Dating When You’re Used to Earning Love
Dating is simultaneously a completely unique and wholly universal experience. Everyone who ever finds partnership goes through a stage of getting to know their partner, adapting to each other’s presence, and learning more about themselves in the process. At the same time, there are parts of dating that are so individual, so subjective, that no two people will ever share the exact same experience. That’s in part because each of us moves through the world with a different perspective – shaped long before our first date, crush, or heartbreak.
Some of us got lucky. A select few were raised in a home where “I’m proud of you” came easily, “I love you” was spoken freely, and there was never much question about your worth. Growing up and entering the dating world, there was no fear of whether or not you deserve love – love had been present since the day you were born.
For others, love may have been present, but it was conditional.
Maybe the “I love you’s” were few and far between, or maybe they only came in the wake of an achievement. You learned early that in order to receive the affection all children need to feel safe, you had to work for it. Maybe that meant striving, achieving, or being impressive. Or maybe it depended on things entirely outside your control – your parent’s mood after a long day, the emotionality of the house, or whether alcohol was involved.
When you’re raised in an environment where love feels dangerous, confusing, or contradictory, dating doesn’t start from a confident place. It starts in a place where you doubt attraction, crave (and then reject) unconditional love, and agonize over the internal conflict that you can’t quite make sense of.
How this Shows Up in Dating
If you read the last few paragraphs and felt seen, I bet that to you, dating often feels less like you’re exploring your likes and dislikes, and more like you’re interviewing for a job.
You might walk into dates thinking “I hope they like me!” instead of “I hope I like them!” You notice shifts in energy quickly, and then immediately change your behavior, posture, or language in order to get the vibes back on track. Any adjustment the other person makes feels like a personal responsibility to track and decode. Your nervous system is on high alert, trying as hard as it can to make sure you walk away from this date feeling wanted and lovable.
When we’re raised in environments where love is earned, attraction becomes complicated. Despite your best efforts, you may feel most drawn to people who are emotionally unavailable or hard to read. There’s a sense of excitement and accomplishment in working to secure closeness, a feeling that if you just say or do the right thing, you’ll finally earn the love you’ve been looking for.
Additionally, you may pride yourself on being a low maintenance partner, endlessly understanding and flexible, even when parts of you feel unseen. You stay curious longer than your body wants to, stomach aches and anxiety following you from date to date. You give the benefit of the doubt more times than you can count. And when things end, there’s an inexplicable feeling of relief alongside the pain that stems from the feeling that you somehow failed the test.
Familiarity ≠ Safety
When you’re used to having to work your butt off to be seen, a communicative and respectful romance feels anything but comfortable. Rather than reading your partner’s quietness as calmness, you might feel anxious, unable to feel safe unless you know exactly what they’re feeling. The emotional environments that may make a more securely attached person feel secure get read as disinterest, or even dissatisfaction. If chaos once meant connection, steadiness can feel unfamiliar enough to doubt, even when nothing is actually wrong.
In order to protect you in your youth, your body learned to find safety wherever it could. If your caregiver would yell at you one minute, and then apologize and hug you the next, your body would eventually learn that yelling led to eventual love and affection. Unpredictability, even if stressful, starts to mean engagement and attention. Now, when a partner shows up in a reliable way, your body may not know how to respond. You might find yourself scanning for signs of anger or withdrawal, or even unconsciously picking fights to recreate the familiar cycle of “earning” attention.
All of this can make healthy dating feel boring, confusing, or disappointing, and it can trigger self-doubt. You might feel like you’re not attractive enough, or interesting enough, to evoke the “passion” (dysregulation) that you’re used to. In reality, what you’re feeling is unfamiliarity, and a body that can’t trust the calm because it’s not used to it. Safety and consistency are not boring, they are healthy signs of connection and trust. It might just take a little while for your body to understand them as such.
It’s important that you start to recognize this dynamic. To be aware of your body’s signals is freeing, and allows you to be in the driver’s seat when triggers arise. Once you understand that calm = confusing (at first), you can begin to reframe the early stages of dating as a learning process, rather than an immediate signal of what the relationship will look like. Eventually, you’ll be so familiar with your body’s signals, that you can begin to retrain it, regarding straightforwardness and calm as green flags, rather than something to run from.
How to Let Someone Love You
What now? You’re familiar with your obstacles, and now you want to move forward in a way that invites healthy love, rather than shying away from it. Here are some affirmations, or sentences to repeat to yourself over and over, to invite new internal narratives as you date. Try to think of these not as punishing statements, but as new facts that you’re trying to commit to memory to help your nervous system learn something new:
“It’s not my job to be chosen.” Try as you might, you can’t force someone to be attracted to you by saying the right thing or being easy to love. Attraction either grows, or it doesn’t.
“Dating is for me, not for them.” Dating isn’t an audition to secure love. It is more important to find out if you like them, than it is to find out if they like you.
“Calm doesn’t mean disinterest.” Consistency and clarity may feel unfamiliar, but they are often signs of emotional availability, not a lack of passion or chemistry.
“Someone else’s mood is not my responsibility.” Repeat this one a few times. You don’t need to manage, predict, or fix another person’s emotional state in order to be worthy of love.
“I don’t have to abandon myself to deserve love.” You are allowed to have needs, preferences, and boundaries without risking the relationship. If your partner thinks otherwise, then they probably weren’t a good partner to begin with.
You don’t need to master these reframes all at once. Each time you notice the urge to earn love and choose curiosity instead of self-blame, you’re already doing the work.
In Conclusion…
To start dating differently, learn to accept love freely. Begin to see your worth as being unconditional, even if it takes years to master. The “earning love” strategies you developed in your childhood were intelligent responses to the environment you grew up in. They kept you connected when love felt uncertain. But dating as an adult offers a new opportunity: to let relationships serve you as you are, to let partners meet you where you’re at, and to make your life better by having them in it.
As you practice noticing when your body begins to go on high-alert, you create space for more self-care. Over time, love will be something you extend to yourself in your journey to feel it for others.