The Biggest Turnoff

A few years ago, I went on a few dates with someone incredible.

I'd been single for a while. I felt confident going in — secure, excited, ready. When we were together, it was genuinely fun and I was present and really interested.

The dates themselves were easy. But between them, I was falling apart.

I wasn't sleeping. I was nervous, and projecting, spinning, rehearsing conversations I hadn't had yet. I was checking my phone too much. I would read into the tone, into how long it took her to respond.

I wanted so badly for her to see me as someone worth choosing that I handed her something she never asked for — ownership of how I felt about myself.

I've always been attracted to independent women. There's something about that kind of energy — exciting, self-contained, a little unpredictable — that pulls me in. But independent people don't need someone who's always angling for their attention. And when I felt unsure of where I stood, I became exactly that person.

Anxious. Overcorrecting. Monitoring, adjusting, performing — needy in ways I wouldn't have believed if someone had described them to me.

I called it caring, but I was afraid they didn't think I was worthy.

I thought the problem was who I was choosing.
It wasn't. It was who I became when I chose them.

To understand the mood, the energy, and to make sure I didn't inadvertently piss someone off.  I got good at it — attentive, perceptive, always tracking. I thought that was just how I was built.

What I was actually doing was training myself to look outside for cues about whether I was safe to be myself.

That habit doesn't stay in childhood. It follows you. Anywhere someone ran hot and cold — where I couldn't predict what I was going to get — that old training kicked in. Full throttle. Monitoring. Adjusting. Performing.

Researcher Sue Johnson has spent decades studying what happens to us inside relationships. Her finding is direct:

when we perceive a partner as emotionally unavailable or unpredictable, our nervous system treats it as a threat to survival. Not a disappointment. A threat. The body doesn't distinguish between physical danger and relational danger. It just reacts.

That's what I was living. Not passion. A threat response on a loop.

What Johnson also found is the other side of it. A relationship where you feel genuinely safe — seen, responded to, consistent — regulates your nervous system. It makes you more open, more present, more capable of giving and receiving. It makes you, functionally, a better person.

The people who calm you down aren't the boring choice.
They're the ones that let you actually show up.

I lead.
I'm generous, curious, present, connected.
I say the real thing instead of the managed thing.
I love well and I can actually receive it.

I'm calm and confident — not because everything is perfect, but because that's what I actually am when I'm not in survival mode.

Calm isn't the reward for finding the right person. It's my default.

Choosing people who don't make you anxious isn't giving something up. It's getting yourself back.

The excitement just feels different.

It isn't will they or won't they. It's can I actually be myself here. It's knowing that feedback can land without becoming a fight.

When you stop handing your nervous system to someone who doesn't know what to do with it, the version of you that's generous and present and confident — the one you actually like — has room to show up.

That's the one worth being in a relationship with.

You don't have to answer these to anyone but yourself.

I didn't become a joyful co-parent overnight — and if you're in the middle of this, you probably won't either.

I share my journey to connect with others working through the same confusing transformation.

It might be exactly what they need to hear.

Thank you,
Justin | The Joyful CoParent

PS: I aim to respond in 48hrs, I do read everything, but please be patient with me :)