Why You're Still Single

Your Fear of Getting Your Hopes Up Is Keeping You Single

• Stefanie Marianné • Season 1 • Episode 2

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If you’ve ever felt that tight, sinking feeling in your stomach the moment you start caring about someone — or if you avoid dating altogether because the emotional risk feels too high — this episode is going to feel like a deep exhale.

In this week’s conversation, we’re breaking down The Hope Hangover:
that emotional crash you experience when you let yourself believe in possibility… and then things don’t unfold the way you imagined.

You’ll learn:

✨ why hoping feels so risky for you
 ✨ how your nervous system is protecting you in ways that block connection
 ✨ why disappointment hits you harder than it “should”
 ✨ how avoiding this part of dating keeps you single
 ✨ and the love-building skill that helps you handle the Hope Hangover without shutting down

By the end of this episode, you’ll know exactly how to tend to yourself in the moments that used to make you spiral — and how to stay emotionally open long enough for real, healthy love to actually find you.

If you’re ready to stop repeating the same cycle and want personalized guidance in your dating life, book a consultation to explore working together.
We’ll look at what’s blocking you, what’s possible for you, and whether my coaching and matchmaking support is the right fit.

👉 Book your consultation here👈🏽

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Why You're Still Single, the podcast and your go-to dating resource to help you find and keep a healthy loving relationship 100% dating app free. I'm Stephanie Mariani, professional matchmaker and master certified dating coach, and here you'll get proven expert level guidance to uncover the blind spots that make finding love almost impossible. Tune in bi-weekly to learn love-building skills that get your relationship ready and create unshakable self-confidence. You're empowered in the dating arena. Finally I keep extraordinary love. If you're ready to break up with dating, hello. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, good night. Whatever time of day you're listening to, I want to welcome you to the podcast. I am so happy that you're here. And I'm also so happy to be here with you. As always, I would like to encourage you to take notes just because when you take notes, you are more likely to implement what you're learning here. And when you implement what you're learning here, you increase the likelihood of finding and keeping a healthy relationship this year 100% dating app free. All right, let's talk about something almost nobody wants to admit out loud, but so many of us have experienced, and this might be a little bit of a vulnerable subject today, but I think it's very important for us to discuss it. And if you're listening right now, there is a good chance that you're either sitting in one of these two places. One, you're quietly avoiding dating. You're not showing up fully, you're kind of seeing what happens, but your heart isn't actually participating. You're holding back, keeping it casual, staying detached, almost like you don't want to care too much. Or you did let yourself care recently, you allowed a little bit of belief to creep in and hoped for something, even if it was just a small possibility, and now you're sitting in the emotional crash afterward, feeling tender, a little embarrassed, maybe even ashamed that you let yourself hope at all. And if either of those are you, then you are either in what I call a hope hangover, or you are trying to avoid a hope hangover. Now, I'm gonna get more in depth with this in the episode, but basically, a hope hangover is the emotional aftermath of believing in possibility, right? And then having to sit with what comes up when it doesn't unfold the way you imagined it would. And here's the thing: most women, or most of us, try to avoid this feeling altogether. Or we don't know what to do when we're in it. And that's exactly what we're going to talk about today. So, today's episode is going to help you understand deeply what a hope hangover really is, see why it hits you so hard emotionally, unpack the deeper thoughts and emotions that come up during it, normalize your experience so you stop shaming yourself for caring, and also teach you the skill you need to handle these moments with emotional resilience. Now, this is a tender topic, but it's also an empowering one because once you understand what's actually happening inside of you, you'll be able to move through these moments with so much more clarity, compassion, and groundedness. So let's get into what a hope hangover actually is. When I say hope hangover, I'm not talking about drama or heartbreak. What I'm talking about is that very real emotional aftermath that happens when you let yourself believe in possibility. You met someone and they, their presence, how they show up, has allowed you to get your hopes up. And then you became emotionally invested, even if it was just the tiniest bit. You stopped acting like you didn't give a F, right? Like you actually started to notice yourself feeling like you do give an F. Or you let your guard down. And then the way things unfold in your dynamic with the other person doesn't actually go the way that you hoped it would go. So a hope hangover is the emotional crash that comes after the emotional lift. And for many of us, what this feels like is disappointment, confusion, replaying every moment in our head, overanalyzing what we said, embarrassment for caring, self-doubt, emotional exhaustion, questioning your judgment, wondering if you misread everything, or even feeling ashamed for hoping. And the reason it hit so hard is because the moment you hoped, your the moment your heart was involved and your nervous system was involved, your vulnerability was involved, right? A hope hangover is the emotional gap between what you felt and what actually happened. A hope hangover happens in the space between two things. One, the emotional experience you were having inside your mind and body, what you felt, what you allowed yourself to believe, what you imagined could happen, what you hoped was unfolding. This also includes the excitement, the anticipation, the possibility, the belief, the emotional investment, the openness, the softness you allowed yourself to feel. It's everything you emotionally stepped into, even if quietly, even if subtly. And then there's two what actually happened in reality, how the situation really unfolded, what the other person actually did or didn't do, the response you got back, or the response you didn't get back, the way things played out versus how you hoped they might. And when those two experiences don't match, your nervous system has to reconcile the difference. That difference, that space between the emotional world you were living in and the external reality you were met with is the hope hangover. It's the crash you feel when the inside doesn't match the outside. And let me make this more clear. Let's say you met somebody and you decided to put some skin in the game and step into the arena and actually hope and believe in possibility. On the inside, you may have felt excitement, but on the outside, the situation fizzled. On the inside, you felt possibility, but on the outside, the communication didn't continue. On the inside, you felt connection, but on the outside, the person didn't show up with the same energy. On the inside, you felt open. And on the outside, the outcome completely disappointed you. Now, this mismatch creates an emotional drop, like your heart was climbing a ladder, and the moment you realize the situation wasn't what you hoped, you fell down a few rungs. That fall, that emotional collision between inner and outer is what produces the hangover. And you'll be surprised to know that it's actually not the situation itself. It's not the person, it's not the moment. It's the discrepancy between your emotional investment and the emotional reality you were confronted with. That gap is where the disappointment lives. That gap is where the overthinking begins. That gap is where the self-judgment forms. That gap is where your old stories about not being good enough get triggered. That gap is where the emotional crash happens. The hangover is the gap. And I want you to feel seen and heard right now. And it's very important that it is acknowledged that that gap is painful. And it's not because you were delusional or wrong, but because hope requires emotional exposure. Now, one of the things that is important for you to deeply understand is why hope feels so scary, why it feels so risky, why it feels like something you should avoid, and why even a little bit of hope can feel like too much. And the answer is because hope requires emotional exposure. To hope is to open your heart, lower your guard, let yourself be visible, let yourself be affected, believe in possibility without guarantees. And for someone who's been hurt, for someone who has had a history of complicated relationships, that exposure feels like walking into a room, actually, walking into the arena without armor. But let's go deeper because this part really matters. There's a deeper nuance around your relationship history, or even your familial history, or the way that you witnessed relationship relationships growing up that makes hope feel even more dangerous for you. Hope doesn't just feel risky because you're dramatic or inexperienced, right? Hope feels risky because you have a track record, a history, a lived memory of what happened the last time you let yourself open up. And for so many of us, for many of us listening now, even a previous version of myself, hope feels threatening because in the past, and mind you, this could be yesterday, this could be childhood, this could be that relationship you had five years ago. The past is literally as recent as a second ago and as the time you were born. So there's a rich history, right, that is really impacting the way you date now, but also the way you allow yourself to hope. So for many of us, hope feels threatening because in the past you opened yourself up all the way, you poured into someone with everything that you had, you believed in their potential, you trusted their words. This could be this could have even been a caretaker, right? A parent, right? You stayed loyal, you showed up consistently, you chose them fully, and then you discovered they were never going to choose you back, they were not capable of changing, nor did they want to. They were emotionally unavailable the whole entire time. They were playing you while you were being sincere, they breadcrumbed you, they took and took and gave very little, they kept you as an option, or they blindsided you after you invested deeply. That kind of experience doesn't just go away, right? It leaves an emotional wound. And whether you consciously think about it or not, your nervous system remembers what happened. So now when you feel hope again, even quietly, that wound gets activated. And it's not because hope is the problem, but because your past taught you that hope leads to pain. And here's where this becomes really important for you because it shows up differently depending on which version of you is listening right now. If you're the woman avoiding dating, your past taught you when I care, I get hurt. When I open up, I get blindsided. When I hope, I end up disappointed. So now, without even realizing it, you protect yourself by staying emotionally neutral, keeping people at a distance, not investing too much, choosing men who don't require vulnerability, performing I don't care as a form of self-defense, staying in low-risk connections where nothing is actually at stake. You're not lacking interest, you're lacking safety. Your past taught you that staying detached is safer than hoping. And it makes complete sense why you show up that way. And if you're the woman sitting in a hope hangover right now, your past taught you every time I let myself believe, it ends badly. So when things don't unfold the way you imagined, your system reacts like, here we go again. I knew better than to care. That's why this hangover feels so intense for you. You're not just grieving the moment, you're grieving every time the storyline has repeated itself. This is why the emotions feel so big. This is why the shame comes up. This is why you're questioning yourself. And this is why the crash feels heavier than the situation deserves. You're not reacting to just this moment. You're reacting to the entire emotional history that this moment activated. So whether you're the woman who avoids dating or the woman who has just had her hopes shaken, you're being shaped by the same emotional past. One version of you shuts down before hope can even happen. The other version of you crashes hard when hope arrives and doesn't go as planned. But both versions are responding to the same wound. The old belief that hope leads to pain, so it's safer for me to stay small, detached, or guarded. And it's not because you're weak, not because you don't want love, and it's not because you're too sensitive, but because this is the only form of emotional protection your nervous system was ever taught. So when you put all of this together, your emotional history, the times you poured into the wrong people, the moments you opened up just to be let down, the betrayal, the disappointment, the rejection, the being unchosen, it makes complete sense why hope feels so threatening to you now. And let's layer in some science here, because this is where your emotional history and your brain chemistry come together. The science of why humans avoid emotions, why emotions feel risky for us, right? One thing about your brain that I want you to that I'm I'm driving as a point is that our brain's primary job is to help us survive. It really is a survival master machine. It keeps us from accidentally walking off the edge of a cliff. It helps us scan environments for danger so that we know exactly what we're supposed to do next to keep ourselves safe, right? So it tries to keep you away from anything that feels like unpredictability, uncertainty, emotional risk, or potential rejection. And here's how that works. One, your brain hates unpredictability. So if we're taking our example in terms of hoping, right, or hope, hope is actually unpredictable. There are absolutely no guarantees when you allow yourself to hope. And your brain interprets that unpredictability as dangerous. Two, emotional pain is the equivalent to physical pain. Believe it or not, but brain scans show emotional rejection activates the same neural pathways as physical injury. So your brain avoids emotional risk as much as it possibly can. It's instinctive. Three, the brain prefers familiarity over possibility. Now, this is what we call predictive familiarity. It means your brain feels safer in outcomes it has experienced before before, even if they are painful. So if your past relationships involved disappointment, rejection, betrayal, not being chosen, inconsistent partners, or emotional overfunctioning on your behalf, your brain will cling to that familiarity because it at least it knows what to expect. And side note, episode one of the podcast addresses that nugget more in depth. So if you need a little bit of a refresher, please go back and listen to this first episode. And lastly, number four, your nervous system stores emotional pain. Your body remembers every time you were blindsided, misled, or overinvested in the wrong person. So hope actually becomes a trigger. And it's not because you're weak, but because your system, your whole system, your mental system, your emotional system, your nervous system, right? All of that is really trying to protect you. So now that you understand the science behind why humans avoid emotions, the unpredictability, the fear of emotional pain, the need for familiarity, and the nervous system storing, emotional history. Let's tie this into why avoiding hope and avoiding the possibility of a hope hangover is quietly keeping you single. Because here's the truth: you're not avoiding dating. You're avoiding emotional exposure. You're avoiding the vulnerability that comes with letting something matter. You're avoiding the possibility of disappointment before it even exists. You're avoiding the hope hangover, the emotional crash that you felt so many times before. And the way your brain tries to protect you ends up creating the exact outcome you don't want. And taking this one layer deeper, because it's not just the avoidance of the hope that keeps you single, it's also the way you respond when the hope hangover hits. They're two sides of the same coin, and both are shaping your dating life more than you realize. So here are a few of the ways that avoiding hope or the hope hangover are keeping you single. Number one, avoiding hope keeps you emotionally unavailable. When you avoid hope, what you're really avoiding is emotional participation. And I know that you're smart. Dating and relationships require a hundred percent emotional participation. So what this would look like is in terms of avoiding emotional participation, is you're physically on the date, but emotionally you're still in the waiting room. This may look like you staying neutral, staying guarded, staying observational, staying cool, keeping your heart behind glass, showing a version of yourself that cannot get hurt, choosing low effort men because they don't require vulnerability, keeping things light so nothing matters too much. This creates a very specific dating dynamic. Healthy men interpret you as unavailable, and emotionally unavailable men interpret you as perfect because you require nothing. So you end up bonding with the wrong men and repelling the right ones without even realizing it's happening. When you avoid hope, your dating life has no emotional depth because you aren't bringing it. Number two, the fear of the hope hangover makes you choose safety over connection. You're not choosing men based on compatibility, you're choosing men based on how little emotional risk they pose. He's inconsistent, safe because you won't fall for him. He's not emotionally available, safe because you know where it's going. He's putting in low effort, safe because your heart won't get involved. He's someone you're not genuinely excited about, safe because you'll never expect much. This isn't preference, this is survival. When you fear the hope hangover, you choose relationships that don't have the capacity to emotionally touch you, which means you can't get hurt, but you also can't get chosen in the way you're craving. Number three, the hope hangover itself keeps you single. And here's the part most women don't realize it's not just avoiding hope that keeps you single, it's also how you respond when hope does happen and the emotional crash shows up. Because when the hope hangover hits, your system goes into self-blame, spiraling, shame, overthinking, misinterpreting the moment, shutting down, withdrawing, disappearing emotionally, or cutting the person off entirely. You react like the disappointment is a diagnosis instead of a moment. You probably tell yourself, I was stupid for caring. This is exactly why I don't date. I knew better than to believe this. I should have protected myself more. This confirms everything I feared. And because you don't have a process for handling the emotional aftermath, your instinct, your instinct becomes to retreat. Retreat from dating, retreat from connection, retreat from men, retreat from visibility, retreat from trying altogether. And with every retreat, your dating life shrinks a little more until eventually you are dating from a place of fear, self-protection, emotional detachment, and internal shutdown. Here's the truth: you can't build a healthy relationship from a place where you're constantly trying to protect yourself from your own emotions. Number four, avoiding the hangover creates a closed loop system. Your avoidance and your hangovers create a cycle. You hope, you feel exposed. Something doesn't match, you crash emotionally, you shame yourself, you retreat, you date less, you protect more, you avoid hope, you avoid connection, you stay single. Your nervous system thinks it's keeping you safe, but in reality, it's keeping you isolated. You're not being rejected by men, you're being rejected by your fear of emotional exposure. And number five, the real problem isn't hope. It's your relationship with the aftermath, the hangover. This is the part I want you to hear clearly. It's not the hope that's hurting you, it's not the belief, it's not the possibility, it's not the emotional openness, it's the aftershock of disappointment, the hope hangover that shakes you so deeply that you would rather never feel hope again. But when you avoid the hangover, you avoid the very experience required to build intimacy. Hope is the doorway to connection, the hangover is the maintenance room, and you need both to get to a healthy relationship. Avoiding either one keeps you stuck. And six, this is why you're still single. Not because you're unlovable, not because there are no good men, and not because you're doing anything wrong, but because you are avoiding emotional exposure, avoiding vulnerability, avoiding possibility, avoiding the discomfort required for connection, and avoiding the emotional waves that come with dating real humans. You're not avoiding dating, you're avoiding yourself in dating. And this is exactly why the next part matters so much. Because avoiding emotions keeps you single, but learning how to respond to them is what makes love possible. So here's the part I really want. You to hear. A hope hangover is not a sign that something went wrong. It's not proof you misread the situation. It's not evidence that you're unlovable or foolish. It's also not a warning to shut down. A hope hangover is simply a part of dating. The same way sore muscles are part of working out. If you are emotionally participating in your dating life, if you're letting yourself be visible, if you're allowing possibility, if you're showing up with heart, you will sometimes be disappointed. You will sometimes feel confused. You will sometimes have an emotional dip. And you will also sometimes feel that crash after a moment of hope. Not because you're unlucky, but because you're human. And when you radically accept that this is simply part of the journey, the hope hangover stops becoming something to fear. Well, it stops being something to fear and stops being something you use as a reason to avoid hope altogether. Because now you understand, oh, this is just part of the process. This is supposed to happen sometimes. Nothing has gone wrong. I'm not doing anything wrong. And when you aren't terrified of the hangover, you stop avoiding hope. You stop avoiding connection. You stop avoiding vulnerability and showing up fully. This is where the love-building skill comes in because the goal is not to avoid the hope hangover. The goal is to know how to handle it, to know what to do in the aftermath, to know how to respond to yourself when your emotions dip, to tend to yourself in a way that keeps you grounded instead of shutting down. Because when you have the skill to navigate the inevitable emotional waves, dating stops feeling like a threat and starts feeling like something you're actually equipped to move through. This skill is what turns the hope hangover from something that derails you into something you can handle with compassion, resilience, and clarity. And that is the skill that helps you find and keep a healthy relationship, a real, secure, emotionally fulfilling relationship, 100% dating app free. And that skill is what I call becoming an emotional first responder. Becoming an emotional first responder is such a valuable love-building skill, and it will completely change the way you date, the way you move through disappointment, and the way you stay open long enough for a healthy relationship to actually form in your life. And you're probably wondering, all right, so what is this? What does it mean? So we'll get right into it. An emotional first responder is the part of you that tends to the part of you who's hurting. She's the version of you who knows how to show up for, the disappointed version of you, the confused version of you, the hopeful version of you who got let down, the embarrassed version of you, the part of you that feels ashamed, the part of you that feels unworthy, the overthinking, spiraling part of you. She doesn't shame you, she doesn't shut you down, she doesn't say, see, this is why we don't date. She steps in, she steadies you, she responds to you, she reassures you, she helps you process what you're feeling, and she brings you back into emotional alignment so you don't abandon yourself or your goal of having that healthy relationship that you so deeply desire in your life. And the better you get at tending to yourself here in the emotional aftermath, the more likely you are to continue hoping, continue believing, continue showing up, and continue having skin in the game, the less likely you are to shut down out of fear of ever feeling this way again. This is a skill that separates women who keep repeating the same cycle from women who find and keep real healthy love. Because when you know how to take care of yourself in the moments that feel the hardest, you no longer fear the moments, you no longer avoid the journey, you no longer treat dating like a threat, you no longer let disappointment become a dead end. This skill changes everything. So if becoming an emotional first responder is the skill, the next question is okay, but how do I actually do that? Because it's one thing to understand the concept, but it's another thing to know how to apply it. On a Tuesday night when you're spiraling, or when that text doesn't come through, or when your hope dips, or when your emotions are louder than your logic. You need something simple, something grounded, something you can remember in the moment, something that helps you tend to yourself instead of abandoning yourself. And this is where the framework comes in. I want to give you a simple, practical way to emotionally first respond to yourself so that the hope hangover doesn't scare you, doesn't shut you down, and doesn't keep you from continuing to show up for love. This is how you begin to become the woman who knows how to navigate the emotional waves without letting them take her out. So let's walk through the simple three-step framework for becoming your own emotional first responder. Step one, notice and name. Here you're going to learn how to separate what actually happened from what you're making it mean. And we're going to walk through this with a real example from a real client so you can see it clearly. And this may be something that you have experienced yourself or may be experiencing now. I had a client who'd been talking to a guy consistently every single day. Good morning, text, little check-ins. It feels steady and consistent. And then one day, nothing. No text, no hey, no explanation, just silence. Most women go into an emotional spiral, just like my client had. Or he didn't text today. That is what's real. That is what is observable. It is just data. But your brain probably doesn't stop at the fact, it races ahead to meaning, just like it, just like my client did. He's lost interest, he's talking to someone else. I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up. I did something wrong. This always happens to me. I'm not enough. So step one is you naming this. The fact is, he didn't text today. The meaning I'm assigning is I'm not enough. He's pulling away. I messed this up. Why this step matters? Well, most of your emotional pain in that moment isn't coming from the fact that he didn't text you today. Even with my client, I had to explain to her that her emotional pain in the hope hangover wasn't coming from that moment. It wasn't coming from the event. It was coming from the story she attached to the event, right? It's coming from the story you attach to the event. When you separate what actually happened from what you're making it mean, you create space between you and the story. That space is important. You stop treating your thoughts like facts, and you step out of autopilot and into awareness. You give yourself the ability to see, oh, I'm reacting to the meaning I'm assigning to this, not just the moment. That awareness is powerful. It's what gives you the consciousness to break the pattern instead of unconsciously repeating it. Most of us don't know that we are unconsciously stirring up an emotional storm inside of us and forcing ourselves to feel emotions that feel terrible, right? Because of the meaning we attach to the factual, objective things that happen in our dating life. Being able to separate yourself away from that is so powerful. Step two, feel. Now, let yourself feel the emotions that come up without shaming or shutting down. Once you've named the meaning, you're going to feel it in your body. If your brain decided his silence means he's losing interest, I did something wrong, I wasn't enough, of course, you're going to feel anxious, disappointed, embarrassed, insecure, sad, and rejected. Those emotions make sense given the meaning your mind created. This step is about letting yourself actually feel that instead of shutting down, pretending you don't care, shaming yourself for being too sensitive, or even immediately trying to fix or control the situation. You might say to yourself, Of course I feel this way. I liked him. I was hopeful. This matters to me. Let whatever feeling comes up move through your body. Notice where it sits. Breathe into it. Allow the wave without making it mean something about your worth. Why does this step matter? Because your feelings are not the problem. Avoiding your feelings is the problem. When you don't let yourself feel the emotion, it gets stuck and turns into an ongoing anxiety, shutdown, or bitterness. It gets stored in your nervous system as proof that dating isn't safe for you. And it also makes you more likely to react from fear. Text from panic, lashing out, pulling away, ghosting in return. When you do let yourself feel, the emotional charge actually moves through you instead of camping out. Your nervous system learns I can feel this and survive it. You build emotional endurance and resilience, which is vital for dating. Being in the dating arena requires emotional endurance and resilience. And lastly, you make the hope hangover less scary because you've shown yourself you can handle it. Feeling your feelings is what prevents a moment of disappointment from being a long-term emotional block and setback. And the last step, three, choose. Decide what you want this moment to mean from your grounded self, not your wounded self. Once you've named the story and allowed yourself to feel the emotions, you're no longer reacting from raw fear or hurt. You're more grounded because you're more aware. This is where you get to ask, okay, now that I understand what I'm making it mean and how that meaning is making me feel, and I'm clear, what do I want this to mean? From this grounded space where you have the ability to objectively see yourself in that moment from the version of you who's growing into the woman who can hold herself and stay open to love, using the example, right, that we previously spoken about. Fact, he didn't text today. Old meaning is he's done with me. I wasn't enough. I'm stupid for hoping. Now, new chosen meaning might look like he didn't text today. People get busy, I'll watch what he does next. If he becomes inconsistent, that's good information for me about his capacity. This is disappointing, and I'm still deserving of love. One quiet day doesn't define my value. I can feel this dip and still keep showing up for the kind of love I want. Now, why does this step matter? Because the meaning you decide to carry forward determines whether you keep your heart open or quietly shut it down, whether you keep dating from possibility or from fear, whether you trust yourself more or less, whether you see this as a data point or a personal failure, if you don't consciously choose the meaning, your brain will default to your old programming. See, you're not enough. This always happens to you. You shouldn't have hoped. And that is what keeps you stuck in the same emotional loops. When you choose the meaning, you reclaim your agency. You stop letting every bump in the road become a full-on identity crisis. You create a new pattern where disappointment is something you move through, not live inside. You're way more likely to stay in the dating process instead of quitting every time something hurts. This is how you become the woman who can experience a whole hangover without letting it convince her to abandon her desire for love. So this is the work. This is what it looks like to become your own emotional first responder. Not by avoiding discomfort, not by pretending you don't care, and not by shutting down every time something feels tender, but by meeting yourself in the exact moment your old patterns want to take over. When you can slow down enough to separate the facts from the meaning, when you can let yourself actually feel the emotion instead of running from it, and when you can choose what this moment gets to mean for you moving forward, you stop being afraid of the hope hangover. You stop seeing disappointment as personal failure. You stop treating every emotional dip like a sign you should give up. You stop abandoning yourself the moment things don't go perfectly. And instead, you become the woman who knows how to hold herself through the messy, human, and perfect parts of dating, which, by the way, are the same emotional skills you will use inside a real healthy relationship. Because love, the kind of love you want, isn't built on perfection. It's built on emotional presence, it's built on resilience, it's built on staying open even when it would be easier to shut down. It's built on knowing how to navigate your internal world so you can actually let someone in. And when you can do that, dating stops feeling like a threat. Hope stops feeling like danger, and connection becomes something you can actually participate in without losing yourself or living in fear of the next emotional wave. This is how you build the emotional capacity to find and keep a healthy relationship, a relationship that meets you, chooses you, and grows with you 100% dating app free. All right, my love. I hope you have an amazing, fabulous rest of your day. I hope this helped, and I'll talk to you soon. Hey, can I ask you something? Are you ready to find and keep love and tired of wasting time and energy on things that just aren't working? If so, I want to invite you to join my membership. Find and keep a healthy relationship 100% dating app free. This membership provides weekly dating success sessions designed to emotionally support you in the moments you get in your head and give you expert guidance tailored to your unique situation. You'll also get access to workshops and courses designed to empower you with the love-building skills to make finding and keeping love this year inevitable. If what you're learning on this podcast is helping, imagine what's possible when you take it to the next level. This membership is designed to work when nothing else has, saving you time, energy, and heartache. Ready to get started? The link to join us is in the show notes. I cannot wait to support you!