relationship. You know, she was upset about the fact that she felt like she went backwards and having to move in with my grandparents again and like help with financial things. And so it didn't turn out that way at all for me. So I felt again like this sense of rejection around that of not being chosen, of not being good enough or not feeling all of that. And so I ended up picking men very early on that were very controlling. Control was a sense of love for me. Um, and I think I got a little bit of that from my dad too, right? Like I needed to be controlled. So, like the relationship I'm in now, when he wants me to go out with friends and he wants me to have hobbies and he wants me to find my like that felt scary to me because I'm like, well, then he must not love me if he wants me to have my own life, quote unquote, right? But it's like, no, that's like normal shit that like people should want you to have in a relationship. And then with my daughter, what I ended up doing was I ended up making her feel like she was the only thing in my life because of the way that I was treated, right? So it's like I went overboard and ended up having a codependent as fuck child, where her and I had a really codependent attachment for a really long time. And so I saw how when I swung too far to the other side of the spectrum, how that then created another set of issues to where I have a child that doesn't feel like she can be independent enough to leave the house or make decisions or stick with a job or like whatever, right? So it's like I kind of created the other side of that. And so I tell women all the time it's about finding the balance between, you know, being a good parent, but also correct, like not doing too much for your kid either. Like there is that line that I crossed a lot and I'm now having to retrain myself and my child to have a more secure attachment style with the other.

Feeling Trapped And The Under-Seven Belief

SPEAKER_01 12:00

I also know I've used in my life this need to be chosen as a way to keep my nervous system regulated or to avoid feeling certain feelings, right? So not even just uh, you know, I didn't realize that I had the power to choose. But if I could get everybody enrolled in the way I see the world, right? I just don't have to feel any dissonance inside of me. And that's just not realistic. Like you can't, like that you can't control other people, A and B. Like diversity is such a beautiful part of life. But it's like um that conflict or disagreement felt so threatening to me for so many years that I couldn't tolerate it. And so maybe chameleoning or, you know, just trying to get people to like me uh was like a, you know, a workaround, but it's not, it's no bueno. Um and so now is is very different, right? To move through social situations or even when clients want to work with me and to be like, well, do I want to work with you or do can I say that here?

SPEAKER_00 13:15

Um I think you can.

SPEAKER_01 13:19

It's a huge part of it. Yeah, or like, do I want to be friends with you? And maybe not, you know, it's it's super, super interesting, new whole new skill set to not need to be chosen. For whatever reason.

SPEAKER_00 13:33

I think as kids, I think as kids too that have exiled parts that felt trapped in childhood or felt like they had to just survive, right? Like you you go into adulthood feeling very trapped in relationships and you forget that you have a choice to leave. You forget that you have a choice to put a boundary down or to end the relationship or to leave the job, or you know, like people just think that they have to sit in this shit and just take it for years. And it's like when you finally start to realize that you have a choice of what you tolerate and what you deserve, the game starts changing very rapidly after that.

SPEAKER_01 14:07

Yes, I wish that our listeners understood how profound what you just said is. And so if the sentences Tiffany just said didn't like hit you between the eyes, let's slow it down and take it back. Okay. Because when you feel trapped in adulthood, it is always because there is some negative belief that got internalized somewhere before seven years old. Period. I can't emphasize that any other way, right? And I say before seven years old because our top brain starts to develop at seven, right? It's just how the brain matures. So before seven, we don't have the ability to critically analyze things and decide for ourselves whether or not that information we just got presented with fits or makes sense. It's why it's so possible to teach kids about Santa. Because whatever beliefs we have them or whatever experiences we offer them, they just take it on board as though it's true. And I mean, if you just think about how much we get exposed to before the age of seven, how much of it is not true or would shape our perceptions, right? But that's how our nervous systems get primed. It's how our belief systems get developed. And that's the work that we're here to do is to change our belief system, right? Where anywhere we have limiting beliefs, changing them for a positive one. And how many times do we try to convince ourselves of new beliefs, but they don't stick? They don't stick. We know them intellectually, but and people say this, right? But I don't feel like it's true. And Tiffany, you are telling us that's because there's an exiled part that holds up. Absolutely. Yeah. And so then we have to do that work to get to those exiled parts, which means going deeper and deeper and deeper in our layers, which ties today's episode to Tuesdays.

IFS Parts Work And Body Sensations

SPEAKER_00 15:56

Yeah, yeah. And it can be, it can be a myriad of things, right? It's it's not just trapped. I work with somebody this week who has a judged part. You know, they're afraid that if they make the decisions, the big decisions in life, that everybody's gonna judge them. They're gonna fuck it up, they're gonna embarrass themselves, they're gonna lose their spouse, they're gonna like whatever the case, right? Like, so it's it's interesting. The things we tell ourselves to keep us small. There's always a fear associated with what would happen if I would be able to take charge and authority of my life and make the choices I know I need to make. Whether you feel like you're gonna be judged, you're gonna let people down, you're gonna be disappointed, you're gonna be abandoned, like whatever.

First Real Choices After Divorce

SPEAKER_01 16:37

Those are the words we wrap around it. That's the story we wrap around what we're actually afraid of is actually a physical sensation in our nervous system. Yeah. We're afraid of experiencing a sensation in our nervous system, which again ties to Tuesdays, why it can't all heal at once. Because if you if you activated all of those sensations all at once, right, it would break us. And so we tell ourselves, like, oh, I'm afraid that they wouldn't like me, or oh, I'm afraid they would leave, or oh, I'm afraid, but all of that is like actually there's a sensation that feels like anxiety or panic or shame, and we don't want to experience the sensation. I love helping people tease apart the story from the feeling because we don't realize that we experience that sensation and then we perpetuate the story, and that's one of the ways we stay stuck.

SPEAKER_00 17:35

But if you can't Well, that's the thing when we do the blue balloon, right? That's why the second step in the blue balloon is where do you feel it in your body? Because it separates the part from your body activation. Like it's yeah. What about for people who can't feel it in their body yet?

SPEAKER_01 17:49

They have a harder time separating it.

unknown 17:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:52

And that's okay. And then that's where we need to go in IFS. I have people that have very blended parts, you know, that they can't envision parts of them because it feels too raw, too real. It's just becomes a part of them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:07

Your meat suit doesn't even feel safe to feel in your body. That tells us a story about how much you've been through.

SPEAKER_00 18:15

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 18:15

Yeah, exactly. What are some of the first awarenesses any of us have had about being able to choose?

Boundaries In Friendships And Social Circles

SPEAKER_00 18:24

Mine was just being able to leave my marriage. That was probably one of the biggest choices that I made was to realize that I I was not okay. And I was just sick and tired of being not okay. And I felt like there had to be something more. There was a little bit of a glimmer of something like it can't be this bad on my own. Like there has to be something, right? Like and I've said that before, you know, that in all the years that I was single, when I was the most lonely was in relationships that weren't a fit for me. That's what felt the loneliest to me. And so I've kind of taken that with me over the years, right? But yeah, there was that awareness of like, I can't stay stuck in this for years. And I think my my daughter definitely inspired some part of it too, that I just didn't feel like I was a good mom anymore. I just wasn't present. You know, so it was kind of one of those things where it did. And I hate that it had to get to that point where my daughter had to be the thing that inspired me to fix my life, right? But like that's how it is, and that's how it went. And I'm thankful that I had her. I hope to God that I would have had the sense to choose if she wasn't there. But I don't know how I would have acted back then, right?

SPEAKER_01 19:44

Yeah. No, I really because as I'm thinking, I'm like, yeah, there are lots of places where I easily activate choice, but so many of them were on behalf of my child and not on behalf of me. And I had this realization very recently, like, I think in the last three years, there was a mom from her class who needed me to know how homeopathy is snake oil. And she learned about it in medical school, and it's not real. And this is somebody I had had many meaningful conversations with. I had referred her to my past therapist. Like, we had many meaningful conversations. And I was shocked at A. I mean, it's just so still sort of shocking as I retell it, right? But it never occurred to me with her until that moment, like, oh, I don't have to choose to be in this. Like, you're not being nice. This is not nice. You're basically calling me an idiot. Uh like you're telling me that what I see.

SPEAKER_02 20:44

She was like, she attacked.

SPEAKER_01 20:45

Yeah. Like, literally, my kid was so sick with food allergies and OCD and anxiety. Like, name the things. My kid was so sick, and then she got unsick, and the thing that changed was homeopathy. Like, what like what? Anyways, um, that was a real aha moment for me in the intimate corners of my own psyche. Nothing to do with um, I say nothing to do with my kid, but like it really wasn't, right? It was like, because historically I would have just swallowed that down and just been like, oh, okay, I understand and kept playing nice. And now I'm no, like, no, yeah, I don't have anything to say. Yeah.

Self-Energy And Refining Your Inner Circle

SPEAKER_00 21:23

But I feel like it's gotten easier, at least for me. Like it was really hard back then for me to make the choices. But when I I learned to choose myself over and over and over, now it's very easy. Like, even like the women's hiking group that I'm a part of, like, there's some women in there that are fabulous and I love talking to them. And there's other women where I'm like, you're toxic as fuck. You're not somebody that I would like to hang out with outside of this club, you know, which is fine. But I can make those choices for myself and know what I want. And I know what I want my life to feel like. And if somebody comes into my circle and doesn't feel like that, I'm like, nope.

SPEAKER_01 21:58

That's a fun thought experiment because uh we launched Menopause Love Lounge podcast this year and that or last year, last year, in the last year, right? And that's been navigating five other female relationships in my life where yes, I've I've actively chosen to express myself, to not put up with bullshit in places, and it took a couple of months, but yeah, now I just say the things. Um, and that's a modern day example. That is a really good example, Tiffany, of you bringing in like modern intersections to say, like, no, I'm not approaching relationships the same anymore. No, thank you, please.

unknown 22:36

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 22:36

No, thank you, please. I think I've really started to really see how much um my I need my girls to see me choosing me. So not just, you know, not just always complying and being little, but like, no, I am doing this for me because of this XYZ. Like I need this for my um peace, my nervous system, my health, the future me, the f the children, you know, like the the grandma, the The nana joy. That's a thought. Right? Isn't that fun? And I sh you know, I want to I want them to see that and experience that, not just and so again, I'm doing it I'm doing it for me, but I'm also making sure they know I'm doing it for me. But that's been a shift in my whole family because traditionally it's only been them. I would self-sacrifice for them.

SPEAKER_01 23:40

And I definitely can see that it's super easy for me to choose me when I'm surrounded by people who support me choosing choosing me, but it's a lot harder to do it when I don't have permission. Does that land? Does it make sense what I'm saying? Like when somebody disapproves of my choice to choose, yeah, I can still feel a wobble sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 24:01

But then I also look at said person and say, What is the concept? Why do I feel like this with you? Correct. Like, what is it about this relationship that makes me feel like I can't have permission to do things or be myself or whatever, fill in the blank. It's all about your circle, man. That circle gets really refined the more healing you do, I'm telling you. You start to see it so clearly, it smacks you in the face. Like you just, I cannot tolerate in my body being around people that are toxic as fuck anymore. Like I cannot. It's I can go out after group and we can have, you know, a drink and we can all be hanging out and stuff like that. But do I want you at my home, in my space, in my sanctuary, in my life? No. Fuck no. Nope.

Safety, Deeper Healing, And Closing

SPEAKER_02 24:47

Nope. I like how she did a little jig when she said nope. Nope.

SPEAKER_00 24:51

And I'm saying, like, I don't need you to have your shit together. That's not the thing, right? I don't need perfect friends, but I need people that are going to show up for me and themselves. Yeah. In a really good way.

SPEAKER_01 25:02

Yeah, this is interesting, right? Like, I feel like maybe we buried the lead, but people who aren't in self-energy can't see other people clearly.

SPEAKER_02 25:11

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 25:12

Yeah. So I don't want people who can't see me clearly in my inner circle.

SPEAKER_02 25:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

And those are probably people who don't have a lot of self-energy.

SPEAKER_00 25:23

Yeah, I would say that. Because I think all of our relationships have changed over the past almost two years that we've worked together as we've all capacity and self, right? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 25:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:34

You know, like our relationships are so different now than they were two years ago. Mm-hmm. Like we all have capacity to really show up for each other in very different ways. And I think that speaks a lot to, you know, when somebody brings something up, it shifts from, oh god, is she mad at me to like, no, this is, you know what I mean? Like it just, yeah, yeah. It's good. It's gonna be able to call shit out like that.

SPEAKER_01 25:57

Yeah. And, you know, when we talk about being able to drop into the deeper layers, there has to be this perception of safety to do it. And so if you're not surrounding yourself with people who are for you, like really, really for you, right? Then it's not gonna seem safe to go to those deeper layers. Yeah. To be able to rehab this permission to choose. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:20

I've literally said that to a friend recently, like, I'm going to pray every day that God takes away the friends that make you X, Y, Z, you know, whatever kind of like you don't need to be, if you that all adage, like you become who you hang out with. Like, why, why, why are you pouring so much into these friends who make you feel like shit? Who don't, you know, like make like talk down to you, belittle you, belittle your family, your friends, whatever it is. Like, why, if you're not met with hype? Like I want my I want to be surrounded by hype women. Like, hype me up, call me out, hold me accountable. You know, like I got a text from a friend this morning, and have were you in the word this morning? Or have you have you done self-care this morning? Have you done whatever you need? Like life is too short to be met with unhealed people, unhealed parts all the time.

SPEAKER_01 27:18

If you notice yourself still self-abandoning or having a difficult time choosing versus needing to be chosen, you're in the right place. You're in the right place. It's a journey, and we're still on it. We're happy to be on it with you. Don't bug out when it gets hard. Final answer. Yeah? We love you so much. Peace.com.