Relationships

After our initial meeting—a quick lunch and a walk with the dogs—I wasn’t sure how I felt about this guy. There was something a little off-putting and hard to read. My body was sending me clear signals: nervousness, a little nausea. Those signals immediately began influencing my brain, spinning into self-consciousness, questioning if something was wrong with me, and gaslighting myself. I found myself the audience to a familiar, exhausting internal ping-pong match: “You’re not

A few weeks ago, I found myself sitting across from a man I met on Hinge. On paper, everything aligned. And for what it’s worth, I look pretty good on paper, too: smart, witty, thriving in my career, and passionate about mountain biking. My friends frequently describe me as a strong, empowered woman. Yet, as the date progressed, I noticed a familiar, insidious ghost crashing the party: the fawn response. Without even realizing it, my lifelong conditioning kicked in. I abandon

When someone we love hurts us, it is disorienting. It feels impossible to reconcile: If they love me, how could they do this? In psychology, we call this cognitive dissonance—the mental discomfort of holding two conflicting beliefs at once. The human organism has many strategies for dealing with this tension. Often, the simplest strategy for survival is to choose a side. My Story Growing up, my mother and I had a very fraught relationship. From the time I had just learned to