As I explained in my blog about IFS-informed Dating and Dating The Day Democracy Died, I learned a ton about myself and my own parts by going on about thirty first dates before I wound up with my current partner Jeffrey Rediger, who I met at a trauma conference we were both keynoting. Even though I didn’t meet someone long term on eHarmony, Match.com, or Bumble (the three sites I tried), I don’t regret that wonderful experience in self-discovery. And I mostly met really great people and had a lot of fun, since I’d never really shopped for humans before.
I only had one regrettable experience, but even that one taught me a lot (and cost me two therapy sessions to process it.) So I want to tell you about it, in case you’re thinking about online dating and curious how it can turn out.
My partner Jeffrey Rediger and I will be teaching a Zoom weekend workshop DATING FROM SELF about an Internal Family Systems approach to dating, in case you want to prepare yourself to try this yourself.
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I was looking forward to my date with the guy I’ll call Calvin. He was a very articulate, scholarly, intelligent university professor, as well as a Civil Rights activist and former Olympian. He was also tall, dark, and handsome (more than half of my dates were with BIPOC men, because a part of me was just over the white male fragility of cis, white, hetero guys.) Before our first date, we chatted about our passions around social justice, African American women’s literature, academic freedom, and my former mentors Skip Gates and Toni Morrison.
It was January 2022, Covid still on the loose, vaccines not yet available. He wanted to meet in his Pacific Heights neighborhood and assured me days before our date that he would have just been to a small party the night before that required everyone to get Covid tested- and he was negative. This was when it was still hard to get Covid tests, so that made my safety conscious parts feel more comfortable. He’d told me we were going out for an outdoor breakfast, but when I got to the address he gave me, it was a private house that turned out to be his.
When I asked how the party went, he seemed confused. “What party?”
“The one you were going to that required Covid-testing.”
“Oh, that one. It got cancelled. But don’t worry. I used the Covid test I’d found anyway. I’m negative.” A part of me felt suspicious that he’d made up the story about the party to try to override my Covid hesitations and then had forgotten his lie. Another part of me attacked me for being paranoid and distrusting.
My safety-conscious part hadn’t intended to go inside any buildings, especially the home of a man I just met. But my compliant part took over when the part of me that had decided not to risk indoor exposures or put myself at risk of sexual assault froze. I realized that this part has no trouble being assertive when it has time to think about consequences, but when presented with a bait and switch, it was too surprised to hold the boundary without much warning.
I found myself inside a palatial historic San Francisco Victorian home with beautiful crown moldings and stained glass windows. He’d obviously put effort into trying to impress me. He’d opened expensive champagne and had it chilling on ice, along with exquisite looking pastries and fresh berries, with classical music playing in the background. I refused the bubbly (it was 10am) but enjoyed the berries.
It didn’t take him long to come towards me for some physical contact, but I reminded him of what I’d said ahead of time to manage his expectations, that I would not be kissing him or getting physical with him on a first date, no matter how much I liked him. He started massaging my shoulders but a more assertive part of me asked him again to stop, suggesting that we move forward as planned, to go out for breakfast.
He took me to the most beautiful bakery I’ve ever seen and asked me to order anything I liked, not just for breakfast, but for my daughter, for later, anything, no limit.
I’ve never dated a wealthy man before, so this was surprising and delighting to parts of me that are exhausted by the financial stress of being a boot-strapping entrepreneur responsible for other people’s salaries and being the financial provider for my family. I had a part that felt guilty for even considering taking him up on his offer. I wound up choosing a middle path between the modest breakfast croissant I was thinking of ordering and the shopping bag of treats my pastry-loving part was drooling over. I ordered an egg dish for myself, a lavender shortbread for my daughter, and one tiny French pastry for dessert for my sweet tooth part.
He pushed me to order more and when I didn’t do so, he told the baker to package up a shopping bag for me and spent over $100 filling it, handing it over to me.
“You have to try these things,” he said, forking over his favorites. I accepted the bag but a skeptical part wondered whether there were strings attached.
I’d hoped we would stay and eat outside the bakery on the sidewalk tables, but he told me he had another idea for where we’d eat. Then he walked me back to his house. Once again, I felt baited and switched and the part of me with clear boundaries froze in the surprise again. A fawning part walked in the door, where he poured champagne for us both, even though I’d said I didn’t want any. I felt peer pressured into drinking some of it even though I didn’t want it.
Then he came at me with an energy that was altogether unfamiliar to me. It’s hard, even now, for my writer parts to describe what I was feeling. But it’s almost like he was hurling this “Come to Big Daddy, my baby girl, and I’ll take care of everything for you” energy.
No man ever has showed up around me that way. Usually, I get the “Come be my mama” vibe from men.
The weird thing is that it kinda worked, even though I was very aware of what was happening as it happened. A young part of me popped to the surface and took the bait, even though a strong protector who was onto his strategy was standing right next to the little girl exile that was all over the Big Daddy thing.
That little one felt such relief, like “Oh wow, maybe we can finally rest and let someone take care of us for a change.”
He spotted that part and went for it. Looking deeply into my eyes, he said, “You’ve worked so hard being the big strong girl. I’ve got you now. Baby girl can relax” It was eerie how accurately he seemed to be able to read my mind.
A more mature part of me felt disgusted by his infantilizing tone.
The little girl part melted but the part responsible for discernment was sounding the alarm, screaming “GRANDIOSE NARCISSIST. DO NOT DRINK THE KOOL-AID!”
The strange thing is that this little exile was so powerful, so seduced, so relieved, so hooked that she took over for a few minutes, not longer than ten, but enough for him to see that his strategy was working. He took advantage of that moment of vulnerability to get very handsy. He went back to massaging my shoulders but kept slipping his hands down the front of my shirt, even when my boundaries part asked him to stop.
Then came a war between the little girl who was getting seduced and liked the love bombing, the part that didn’t want to get Covid or bring it home to the two vulnerable people in my Covid bubble, the part who knows it’s not good for my attachment system to get physically involved with someone I don’t know because then I attach prematurely, and the part of me that was afraid that if I didn’t give this guy something that he wanted, he might reject me.
He went in for a kiss, and for a moment, I let it happen. My parts that crave physical touch and had been starving during the pandemic loved the massage and he was a good kisser. My sexual parts, which had been so neglected since my divorce many years earlier, felt turned on.
But my system unfroze quickly enough to stop things there. When I did, I had tears in my eyes, and he went full on with the “Come hither little girl” energy. But my discernment part was gaining strength in my system and I could feel a little Self energy come online to be with the whole party of parts at once, as if a loving adult had just entered the room. In Self, I was able to ask more questions about him and take up more space in the kitchen where we were standing.
I was curious about the mother of his daughter. Were they close? He said they hadn’t married. She’d gotten pregnant and he’d paid for his daughter’s expenses, but he and the mother of his child had never been close.
I asked him about his 26 year old daughter. What was her story? What was their relationship like as father and daughter? He said they got along well when she was young and he was free to see her whenever he wanted to, although her mother had custody. But his daughter had turned on him when she was a teenager and didn’t want to spend time with him anymore
And now that she was an adult? Had they been able to repair?
Not really, he said, blaming her for being too immature. ‘She’s selfish and caught up in her own life.” I thought that sounded about normal developmentally for a 26 year old and noted the projection of his own qualities onto her.
A part of me registered this as a classic narcissistic defense- blame-shifting. Who was being selfish and immature here? My discernment part noted the big red flag. As the mother of a child, I can’t imagine not fighting for connection with my adult daughter, no matter what. His nonchalant brush off over the estrangement with his own daughter was a total turn off, even to my little girl part and my sexy parts.
I reminded him that our date had an end time because I had a therapy session at noon. I had planned to call my IFS therapist from the park nearby. He started putting on the pressure for me not to leave, ramping us his love bombing and getting handsy enough that a part of me started alarming more and more, remembering all the times people tell you never to get yourself alone with someone you’ve met online, as a sexual assault protection.
I stiffened my body, pushed his hands away, took my purse and my pastries, and moved for the door. He pushed back but ultimately stepped aside, He said he wanted to see me again and asked when we could have a second date. Was tomorrow too soon? I responded with a non-committal answer and promised I’d text him later.
When I called my therapist and felt her strong Self energy, my little girl part instantly started bawling. We mapped out all the parts that had shown up on that date, and I felt much more stabilized in Self after we were done.
By the time I drove back home, there were about ten gushing texts waiting for me from Calvin. He wanted to schedule another date and offered to come my way, since we lived about 45 minutes apart. After working things through in therapy, a hopeful part that knew it could trust me, in Self, if I could make sure to represent all my parts and not let the little girl part take over, accepted the invitation to a second date, even though I was not entirely certain I wanted that second date.
But as the date got closer, the tone of his texts changed. I had suggested we go for a hike in a heavily trafficked part of Marin county. He started mocking me and asking if I was like those Marin athletes that all have to have their REI gear and mountain bikes, as if that was a bad thing. When I offered to pack us a picnic, he made fun of picnics and people who like them, insisting we go to the most formal, gourmet restaurant in Marin, without doing any exercise, which seemed weird from a former Olympian, which made me look him up to see if he’d been lying about that. I couldn’t find any record of his Olympic history, so I started wondering about all the other impressive things he’d told me. Most of the others checked out from a quick Google search.
It quickly became clear to me that he was only interested in doing something he planned, the way he liked it, on his terms, with him in control. Even that little bit of assertiveness I’d brought to planning the date in my neighborhood apparently turned him mocking and mean. In Self, me and my parts canceled the date with no hesitation.
That’s when the gloves came off and he started attacking me with cruel texts, telling me I was fat and ugly, boring and unsexy, and I should be lucky someone like him was interested in someone like me. He didn’t realize he was just validating my decision with great clarity. I was able to comfort my parts and fend off his insults with Self energy holding the parts that felt hurt, confused, and shocked. I was able to be there for my little girl part, to hold her with my own Big Daddy arms.
After telling me I’d come running back to him after I dated the “other little boys on Match.com,” after insisting I’d be begging for him to give me another chance six months from now, after I realized what losers all the other guys out there would be and recognized a gold nugget when I’d met one, I told him I wanted no further contact with him.
He kept crossing that boundary, and so I blocked his phone number and was glad I’d never told him where I lived, even though I’d been warned that it’s not hard to find someone’s address if you pay $25 for a background check on someone.
I’ve never seen him again. But that one date informed many more therapy sessions and many more dates. It even inspired a whole online class, Becoming Unf*ckwithable: Finding Your Sacred No, which you can register for here, if you like. It also informed Heal Your Wounded Boundaries, a program about IFS-informed boundaries, which includes an unpublished manuscript I wrote The Boundaries Handbook.
And now it will be informing DATING FROM SELF! So although that one date was stressful and uncomfortable, I was able to harvest all kinds of useful growth, therapy, and inspiration for helping others out of it. It even informed my next book Relationsick, which I co-wrote with the partner I did wind up with, Jeff Rediger.
If you, someone you know, or a therapy client is considering getting back into the dating scene, please join us or refer your clients to join us for what we hope will be a light-hearted, optimistic, growth-oriented, IFS-informed way of approaching dating.
Save $100 if you register now for DATING FROM SELF.
Jeff and I hope to see some of you there, where we’ll share more personal stories and hold space for your own dating stories and parts processing.
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