Caroline* came to see me with one of the more common problems that plague people in our modern era – difficulties with romance and dating. She was a young woman in her early 30s who said she had always found it difficult to find a man she felt connected to. She’d had one long-term relationship in her early 20s but had otherwise been single despite trying online dating and many dating events. Many of her friends were partnered up, and her best friend had just become engaged, resulting in a cascade of anxiety for Caroline, a fear that she was defective in some way and would miss out on milestones in life.
“I can’t stop thinking about the things that might be wrong with me. I’m even thinking of taking Ozempic and getting a boob job,” she said, anxiously prodding at a stomach that appeared to be a perfectly normal size to me.
She felt so overwhelmed by her lack of success in dating that she was slowly withdrawing from the activities that usually brought her joy, in favour of spending most of her time swiping on dating apps. However, she said that in the past this usually alternated with periods of intense apathy about dating because of the poor behaviour she had encountered, and difficulties finding partners who matched her vocational success and emotional intelligence.
This was a story many women have repeated to me – usually accompanied by similar tales of feeling frustrated, distressed, isolated and defective, especially as the main socially sanctioned celebrations for women still involve marriage and procreation.
My work with Caroline was multi-staged.
She did not present with a diagnosable clinical disorder, although I was concerned that if she remained preoccupied with dating and her body size and withdrew from people and her hobbies, she may start to experience a depressive disorder or body dysmorphic disorder. As Caroline was highly intelligent and insightful and told me that she valued frankness, I shared this concern with her directly, and we were able to work on a range of cognitive strategies to reduce her concerns about her body (for example, reducing body-checking behaviours, looking at the diversity of body types among her friends who were partnered) and planned some behavioural strategies to renew her engagement with the world (such as planning some travel and joining a pub football team).
Caroline said she was very concerned she was an “avoidant”, as TikTok had been blasting videos at her about this attachment style, and that this might doom her to dating failure. It seemed she had some self-protectiveness that had built after repeated poor dating experiences, but that she could draw close to people, connect with them and maintain relationships. We identified ways her self-protectiveness might be a barrier at times.
The largest component of our work involved reducing her sense of defectiveness and tackling her self-esteem. We explored the ideas she held about dating (“if I try hard enough I can make it work”, “if I’m not picked, there must be something wrong with me”, “I’m going to die alone”) and worked on acknowledging the distress and sadness she felt. It was important to simply make space to sit with this and hold it instead of rushing to fill the gap with trying to “fix” this or to promise success if she just tried a new way of approaching it.
As she sat with her sadness, Caroline noticed a yearning for connection and found this easier to understand than the anxiety she felt. The defectiveness she felt was a cover for loss, and a compensatory response.
We spoke about ways she could approach dating while having boundaries and that refusing to tolerate poor behaviour was OK – she should not put up with emotional immaturity or sexual inappropriateness to find a partner. We reflected on the societal changes in the world that have made relationship-finding more complex, and also noted the positive changes, such as Caroline’s ability to hold a job and have a mortgage independent of a partner.
Working on ideas about dying alone or being lonely were important. We utilised an approach derived from acceptance and commitment therapy to name Caroline’s key values. This was to help her build a life aligned with the value of community, with or without a partner, while accepting that every life will hold a measure of emotional distress, including loneliness.
While none of these approaches miraculously solved Caroline’s dating difficulties, she was able to approach this aspect of life with a greater measure of equanimity, equilibrium and a sense that her worth was bigger than simply her success in dating.
*All clients are fictional amalgams
• Dr Ahona Guha is a clinical and forensic psychologist, trauma expert and author from Melbourne. She is the author of Reclaim: Understanding Complex Trauma and Those Who Abuse, and Life Skills For a Broken World
