Getting To Know The Parts Of You That Show Up Around New People

Approaching New People As An Opportunity To Get To Know Your Own Parts

As I explained in my blog about IFS-informed Dating, 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 or just interested in noticing which parts of you show up around new people.

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.

Save $100 if you register now DATING FROM SELF before the early bird expires.

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 he’d just been to a small party the night before that required everyone to get Covid tested- and he was negative. 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.

I 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 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.

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 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 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 an 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.

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 and 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. A fawning part walked in the door, where he poured champagne for us both, even though I’d said I didn’t want any.

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” energy 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.” 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. 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 all the parts at once, as if a loving adult had just entered the room.

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 she’d turned on him when she was a teenager.

And now that she was an adult? Had they been able to repair?

Not really, he said, blaming her for being too immature. A part of me registered this as a classic narcissistic defense- blame-shifting. Who was being immature here? I chalked that up to a 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.

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 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.

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.

It quickly became clear to me that he was only interested in doing something he planned, the way he liked it, on his terms. Even that little bit of assertiveness apparently turned him mocking and mean. In Self, me and my parts canceled the date.

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.

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, I told him I wanted no further contact with him.

He kept crossing that boundary, and so I blocked him 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.

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 with 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.