When Attraction Pulls You Away From Yourself

The subtle moment I realized I was leaving myself in order to be chosen.

Photo by Erik Starink on Unsplash

I recently matched with a man on Ok Cupid whose profile caught my attention.

I liked that he was a therapist and a Special Olympics coach, which I imagined translated to someone thoughtful and compassionate.

I also liked that he had blurred his daughter’s face in his photos.

He seemed capable of caring for someone outside of himself.

I read his profile carefully before sending a message.

Instead of commenting on his good looks or asking about his weekend, I asked what led him to become a therapist and what brought him to the North Bay.

I also shared I was in a Somatic Experiencing program, and a fellow psychology nerd.

It was a short enough, but thoughtful introduction.

A day later, a response landed in my Ok Cupid account: His message answered none of my questions, though he did say we could nerd out about those subjects later.

Meanwhile, he complimented my profile for keeping it classy.

Despite the glaring red flag of not answering even one of my questions, or commenting on what I’d shared… I decided to engage in his banter anyway, which felt light, funny, and engaging enough.

Because I was attracted to him.. And attraction has an amazing ability to fill in the blanks.

My imagination had made up some things about him.

Like he was deep because he’s a therapist. He was compassionate because he was a special olympics coach.

I noticed immediately that his style of conversation pulled me out of myself.

I could feel myself wanting my responses to be as funny and witty as his.

I could feel myself leaving my natural communication style to respond to his.

I can appreciate witty banter, and I get that not every conversation has to go 20 layers deep before you meet them in person.

I explained away that staying at the surface of things might be healthier than moving into vulnerability, which happens in dating apps and creates a false sense of intimacy.

He made me laugh, and I liked that.

I’ve been paying close attention to how I feel when I’m chatting with a new person.

And this was taking me minutes to respond to a single text.

I had to spend time thinking about what to say, and felt like I couldn’t relax.

I assumed things like he’d be better in person, that texting wasn’t his thing, that maybe I was expecting too much.

He was Mexican, and I shared I was learning Spanish.

He did not respond.

What surprised me isn’t that he wasn’t curious.

It’s that I stopped noticing I wasn’t being met.

This wasn’t the first time I’d mistaken attraction for connection.

The intoxication of finding someone attractive, projecting qualities onto them, believing in potential instead of reality.

I spent years in two relationships trying to understand why intimacy cost so much.

Where I’d feel a similar pull outward, reach towards the person, orient my entire body, life, and care around them.

And keep myself shrunken, small, then despair and puff-up. There was no middle ground.

I believed the intensity meant I was seen, heard, loved.

That I mattered and existed.

For years I thought healing was finding someone who could love me fully.

I thought the issue was attachment.

I studied it thoroughly, and find ways to label them and myself that helped explain some things.

I studied nervous system regulation, which is absolutely part of the equation in building the capacity to be with difficult emotions.

I started learning to place boundaries, which is also useful as a way to develop deeper self-trust.

I studied differentiation, which also helped explain some things.

But what finally changed how I think is coming across psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin, and her idea of mutual recognition.

She describes the developmental edge of love as the capacity for two people to experience one another as separate minds, each with their own feelings, desires, histories, and realities.

When that breaks down, relationships often become organized around complementary roles—one pursues while the other withdraws, one controls while the other submits, one becomes the doer and the other the done-to.

I realized I’d spent decades asking one question: “Can this person finally see me?”

Can this person finally be the one that confirms I exist, I matter, that I am worthy of love?

And that I hadn’t spent much time asking another: “Am I remaining connected to myself while I get to know them?” Am I also able to recognize MYSELF?

Looking back, I don’t only see the ways I longed to be recognized.

I also see the relationships where I wasn’t yet capable of recognizing someone else’s full humanity because I was so consumed by my own longing.

I couldn’t handle seeing them as separate people.

It was impossible to have difficult conversations without receding.

To hear hard things without crumbling into shame.

I was dying to be recognized.

But I couldn’t offer the same thing.

Because this begins with being able to see, hear, and recognize YOURSELF.

If you cannot do that, you cannot do it for another person.

And this pattern remains in my nervous system.

The therapist, in the middle of a text convo, asked: “Should I come to Sonoma tonight?”

I immediately perked up, imagining some excitement, a fun night, company to assuage some of the deep loneliness I’d been feeling.

I answered with the truth of where I was, feeling tired after work, but that maybe I could rally.

He said no worries, and I responded: “Yes, I can come meet you tonight.”

Even though I was actually exhausted, and reaching for something to change this state.

And that is the exact moment when he ghosted me.

He left me hanging midway, having sent an invitation he couldn’t follow through on.

And I realized I’d left myself the moment I said yes instead of ignoring the clues.

I’d ignored the Tesla photos he’d sent me, the special olympics photo, the way he was relating to me as someone wanting to be seen… but not able to see.

Where I’d equally stopped seeing myself, to that maybe I could be seen by him.

A year ago, I would have made this about me. Asked for all the ways I might have fucked it up, said the wrong thing, done the wrong thing.

I would have been sad, dejected, and felt the sting of rejection.

But now I believe the conversation gave me something much more valuable.

It showed me the moment I began leaving myself in order to stay connected.

Dating to find a life partner isn’t simple, especially when you’re trying not to repeat patterns that are still imprinted in your nervous system.

But I’m learning that it’s important to discern early if someone is capable of recognizing my inner world.

If someone can’t ask questions about you, be curious, and track you, that’s something real to pay attention to.

A simple dating app exchange can tell you a lot, even in a few paragraphs.

It means placing boundaries early on, saying no to connections that don’t feel mutual.

It means holding out for real connection even when dizzy with desire and loneliness.

I used to think love was about attraction and chemistry, that you could nourish yourself on the feel-good hormones of falling in love.

I know better now.

Without mutual recognition, a relationship collapses in on itself — what Benjamin calls the drive to terrorize or be terrorized, dominate or be dominated. It sounds extreme until you watch it play out, quietly, in marriage after marriage.

The real path to love is remaining fully myself while I discover whether two separate people are capable of meeting.

It’s a developmental edge, and it takes serious work.

But it’s the only way through.