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Love Coaching Social Experiment - watch Love Coach Rinatta Paries coach Jodi, a single, bright, beautiful, late-thirty-something lady, to help her attract the man of her dreams – reality-tv style, right in front of your eyes and ears. Coaching Session #8 - “The hole and what to do about it.”

Read the full introduction to this social experiment, follow the links from there to previous coaching sessions and then back to this post.

Jodi was on vacation for a week and when she came back she put up a number of posts that I will address in this coaching session.

Read Jodi’s first post in this series about what happened on her vacation regarding connecting with her kids, and then come back here to read my coaching to her.

Jodi said: “My sons and I had some great quality time. I tried to get them to open up to me about their feelings about our family situation, past and present. They don’t seem to know life any different and are accepting. I am finding it difficult to open up but it is not surprising. I am doing the best I can.”

Love Coach Rinatta says: Jodi, kids can’t articulate deep emotional experiences, however, you bet they were affected by what happened in your family. With children, emotional healing is often a one-way street. They may not know that anything was different, but if you acknowledge the pain they felt at the time, if you apologize for it, it will make a difference for them. You just have to trust that you are making an emotional difference.

More importantly, you have to help them heal from being abandoned by you. And you do that by being emotionally present for them, even if they find it weird and uncomfortable and silly. You and I have already talked about how to do that. If you need to, you can listen to our conversation again to remind yourself how to connect with them.

Doing the best you can with your kids is not good enough here. What you do with your children emotionally and whether you help them heal from the divorce, your walking away from them and your breaking their trust, will affect them for the rest of their lives and will affect their future families and children . You owe them and yourself to learn how to connect with them and heal yourself.

Here is one more resource to help you. Get Giving the Love that Heals: A Guide for Parents, by Harville Hendrix.

Read Jodi’s second post in this series on what she has been hiding inside of herself, and then come back here to read my coaching to her.

In her post Jodi said: It is a feeling that engulfs me, like it is part of my being…I have had this “aloneness” companion for as long as I can remember. No matter what, it is just me…Coach Rinatta, does this sound familiar or make sense? Does my aloneness show through to others somehow making me impossible to connect with? If I let my aloneness consume me, I will be depressed and that terrifies me. No one likes a depressed person.Love Coach Rinatta says: Jodi, the aloneness you speak of is very deep and painful, and, sadly, is very common.

Where does it come from? An existential or a religious answer could be that the aloneness is our sense of being separated from God. A psychological answer is that the aloneness comes from not being connected to others in a deep and meaningful way. Both are right.

Here is one more take on the aloneness, one that I find to be both professionally and personally powerful. The deep aloneness comes from not being enveloped in love and nurturing as a small child. After all, it is only this generation of parents, those of us who have young children, that finally understands that children need our love and connection to them above all else. Our parents’ generation and the previous generations did not see that children needed to be loved and connected with, not just taken care of.

So the aloneness in you and in most of us comes from not getting enough love and connection when we were little. That affects us for the rest of our lives – we walk around with a big hole in our gut. For you the issue is compounded by the fact that both of your parents were highly untrustworthy.

And I think this is the ultimate root of what has driven all of your relationship issues. You are alone and no one can be trusted, so you settle for just spending time with people, knowing that there will never really be anything deep anyway.

You asked if your aloneness shows through to others, making you impossible to connect with, and my answer is yes. Having interacted with you personally, I can say you have a wall. So not only does your aloneness show through, but your lack of trust also shows through. You just don’t let people in, which is why unavailable men are attracted to you. With you there is no chance of having to really connect, as you won’t let them in anyway.

And finally, you said you are afraid of your aloneness consuming you. This is also very common. Many singles feel deeply alone, as you do, and try to run from that aloneness into the arms of other people. Most people are so terrified of that aloneness that they will take any relationship, no matter how dysfunctional, rather than face being alone.

Sadly, though, no other person will save you or anyone else from that feeling of aloneness, because the feeling is about not being in a relationship. Ok, let me say this again: The feeling of aloneness you feel has nothing to do with you not being in a relationship. The feeling comes from your childhood, comes from not being lovingly connected to your parents. And then it is made worse by your general inability to connect with anyone on a deep and meaningful level.

I hope you are ready, because here comes the worst part. The only way to stop having that consuming feeling of aloneness mixed with lack of trust is to learn to make it go away, to sooth it, all by yourself. In other words, you have to heal the hole inside of you. You have to feel the aloneness, face it, and learn how to heal it. Then you have to feel the mistrust, face it and learn how to heal it. Only then you will be able to start connecting with people.

And yes, of course you will be depressed – or, rather, sad – as you feel the depth of your aloneness and mistrust. However, wouldn’t you rather feel sad for a while rather than always feeling frustrated from the lack of a partner and always ending up alone?

Besides, I am here with you. So you really are not alone. I am here to support you on your journey, and you can count on me.

Before I go into how exactly to face and heal your feelings of aloneness and mistrust, I need to hear from you, to see how much you identify with my words and what they bring up for you. Then I think we will have to have a phone coaching session to teach you how to go into your emotions and learn to heal them. (update - we did have a phone coaching session. See bottom of this post for the audio of our coaching session.)

Jodi also put up a third post in the series, this one about learning how to see untrustworthy people. Read her post and then come back here to read my coaching to her.

Jodi said in that post: “I still seem to find and attract men with limited or no self control.”

Love Coach Rinatta says: Jodi, what you said at the end of your post about self-control is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping you would see by looking back at Ron.

Let’s address the thing at the top of your mind first. You said that every time you go out with a guy you wonder if he is capable of the kind of thing that Ron did. Here is how you would know.

You have to know that everyone is out of control in their life somewhere. Even the people who seem to be control freaks are out of control about how much control they need to have. What you have to get to know about people is where they are out of control and how you are likely be affected by it if you participate in their life.

For example, the thing with Ron about being addicted to TV seems innocent enough, until you realize that what you have is a person with an addiction. Anyone with any kind of addiction is out of control with their impulses and is consumed by the addiction, and because of that, will affect your life strongly in a negative way.

Now how could his TV addiction affect you in a negative way, you may ask. The thing with addicts is that they can be addicted to anything and usually have more that one addiction at a time. This is why nothing ever bothered Ron, nor could he pay enough attention to you to compliment you or comment on you. He was preoccupied with his addictions, whatever they were.

I think what I will do for you and all the singles out there is write an article on how to read people and understand their control/out-of-control issues. Watch for it in the next few days.

Once you understand people through the “what’s out of control in their life” lens, you will find it a lot easier to identify and avoid people like Ron. And that will help you with your trust issues.

In Jodi’s fourth post (ok, I know that’s a lot of posts, but sometimes coaching is like that - there is a lot of work to be done), she talks about what she is doing on the latest dating site she is trying out. Read her post and then come back here to read my coaching to her.

Jodi says: “This emptiness in my personal life is getting to me today.”

Love Coach Rinatta says: My dear Jodi, I am sorry you feel alone and I am sorry you are hurting. Please stop the dating site for a bit while we do this work. You are getting to a place where you need to feel the emptiness and deal with it, not try to stuff it with yet another, or many, unavailable guys. Instead, be with the emptiness just for a little while and see what it has to tell you, what it has to teach you, what it wants from you. And know I am here when you need me.

As I was writing this to Jodi, she emailed me for coaching. Below is our email exchange:

Jodi: I would like to add something to the mix. I went and saw Dustin last night. He is the guy I didn’t want to date because he is unavailable due to his goals in life are to move to Hollywood and become an actor but keeping his roots planted here. He lives about an hour away from me now anyway. I had met him in the real world and we get along well. I liked his character traits a lot more than Doug’s. I have not slept with Dustin and it is easier to let go and be “friends” because of that. I have not seen him since last October but talk to him and we always seem to connect at different levels. We have great conversation.

Last night I had the most fabulous time. He has the qualities I am looking for in a man; I know, I feel it. The fact that he is not settled is a huge deal for me but I have not met someone in a long time that I had not had mammoth issues with his ex wife or life in general. I know he genuinely cares for me; he actually wants to make me happy instead of furthering himself along using me as his guide. Knowing how attached I get to guys that can’t be there for me, how do I deal with this situation?

Coach Rinatta: As far as what do you do with him, well, is he actually moving away? And if cares about you that much and wants to date you, how come he has not seen you in all these months - was that you saying no?

Jodi: He is planning on being in LA and home. Back and forth. He does have a full plate and he tends to drive by seeing if I am available to go out on the spur of the moment. I typically blow him off but last night we were both in the same place at the same time.

Coach Rinatta: he sounds just like another one of those guys - unavailable. Can you pinpoint what feels different about him?

Jodi: His character is genuine. He comes from a close family. He is not drooling all over me; he enjoys my company. He doesn’t want to hurry. I feel he is trustworthy. Some controversial topics of conversation come up and I like his answers; shows our values are in line. He has a lot of good friends. He asks about my life and listens when I answer (although of course, I don’t reveal too much at this point).

Coach Rinatta: Are you feeling really lonely? Is the aloneness getting to you? Because no matter how wonderful this guy is, he is still very much unavailable, right? I mean, how would you have a relationship with him, really?

Jodi: Yes. I am feeling lonely and yes I will give up the dating site. It is not working right now anyway. I am not open and I will repeat the cycle in Internet dating, it is inevitable.

I don’t think that Dustin and I could have a real relationship due to distance and time constraints no matter how nice of a guy he is. I remember when I was dating him and Doug, I couldn’t decide between them because both were not available for a relationship. Neither am I, I guess. I am looking for someone else to fill my holes. I am disconnected and incomplete. I probably would not be a fulfilling partner and I may be cheating someone else out of what they deserve. I will look to my higher power and use the meditation to attempt to fill my void. Change is hard.

Do you think that when the time is right and the right person comes along that I won’t be asking all these questions?

Coach Rinatta: I think when the time is right, more importantly, when you have healed your “holes”, you will find a wonderful man to love. It’s not that far away. Just a few steps, really. We now know what we are dealing with, where before it was just some vague issues. Now I know exactly how you can get to healing yourself. Have faith, this will get better.

Do you want the same help and coaching Jodi is receiving, so that you can find your way out of being single and into a healthy relationship? You can get help from me, privately, by hiring me as your love coach. Contact me to tell me about your situation, and we will go from there. Or go directly to the coaching page.

Love Coach Coaching on Intimacy: Listen to me coach Jodi on how to fill the hole inside herself, meaning heal the loneliness she always feels and how to begin to heal her mistrust of people. Length of audio – 25 minutes.

From the Heart,