Sax, Drugs, and Turtle Patrol | Travel Dating Diary - July 2025
July had everything.
Peak summer with long hot days and nights brought a lot of festivities and a lot of chaos, and several broken hearts (one of which was mine). A broken laptop led to smiling at a handsome man in a coffee shop which led to a date. There was a romantic weekend in a beautiful beach town with a brainy researcher. There was a revelation about what “balance” means for the heart chakra while receiving a haircut. Beach parties. Dance parties. One day I had dates with two separate men!
So, so much jazz music! Which was great. And the ecological protection of hatching turtles.
This is the 6th installment in a series about my search for a soulmate-type partner while traveling. You can learn more and read all the previous posts here on the Romance by Rail page.
Blog Outline:
Comments and reflections from Part 5 (January-June 2025)
July Travel Dating Diary - dates and reflections on love and dating
Romance x Rail - Part 6 - July 2025
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Romance x Rail - Part 6 - July 2025 //
Part 5 Reflections
After I published Part 5 in the series, about recovering from heartbreak early in 2025, only to travel to Türkiye and encounter another phantom lover, I had a serious case of vulnerability hangover! My stomach was in knots about how much I’d shared that was still raw. I’d also been more brutal in my assessment of men than in blogs past. I try not to throw anyone under the bus, but I reached a breaking point and I needed to lay it all out—my devastation and rage. I couldn’t seem to process any of it without writing it in its pure, raw form.
The reaction I got was strong! Many of you told me it was one of your favorite pieces I’d written. The vampire/ghost/zombie metaphor about the ways men have terrorized me was a hit.
The main feeling I kept getting, though, in processing everything I’d dumped onto the page, was embarrassment. How could I let men treat me like this? Where was my sense of agency? Why was I blaming them? Certainly, I could simply not let them into my life with their predatory behavior. Vampires suck energy and give nothing back, ghosts disappear after emotional investment, and zombies have no emotional depth.
I try to write my blog in a way that shares how others’ actions make me feel, but I fear that Part 5 veered more into blame territory.
Blame takes away all our power. I want my power back.
How can I take my power back in the stories of Jean 1 and Can 18? I can focus on the lessons learned and move on quickly. Some of the lessons learned:
People who don’t honor their word on little things don’t honor their work on big things. Since high integrity is a value of mine, I need to pay attention to the little misses and make them matter.
Move on quickly! Don’t make things mean too much so early.
There are so many emotionally avoidant men on dating apps! The secure and anxious ones are in relationships. Avoidants stay single and push people away. Be extra vigilant in vetting avoidants, those who are not working on healing, early.
Simply do not let vampires, ghosts, and zombies have my energy and time. I have no one to blame but myself for letting them have access to me.
Why did I let them have access to me in the first place despite some red flags? I’m aware of my propensity to project “potential” onto men: “If they just had a lil’ therapy, they’d be great…” etc. But I think less complicated than that is that I really liked these guys, and I wanted it to work! And there’s truly nothing wrong with that. Moving forward, however, for the sake of finding my person and preserving my sanity, I need to prioritize something else that I discovered this month and will discuss below.
By far, the thing in the blog that you all commented on the most was Can 18’s extra car. “Why didn’t you just ask him if you could buy the car?” I got from several readers who are friends and family members.
For one, I realized that my writing of that story could have been better because the story was not supposed to exactly be about my need for a car, but rather one example of many of the ways I noticed he was putting distance between us.
But why didn’t I offer to buy the car, since I thought maybe I wanted one? I had just arrived in Antalya 3 days prior when he mentioned it, and my head was still spinning from travel. It wasn’t a firm enough desire. When our desires have been fully fleshed out, that’s when we can go, “Oh hey, here’s this thing I said I wanted! Great! I’ll grab it.” So, it wasn’t fair of me to say that he should have considered me when I wasn’t even considering myself. In processing with my friend US, I realized something else about the car, though. I’ll get to that below.
There was something else happening with me that I want to acknowledge. I was frozen with Can 18 in those initial weeks, and I regret that I gave him so much of my power. In my blog with my best dating tips, I mention something author Neil Strauss calls “One-itis” in his bestseller The Game. It’s where we think someone is “The One” too early—doing exactly what I did, freezing up and losing my power. The part of me that wanted to be excited and hopeful—I think that’s a really beautiful part. I don’t want to give it up. So maybe there was no other way to get through things other than to see Can 18 not show up for me, have it take a few weeks to process, and then move on.
[Narrator’s Voice]: You’ll soon learn that our protagonist did not move on.
What I can set a goal around, moving forward, is that the effort needs to be much higher before I get my excitement and hopes up. I was overcompensating for the ways he wasn’t showing up by making excuses for him, being extra warm, and taking the lead/initiative. Sure, he was proactive in some ways about us, but not enough.
There’s something specific that happens when you get a phase of early adoration and attention, often called “love-bombing,” then the person pulls away — the love-bombee goes through withdrawal. “Wait, what happened to all of the compliments, adoration, and attention?!” Some love-bombing is covert and doesn’t feel like too much. It never felt like too much with Can 18 until he pulled it, turning up his skepticism, criticism, and aloofness.
One other rule I’m setting is that I’m allowed to be messy (or so an old therapist tried to convince me). I have a strong perfectionist streak that lends itself to embarrassment and then months of shutdown. Mantra for August: Let it all be beautifully messy. Love hard, fail big, embarrass yourself…that’s how you know you’re living with your whole heart.
Sax, Drugs, and Turtle Patrol | Part 6: July 2025
As July started, I knew I needed a different vibe for the summer than heartbreak. “I need to do my makeup and hair every day and go hang out in places with hot people.” Maybe I could meet someone in the wild and get off the apps. I needed a total refresh and reset!
On Wednesday, July 2nd, my laptop also decided it needed a refresh and a facelift when the screen suddenly went from perfectly functional to fully covered in dreaded vertical colored lines. Luckily, I found an Apple repair shop in Antalya, iTech, with great reviews and headed over the next day. I prayed the repair bill would be in the hundreds and not thousands.
I had scouted the neighborhood of Lara, known for its chic cliff-side coffee shops, restaurants, and clubs overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, for places with hot people my age hanging out the week prior, and knew just the spot, a coffee shop attached to the fancy hotel where Can 18 had taken me to the jazz music festival.
I got my coffee and croissant and sat down in a central spot with a view of the whole room and opened up my Kindle to where I’d left off on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s gripping novel about the Nigerian civil war of the 1960s, Half of a Yellow Sun.
After no time at all had passed, a handsome man appeared in my line of vision, across the room. Our eyes met. Electricity ran through me. “Wow, that worked like magic!” I thought.
The novel was engrossing enough to hold my attention despite my nerves about the attractive man in my orbit, but each and every time I looked up, I caught his gaze. After nearly an hour, I looked up and he was gone. “Shoot, I blew it! I need to try harder if I want to have the sexy summer I deserve!”
But then I saw him again. He was outside having a cigarette, as common as breathing here in Türkiye, and therefore, not the same turn-off it would be in the States. He came back in and sat down. I got up to use the bathroom, gave myself a big girl pep talk, and when I came back into the room, I looked right at him and gave him a flirty, genuine smile. My heart raced! This was thrilling!
I sat down again and had to take about 20 minutes to calm my beating heart. I was ready for serious eye contact now. I looked up at him. He looked right back at me. I smiled again. He raised his chin as if to say, “What’s up?” I raised my chin back. He gestured as if to say, “Can I come over?” I nodded and waved him over.
He got up and walked across the cafe’s dining room and sat down in the empty seat beside me, introducing himself.
Yahya 28 | Persian (Iranian) | Mid-30s | In the Wild
He was a civil engineer and real estate developer from Iran who had an apartment in Antalya. We talked for a while, and then he asked me if I’d had lunch. I hadn’t, and all the staring, smiling, and waiting had made me hungry! He offered to take me out. I assessed that he wasn’t a murder threat and walked out with him to his car, which was a 2-door Mercedes. I don’t know enough about cars to say what the model was. “He wanted me to notice his car,” I thought. So far every man I’d dated in Antalya had made a big show about driving me somewhere in his car. Cars, while a major purchase in any place, are especially expensive in Türkiye, a country that imposes one of the highest vehicle taxes in the world. This tax, calculated based on the engine size and price of the car, can be up to 220% of the car’s value. The weak currency, the Turkish Lira, adds to the relative cost. So I can see why showing off their car can feel like a significant status symbol here. But is it more than that? Their safe space? The place where they’re in charge, dominating the road, the steering wheel, and their woman?
This was a particularly fancy little car, and I made sure to compliment it. My real feelings about it were more mixed. On the one hand, it was an overt presentation of the fact that he was “no scrub.” Planted firmly in the driver’s seat of his own vehicle, this man wouldn’t be caught hanging out of the passenger’s side of his best friend’s ride. But as a more modern interpretation of that song I recently heard on TikTok stated, maybe the friend in the passenger’s seat is more money conscious, putting that money towards safer investments, carpooling, and saving on gas and insurance? What if we had it all wrong and the friend without the car is the more rational long-term bet? “Maybe this is all the money he has,” I thought. “And his priority is car and it won’t be girlfriend.” We all know that man who buys six sports cars instead of taking his wife on vacation.
Over lunch he only wanted to talk about one thing: Artificial Intelligence. I mmm’d and and mmhmm’d between bites of a delicious falafel and lentil salad bowl. He showed me a video of US Vice President JD Vance saying something mundane about how to plan for the future of new technology. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I’ve been following Ray Kurzweil’s work on The Singularity since the early 2000s, when I was still a teenager, subscribing to the Bay Area Futurist Society’s email newsletter and listening to The Age of Spiritual Machines on audiobook. I don’t need our fascist Vice Leader instructing me how to think about the future.
The conversation got more contentious when I told him that AI would never replace my job, and he would not allow me to have that opinion about my domain. “My job is about caring for people. A robot cannot care.” He refused. “Would you rather have a real girlfriend or a robot girlfriend?” I asked him. “A real girlfriend of course!” He was appalled I would ask. “For the same reason you want a real girlfriend, people want a real coach and care consultant,” I woman-splained. Those aren’t the same thing, he protested. I’ll never know the logic on that one. My argument that care is uniquely mammalian wasn’t getting through.
When he started to get up to go outside to have another cigarette, I offered to coach him out of his craving so he could experience said human care. He was game.
“Can I teach you two tools I use in my program to help people quit sugar?”
The first tool is about feeling feelings. I pulled up FeelingsWheel.com on my phone and had him select a feeling that he was feeling just now. He reviewed the entire wheel in earnest and said, “My feeling is not on here. ‘Relaxed’.” This…this seemed to me to be the wrong feeling for the moment. Dates with strangers are supposed to get your heart racing and your nerves jittery. This was an indication to me that his nervous system was not functioning as designed. We had a Zombie on our hands, someone going through the motions of life without deeply feeling.
I asked him what the feeling of “relaxed” felt like in his body. He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths, as I instructed, and scanned for feelings. “Nothing. It doesn’t feel like anything.”
I tried too. I scanned my body for relaxed and added in the related feeling, peaceful. “It feels like a warm, glowing sensation in my core,” I told him. “It’s a gold light radiating outwards.” He looked at me with astonishment. “You feel all of that?” “Yeah, that’s what that feeling feels like in my body.” I could see a lightbulb going off in his mind. He wanted what I was having.
He was reluctantly considering why maybe a robot couldn’t do my job, while I considered that this was quite probably the first time he’d ever tried to feel a feeling in his body.
Folks, we gotta watch out for the AI evangelists! They out here living life with NO FEELINGS, thinking that this is it—the whole human experience. Why not let the robots in since there’s no difference?? We can’t let this happen.
The second tool I gave him is called “future-thinking.” We imagine how we’ll feel in the future if we do the thing: right after, a few days after, if we keep doing the thing every day, and a year from now, maybe several years from now. When we do this, eating sugar or smoking a cigarette don’t sound as good as if we were just considering scratching the immediate itch.
He liked this one. He didn’t have the cigarette.
Just then, a waiter next to us dropped a whole tray of glassware, and a few shards sprayed over me and my meal. I was nearly done anyway, but had to give up the remaining bites. The restaurant comped my salad. He picked up the tab, and I thought, “Should I still thank him for lunch if he technically didn’t have to pay for mine? Was it the thought that counted?”
I got the text that my laptop was ready, and the repair was $260. Whoohoo! A quick, cheap repair? A spontaneous, flirty lunch date? This was my lucky day.
Yahya 28 dropped me off at the repair shop. We agreed to meet for a drink next, maybe over the weekend. I knew he wasn’t the soul mate I was looking for, but he had a certain gravitational pull. He was a deep thinker, and I imagined, would be a deep feeler too, with a little more practice (see how I project potential?!). His sexiness was a mix of mystery, melancholy, and moody, furrowed eyebrows with eyes that turned downward at the outer side, giving him an air of perpetual sadness.
John 29 | British | Late 30s | Bumble
Hopped up on the fumes of a freshly repaired laptop and a surprise, sexy lunch date, I flirted my way into a date with John 29 from Bumble.
The strange thing was that we had matched on Hinge in a different city before, but never met. “Hey, I know you!” I messaged him once we matched on Bumble. We had to meet.
Statistically speaking, any guesses as to John 29’s profession? Going once…going twice…yes, it’s engineer! You got it!
Engineers, it seems, are either the most common male profession in the world or chronically under-partnered.
Like Yahya 28, John 29 also had endearing downturned eyes that gave the impression of a lost puppy dog.
We watched the sun set over Antalya from an overlook spot in a beautiful park, then we went for a drink at one of the touristy spots in Old Town (Kaleiçi). “I tend to stay out of Kaleici for drinks, I told him, due to the tourist prices. “Well, I’m paying!” he offered. He had just quit his job and was starting a several-month sabbatical before getting back to the grind.
He was such a nice, solid guy, but unfortunately, he didn’t hold any sparkle for me. I found myself yawning and checking my watch. He kept trying to escalate physical contact by leaning in close to me and swatting my leg or arm with jokes. I really loved that he did this—it’s a rare skill—but I just wasn’t that into him. We parted ways, and I texted him, thanking him for the drink when I got home. We never texted each other again. I was grateful he took the hint.
I sincerely hope this guy finds a good lover because he truly was solid. Not enough trauma for me, I fear!
Can 30 | Turkish | Early 40s | In the Wild
The next night, I hosted a 4th of July party at the beach for the coworking social club I’m a member of. People from Turkey, Russia, Iran, Sweden, Egypt, and Germany came decked in Red, White, and Blue to play the American Trivia game I’d prepared and hang out until late into the night in the humid summer air.
At the end of the evening, a Persian man said he was driving toward Kaleiçi, where I lived, if I or anyone wanted a ride. Can 30, a drunk, manic character, took him up on it as well.
On the drive, our Persian driver said, “It seemed important to go to this event tonight to see about celebrating the United States, who is currently bombing my home country [Iran]. It may seem strange, but I wanted to practice peace.” This beautiful sentiment brought tears to my eyes as he shared it, and I‘m teary-eyed again as I type this. Travel and the opportunity to meet real human beings from places our leaders may have deemed “enemy territory” is one of the greatest gifts. May we each continue to wield peace one heartfelt conversation with each other at a time.
Can 30 and I walked the same direction for several blocks. I could tell he wasn’t quite mentally all there, but also whip-smart intellectually at the same time. I love a smart person with some decent trauma! When he asked if I wanted to join him and his friends for a show at the jazz bar attached to that same hotel with the cafe at which I’d just been picked up by Mr Robot Sad Eyes, I said yes. This was the same venue as the jazz festival, but its own permanent jazz bar fixture. I’d been wanting to go there. I knew I wouldn’t want to date Can 30, and that even though he told me he was meeting friends at the show, he wanted this to be a date with me, but I figured I could sort it all out and still go check out this venue that was on my bucket list.
He was very much giving date vibes when I arrived several hours before his friends. He wanted us to watch the sunset—which would have been quite romantic. He was exceptionally chatty, talking a mile a minute. He was interesting to listen to until he reached a certain threshold of drunkenness. I saw him order and throw back quite a few Long Island iced teas, the drink notorious for being heavy-handed on all the alcohol. He was full of tall tales. I could tell that each story had a grain of truth and was probably being expanded for dramatic effect. He’d been in the Turkish military, he explained, where he’d met Prince Harry. This was random and specific enough that it sounded like the truth. Plus, he seemed like someone with deep Afghanistan-levels of PTSD (I’ve dated this type before). He attended high school in the US, he shared. This one, didn’t seem true. His English wasn’t that good, and in high school, brains are malleable and social pressure is high—he’d have emerged with a fluency he very much didn’t have.
Long Island Iced Tea (source):
½ fluid ounce vodka
½ fluid ounce rum
½ fluid ounce gin
½ fluid ounce tequila
½ fluid ounce triple sec (orange-flavored liqueur)
1 fluid ounce sweet and sour mix
1 fluid ounce cola, or to taste
1 lemon slice
When the conversation turned to his career, I was curious to hear all about his life as a criminal defense lawyer for the drug cartels! Tbh, these are exactly the kinds of stories I could listen to a tipsy person talk about all night. I love sordid tales of people on the edges. He answered all of my questions about which drugs Turkey makes (m*th), which ones they import (molly from Netherlands, blow from Colombia), and how government corruption and sheer geographical positioning make Turkey a regional hot spot for drugs going in every which direction (poppies from Afghanistan).
His friends arrived, three women from Russia, 2 recently divorced from their respective Turkish husbands, and they seemed more normal than he did. “He’s a great guy!” one of them yelled across at me over the music when Can 30 went to the restroom. I lifted one eyebrow. I don’t think he is. But out loud I said, “He talks a little too fast. He could slow down…in life.” She looked back at the band. Truth-telling wasn’t going to happen tonight. The jazz band was okay—I do love me some sax—but a little boring. I don’t enjoy being around drunk people (meaning, Can 30 and his multiple Long Island Iced Teas) if I’m not also having a good time, so I bid them all farewell.
The next day, he texted me wanting to plan another date. I pitched him life coaching instead. “You drink too much.”
Over the next week, it became clear that this person was exceptionally mentally unwell. He would vacillate between “Yes, I could use coaching,” to “I don’t need to pay for therapy!”
Finally, when I told him “I’m sorry Can 30, I’m not interested in spending more time with you but I wish you the best.”
He said:
“Why
We can meet one more time and we will see
We will enjoy i m sure that
We only met one time u should be open minded.”
BLOCK! Boy, bye.
I hope he gets the help he needs, which is substantial.
All of this happened in the first 5 days of July. This was gearing up to be the spicy summer I desired!
The Haircut Revelation
On Tuesday the 8th, I went in for a hair trim to a place recommended to me by someone in the Coworking Antalya group WhatsApp chat, home of many great recommendations, for which I was grateful. In Türkiye, as compared to the United States, hairdressers are more often men than women.
Since it had been 8 months since my last cut, the male hairdresser scolded me: You have to come in more often than that or you will get these split ends. He held up my damaged-looking hair for me to view in the mirror. I shrugged. Sorry Mr. Stern Hair Man! The female assistant shampooed and conditioned my hair, and I sat down as he began to snip snip at the ends of my bedraggled locks.
As I watched in the mirror, I realized that I was tense all over. “What would it be like to relax and let this man take care of me?” I thought. I relaxed my head. I relaxed my neck. I relaxed my shoulders. I let my mind fall into a state of trust.
“What would it be like to relax and let this man take care of me?”
Oh shit. I think this is the heart of my problem in dating! I’m not letting men take care of me! Mind blown in the salon chair on a random Tuesday afternoon.
In the blog I posted last year, My Therapist Said to Look for Only One Quality in a Partner, I detailed how (spoiler!) that quality is: “do they care about you?” and how many ways care can be defined. Every man I’ve ever dated has cared about me in ways big and small, but not in ways that satisfied Melanie, my therapist. She could sense a block.
This was the first time I realized that my trust issues with men were causing me to not receive some possible care on offer. Much like how I noticed my whole body was tense with the male hairdresser, my energy was wound tightly with men in general.
“You never tell me stuff first, you always go to your mom or a girlfriend,” was a common complaint from the ex-boyfriend of my mid-30s. Why didn’t I feel safe enough to go to him first? Was I blocking care? Was he not making it safe? Probably some combination of both.
Allowing men to care about me is the only thing I can personally work on and control, however. Man, I don’t even know what that would look and feel like! And how much care had I already blocked?? What would it take to feel safe enough with men to sink into a place of full trust??
Tangibly, what does it look like to accept care?
The big thing I think of is being comforted. If I’m feeling disregulated, they could put their arm around me and help me feel more settled. This is called “co-regulation”. It’s something I haven’t received very often from past boyfriends. But I could also sense that I’m not often especially vulnerable with them. I think I keep my guard up.
I would like to work on not needing to be in control so much by keeping my emotions all together or pretending to be okay when I’m not. As I write this, I can think of times when I let my emotions run rampant or when I’ve asked for my emotional needs to be met in a relationship. So I know I have done it. But somehow there’s still a block.
As I took this insight with me outside of the salon, this idea of “balance” being associated with the heart chakra finally made sense. I have these little glass bottles of essential oils that are associated with chakras and mantras. They’re meant to be used for intention setting and energy cleansing. I love them, and they’re products from a woman, Constance, in my hometown. My friends always love them when I pull them out for a tarot reading or something. Check out Conscious Colors here.
The Green one is the Heart Chakra and the mantra is “I am balanced”. Since buying a set of these a few years ago, I’ve always been confused about why the heart chakra was associated with “balance”.
Now, I realized its because our heart needs to both give and receive. If we give only, our heart is unbalanced. If we receive only, the same. We must give and receive in equal measure.
I have been in the habit of giving but not receiving. The men in my life noticed, I knew. One exbf even forced me (strongly suggested) to read Melody Beattie’s Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring For Yourself.
What’s funny is that codependent behavior is not really giving either. When we overcompensate for the perceived lack in others, they can feel it, and it doesn’t feel like care—it feels like control and contempt.
Some things I need to keep exploring:
What’s within my control in lowering my defenses with men?
How can I stop caretaking?
How can I receive more care?
Is it that men are offering care and I’m not receiving it? Or is it that I’m giving men access to me who aren’t capable of offering care?
Çirali / Olympos (Türkiye)
Most images I post are mine but this one is not! I grabbed it from a google search.
The next weekend, I wanted to organize a party to celebrate my friend US’s (these are her initials, not the United States of America) divorce from a Turkish man becoming finalized. Our friends suggested a weekend retreat to Çirali, a little hippie town about an hour south of Antalya with a beautiful beach tucked between mountains.
The day before we left, I published Part 5 of this Romance x Rail blog. As I said, it felt so raw and vulnerable! I felt anxious about it. The morning after publishing, before getting packed for the weekend getaway, as I sat on the kitchen porch of my shared apartment, I got a text from Yuhanna 25, the Lebanese friend who checked in with me when I got to Türkiye and who invited me to travel with him.
“Made it on your blog 😅”
The “😅” emoji, according to https://emojipedia.org/, is “intended to depict nerves or discomfort but commonly used to express a close call, as if saying Whew! and wiping sweat from the forehead.” I get nervous about the men in my life reading my blogs and my getting things just right—where I’m honest and raw but don’t throw anyone under the bus—so the “😅” emoji felt just right.
My stomach tensed up. What would he think about my inclusion of him?
“lol I thought you’d read it.
I was planning on sending you a note about it.”
He thought what I said was accurate and fair but he wanted to clear one thing up, he explained in a series of voice notes. Okay, do tell.
Rather than having the “selective hearing” I ascribed him regarding my desire to have children, he said he was paying attention to my saying that and deliberately brought up that the reason he and his exgf broke up was because she wanted kids and he didn’t, to signal to me that he was listening, and realized that our goals weren’t in alignment. It’s funny how indirect we are when we’re trying to see about someone—it’s a dance. In this particular dance, we had a friendship to hang onto, so we were being especially indirect. But now that I’d written him into my dating blog, we could talk about things head-on.
He thanked me for complimenting him on his conversational skills in the post. I thanked him for reaching out and clarifying his intentions after reading the blog. He said he enjoyed reading it. I said I’d love for us to keep being friends. We started to plan a future friend travel trip, which is feeling great.
I have really loved the whole of our interactions since getting back in touch. I called him in on a little thing and he called me in on a little thing and we both were able to learn more about each other through small conflicts and honest communication. Very adult of us!
I shared with him that there were some funny circumstances regarding the timing of his reaching out to me originally and that I’d put it here in the blog. He said he looked forward to reading about it.
The funny circumstances:
Last year, I read two books about the neuroscience of manifestation: Mind Magic and The Source. In The Source, the author, Tara Swart, PhD, suggests making an “Action Board” or “Dream Board” where we put images and words on it and view it every day to manifest the things we want to create in our life.
As those of you who have been following along well know, I have been wanting to manifest a soul mate partner and child. So, naturally, images for this manifestation needed to be on my 2025 board. I Googled “handsome man” and picked an image of a solid and sweet-looking stock photo model, and stuck it on my digital Canva board. Next to him, I put an image of a lion because I wanted my partner to have some lion energy—courageous and strong. Honestly, no idea why I picked lion energy—it just felt right and dream boards are full of vibes.
About 2 weeks after I made this board, Yuhanna 25 messaged me out of the blue after being out of touch for about a decade (we first met in 2007). I realized that, coincidentally, Yuhanna 25 looked just like the stock photo guy I put on my manifestation board! We added each other on Instagram, and the day after, he posted a photo he had taken in Africa during his travels of…none other than…yes, a lion.
It was so eerie!! “Whoa, these manifestation boards really work! I'd better be mindful of what I ask for!”
If you want to join me for manifestation and meditation sessions, I host them each month on the 2nd and 4th Tuesday at 8 am Pacific (6 pm in Turkiye).
Learn more and register for Flow & Flourish here.
As you can see, manifestation works!
After this clarifying conversation with Yuhanna 25, I headed to the coworking office for the weekly ice bath session, led by my friend AE, where a small group of us gather each Saturday, doing breathwork then hopping into the icey cold water for at least 3 minutes to practice some controlled pain.
Afterwards, my friends AE, US, BG, and I piled into BG’s car and drove down the coast for our weekend retreat. The celebratory activity on the docket was ‘shrooms, and I was game for a trippy time on the beach with my friends. We drove to our rental, dropped off our things, packed for the beach, then ingested the magic lil’ guys and got our beach spot ready for a fun day.
My friend US is a gorgeous, tall Goddess of a woman, my age, and I got into the ocean just as the shroomies started to infiltrate my headspace, creating amplified body sensations and beautiful, vibrant, pulsating colors in everything I viewed. As we were both floating, bobbing, and enjoying the oncoming waves of sensation, my mind started to ruminate on just one thing: the vulnerable blog I’d just posted. In it, I had called out Jean 1 and Can 18 for being the phantoms they were in my life—using my energy and pretending to want commitment, then vanishing.
“So, I haven’t shared this with you all yet,” as I moved closer to her in the clear, warm, blue water, “but I moved here to Antalya in part to date this guy.”
I got her caught up. Messages he regularly sent me included x-rays of patients’ broken bones, selfies of him and his friends over dinner, issues he was having and needing advice about, and the NY Times Connections game daily scores. If you could see our text thread,” I told her, “you would be shocked at how quickly he ghosted me once I traveled halfway around the world to keep dating. And it wasn’t just texting. We were sharing VoiceNotes, talking, and face-timing. I clarified many times that I would only keep communicating if we were serious about spending more time together.”
I went on. “Once I got here, he suddenly had every excuse imaginable not to see me!” The shroomies were making this sad subject suddenly much lighter in spirit. "We texted and talked for an entire year, then, the very week I arrived, he couldn’t possibly see me because he had this old forgotten car he had to sell Right. Then. Right that very moment!” I started giggling. It seemed preposterous now that I was saying it out loud.
When I had written about it in Part 5, I was focused on the fact that he wasn’t seeing me as a life partner with whom he might lend an extra car to, without realizing that he was also making himself very busy and unavailable, grabbing any ol’ task that was lying around. They do say that if you want to quit procrastinating on something, find something even more daunting to procrastinate on, and suddenly you’ll find yourself doing the other thing. I was the ultimate uncomfortable thing he didn’t want to face, it turned out! So happy I could help him wrap up all the loose threads! I giggled more. Wasn’t it all so insane??
US was laughing with me, but confused. “No, I’m serious,” I explained, “He literally that day—the weekend after I arrived, after talking long-distance for nearly a year, was like ‘Oh whoops, I’m too busy to see you today, I’m getting this car detailed so I can sell it.’” I threw my head back against the water and laughed and laughed and laughed. If you’ve ever been high on Earth’s most trippy fungi, you know the kind of deep, belly laughter I’m talking about—laughter that seems to hook onto a certain cosmic nihilism and chuckle along with the entirety of the universe and all of existence—the ridiculousness of it ALL.
US was finally getting it and the intensity of her laughter was matching mine. “I have an idea!” She said, “Let’s play ‘Second Date Update’ with this!” She explained that there’s a podcast called Second Date Update in which someone calls into the podcast hosts because they went on a date and wanted a second date, and their date didn’t. The hosts then call the date to get their take. The date doesn’t know that the person they didn’t want to see again is listening in on another line. The hosts try to negotiate a second date outta the thing. It doesn’t work very often, apparently.
“I’ll be your Car Guy!” US offered.
She also played the part of the podcast hosts. “Okay, so tell me what happened on the first date.”
“Well, I flew to Turkey from California, and he was too busy selling a used car to see me…” I explained in summary.
US then took on his part, “The whole time we were talking, I was just being friendly. She’s the one who took it too far by flying out here. Can’t you see how crazy that is?? She should be the one to apologize to me,” placing an extra indignant emphasis on ‘me!'"
I was just being friendly! I was just being friendly!!!!
Hahahhahahahahahahahahahhahahaah !! [read with the appropriately high level of universal nihilism and absurdism]
The deep cosmic laughter erupted again from both of us. I worried I was going to swallow ocean water and drown from laughing so hard. We laughed and laughed and laughed, not just on behalf of Can 18, but every man who has ever led us on—every man on Earth who wasted a woman’s time. How could we think he wanted something serious??? How could we be so silly? So manipulative?!?!?!? So stupid?????
Hahahahhahahahahahahahahhahaha. The whole of the Universe laughed with us. Gloria Steinem, Simone de Beauvoir, and Mary Wollstonecraft joined in. Cleopatra and Queen Elizabeth I were there. Queen Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba, the fierce African warrior, took pity on us, laughing. We all laughed and laughed and we could Not. Stop. Laughing.
US! You healed me! Second Date Update healed me!
By this time, we were cackling so maniacally that our dude friends had to jump in the water to check on us. I tried to explain, but they couldn’t get it. They’d never had to try the futile and cosmically frustrating experience that is dating men.
But I didn’t need everyone to understand me. US got it. She got every last fiber of it. I was deeply seen and known in that moment. And in that moment, I belonged to all women of all time. It was beautiful.
I slithered primitively out of the water like a Paleozoic tetrapod, breathing air for the first time, across the hot sand and finding refuge on my towel, lying on my belly. I had a deep cry of grief and relief. Was I crazy for wanting to love and be loved? Why did things always seem to go wrong?
“Please, dear cosmic medicine, show me what I’m not seeing. What am I doing wrong?”
And that’s when I got the message about the people I let have access to me. “Can’t you see you’re doing this to yourself?” the medicine said. “You let them in.”
Ahh yes, that’s how these vampire folk tales go, isn’t it? The ghoul can’t enter your house unless you invite them in. It’s up to me to decide. I have to draw firmer lines in the sand.
How embarrassing to air out all my dating sob stories when everyone can see what I’m doing wrong, I thought. I’m sure my readers want to grab me by the shoulders and shake some sense into me. What will it take for me to change??
That evening, as we were sitting on the beach, watching the most epic moonrise of a giant, bright orange nearly-full moon come up over the edge of the Mediterranean Sea, a government employee in uniform approached us on the beach to let us know that we had to vacate our beach spot to let the loggerhead sea turtles’ eggs hatch. Turkey has a dirth of regulatory oversight—for example I’ve never once seen a smoke alarm—so this was shocking. Of course we wanted to protect the turtles! Read more about their new turtle patrol here.
The next morning we de-briefed over copious cups of coffee and I shared about my haircut revelation that I’m not letting men take care of me. “Actually, I’ve noticed that,” AE said. “You can be very short with me when I’m just trying to offer help or care.” He started to call me in on my snippiness and I gained some awareness about how I can often say things in a way that’s harsh and dismissive and it hurts people and pushes away soft, kind energy. I thanked him for bringing these things to my attention. We all need friends who can call us in and challenge our behavior—otherwise, we would never change.
One inside joke to come out of the beach trip was about jazz, which was funny because Antalyans LOVE JAZZ MUSIC. You can see from my stories that my time here has included so much saxophone, so much jazz. US shared that she doesn’t love jazz music and at one point on the beach, the electronic music mix started to include a rambunctious saxophone solo. “TOO JAZZY!” she exclaimed. We skipped the song and held onto the phrase. “Too jazzy” could be used to describe any situation with too much intensity of feeling. “Jazz stresses me out,” she said. Hahaha.
I told my friends about Yahya 28, the guy I met in the coffee shop who took me to lunch, and making him try out feeling a feeling, maybe for the first time in his life! “He did not ask me out again after that!” I relayed. They agreed that I did him a great service, but probably at the expense of ever seeing him again. “He’s going to need some time to process!” they concurred.
Kaş
Yahya 28 did ask me out again! Sorta…
A week and a half later, he messaged me on Instagram, on a Thursday, asking if I wanted to get together again. It was weird since I already told him I’d love to get a drink with him when he dropped me off to pick up my laptop. He asked what I was doing that weekend and I had plans to go to Kaş so I said I was free the following Wednesday. He said he wasn’t sure he’d be free but maybe. I kept things flirty, but I knew this wasn’t the energy I was looking for in a partner. I need someone who can plan in advance!
Monday came and went. Tuesday. Wednesday. I hadn’t saved the time for him at all but he texted me on Whatsapp at 5 pm on Wednesday asking if I wanted to hang out.
“Oh, I hadn’t thought we’d had a date,” I said. He sent me a very strange meme of nuns kicking someone on the ground, made stranger by the fact that he’s not from a Christian country.
He still views my Instagram stories, but that was the end of our communication.
A date is PLACE and TIME, y’all. Place and time! Ideally, 3-4 days in advance in the early dating stage.
Can 31 | Turkish | Early 40s | Bumble
The week after returning to Antalya, I matched with a Turkish man on Bumble who was vacationing in the town of Fethiye, about a 4-hour drive away. He held a PhD and worked as a researcher at a university in the UK in a liberal arts subject. We talked by phone and had an exceptionally dynamic conversation, so we made plans to meet up in the cute, coastal town of Kaş, between Fethiye and Antalya, for a weekend retreat, a place that would be new to both of us.
I felt nervous about this because we hadn’t met yet. So I sent him a long text. I said we could get a room together, but that I didn’t want any expectations that we would hit it off romantically. It seemed like we would be good friends even if we didn’t feel a spark. He thanked me for the text and said it was also what he was thinking.
He asked if I would book the room, and I almost did it, but then I thought I didn’t want to lead the emotional labor (initiating emotional boundaries) AND the logistical and financial labor. Also, I told him that due to being ghosted recently by two men, I didn’t trust men, and could he please book the room? He booked it and we shared the cost.
Later, when I shared the stories of Jean 1 and Can 18, he was shocked, especially on behalf of Turkish men. He shared his own story of recent heartbreak. Trying to find lasting love is a life journey for us all.
This is the part of the story where I share with you all one of my biggest assh*le moments of my life. I was complaining to Can 31 about how Turkish people often play videos on their phone without wearing headphones, and it’s been driving me crazy, especially at restaurants or on the bus or a flight. He said this equally drove him crazy, but was also so common throughout Türikiye.
At breakfast in the morning at the hotel, a young boy was watching a video loudly next to us. I turned to him and asked if he could put headphones on, and my tone was curt because by the time I said something, I was already quite annoyed. I also looked at his parents and made the hand motion for earphones in case they didn’t speak English. The boy turned around, and I realized he wasn’t young—he was a teenager, but something was wrong. He had a mental handicap of some kind. I felt terrible. I’m sure the parents struggled to take care of him and keep him calm and occupied. I still wished he could wear headphones while watching his phone, but I felt sad to add any stress or shame to his parents. Taking care of a disabled child, teen, or adult is a burden. Here, my sharp words were slicing and dicing again! Ouch!
Turning back to Can 31, I didn’t admit how terrible I felt inside about scolding this boy and his parents. Looking back, this is a moment of lost vulnerability where I could have created that elusive heart chakra balance.
Can 31 and I enjoyed a gorgeous beach day in which we rented lounge chairs and spent the day swimming, reading, lounging, and talking. I loved talking about intellectual ideas with him. He has an exceptionally intelligent mind and is knowledgeable on a wide breadth of topics. But he also commented on my sharp tone. “When you correct me sometimes,” he shared, “it feels like you’re trying to make me feel stupid or inferior.” Ahh shoot. That wasn’t my intention at all. It can be tough to correct something that comes out as an automatic reaction. I’m not intentionally yelling at disabled kids or non-native speakers. I must get to the root of why I have sharp automatic reactions to prevent them. Some therapy, coaching, meditation, and self-reflection are needed. Maybe another mushroom journey.
Can 31 and I played a connecting game called We’re Not Really Strangers that cultivated some romantic feelings. The cards have personal questions that each player takes turn answering.
The truth was, I brought the game in my luggage to Türkiye to play with Can 18. I thought it would break the ice of not seeing each other in person for so many months. But we never got the chance since he broke things off after seeing each other twice.
Additionally, I had purchased a bottle of French wine during my stopover in Paris on my way to Antalya. On Bumble dating app profiles, users can list up to 5 interests, which are displayed wtih cute icons. I remembed the Can 18 had listed wine as one of these top interests and that he had lived in France for a bit. I thought he would appreciate the bottle, especially as finding good wine in Türkiye can be tricky sometimes.
I opened this special bottle with Can 31 and felt sad about it.
Ultimately, I didn’t feel a strong enough sense of attraction to Can 31, and there were many moments in which I wished I could have shared the experience of a romantic beach weekend with Can 18.
I felt attracted to many of Can 31s qualities. He had a soft and sweet gentleness to him. He was very smart.
But ultimately, not a match. Romantic spark is elusive, rare, and valuable.
It was nice to pretend to be a couple on vacation for a weekend. Instead of staying in a hostel bunk bed, I got to stay in a nice place with an epic breakfast and pool. Normally, when I solo travel, I get the most economical option. With another person to split the cost, nicer things are possible. So, the weekend was a success even though it didn’t get me closer to meeting my soul mate.
Can 31 was surprisingly good at reading me. At one point, we were giving each other mutual challenges to try in the week ahead, and he eerily said, “I think you’re not great at receiving care. For one day next week, try receiving instead of giving.” The universe seems to bring synchronicities and coincidences when we’re on the right track, I believe. How did he pick up on this thing I’d just had a revelation about?? I told him my male hairdresser story.
Back in Antalya
One of the most fun things about living in Antalya is the regular electronic dance shows, often set on the edge of the cliff overlooking the sea. The views in Antalaya, I’m telling you! The views! 🤌🏻
One night, I went to see the saxophone player Ash perform. He plays saxophone and piano over the top of electronic dance beats. I arrived early, found a seat on a stone ledge at the back of the venue, bought a Coke Zero, and pulled out my Kindle to do some reading while I waited for his set. After an hour, a young Turkish man asked if he could sit next to me. Since I didn’t own the stone ledge, I was confused but nodded and went back to reading my book. After 15 minutes of sitting there, he turned to me and said, “So, how are you?” but before I could respond, he had hopped off the ledge and walked away! Cold feet mid-question!?
Here’s Ash performing in his home country of Egypt. It was a fun show!
That Friday night I went out with AE and BG from the turtle trip, and two new friends, VS and ZY, to see some German and Turkish DJs. We pre-gamed at ZY’s apartment. While ZY was making cocktails for all of us in his kitchen, we exchanged pleasantries, getting to know each other a bit. ZY was tall, good-looking, and charming in a way that felt like almost too much. He was from Syria but had been living in Antalya for a long time. “You’re American? I had an American girlfriend once!”
He told me the story of how he had dated this Florida woman when they were in their 20s, and she fell head over heels for him, and he wasn’t as into her. “I felt bad because I try my hardest not to waste women’s time. I know how important it is for them, with their biological clock that men don’t have. If they want kids, it’s so important to let them go.”
“Wow! I have never heard a man say that out loud.” I told him. It healed the part of me that felt harmed by Jean 1’s lack of care for my biological clock.
To be fair, he had the swagger of a man who wastes women’s time quite often, but it still felt good to hear him say it.
Can 18 again | Turkish | Early 40s | Bumble
Whyyyyyyyy did I do this to myself??? 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
Repeat after me: if someone has treated you poorly, and they haven’t done any inner work to reflect on why something went wrong, nothing will change.
They say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
I AM AN INSANE PERSON. I want off the crazy town rollercoaster!
That weekend, probably from wishing he’d been on the trip to Kaş romantic weekend with me, I texted Can 18 something casual and neutral, and he responded. It had been two months since he broke things off with me. He asked me to coffee and I felt high at the prospect of seeing him again.
My friend AS, who is someone with avoidant attachment, married to someone with even more avoidant attachment, told me that if you want to try this again with him, don’t bring up any feelings in this meeting. Keep it light. You’ll have to ease him into deeper talks. That sounded good to me!
Over coffee, I tried to keep things light. We caught up about what we’d been up to over the summer. But eventually it couldn’t be avoided—we had to talk about where things had left off between us. He initiated the conversation. I asked if he had read my blog. I knew he had read my blog in the past and I figured he might have read Part 5 about ghosting me when I arrived in Antalya—I wanted to address it head-on just in case. He said he hadn’t read it, but he brought up so many things I talked about in it, like feeling hurt that I hadn’t told him I would be dating other men in France, that I thought maybe he’d read it and just didn’t want to tell me.
When I left the table to use the bathroom, he said, “I’m going to read your blog now.” “No, no,” I said. “It’s a vulnerable piece. I’d prefer if I could just tell you everything that’s in it and we could talk about it.” He agreed and put down his phone where he’d started to search for it.
While in the bathroom, I thought about what the major theme of my blog was and how to take accountability rather than blame. I came back to our table, sat down across from him, and said, “The blog is mostly about how hurt I felt when I arrived because I was excited about you and you weren’t excited about me back. I’m sorry if I arrived with a level of excitement and anticipation that felt like too much for you. I can understand if that felt overwhelming, and I’m sorry.”
This seemed to soften something in him. I saw him relax. “It wasn’t that I wasn’t excited about you…” He said, but trailed off.
“Would you like me to use specific examples of how I felt you were pushing me away?” He said yes.
I shared an example. “In the morning, when I woke up next to you, you didn’t cuddle with me. I’ve learned, throughout my experience dating men, that this is a red flag that the man would then have some issues with closeness. It was hard for me because it was your house, not mine, and in that moment, I didn’t feel welcome to be there.”
He nodded, thinking it over. “I can understand that, and I’m sorry,” he said. I felt he genuinely meant it. It felt so good to hear him take accountability and hold space for how he hurt me. So, so, so good.
We continued to talk about a few specific things, and it was a productive conversation, though intense. Too jazzy! I felt surprised that he was the one driving it. I wasn’t pushing the emotional stuff.
I tried to keep the focus on my feelings and not accuse him of anything. I worked hard to own my side.
After a while he asked if I wanted to go to…yes, none other than a jazz show his friend was playing in. Unlike my friend US, I happen to love jazz (and emotional intensity), so that sounded great to me! He drove us to the spot that was just a few blocks from my apartment.
This evening felt so perfect and magical. Everything was just right. Can 18 bought us beers and we sat on big cushions watching the jazz band, who were so good! The lawn looked like a stereotypical American fraternity house lawn, but more grown-up. In front of a great wooden multi-story building, there were different levels of wooden platforms with different types of seats, chairs, and cushions everywhere. People were sprawled out, enjoying the company of their friends over beers and sparkling water. In Türkiye, they have these tiny green bottles of sparkling mineral water that are so cute. I drink 1-2 every evening and you can find them in every corner store on every block. It was hot and humid, creating a coziness. The energy was a nice buzz. Some people were testing out walking on a slack line set up between two poles. Children ran around giggling and playing.
I saw that some of my friends from the coworking community were there and one of them conspiratorily helped me find a secret set of upstairs bathrooms when we found the downstairs ones full. Can 18 introduced me to his friend, the trumpet player, and we had a fun conversation. Can 18 and I shared a cigarette, something I haven’t done since my 20s. He found a soccer ball and we kicked it around for a bit, playing keep away, while flirting with each other.
“I missed you,” he shared, which melted me. I missed him so much.
“I missed you, too.”
We sat watching the rest of the set, holding hands. I felt so happy and content. I thought about whether he was someone I would want to grow old with. I liked that he was a person of integrity. He cared deeply about his surgical patients and their outcomes. Doing the right thing was important to him. Our sense of humor seemed to be matched, and it was easy and fun to talk with him. I felt so high that I momentarily forgot about the misstep in May—maybe he felt overwhelmed and needed some time. That was it.
He told me he appreciated how kind and soft I was regarding his English language abilities. So interested that Can 30 told me the opposite! What was this about? A power dynamic, maybe? I really saw Can 18 with heart eyes, not unlike the cute emoji, my favorite. 😍 Did that make me more gentle…or was I subdued with him, part of my starry-eyed frozen one-itis-ness—not challenging him or not being my full self? Or, is this merely part of that elusive romantic spark? We simply clicked better because we’re a romantic match. What do you think, reader?
After the band finished playing, we walked to my apartment. We talked about what happened when I arrived in Antalya and how I had wanted a much warmer greeting. He shared that his fear of it not working out got the better of him. “But you could have created any outcome with your actions,” I told him. “You could have decided you wanted it to work out and then made that happen.” I’m not sure I convinced him of his agency on this, but he said, “We get learned helplessness here in Türkiye.” That, I had noticed and I attributed it to their current political climate. Türkiye has had the same autocratic leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in power since 2003. For someone like Can 18, this means his entire adult life without the true democracy that his country enjoyed since Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s cultural revolution that began in 1922. I could see how Turkish men, especially the ones my age, would feel helpless politically, and how that could spill over into other areas of life.
Many of us foreigners in Antalya would comment on Turkish people’s lack of trying, in general. “They’re always doing the bare minimum,” I’d heard others comment. I regularly observed Turkish people throwing their trash on the ground around town, which broke my heart. Don’t they see this as their city? Don’t they feel pride in keeping it beautiful?
There was a cultural chasm between me and Can 18 that included not just the learned helplessness, but also attitudes about women and appropriate behavior. I could tell that he judged me for dating many men, even if he was trying to overcome his conservative conditioning. He wasn’t the most judgmental person from a Muslim country—in fact, I was mostly impressed with his progressive views—but the conditioning had deep roots. It would be hard to bridge the chasm. Part of the challenge of travel dating. This was something Can 18 seemed to be acutely more aware of than I was. “Why don’t you just date an American guy?” he implored me more than once since I’d met him, “Wouldn’t that be easier?”
At my apartment, we made out passionately, gazed into each other’s eyes, and shared how much we had missed each other. After having felt so sad about the way things had gone, the high I felt at this reconciliation was unparalleled.
He said he wanted to be together again, and he was serious about us. “If I start to act weird, please call me out on it,” he said. Okay, we would try again. I told him I wanted that.
And yet, as nearly anyone on Earth with some dating experience could have predicted, it wasn’t meant to be.
We talked by phone on Tuesday evening, and he was back to being weird in his way—avoidant—and I was back to being weird in my way—frozen. “When do I see you again?” “Oh, I’m not sure because this weekend I have a work event one evening.” This wasn’t what I wanted at all.
What did I want? I wanted to see him more than 1 day a week and more than whenever he felt in the mood. I wanted advanced plans. I wanted to come over to his place for the night, even if we didn’t do anything significant, and even if we were both busy. Just to be around each other.
I left the conversation feeling ill at ease.
The next morning, I woke up, went for a long run, and then did my morning website traffic check. I noticed an IP address from Antalya had read the most recent dating blogs, the Summary of Year 1 and Part 5. I knew it was him because the time stamp was right after we talked by phone.
Shoot. I felt sick to my stomach. “I don’t have to overcompensate,” I thought. “I can just let him have the reaction he’s going to have.” Balance.
I waited for him to reach out. He didn’t text me that day. The next day, he texted:
“I just read the blog
And I get why you didn’t let me read it
I’m sorry being such a waste of time for you, but I’ll be ending with this last message. It’s funny being the bad guy, while there’s a bunch of ghosting right away or coming up with indecent proposals. Wish you a good life.”
I sent a very thoughtful, apologetic text back, apologizing for any bitterness that came across in my writing, explaining that I wrote it from a place of hurt and shame, and it was more a reflection of the emotions I was processing than anything about him.
He wouldn’t have it.
I asked if we could talk. No.
I told him this conflict could be a starting point to deepen our connection. It didn’t have to end things. Still no.
“We’ve a completely different understanding of things,” he said. “I’ve made up my mind and am clear about it.”
I said I would leave him alone, but then sent one final text the next week asking if he could clarify more about what exactly in the blog bothered him. He didn’t respond.
Double heartbreak.
I’ve felt mostly shocked and frozen since this happened, and only had 1 short cry. There’s a deluge coming, I can feel it.
I debriefed the incident with my mom and my friends and here’s what folks had to say:
Mom: “A bit immature emotionally, but still, heartbreaking for both of you.
I’ve been watching clips of a couples therapy show on TikTok and right away you see the couples have to be open to receiving criticism.
I just know that you both really care about each other and that’s why this is so difficult. You know it was hard for him to hear that because he cares.”
She was sad to hear it was over.
“[Sometimes] care is not enough.” I texted her back. “Good point!” she said.
I love my mom. She’s the best. She truly got every piece of nuance and held space for all of it. Because both of my parents have had so much therapy, I’m not able to date anyone who doesn’t do their emotional healing work—which has it’s pluses and negatives!
JO: I text her “Ummm the surgeon and I reconnected on Sunday and he apologized and said he wanted to date again and then he read my blog about him and was like nm I hate you byeeee”.
She said, “OMG lol dying." “Well I guess it’s really over now!”
Previously, she had given me strict instructions not to date a surgeon. “I dated a surgeon…they are so wrong in the head” then clarifying “I mean I GUESS we need them. a few.”
“I would let him operate on me!!” I told her. “I trust him to fix a broken wrist.” This is 100% true! I would request him and trust him with my life if I needed surgery!
JO wasn’t the only one who had views like this about surgeons. My friend JF, a nurse, told me that surgeons where she works struggle with their soft skills or “bedside manner”. “They have to spend all of this time learning this very specific detailed skill, that they don’t have time to develop the other stuff. I can see it’s hard for them.”
Studies confirm what we can generally intuit to be true—surgeons are high in sociopathic traits. A 2017 paper published in the Journal Education for Health, titled Personality Traits Predict a Medical Student Preference to Pursue a Career in Surgery, showed that in a sample of 335 medical students, “the prevalence of students aspiring to a surgical career was 23.6%. They exhibited higher PPI-R total score, self-centered impulsivity (SCI) factor score, Machiavellian egocentricity, social influence, and fearlessness content scale scores. Logistic regression showed that SCI score was a significant predictor for the likelihood of expressing interest toward a surgical career. Our findings expand previous research on the usefulness of the nonclinical use of psychopathic personality traits to investigate career choice.”
I don’t think Can 18 is a psychopath or sociopath—far from it actually! I found him to be especially sensitive with a big heart. But I can see how the profession requires a certain exacting quality that might attract certain types of people and then also promote or develop specific qualities that support the practice of surgery, which requires an extraordinary attention to detail and perfectionism. The teensiest, tiniest mistake could change the surgical outcome by so much! Stakes are very high.
I sincerely hope that Can 18 finds someone, maybe in a similar profession, with whom he can be his full self and be loved and accepted as-is. Maybe a fellow surgeon?! Or some other detail-oriented or obsessively workaholic profession.
EL: “Oh wow, the roller coaster continues.” “I’m sorry about the men.”
I explained that I was sad that I hurt him. “It does suck to hurt feelings,” she empathized.
AS: I told her I guess he hadn’t read the blog in advance of meeting me after all, and shared his texts. “Ouch, blogs are a risk” she said.
I shared this quote with her:
And she said, “Yes, and if I run this through the filter of [my own avoidant partner], if I would have blogged about the push pull stuff [in the beginning], he would have been long gone. The shame is real stuff and protectors don’t play.”
In Internal Family Systems therapy, “protectors” are the parts of us that push others away in an attempt to keep the “exiles” or softer, hurt parts, safe.
“I don’t know when you can suss out a potential partners ability to recognize their system and be willing to work on it. [My husband] was willing to work on his own system.”
“Close this loop. It is his protectors that are communicating in fact that’s probably all you’ve really been communicating with.”
In IFS, we try to get to a place where our “Self energy” is what’s guiding us and interacting with others. I blogged about how this IFS framework changed my life in 2023 here.
Protectors are not the real us—they’re masks or shells. Was I just meeting his protectors and never his “Self”??
There were times when he let his guard down with me and shared vulnerable truths. I’ll bet the part of him that let his soft parts be seen is feeling extremely betrayed by me, I thought. Like I had him let his guard down only to stab him in the heart. I felt sorry that I had done this to him.
The blog was so much more about processing my own experience and healing. But the thing is, the reasons people push us away or shut down in relationships, is because the wounds are really, really painful. There is a hurting inner child in there and it’s not that cool to vilify someone’s hurting inner child.
I don’t know if I should have not written it, taken it down, or stayed strong in the truth of what I wrote. It was my truth in that moment, even if I’ve processed it more fully now and would say things differently.
I think I need to have a partner with some emotional flexibility, not one who shuts down with any new intensity. I told him he had every right to feel angry with me, and I would hold space and make it right. In relationships, that’s all we can do.
Rupture, repair. Rupture, repair. Rupture, repair. Until the end of our days.
I guess we wouldn’t be able to grow old together because we would never be able to lay this foundation. Couples need to have a meta-understanding of themselves. We have to create systems and rules on how to communicate, how to fight, and how to heal and come together again. Shutting down and turning away prevents this.
US: “I didn’t read that part in detail so I’m not sure how offended he would be. But since he is a Turkish man, I can imagine he is offended…”
Remember, she just divorced a Turkish man. She would know. We discussed how difficult it is to be in a relationship with Turkish men because they seem to not be doing their emotional healing work. It’s a pity because they’re really so warm and endearing. They also do that patriarchal thing where they make women feel taken care of: open doors, helping put on jackets, paying for things, etc. With all our equality in the West, these small things are gone, and they feel really nice.
“It will be difficult to find what you are looking for in Turkey, I think.”
Finally, I ran the whole thing by my guy friend, ET, who will be celebrating 10 years with his partner next year.
I shared that Can 18 may have been hurt that I psychoanalyzed him without his consent, running his actions through attachment theory.
“I guess I don’t see a huge difference between naming what happened and putting it in terms of attachment style? Like whether you are contextualizing it in that framework or not, he still withdrew when things were ramping up.”
I appreciated him saying this.
I told ET that I had apologized and wished that Can 18 could have simply said, “I’m sorry my actions were so painful.”
He said, “Yeah it is hard to be on the receiving end of that kind of thing. It’s unfortunate that he was upset but it’s not some insurmountable thing.”
“I tried that message,” I said. “I was like, this doesn’t have to be the end. We can just talk about it.”
“That’s really unfortunate. How are you doing after all that?”
Ahhhh to be cared for by a man! ET is proof that there are conscientious, kind, caring men out there doing the emotional healing work and doing their best to counteract the harms of the patriarchy. So grateful for this friend and the excellent space he held.
Tallies
I forgot to add tallies to tend of Part 5, so I’m bringing the two guys I dated in that part, Can 23 and Can 24, over to these tallies. This does not include Can 18, who I met way back in Part 2. It’s just new guys—new dates!
Nationalities of the men I went on IRL (In Real Life) dates with:
Turkish - IIII
Persian (Iranian) - I
British - I
Hair color of the men I went on IRL dates with (to establish whether I have a “type”):
Gray -
Med-Dark Brown - III
Brown/Red - 0
Black - III
Blonde or Light Brown - 0
Red - 0
Bald - 0
Did we kiss?
Yes - II
No - IIII
How I connected with the men I went on IRL dates:
The League app - 0
Bumble app - IIII
In the wild (out in real life) - II
Hinge app - 0
OKCupid app - 0
Average age:
38.3 (I’m 40, for reference)
Age range = 30-44
Height (I’m 5’10” or 178cm)
A lot taller than me - 0
A bit taller than me - III
Same height as me - III
A bit shorter than me -
Quite a bit shorter - 0
Date asked me questions about myself while on the date:
Asked questions - IIII I
Didn’t ask questions - I
Only Mr. Long Island Iced Tea didn’t ask questions! I got a great group this go-around!
Date paid for the date:
Paid - IIII I
We split it - I
I Paid - 0
No costs - N/A
To learn more about why men paying for dates is important to, read about that in Part I.
