Ghosts, Vampires, & Zombies, Oh My! | Romance by Rail - First Half of 2025 Travel Dating Update
I entered 2025 feeling confused and heartbroken about what had happened with Jean 1. If you haven’t read that post yet, go read that one first!
Here’s how you can get up-to-date on the Romance by Rail travel dating project:
Romance x Rail project page with intentions, route, inspiration, and recent blog posts
Part 1: France to Istanbul by train (dates in Switzerland, Hungary, and Bulgaria)
Part 2: Türkiye (dates in Istanbul, Cappadocia, and Antalya)
Part 3: Norway and France (dates in France)
Part 4: France and a shot at love (more France!)
Fall 2023: The Trip that Inspired the Creation of Romance x Rail (dates in Spain, Poland, Slovenia, and Croatia)
Wrap Up: One Year, Two Suitcases, Seventeen First Dates: The Highs, Lows, and WTFs of Travel Dating
My itinerary:
San Luis Obispo, California, USA - I stayed with my family in my hometown from January to April
San Luis Obispo —> New York City, USA - On May 1st I flew to NYC to visit some family members and friends
New York City —> Paris, France - I departed NYC on May 5th and flew overnight to Paris for a 1-night stopover
Paris —> Antalya, Türkiye - On Wednesday, May 7th I arrived in Antalya
Antalya —> Portugal (Porto, Aveiro, & Lisbon) —> Antalya - From June 2nd to 16th I traveled to Portugal to spend time with family (who flew over from California) for 1 week and friends for 1 week
How long was I in each place?
California - 5 total months from the end of November 2024 to April 2025
NYC - a long weekend
Paris - 1 night (cheaper flights)
Antalya - I have been here 6 weeks so far and plan to spend the full 90 days I’m allotted as a tourist, taking me into August
How did I choose this route?
I knew I wanted to put myself out there again and keep trying Romance by Rail. Everyone said I could do another round of dates and surely have better success this time.
I was deciding between two places where I had felt a strong community connection via the coworking communities: Budapest, Hungary, and Antalya, Türkiye.
In Budapest, I worked from Kaptar Coworking Space, and the other members were so friendly and welcoming! The space was modern, clean, and well-designed. I was productive during that time! There were regular member events like lunches, and I met other people from around the world. There was a recording studio in the basement run by another company, and I thought that could be interesting for projects like another podcast.
In Antalya, I’d worked from Coworking Antalya, and the space was in such a beautiful setting: overlooking the harbor of the old town of Antalya. Gorgeous Mediterranean sunsets were part of the everyday grind. The office was not quite as modern and well-equipped, but the community was top-tier. I went on an excursion into the mountains to find 3 stunning aqua blue swimming holes one weekend with a group of coworking members. You can see a short video of that adventure here:
I couldn’t decide between the two! It felt impossible. Budapest boasts 19th-century European charm, with its antique cafes, characterized by high ceilings and glass chandeliers. Check out my blog about exploring the beauty of Budapest here: The Beauty Wander in Budapest.
Antalya is a coastal paradise, with miles of beaches and a dramatic mountain backdrop. It would be a vacation retreat—more laid back, less hustle and bustle. I had a stronger friend connection to Antalya as I’d made friends on the mountain excursion, who I knew were kindred spirits.
I’d been texting a lot with Can 18, who lived in Antalya, since breaking up with Jean 1. You may or may not remember that he texted me several times after I told him I was seriously seeing someone else, maybe to just check in to make sure I was still not available. In April, as I was trying to choose between these two cities, I told him I was considering coming to Antalya. After several phone and FaceTime conversations, each lasting several hours, it felt like there was a strong mutual interest in dating again and seeing what happened! So, I decided on Antalya, which was a relief. I knew I’d rejoin the coworking, rekindle friendships, and have a great time no matter what.
I already had my flights to NYC and Paris, so, in April, after talking with Can 18, I bought the last flight leg to Antalya. Decision = made.
✈️ Travel hack - Check out French Bee airlines for cheap flights from LA, SF, and NYC to Paris. From Paris, you can book the next leg separately. Flights in Europe are usually pretty cheap on low-cost airlines.
Did I stick to my dating goals and intentions?
I need to revisit my intentions and goals and see if they need updating in Year 2 of the project.
They have been:
Go slowly
Stay curious
Check-in weekly
Bring up conflicts, discomforts, or confusion as soon as I can; have the uncomfortable conversation
Show appreciation and gratitude
Communicate needs and feelings
Discuss values, lifestyle, and goals and see if they’re shared and compatible
Have fun and play
Looking at item #4 I’m impressed that I put that there! A+ from me on that one. If you read my blog about my journey healing from Dismissive Avoidant Attachment, you’ll know that bringing up conflicts in the moment (instead of, you guessed it, dismissing them) is something I’ve had to work hard to achieve. I think I did great at that…which in the case you’ll soon read about, means I’m still single!
I have a new perspective on #7 and just how direct and clear I have to be with men, due to their selective hearing.
The dates!
As with Year 1, all of the men will be named “John,” but in their home country's language, for fun, and for their anonymity.
Spoiler alert! Things did not work out with Can 18, so you’ll see there are more dates added here.
“Can” is pronounced “John” in Turkish.
California - no dates
NYC - no dates
Paris - no dates
Antalya - 2 new dates and a reprise
Can 18 - from Part II
Can 23 - 1 date
Can 24 - 2 dates
Portugal - no dates
Antalya - no new dates but some possibilities
Yuhanna 25 - reached out to see if I was seeing anyone, from a nearby country
Can 26 - asked me out, but I wasn’t interested
Can 27 - date planned, but he canceled at the last minute
Story Time
California
Breakup recovery, twisting the knife in the wound, but some pleasant trail runs.
January sucked.
I had been planning to move in more of my things with Jean 1 in Paris, and I couldn’t keep myself from ruminating on what went wrong, even if I knew that wasn’t helpful.
Luckily, I had a big work contract keeping me busy—coaching 1:1 a whole team of managers, VPs, and executives at a nonprofit in California, every week. It was fulfilling, but it took up the majority of my mental and emotional energy as I adjusted to the pace. The rest of the time I spent trail running, which was nourishing.
Jean 1 sent a box of my stuff back. “I keep getting an error message when I put the shipment together on FedEx online. Can you do it, and I’ll pay you back for the cost?” I put it together sans error message. The cost was $130.
[Narrator’s voice]: “He did not pay her back for the cost.”
He also forgot to include many of my things, so there was a lot of back and forth about putting together another box, a box I have yet to receive.
February: more suckage.
He asked if I wanted to catch up by phone. I did because he had emotionally ghosted the breakup, and I didn’t feel any sense of resolution. I was naively hopeful that I might feel relieved to finally talk.
We got on the phone and went through some shallow pleasantries. Then the real purpose of his call became apparent: to tell me that he was seeing someone else and that he’d met her while he and I were still together.
Suddenly, a few things about the week we broke up started to make sense. He had avoided me because he was spending time with her. Ouch. Nights when he said, “Sorry, I just can’t talk,” meant that she was over at his place. Over at his place, where I’d been living with him the past 2+ months. At his place with my things there. My sweaters in the closet. My hair on the pillow. My toothbrush by the sink.
“Why would he tell you that unless to hurt you?” My mom asked me. I don’t know. It seemed so unnecessary! Did he want to provoke jealousy in me? That didn’t work. It didn’t make me want him back. The only thing I felt was extreme embarrassment that I’d done all this self-development work, spending countless hours and dollars on therapists and coaches, reading every book on healthy attachment…only to pick another partner with the emotional maturity of a child.
I felt embarrassed for choosing him, embarrassed for being excited about him, and mortified that I’d shared my excitement with others. I felt deeply broken. “Wow, I just can’t seem to shake that I’ll always pick the wrong person,” my inner voice shame spiral was telling me.
It took so long after this breakup to get more perspective.
What are ghosts, vampires, and zombies in dating or a relationship?
Ghosts in early dating are those who, after meeting for 1 or more dates IRL, suddenly disappear without a trace, offering no real explanation about why they’re no longer responding.
In relationships, where you’ve already gone exclusive and maybe exchanged “I love you’s,” met each other’s families, and achieved other milestones together, a ghost is someone who drops the relationship suddenly without connecting emotionally first about what’s not working.
Vampires suck all your time and energy but either can’t or won’t commit, are lying about their true intentions, or steal your energy in some other way without giving you what you need in return. They suck your life force, feeding on you.
Zombies have not done their inner healing work. They are living life but are not fully alive because they are not fully feeling their feelings. They don’t understand how their actions impact the feelings of others because they don’t know how to feel.They may intellectualize empathy but not truly feel empathy.
👻 Jean 1’s Ghost, Vampire, and Zombie Scores (1-5)
Ghost - 5, Vampire - 5, Zombie - 4
For one, he ghosted our first date—didn’t show, didn’t text. That’s a 5 right there. At the end of our relationship, he refused to talk to me on the phone, only sending avoidant emails with zero accountability.
He vampirically stole my life from me with no intention of committing to or hearing me when I said that having a baby was the most important thing to me. Not only did he steal my time, but he stole my love. When I fall in love, I go all in. When we broke up, I was heartbroken, and it took 3-4 months to recover. He took my time, love, attention, and the last remaining months of my 30s before my fertility odds would start to go down quite a bit.
He doesn’t get a full zombie score because he does read some self-help books and has been to a few therapy sessions. But he was not able to meet me in a feeling place when we broke up. I kept emailing him explaining why I was feeling hurt, and he never dropped into the place to hold space for the harm his actions caused. No accountability.
In the meantime, Can 18 and I were texted fairly often. I had sent him a postcard from Bergen the previous August, back when we were infatuated with each other and I hadn’t yet met the two Frenchmen I would go on to date. The postcard never arrived, and he asked me about it in January over text. “Yes, I really sent one! I’ll send one again.” I sent one from California; this time it arrived safely in his mailbox.
Can 18 then listened to the podcast I was in, which he saw me post on Instagram, and texted me to tell me that he thought I was joking when I told him about my travel dating project (the thing you’re reading right now).
Things picked up from there, and we started texting a lot more.
He was a little hot and cold but I rationalized it because of his demanding job.
One thing that happened in January and February was that I started watching the reality TV show Love is Blind, which my friend AC insisted I watch! “It’s so good for your dating project! You must see it!” I’m not a reality-TV girlie, so this was a first for me. AC said to skip the US versions and just watch the international locations. I watched the UK (the best one), Germany, Brazil, and half of Sweden.
On this show, single men and women are brought together on dates, but there’s a partition separating them so they can’t see what the other looks like. They date each other until they narrow their selection down to 1 or 2 that feel like a romantic match. They have to get engaged before they can see what they look like, and then the rest of the show is the engaged couple spending time together.
What I saw during the dating process was that they were so direct with each other about who they were and what they were looking for! I’ve been much more avoidant and aloof in early dating. The show inspired me to be direct. Don’t worry so much about the chemistry—find someone who has the same life goals and lifestyle. Of course, chemistry also matters, but make the life goals matter more, and then see if over several dates, chemistry builds.
I tried being more direct with Can 18 over text. It seemed to make him shut down. Even though we’d already talked about wanting the same things: marriage and a kid. But over the course of many hours of phone and FaceTime conversations, we each got enough answers we need to move forward with the “in-person” part in dating, much like the show. Sure, we’d met in real life once, but it was a short date. We needed to spend more time together.
I did try to date in California! I had Bumble and Hinge open, especially on trips to the Bay Area. Conversations were had, but I didn’t hit it off with anyone. I was open. Dating in my small hometown of San Luis Obispo is impossible.
My mom and aunt got someone’s phone number out in the wild for me, but when we googled him, he was 26 years old. That’s how it is in my hometown: all retirees and college students.
New York City
I did not have the apps on in NYC because I wanted to focus on things with Can 18. I had this feeling like it had hurt him when I started dating Jean 1 and Jean 6 in Paris after he and I connected and were talking and texting so closely. Looking back, I would have told him that I was going to date others before it happened, not after. At the time, I felt I didn’t owe him anything since he wasn’t locking me down. And that’s still true! But I wish I had just said, “Hey, I feel connected to you, but I’m dating other men too.” Simple and efficient, and avoids hurt. I hadn’t done that.
I spent time with family, including my Aunt Claudia, who is a brilliant psychoanalyst. Check out her interview on my podcast.
When I told gave her the summary about dating Can 18, Jean 6, and Jean 1 in August, and picking Jean 1, and then not having it work and then going to see about Can 18, she said, “Well, clearly it was not obvious about Can 18, otherwise you wouldn’t have moved on to date the other ones.”
Damn.
“Yeah, he has some avoidant tendencies. We were talking a texting a lot but it seemed hard to pin down when we would see each other next.” Again, I blamed the nature of his work.
My my Auntie has been an analyst for a long time. She knows people. She knows unconscious behavior. She reads clues. She has decades of data to draw from.
She’s the only person who looked at my bear tattoo and got it instantly. “Oh, that’s about a fierce animal having a soft side,” she said as I gaped at her. “What, isn’t that obvious?” she shrugged.
“I thought it was obvious,” I let her know, “but no one ever gets it. I always have to explain.”
Claudia gets it.
I met an old friend for coffee, someone I had had a crush on, but who has always been partnered. He admitted he had a crush on me, too, and there were some flirty moments in addition to the deep life catch-up. We hadn’t seen each other in person in over 10 years (I moved away from NYC in 2015). The heartbreak I had been recovering from felt so acute, and I had been feeling like such a failure that his attention and affirmation felt nourishing. It was a nice send-off for round two of my dating adventure.
I met with my close friend and former roommate, KC, for brunch, and we talked all things dating, relationships, couples therapy, marriage, and kids. We then went to try on engagement rings together, just for fun. “I’ve never known my ring size,” I told her. “Do you know yours?” She didn’t, so I said we needed to find out.
We had fun trying on rings at Brilliant Earth, who specialize in ethical and sustainable gems and jewelry.
My ring finger size is 6 3/4, if anyone wants to propose or buy me a nice gift. 💁🏻♀️
“Tell your boyfriend your ring size when you get home!”
I followed up with her on this, and she reported back that she told him. Men, when you find your lady, lock her down! Make haste!
Paris
I thought about reaching out to Jean 1 so I could get the last remaining box of my stuff, but ultimately, it was too short of a stopover, and I didn’t want the stress. I spent my time wandering my favorite neighborhoods, eating croissants. I took “me time” to reset the heartbreak the city had come to represent.
In New York, I had accidentally dialed Jean 6 on WhatsApp for a moment while scrolling through our texts, searching for a detail of a story I was sharing during my coffee meetup with my flirty friend. "Accidental dial!” I texted him. We hadn’t been in touch for about 7 months.
To my horror, he texted me to let me know he’d been reading my blog updates about him:
By the way, I read your blog and the way you wrote about our story… It was sensitive, precise, delicate, and moving. I really liked everything you wrote on there. I just wanted to say that. And also… I think of you sometimes, and I hope everything is going well on your side
I had secretly wondered if he was checking my blog. Now I knew. At least my recount of our love affair seemed to get his approval. I’ve never wanted anyone I dated to feel like I was portraying them in a negative light, even if things didn’t work out between us. And at the same time, what I try to do here is to reflect on my heart and and how dating makes me feel.
Of course, I still thought about him too. Our connection was rare and valuable, I let him know. It was. He was one of the only people I had dated who made me feel seen and known, intellectually. His mind ran a mile a minute, just like mine. We seemed to be eccentric in similar ways.
I thought about sharing with Jean 6 that I was in town for the night and if he wanted to catch up over a drink…but I needed Paris just for me, as a reset.
Antalya
I arrived in Turkey already knowing that something was off with Can 18, and I felt sad about it. Looking back, I wish I could have taken it in stride more, but there was some part of me deep down that was tired of men phoning it in. Just like I’d experienced a few times long-distance with Can 18 when we’d have a deep talk and then he’d go distant for a few days, he was choosing to hide rather than go all in. It stung.
I wanted a warm welcome, a plan, an aura of excitement and gratitude for traipsing halfway across the world, and what I got was tepid, bordering on cold. “When are you meeting Can 18?!” a friend excitedly texted me while I was waiting to board my flight to Antalya. She was excited for me because I was excited. She wanted to know what our date plans were. My heart sank. He hadn’t set anything up, and I knew he wasn’t going to.
Knowing what I know now, I’d go back and just leave things be, not overperform to make up for what he wasn’t doing. But I went extra warm instead.
“Hey, I’d love to know when I’m going to see you,” I texted, “So I can look forward to it.”
He texted back right away and said, “As soon as possible,” which is a funny sort of answer that doesn’t mean anything. Time and place needed! If you’ll remember, though, he wasn’t able to name a time and place for our first date either! I chalked it up to him being a doctor in a particularly stressful subfield: surgery. He fit the stereotype of the aloof surgeon with low social-emotional skills. I thought that I wouldn’t mind it as long as he showed interest in other ways. I thought, “I have to meet people where they are sometimes.”
We talked by phone on Thursday, and I asked him about his work schedule, which was intense. “Sounds like Saturday is good?” He said he’d love to see me sooner, Friday, if he didn’t end up performing an extra surgery that was up in the air. “I’ll text you in the morning and let you know.”
This is where [the narrator] comes back with another voice over: “He did not text her in the morning to let her know.”
That’s such a deal breaker for me—not doing what you said you’ll do and not acknowledging it.
[Narrator]: “He did not acknowledge it.”
“Acknowledging it” is repair work, and it would go something like this: “Hey, I’m so sorry I said I would text you and I didn’t! I’ll bet you felt let down and also spent the day wondering. That wasn’t fair. I get so focused at work that sometimes I forget to do things I said I’d do.” If this was going to be an ongoing relationship, one might add, “Next time I’ll…” and follow it up with changed behavior.
None of this transpired. The messages I received:
His word isn’t important to him, so I can’t trust him.
He doesn’t care about me.
On Saturday, he texted me and asked if I wanted to “hang out.” I didn’t want to hang out, I wanted a real date! If I could go back in time, I’d say that. Here’s why I think I didn’t:
I was tired from traveling. Mental fatigue.
I’d already built it up in my mind, or rather, the two of us had built it up over hours and hours of phone calls and FaceTimes. I had it set that I wanted to meet him and that I would. It was hard to do a 180.
I thought I could be patient and compassionate, but I should know by now that that never works.
So I met him for a beer at a casual bar. I spent time and care picking out my outfit and making my hair and makeup look cute. He was wearing a casual t-shirt and cargo shorts. “Ahh, he doesn’t care,” I again thought. I felt sad and hurt.
My heart still swelled to see him again after all of the suspenseful buildup of time and long-distance connecting. I found him to be handsome and especially liked his shy yet sly grin. His eyes were sparkly with a hint of mischief. He was several inches taller than I am, which is rare as I stand at 5’10” or 178 cm.
The conversation was pretty fun—we get along well and he’s witty and clever—and we went for a walk around a festival that was happening in the park the next block over. We ran into a group of his coworkers, and he introduced me to all of them.
He took me to dinner and told me all about different Turkish dishes, including this dessert called künefe.
Künefe is a traditional Middle Eastern dessert made with shredded filo dough, or with fine semolina dough, infused with a sugar-based syrup and typically including other ingredients such as cheese or clotted cream, pistachios, or hazelnuts. (Wikipedia).
It was too sweet for me but I enjoyed trying this new thing!
I stayed at his place, which I regretted. It was like the more he pulled away, the more clingy I became, against my best nature.
In the morning, he was distant. He made a really nice breakfast, which felt warm. But he couldn’t help push me away with literally every word that came out of his mouth.
“I have this research paper I’ve been procrastinating on for two years. I think I’ll work on it today.” Okay, wow, you’d rather dredge up a dead project than spend more time together. Cool cool.
The weirdest thing was him bringing up this “extra” car he owned. Like, he could have just not mentioned it. “My old car, the one I had before my new one,” he told me, “I haven’t done anything with it. It’s just sitting around. A friend of mine borrowed it for a bit.”
I had been thinking about the logistics of trying to buy a used car during my travels in Turkey and Europe and here he had one just sitting around. It would be amazing to be able to borrow it one weekend to go trail running in the mountains above Antalya, especially since he worked so much.
“I think I need to sell it now.” Oh.
It was in that moment that I realized something: he didn’t see me as his future partner.
It’s not that I take with me expectations that people will lend me their multi-thousand dollar posessions just because I want them to. But he so deliberately brought it up to me, I couldn’t help but think he wanted me to feel how he wasn’t thinking about me, didn’t care about me, and would get rid of any possible tie he could make with me, such as letting me borrow his second car.
In 2020, I let some German students borrow my car when they found themselves stuck in my hometown during the early pandemic. I was living in Boston, and my car was in California. They were so grateful! It being an older used car, I wasn’t so worried about the condition of it and knew it could change their experience dramatically.
In college, a good friend of mine, GL, had an extra, older car, and he let me borrow it whenever I needed. I’ll never forget how kind that was. It made such a difference for me.
So, it was in the realm of possibilities that he could lend me his “extra, forgotten” car. If he saw me as the love of his life, he’d want to do nice things for me, want to include me, want to consider me.
He didn’t want me.
That week, he ignored me over text except to share that he’d sold the car.
The weekend came and went, and I was still in full cling mode, feeling disillusioned. “Did I invent our connection? Did I imagine a year of texts, phone calls, and FaceTimes?” What about the text he’d sent me on my birthday? “Happy Birthday Alison! [cake emoji] You’re a beautiful human being and it’s great knowing you [hearts emoji]” or the one a few days later saying he’d wished we could have spent New Year’s Eve together?
We talked by phone, and he shared that his work was keeping him feeling overwhelmed. “I know about your work,” I shared. “Do you want to see when we’re both free?” We decided on Wednesday evening.
“Can I take you to a concert?” he asked.
A real date?! Maybe he’d had a change of heart about things and merely needed to warm up to things.
He picked me up (in the new car), and this time he was dressed up. He looked sharp!
“So, who are we seeing?” I asked him. To my shock and delight, it turned out to be one of my favorite jazz musicians, one I’d seen many times: American guitarist Charlie Hunter. What were the odds that he would take me to see one of my favorite musicians??
The venue was upscale, and it was fun to see everyone dressed up with their dates across the late-spring lawn. We were behind a nice hotel, right on the cliff’s edge overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. The concert started as the sun was setting, and there were beautiful hues of pink and orange in the sky. It was romantic!
We had a great time together, but I still felt a little uneasy, disconnected. I knew I couldn’t sink into the safety of trusting him. He was hot and cold. Much like our position on the edge of the cliff overlooking the deep blue sea, I stayed on edge with him the whole night, knowing we couldn’t dive into deep emotional depths.
He dropped me off at my place after sharing a passionate kiss. I had mixed feelings.
That weekend, 2 1/2 weeks after my arrival, he broke things off over text:
I do have good time with you but seems like I’m not able to save time for someone right now. I know this probably isn’t right and work is not everything, but I can’t seem to handle all right now, sorry.
“He sure didn’t try very hard!” my friend AS texted me.
By this time, I’d already gone on a date with someone else…
👻 Can 18’s Ghost, Vampire, and Zombie Scores (1-5)
Ghost - 4, Vampire - 4, Zombie - 5
Can 18’s failure to show up properly for me when I arrived in his city is some proper ghost behavior. Instead of doing the adult thing to plan a date for me and help me feel welcome, he hid, shut down, and went silent. But it didn’t hurt as much as with Jean 1, because I wasn’t in love with him.
I give him a pretty high vampire score because he seemed to want to breadcrumb me to death. For nearly a year, he was texting me almost every day, sending me Instagram videos (reels), sending me his NYT Connections game score, sending me selfies with him and his friends, asking me for advice about his life, and on and on. Huge f*cking waste of my time for no reason. He just wanted to feed on my life force without commitment. I told him several times this year that I don’t text just for the sake of texting, so I needed to know if he was serious about trying to meet again. He would always say that we wanted the same things, we just needed to be in the same place.
He gets the highest zombie score because this is someone who has not done any emotional healing work and does not understand how his actions affect others. At one point, I was trying to explain how something he did made me feel, and he accused me of being “manipulative”. Can’t work with that toxic energy! If someone isn’t able to care about how their actions affect others, that’s not the basis of a functioning relationship.
Let’s talk about avoidant attachment and avoidant discard
As I outlined in this blog post with my top 20 book recommendations to heal attachment disorder…
Attachment theory was first developed by British psychoanalyst John Bowlby, who proposed that a child’s early relationship with their primary caregiver serves as the blueprint for how they relate to others later in life—especially in intimate relationships.
“The propensity to make strong emotional bonds to particular individuals is a basic component of human nature.”
— John Bowlby, Attachment and Loss (1969)
Working with Mary Ainsworth, who conducted the Strange Situation study in the 1970s, Bowlby’s work led to the identification of different attachment styles in children:
Secure: Comfort with intimacy and independence
Avoidant (Dismissive): Downplays the importance of relationships, often suppresses emotion
Anxious (Preoccupied): Craves closeness but fears abandonment
Disorganized (added later by Main & Solomon, 1990): A mix of fear and longing; often associated with unresolved trauma
As adults, we tend to replicate these attachment patterns in romantic relationships—unless we become aware of them and intentionally work to “repattern” our responses.
If you just read one book on attachment, read Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller.
One thing that stood out to me from the book Attached was this idea that with avoidant attachment, closeness is punished with distance instead of being rewarded with more closeness.
This push-pull/hot-cold pattern with Can 18 was classic avoidant. We would text, then we would talk, feeling closer emotionally, then he would go silent for a few days or a week. Then, after a break, he would feel safe enough to start up again, we’d text until we got too close, then he’d drop it again.
This is because feelings of closeness and intimacy feel vaguely overwhelming, but without emotional literacy, there’s no way to label the emotions as they arise. The only option is to shut people out to stop the overwhelm.
The other concept I still think about from this book was one called “Enemy or Royalty”. When we love someone, we want to treat them like royalty, lavishing them with love, consideration, and goodness. When we’re avoidantly attached, though, that is, skeptical of closeness, we start to treat our partner like the enemy.
When I woke up at Can 18’s place, I could feel that I was in enemy territory. He was overwhelmed, and I was not the ally to be brought closer. He had to guard himself and protect himself, ultimately pushing me away.
Avoidant discard is when an avoidant suddenly throws the relationship away, dismissing everything invested as not valuable. Securely attached people see the value in the care they’ve cultivated. They see the value of investing in other people and receiving care and attention from others. Avoidants can dismiss and discard, feeling relief initially, while only regretting throwing it all away later when the lonliness returns.
Can 23 | Turkish | Age = early 40s | Bumble app
I felt so dismissed by Can 18 that I downloaded the apps after 2 weeks in Antalya, mainly to soothe my ego. I matched with Can 23, who I saw had done many “Amazon rituals,” aka ayahuasca, which I’ve also done (read about my first journey experience here). Certainly we would have a good time talking!
I pitched the time and place. I wanted to visit a site called Upper Düden Waterfall. He picked me up in his jeep and we drove there. He was a deeply spiritual person who had done a lot of self-healing work.
He was excited about me. He was as much excited about me as Can 18 was dismissive about me.
He took some photos of me by the waterfall and it was restorative to feel the gaze of someone sending loving energy my way.
I soon discovered that his attention and strong photography skills were counter-balanced by his…lying.
He talked a lot and not everything sounded true. He told me he was, in fact, not Turkish, but Italian. I pressed for more details and his mom was half Turkish, half Italian. I kept pressing for more and more details and finally found out that he grew up in Ankara…which is in Türkiye. He couldn’t keep his stories straight.
“I do a lot of project work,” he said. “I found some great projects here so I ended up in Antalya.” I pressed for more details, and it seemed like a regular full-time job to me. The lies didn’t even matter. What did I care where he was, an employee or a contractor?
He said we could stop by his apartment to eat lunch and grab stuff for the beach, which I agreed to. He did feed me delicious Turkish food, but I got more of the chronic lying. He said he worked as an architect. His apartment had gorgeous, stately, large stone tiles covering the floors. “What is this? Marble?” I asked, feeling like that wasn’t the right answer. He shrugged.
Later, I realized what the stone was: quartz. An architect would have known that.
Much to my surprise, he took a giant rip of the devil’s lettuce at lunch, and then he was mentally even more confused than he had been, disappearing into his head. He wanted to kiss, and I tried, but I wasn’t into him. I excused myself and caught a bus home.
“Did you get kidnapped?!” my friend EL asked me as I texted her on my way to the bus.
At the bus stop, there were two kids waiting who spoke a total of 10 words of English between them. They wanted to know what time the next bus was coming. I showed them the Google Maps app, but they insisted I download the public transit app, AntalyaKart. “Oh, I already have that app!” I showed them. They were impressed with me, the strange tourist lady. They pointed up at the bus stop where there was a 5-digit number posted. They pointed at the search bar in the app. I typed the number in. Suddenly, the app populated with a live tracking map of every bus that was on its way toward us. Wow! Thanks, little guys!
I did wonder why they were traveling by themselves sans cell phone. They were probably 10-12 years old.
The app showed us that a bus would arrive in 5 minutes. When we got on, they sat across from an elderly man, and they kept making him laugh. I made eye contact with the man, and we exchanged expressions of knowing. “Why are these young kids traveling around??” we said to each other in a glance, but also, “Why are they so adorable??”
The next morning, Can 23 texted me that he’d had a great date. Because I have a solid base of rudimentary communication skills, I let him know right away that we weren’t a romantic match and ended things.
Can 24 | Turkish | Age = early 30s | Bumble app
One of my conversation prompts on Bumble is “What’s one book that everyone should read?”
Can 24 said, “The Alchemist,” and I agreed with him—everyone should read that book. I read it in my early 20s, and it left such an impression on me about finding my “personal legend,” or my purpose in life, and how to integrate love with life's purpose.
He asked me which one I would recommend, and I said Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. “I almost said that one!” he shared.
We had to meet.
We had coffee and talked. It was a nice date! I, again, picked the time and place. This was a trend with Turkish men, I was noticing.
After coffee, we walked around the old city, called Kaleiçi. He had newly relocated to Antalya, so it was I, the American, who gave him a tour of this part of his country.
We stopped at a viewpoint overlooking a beautiful harbor of old-fashioned ships. I had to get to my coworking office to start work.
“I read that Americans like more personal space, so I didn’t touch you,” he shared. “But I wanted to.”
Oh wow, not only did he want to date me, but he googled how to date me! Again, effort! Felt so good after Can 18, doing the bare minimum.
Turkish men being kinda handsy is one of my favorite things about them (read about my favorite Turkish hand-holder here), but I so appreciated him being mindful of what I needed. I reached over and took his hand and we caressed each other’s forearms, enjoying the new sensation. Then I moved in closer for more touching. We hugged. Then we had a brief but perfect kiss. “Maybe we can do that somewhere more private next time,” he said, “while we’re in this religiously conservative country.” I had forgotten in that moment that I was in Turkey! He was conscious of how to date an American, but I had forgotten about affection in public in Turkey being taboo. It felt nice to be the less conscientious one for once.
The next morning, he sent me quite a few texts. One was the image of the cockpit of the commercial plane he was flying. He had typed out my name with a message: “Have a good day, Alison!”
I felt a little overwhelmed by it. We’d had a nice date, but I didn’t feel close enough to him yet for this amount of attention.
Later in the evening, he texted me “Did you miss me?” I froze up at that. Too much, too soon.
#4 bring up conflicts, discomforts, or confusion as soon as I can; have the uncomfortable conversation
I let him know he was texting too much. He listened and backed off, but asked me out for breakfast in 4 days, which was good. He took me out to a gorgeous Turkish breakfast. He had asked his colleagues for a recommendation on the place. It was a charming cafe called “The Yellow Teapot”.
We went for a walk in the park and found a secluded bench to make out on. He was a great kisser! He was also in great shape. I could feel his strong arm muscles through his button-down shirt.
I talked to him about the text that made me freeze up. When you sent “Did you miss me?” I felt overwhelmed, and it reminded me of an ex-boyfriend I had who had borderline personality disorder. I was reminded of how possessive he was of me, and I had a trauma response. He listened to me and didn’t get defensive. “I understand.”
The next few days, he gave me a lot of space, not texting me, even though I knew he wanted to. Meanwhile, I was thinking about whether I could keep seeing him. I liked him a lot. He could take feedback without getting defensive, he read books, he even shared that he went to therapy! He checked a lot of boxes.
But deep down, I knew he was not the one, and the sooner I ended things, the more space I was creating for the right one for me. I let him know that I thought he was wonderful, but I just knew.
I felt proud of myself for trusting my intuition sooner rather than later.
Portugal
I left Antalya for the first two weeks of June to spend a week with family members and a week meeting up with various friends.
My brother, sister-in-law, and dad were sad to hear my update about Can 18. I felt embarrassed to try to explain. The only thing I could do was own my part: “For some reason, I keep picking avoidant men. So, I need to work on that.” I had known he wasn’t the most emotionally available person, but I was surprised that he froze up even before I arrived, mustering just 1 1/2 dates after nearly a year of constant communication.
I had the apps going! But I was with family for the first week and friends the second week, so it logistically didn’t make sense. There were no intriguing conversations on the apps.
Meeting with friends was restorative. I met first in Porto with MF, whom I had met in Porto 3 years prior. Since then, she had gotten married. “How did you meet him?” “On Hinge!” A dating app success!
She confirmed that he was as wonderful a husband as he appeared in her Instagram photos. As I recounted my dating trials and tribulations, she asked me to open the app and show her my vetting process. I opened Bumble and swiped left (no) and right (yes) a few times. Soon, she scolded me for swiping left on nice-looking men with awkward photos. “My husband had terrible Hinge photos. If I had been too picky, I would have never met him!”
I promised her I would try to play around with dating men who look nice but are maybe not so savvy with their profile.
I met up with my former Dutch language professor from UC Berkeley in Porto next. She brought her husband along, whom I hadn’t met. They were such an adorable couple!! Clearly soul mates who had continually invested in their relationship to form a solid bond. They finished each other’s sentences, made each other laugh, and recounted stories and adventures together with such joy and delight in each other. They told me that both of their 1/2 Dutch, 1/2 American kids had Portuguese partners. “You should date Portuguese men,” my professor told me, “I think they’re really sweet guys here.”
Next, I visited AC, whom I’d spent a long weekend with the previous summer in Aix-en-Provence, trying to decide whether I should keep dating Jean 1, Jean 6, or Can 18. AC has become such a close, dear friend over the years that I felt safe enough to shed tears.
“I know I shouldn’t compare,” I sobbed, “but spending time with my brother and his beautiful family feels so hard sometimes. And it’s embarrassing to have to share yet another dating failure with them.”
I recounted one of my most mortifying moments to her. My parents had rented a house in Venice, California, for Christmas in 2018. My brother and now-wife (then-fiancée), my boyfriend, and I were all there. This boyfriend had experienced a lot of trauma in childhood, and the holidays were much more triggering for him than I realized. He left the house and went to a bar and got debilitatingly drunk, which was a relapse from a period of sobriety. I was exhausted of him being so much to deal with and asked if he could stay put in our upstairs room while I played a board game with the family. When it was time to go to bed, I discovered that he had jumped out of the second-story window of the bedroom and gone out. We were all worried about him, so we went out to look for him. We wandered around the streets of Venice until my brother and my sister-in-law texted us. “We found him. We heard his voice!” He was in a tent with a homeless person on the street, hanging out. We broke up a few weeks later because, as you can see, I was more his babysitter than partner. He was never able to string together more than a few months of sobriety at a time, and in 2022, he died of a drug overdose.
“And it’s just so embarrassing to tell them time after time, ‘hey, I picked another loser. You thought I was going to get my shit together. Well, it’s still a no.’”
“But your stories are so much more interesting than anyone else’s!” AC pulled me in for a comforting hug. “You may not have picked the stable partners or life, but you picked the interesting one.”
In another deep soul talk with AC, she held space for my disappointment over how things ended with Jean 1. “But of course, in this dating journey, you’re going to feel disappointment. That’s how love goes! When we open ourselves up to love and vulnerability, we have to make equal space for loss and disappointment.”
I guess I hadn’t mentally prepped myself for all of the negative emotions I was bound to feel by putting myself out there. She helped me get it. Something shifted in me, and I finally felt the closure I needed, the shame and embarrassment melting.
Of course, in this dating journey, you’re going to feel disappointment.
Antalya, Türkiye (round 2)
A few days after getting back from Portugal, I awoke with a painful red rash on my back, near my right armpit. “Fuuuuuck,” I thought. I knew exactly what this was: shingles. My 3rd bout since age 14.
Was I really that stressed??
Well, first things first, I needed to get anti-viral meds. I wasn’t sure where exactly to go, so I texted Can 18, since he’s a medical doctor.
Before hearing back from him, I stopped into a pharmacy and just asked. “Oh, we have the medication right here,” the pharmacist said in English. $12. Within 10 minutes, I walked out, medication in hand. “We have high-quality, low-priced medications in Türkiye, the pharmacist informed me. Apparently!
The USA is so broken…this would have taken a doctor’s visit, then a trip to the pharmacy, then insurance paperwork. Sigh… 10 minutes! 12 dollars!
Can 18 finally got back to me, but I told him I figured it out. He offered me no sympathy. What hurt more, the shooting nerve pain on my back, or Can 18 yet again showing me that he did not care about me?
The meds worked like a dream, except for one night I didn’t eat enough and woke up puking thick, yellow bile for hours.
“Maybe this is the purge I need before something changes for good in my life,” I thought. Read my blog about my purge last year here.
Why did I get this stress-related illness, though? I meditated on it, asking for answers. A lot of things in my life were stressful—running my own consulting business, not being grounded at a stable home, the quick trip to Portugal…but I had to admit, getting rejected by Can 18 in this way really hurt. He so easily dismissed our connection. It triggered memories of childhood in which my parents were either always at work or too stressed about work to offer me the care I needed. I can’t believe I’m still trying to fix my childhood through men…after years of therapy, the last year of which cost me $700/month! There were some deep wounds I still needed to tend to if I wanted to stop my habit of picking men who didn’t want me.
Yuhanna 25 | Lebanese | Age = mid 40s | Couchsurfing
When I arrived in Türkiye and started posting stories to Facebook, an old friend of mine that I’d met in 2007 reached out. He lived in nearby Oman. He had stayed with me in Berkeley, California, when I was living with a former boyfriend. We met up again in Nantes, France, in 2010, and we were both partnered at that time, I with a different boyfriend—the traumatizing, borderline personality disordered one, in fact! We all attended a music festival together. I hadn’t seen him since, but we had stayed in touch online.
“I read your dating blog! It was a fun read.” Was I back in Türkiye for a “long-distance love situationship?” he asked. Okay, so he wants to see about me…
I told him no, there was no situationship. Can 18 wasn’t worth mentioning. Yuhanna 25 invited me to meet him on his next trip to Lebanon, and I would have probably joined, but I already had plans to be in Portugal that week. He mentioned he’d been wanting to visit Türkiye and invited me to join him on a trip to Romania, which has been high on my travel bucket list for a while now. I was curious about him. We had always gotten along well, and he was cute. Very smart. Very easy to talk to.
We kept texting, culminating in an evening of back-and-forth voice memos on WhatsApp.
I had just posted a new dating blog that he read, this one.
He was reading it, he said, and sent me a screenshot of the paragraph he was on:
🚩 Most Red Flags: Jean 1
It’s hard not to look back at Jean 1 and not see every red flag. The first time I noticed that his words didn’t mean anything to him was when we had gone to bed and made a plan for the morning: “Let’s walk to the new coffee shop across town.” When we woke up, it was as if the plan never existed, the conversation hadn’t happened. It was eerie! Normally, when you say words out loud, you feel accountable to them, and if you need to change the plan, you say so. “Oh hey, I know we said we were going to walk to the coffee shop, but I realized I need to do x this morning instead. How about next week?” Just pretending a whole conversation didn’t happen is weird. This also happened with our first date. This also happened with our conversation about my wanting a baby…
Yeah, I felt sad writing about that today, I shared. He sent me a Voice Memo, that at least it was in the past now.
The next day, I asked him if I could call him in on something, and he said yes. “I felt your response to my saying I felt sad was dismissive. Yes, it happened in the past, but it was really sad to realize that my partner was lying to me about wanting a baby, and he wasted my time in one of my last fertile years.”
He apologized, which I appreciated.
#4 being to bring up conflicts, discomforts, or confusion as soon as I can; have the uncomfortable conversation
Here I was doing it in action, and it did make me feel more connected to this friend. Ignoring the thing would have the effect of making me stew in resentment, albeit a small one. If we want people to understand us, we have to invite them to understand us.
However, what happened next was a reminder that men can have selective hearing.
I thought I’d made it expressly clear that I’ve been dating to find a partner to have a child with. Not only was it in my blog that he read, but then I called him in on it, leaving a detailed voice note with more context and nuance.
But after a whole evening of rapid voice notes, in which I’d asked him about why his last relationship ended, he shared that it was because she wanted to start a family and he didn’t.
“Omg, then F right off!” was my reactive first thought.
No. More. Energy. Vampires.
If we don’t want the same thing, go away!
This was, of course, not because of anything Yuhanna 25 had done, but due to my traumatic experience with Jean 1. I had to be more vigilant.
I didn’t say anything but made a mental note to wind down the conversation and wrap it up for good. We didn’t text again.
For me, as soon as he knew how important having a baby was and that he didn’t also want one, that would be the end of flirty text and voice exchanges and inviting me on trips. Just like with Jean 1, I got the impression that he maybe thought it wasn’t so important to me or that he could change my mind.
But really it was selective hearing—selecting the things that matched with him to deem “important.”
And maybe that’s just human nature. The things we agree on seem more relevant. Our mind rests on those things. We think we can work through the disagreements later.
No one is going to prioritize my needs for me, I realized. I have to be vocal and vigilant. No one will care about me as much as I do.
#7 Discuss values, lifestyle, and goals and see if they’re shared and compatible
Check. We did this all over 2 days of voice notes. No need to move forward and waste each other’s time. I’m getting quicker at this!
Can 26 | Turkish | Age = late 40s | In the Wild
Someone I met through my friends asked me if I wanted to go camping. I wanted to go camping, but I didn’t have romantic feelings for him, so I declined. He looked hurt, as though he’d really psyched himself up to ask me.
So often, life feels like Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (I love the 1999 film version), in which the characters are only in love with the one who is not in love with them back. I wanted Can 18, who did not want me, and I did not want Can 26 (or Can 23 or 24), who wanted me.
Can 27 | Turkish | Age = early 30s | Bumble app
To finish out the month of June, I had a morning coffee date planned with a Turkish man who lives in Norway but was in town for a family member’s wedding. Unlike most Turkish men with whom I chat on the apps, he and I exchanged voice notes about the nuances of feelings and depression.
One of my Bumble conversation prompts is “What is your favorite sad song for wallowing?” He explained that he tried not to wallow because he struggled with depression. I shared similar struggles and how I like to let myself wallow for defined periods, as a treat.
I asked him to coffee (see the trend with Turkish men??), but that morning he said he woke up late and wasn’t up for it. He departed back to Norway that afternoon. It was a nice momentary connection, at least.
In conclusion…
Lots of dates and love in the air! Lots of disappointment and yearning as well. A quote I come back to again and again is by Alice Miller in her 1980 psychology and child trauma recovery book The Drama of the Gifted Child:
The true opposite of depression is neither gaiety nor absence of pain, but vitality—the freedom to experience spontaneous feelings. It is part of the kaleidoscope of life that these feelings are not only happy, beautiful, or good but can reflect the entire range of human experience, including envy, jealousy, rage, disgust, greed, despair, and grief. But this freedom cannot be achieved if its childhood roots are cut off. Our access to the true self is possible only when we no longer have to be afraid of the intense emotional world of early childhood. Once we have experienced and become familiar with this world, it is no longer strange and threatening.
When I re-craft my intentions, I will be sure to save some room for disappointment, sadness, longing, frustration, and despair right alongside wonder, curiosity, adventure, and care.
