Coffee Chats w/ Dr. D

Hello, Cadre. How you guys doing? It's coffee time. Y'all ready? Today? I have a full cup. I don't know if y'all heard that smack. Was that coffee was. It was good. It was hidden. But I actually went to a new coffee shop that I found in my local area. I just wanted to google, like, local coffee shops, because I'm getting tired of Starbucks. I don't know if you guys are, but I found a really cute coffee shop. I can't remember the name, but I do know it has a new owner. It's been around for a few years, and I had never heard about it.

It's owned by a black woman in Belleville, Illinois. And the vibes there. I went there on a Sunday, and the vibes were just really cool. Everyone there was just kind of in their own world. Hello, Walt. And people were just. They just looked really happy. The owner was there. She welcomed me. And then I also noticed one thing that was cool and different is that they had live music. So there was a black woman singing on the mic, and she was really close to me, so I got to see her personality as she was singing and commenting between her songs.

But it was a really great vibe. So if you get a chance to go to any local coffee shops, I definitely encourage you to do that to shop local. But today, I am going to talk to you about settling in relationships, and it's interesting. I'm gonna tie this into coffee. So, y'all know I love coffee, and I used to be so committed to Starbucks. That's all I ever wanted. I didn't want to go to a local coffee shop. And one day, that all changed. And then I decided, you know what? I'm shopping local from here on out.

But I remember there were times when I was traveling, even in the past couple of months, where I couldn't find a cute, local coffee shop. So I settled for Starbucks, and I was not satisfied. Hello. Everybody's coming in. So, me being a coffee lover, it's important to have good coffee but also good service. And I remember settling for Starbucks, where I felt guilty afterwards. Not gonna lie. So let's talk about settling in relationships. And this came out for me. I recently just had this random thought about settling in relationships, and what came to mind is, why do we settle for things that are temporary?

Because we want the real thing that's permanent. So, if you think about, have you ever settled in a relationship and you were with that person even for a long amount of time? So a number of years, and you knew that you weren't going to stay in a relationship with that person long term. You knew you weren't gonna marry that person. You knew you didn't really want them around your family, but you settled because you wanted something that felt like it was permanent. And maybe the permanency in your mind is marriage, or the permanency is being able to live with someone, to have a partner for life.

And so you settle with this person that you chose just because that's what was available or for whatever reason. Hello there. So I want to look at just a few reasons why we settle in relationships, and I do need to look at my notes so I can stay on point. But the first thing that we, you know, the reason why we settle in relationships is we move too fast. If you struggle with anxious attachment style, and I know I always bring that one up because I think that's the one that, that really digs into people sometimes.

But if you suffer with anxious attachment style, you probably move really fast in relationships. You probably connect with people, you feel their vibe, you feel comfortable with them, and you just don't want to let that relationship go because you're afraid of abandonment. So you end up settling for someone that you chose impulsively because you wanted to be in this relationship. You wanted to have connection. Okay. The second reason why we settle in relationships is sometimes we just feel unworthy.

We feel like we don't deserve anything better. We feel like, you know, maybe our past mistakes that, you know, those get in the way where no one's going to want us. And so we attach to the first person that says hello or the first person that gives us any attention, that feels good, even though we know it might be temporary, we will settle for that and hold on to that, hoping that it becomes permanent. And the third reason why we settle in relationships is we just don't want to be alone. Now, I've talked before about the epidemic of loneliness, but loneliness leads to a lot of other things.

It leads to us making really poor decisions. It leads to depression. It can lead to anxiety as well in relationships. But we will decide to settle in a relationship just for the simple fact that we don't want to be by ourselves. Maybe we saw our mother or our fathers living a life alone, and we didn't like how they were, and we vowed never to be like that person. So we settle with whoever chooses us. Whoever says, yeah, I'll be with you. Right? And maybe they're not even choosing us. They're just settling, too.

We don't know. But those are three main reasons I think that we might settle in relationships. Now, let's talk about how it feels to settle. I'm an emotion focused therapist, so I want you guys to tap into your heart right now. So get out of your head and get into your heart and think about what does that feel like to settle? To tell yourself, this is all I can have. This is the best I'm going to get. Now, a few emotions that come up for me that I think about is we might feel empty because we know we're not getting what we want to.

We might feel unfulfilled is another strong emotion. There's this empty space, right? So emptiness and feeling unfulfilled are really connected. And at times, we might be ashamed. We might be ashamed because we knew we weren't supposed to be with that person. We knew that we settled. We might be ashamed because we know other people are maybe judging us for the choices that we've made. They might be judging us for all the mistakes we've made in previous relationships. So there's shame attached with settling, and there might be some guilt.

You might feel guilty because you know you're doing the wrong thing. You know that you shouldn't be with this person. You know that you're worth more, but you just won't do the right thing for yourself. And I'll get into that in a minute. And then there's also this feeling of being embarrassed. I don't want anyone to know that I settled. And so when that shows up, you might be in a relationship that you're not even talking about. There are a lot of people, especially coworkers, right? Think about coworkers that you meet, and you never knew that they had a partner.

You never knew that they were married because they might be embarrassed with the choice that they made in that person. Hi, Jungkook Junkie said, in many years, you've noticed that your friends will settle for whoever's available because their friends are married and they want to fit in with the couples group. Absolutely. I've been there. I remember making choices in choosing whoever was available because they were connected to my friends. And all my friends had boyfriends. And I'm like, well, I don't want to be left out.

I want to have somebody date. I want to go on group dates. And I settled for this person that was just there, that was part of our larger friend group, and I was not happy. I felt empty. I'm like, this is not enough for me. But I settled because I didn't want to be alone. I didn't want to be different from my friends. And so let's talk about how do we avoid settling? We don't always think about that. We think about it after the fact. So if you are in a position where you're thinking about getting into relationship and maybe you're trying to decide, is this person the right one for me?

And you're getting these vibes or these feelings of, I'm not really sure if I should do this. I want you to tap into this section right here. So how we avoid settling. The first thing is you have to start out with knowing what you want. What do you want in a relationship? And, hi, Luke. It's not just about knowing what you want in a relationship. Like, what do you want in that person? I want you to also consider, what do you want about yourself, what do you want to experience in the relationship?

How do you want to feel in the relationship, how do you want to show up in this relationship? And if the person you are deciding to connect with is not allowing you space to do those things or to have those things, you might be settling. Okay. The second thing of how you can avoid settling is know your worth. So remember feeling unworthy of having what's best for you, what you know you want, you know, if you know your worth, you know who you are, you know that you deserve better. And maybe it's a matter of people have to tell you that, and you have to believe it for yourself.

So a way that you can decide, you know, what is my worth? I. Right. We. It's hard to quantify that sometimes. But if you take some time, I want you to sit in silence with yourself. No tv, no phone, no music, and just really ponder the great things about you. What's great about who you are, who are you created to be? And when you tap into who you are, you go, you're going to make better decisions about who you want to connect with. Okay. The last thing you can do to avoid settling is stop getting in your way.

We sometimes are our biggest obstacles. We get in our own way of getting what we want and what we deserve. And if you think about it, the person you are choosing to be in a relationship with is not forcing you to settle. You're doing that to yourself. If that resonates with you, please drop a coffee mug in the comments or hit the heart button for me, because that right there, I've been there. I know that I made decisions in my past to settle for the person that I chose. That person didn't make me stay with them.

I could have exited that relationship at any point. And I've done this in multiple relationships. Remember, I have a history of toxic relationships. And thank God I've learned how to navigate that and find real love. But no one is going to make you settle. You do that to yourself. So consider that. What are you doing to stay in a relationship that you know you shouldn't be in, or to stay in a relationship that you know is not going to be good for you and that's not what you really want and how can you get out of that?

Maybe we can talk about that next time. So, yeah, I hope you guys, there's so many comments here, I can't even go back. I will read through them later. But I do want to thank you all for tuning in. Thank you for coming to my coffee chat. Please get your coffee today. Stay alive. And. And really, I want you to think about who you can connect with today. Today. My word personally is connection. Okay? So thank you for connecting with me. Bye.