Category: Dating Guides

Are You Ready for a New Relationship? A Healing Checklist for Women

Wanting a new relationship after heartbreak, disappointment, or emotional exhaustion is completely natural. At the same time, many women rush into dating again without fully understanding whether they are emotionally ready. Being ready for a new relationship is not about having everything figured out or being completely fearless. It is about self-awareness, emotional healing, and the ability to show up with clarity rather than unresolved pain.

This article is written for women who want to approach their next relationship from a healthier place. Instead of guessing or relying on hope alone, this healing checklist will help you honestly assess your emotional readiness and guide you toward stronger, more fulfilling connections.

You Are No Longer Trying to Replace Someone From the Past

One of the first signs of readiness is that you are not dating to fill a void or replace a specific person. If you feel the urge to recreate a past relationship or prove something to an ex, there may still be unfinished emotional business.

When you are ready, you date because you want to share your life, not because you are trying to escape loneliness or validate your worth.

You Have Processed, Not Suppressed, Past Emotions

Emotional readiness requires that you have acknowledged your past pain rather than pushed it away. This does not mean you never think about past relationships. It means those memories no longer carry overwhelming emotional charge.

You can reflect on what happened, recognize lessons learned, and talk about it calmly without being consumed by anger, sadness, or resentment.

You Trust Yourself More Than You Fear Being Hurt

After emotional pain, many women struggle with self-doubt. You may question your ability to choose well or protect yourself. Readiness shows up when self-trust begins to outweigh fear.

You know that even if a relationship does not work out, you can handle it. You trust your ability to notice red flags, set boundaries, and walk away if needed.

You Feel Comfortable Being Alone

Being comfortable alone is one of the strongest indicators of emotional readiness. You enjoy your own company and do not rely on a relationship to feel complete or worthy.

When you are okay being alone, you are less likely to tolerate unhealthy behavior or stay in relationships that do not meet your needs.

You Have Clear Emotional and Relationship Standards

Readiness involves knowing what you want and what you will not accept. You have reflected on your values, emotional needs, and boundaries.

Instead of being guided solely by chemistry or potential, you pay attention to consistency, communication, and emotional availability. Standards help you choose intentionally rather than emotionally.

You Can Communicate Your Needs Without Guilt

If you can express your needs, expectations, and boundaries without feeling ashamed or afraid, it is a strong sign of healing. Emotional readiness means you no longer believe that having needs makes you difficult or unlovable.

You understand that healthy relationships require honest communication and mutual respect.

You Are Not Carrying Anger Into New Connections

Lingering anger or resentment toward past partners can quietly affect new relationships. Readiness shows up when you no longer project past pain onto new people.

You may still remember what hurt you, but it no longer defines how you interpret someone else’s actions.

You Feel Curious About Love, Not Guarded or Cynical

After emotional wounds, it is common to feel closed off or cynical about love. Emotional readiness feels different. It feels curious, open, and grounded.

You are cautious without being closed. You are hopeful without being naive. This balanced mindset allows connection to grow naturally.

You Have a Strong Relationship With Yourself

Being ready for a relationship starts with the relationship you have with yourself. You prioritize self-care, emotional regulation, and self-respect.

You listen to your emotions, honor your limits, and treat yourself with compassion. A strong inner relationship sets the tone for healthy romantic ones.

You Are Willing to Go Slowly and Observe

Readiness does not mean rushing into emotional intimacy. It means allowing connection to develop over time.

You feel comfortable pacing a relationship, observing behavior, and letting trust build gradually. You no longer feel pressured to commit quickly out of fear of losing someone.

You Are Choosing From Wholeness, Not Need

Perhaps the most important sign of readiness is that you are choosing from a place of wholeness. You are not looking for someone to fix you, save you, or complete you.

You are open to partnership, not dependence. This creates the foundation for a balanced and emotionally healthy relationship.

Why This Healing Checklist Matters

Dating without emotional readiness often leads to repeated patterns, disappointment, and emotional exhaustion. This checklist is not meant to judge or pressure you. It is meant to help you pause, reflect, and choose intentionally.

If you notice areas that still need healing, that is not failure. It is information. Healing is a process, not a destination.

How to Move Forward If You Are Not Fully Ready

If some of these points feel challenging, consider focusing on healing before actively dating. This might involve therapy, journaling, personal development work, or simply giving yourself time and space.

Each step you take toward healing strengthens your emotional foundation and prepares you for a healthier relationship in the future.

You Deserve a Love That Meets You Where You Are

Being ready for a new relationship is about honoring yourself and your emotional journey. When you enter dating from a place of awareness and self-respect, you increase the chances of creating a connection built on trust, mutual care, and emotional safety.

Take your time. Trust your process. When you are ready, love will feel less like a risk and more like a natural extension of the life you have already built.

Signs You’re Still Holding Onto Old Emotional Wounds

Emotional wounds do not always announce themselves loudly. For many women, unresolved pain from past relationships quietly shapes how they think, feel, and behave in dating without them realizing it. You may believe you have moved on, especially if the relationship ended long ago, yet certain emotions, reactions, or patterns keep resurfacing.

Holding onto old emotional wounds does not mean you are weak or broken. It means something inside you has not yet felt fully seen, processed, or healed. Understanding the signs is the first and most important step toward emotional freedom and healthier relationships.

This article is written for women who want clarity, self-awareness, and deeper emotional healing before or during their dating journey.

You Feel Triggered More Easily in Romantic Situations

One of the clearest signs of unresolved emotional wounds is emotional reactivity. You may notice that small things in dating feel disproportionately painful or overwhelming. A delayed text, a change in tone, or perceived distance can trigger anxiety, sadness, or anger.

These reactions are often connected to past experiences of abandonment, rejection, or emotional neglect. Your nervous system responds as if the old pain is happening again, even when the present situation does not fully justify the intensity of your feelings.

You Struggle to Fully Trust New Partners

If trusting someone feels unsafe no matter how kind or consistent they are, it may be a sign that old wounds are still influencing you. You may constantly look for signs of betrayal, question intentions, or expect disappointment.

This lack of trust is not always about the person you are dating. It is often about protecting yourself from reliving past hurt. While caution can be healthy, constant suspicion can prevent genuine intimacy from developing.

You Keep Attracting or Choosing Emotionally Unavailable People

Repeating the same dating patterns is a powerful indicator of unresolved emotional wounds. If you consistently find yourself drawn to emotionally unavailable, inconsistent, or distant partners, there may be an underlying emotional familiarity at play.

The subconscious mind is drawn to what feels familiar, even when it is painful. Old wounds can create attraction to dynamics that mirror past emotional experiences, keeping you stuck in a cycle of unmet needs.

You Fear Abandonment or Rejection Deeply

A heightened fear of abandonment is a common sign of unhealed emotional pain. You may worry excessively about being left, replaced, or forgotten. This fear can lead to people-pleasing, over-giving, or staying in relationships that no longer serve you.

Instead of expressing your needs openly, you may suppress them to avoid conflict or rejection. Over time, this creates emotional exhaustion and resentment.

You Have Difficulty Being Vulnerable

Past emotional wounds can make vulnerability feel dangerous. You may keep emotional walls up, avoid deep conversations, or struggle to express your true feelings. While independence can be healthy, emotional withdrawal often signals self-protection rather than strength.

When vulnerability feels unsafe, intimacy becomes limited. Healing allows you to open up gradually without losing your sense of security.

You Overanalyze and Second-Guess Yourself Constantly

If you frequently doubt your judgment, emotions, or decisions in dating, it may be rooted in past experiences where your feelings were dismissed or invalidated. Gaslighting, emotional manipulation, or repeated disappointment can weaken self-trust.

This can lead to overthinking every interaction, seeking reassurance, or relying heavily on others’ opinions. Rebuilding self-trust is a key part of emotional healing.

You Carry Lingering Anger, Resentment, or Guilt

Unresolved emotional wounds often show up as lingering emotions toward past partners or situations. You may feel anger about how you were treated, guilt about what you tolerated, or regret about choices you made.

These emotions do not disappear simply because time passes. When they remain unprocessed, they can affect your mood, self-esteem, and ability to move forward emotionally.

You Compare New Relationships to Old Ones

Constantly comparing new partners to past relationships can be a sign that you are still emotionally tied to old experiences. You may expect the same outcomes, behaviors, or endings, even when the person in front of you is different.

This comparison keeps you emotionally anchored to the past and prevents you from experiencing the present relationship on its own terms.

You Feel Emotionally Numb or Disconnected

Not all emotional wounds show up as intense feelings. Sometimes they appear as numbness. You may feel disconnected from your emotions, uninterested in dating, or unable to feel excitement or joy.

Emotional numbness is often a protective response to past pain. While it may feel safer, it also blocks connection, pleasure, and intimacy.

You Avoid Relationships or Sabotage Them Early

Some women protect themselves by avoiding relationships altogether, while others unconsciously sabotage them once they start to feel serious. You may find reasons to pull away, lose interest suddenly, or focus on flaws to justify leaving.

These behaviors are often driven by fear of getting hurt again rather than a true lack of compatibility.

Why Recognizing These Signs Matters

Ignoring emotional wounds does not make them disappear. Instead, they quietly influence your dating choices, emotional reactions, and relationship outcomes. Recognizing the signs allows you to approach yourself with compassion rather than judgment.

Healing does not mean erasing the past. It means understanding it, learning from it, and releasing its control over your present.

How Healing Begins

Healing old emotional wounds starts with awareness, patience, and self-honesty. It may involve journaling, therapy, emotional reflection, or building supportive connections that model healthy relationships.

As you heal, your nervous system learns that love can feel safe, calm, and supportive. Attraction shifts, boundaries strengthen, and dating becomes less about fear and more about choice.

You are not defined by your emotional wounds. You are defined by your willingness to face them and grow. When you recognize the signs that you are still holding onto old emotional pain, you take the first powerful step toward healthier love and deeper emotional freedom.

How to Leave Your Past Pain Behind Before Starting a New Relationship

Starting a new relationship can feel both exciting and terrifying when you are carrying emotional wounds from the past. Many women genuinely want to love again, yet find themselves guarded, anxious, or emotionally distant without fully understanding why. If your past experiences still shape how you trust, attach, or open your heart, you are not alone. Healing before entering a new relationship is not about forgetting what happened. It is about releasing its power over your present and future.

This article is written for women who want to begin their next relationship with clarity, emotional freedom, and self-respect. Learning how to leave your past pain behind allows you to love without fear and choose partners from a place of strength rather than survival.

Understanding How Past Pain Follows You Into New Love

Unresolved emotional pain does not stay in the past. It quietly influences how you interpret behavior, respond to closeness, and protect yourself from potential hurt. You may overanalyze messages, fear abandonment, or struggle to fully trust even when someone treats you well.

These reactions are not flaws. They are protective responses shaped by previous experiences. When the nervous system remembers pain, it tries to prevent it from happening again. Understanding this helps you approach healing with compassion instead of self-criticism.

Why Time Alone Does Not Heal Emotional Wounds

Many women believe that enough time will naturally heal heartbreak. While time can soften pain, it does not automatically resolve emotional patterns. Without reflection and processing, unresolved feelings often resurface in new relationships.

Healing requires intention. It involves acknowledging what hurt, how it changed you, and what you learned about yourself. When pain is avoided rather than processed, it finds new ways to express itself through fear, distrust, or emotional withdrawal.

Identifying the Emotional Baggage You Carry

Before entering a new relationship, it is important to identify what you are still carrying. Emotional baggage can include fear of rejection, low self-worth, resentment, anger, or grief from unmet expectations.

Ask yourself how past relationships made you feel about yourself. Notice patterns in your reactions and beliefs about love. Awareness creates space for change and helps you separate past experiences from present reality.

Letting Go of Old Relationship Narratives

Many women unconsciously carry stories about love that were shaped by painful experiences. You may believe relationships always end in betrayal, that you are too much, or that love requires sacrifice.

These narratives influence how you show up emotionally. Challenging them does not mean denying your experiences. It means recognizing that the past does not define what is possible in the future. Rewriting these stories allows you to approach love with openness instead of fear.

The Role of Forgiveness in Emotional Healing

Forgiveness is often misunderstood. It is not about excusing harmful behavior or reconciling with someone who hurt you. Forgiveness is about releasing the emotional weight you have been carrying.

Holding onto anger or resentment keeps you emotionally tied to the past. When you forgive, you reclaim your energy and create space for new experiences. Forgiveness is a personal process and does not need to involve the other person.

Rebuilding Trust With Yourself First

Before trusting a new partner, it is essential to rebuild trust with yourself. Past pain can make you doubt your judgment or instincts. You may question whether you can recognize red flags or protect your heart.

Self-trust grows when you honor your boundaries, listen to your emotions, and act in alignment with your values. Each time you choose self-respect, you strengthen your confidence and sense of safety.

Learning to Set Emotional Boundaries

Healthy boundaries protect your emotional well-being. They allow you to stay open without losing yourself. Many women struggle with boundaries because they fear rejection or believe love requires self-sacrifice.

Emotional boundaries help you pace intimacy, communicate your needs, and step back when something feels off. They are not walls but filters that ensure you invest your energy wisely.

Healing Your Relationship With Vulnerability

Past pain can make vulnerability feel dangerous. You may keep your guard up or struggle to express your true feelings. While vulnerability involves risk, it is also essential for genuine connection.

Healing vulnerability means learning to share gradually with people who show consistency, respect, and emotional availability. You do not need to reveal everything at once. Trust is built through repeated experiences of safety.

Choosing a Partner From Wholeness, Not Fear

When past pain remains unhealed, relationships can become a way to seek validation, distraction, or emotional rescue. Healing allows you to choose a partner from wholeness rather than need.

You no longer look for someone to fix your wounds. Instead, you seek someone who complements your life and shares your values. This shift changes not only who you choose, but how the relationship feels.

Creating Emotional Readiness for a New Relationship

Emotional readiness does not mean being completely free of fear. It means being aware of your emotions and able to manage them without projecting them onto your partner.

You are emotionally ready when you can communicate openly, respect your own needs, and respond to challenges with clarity rather than reaction. This readiness creates a foundation for healthy love.

Allowing Yourself to Love Again Without Guilt

Some women feel guilty for moving on, especially if a past relationship was deeply painful. Letting go does not erase what mattered. It honors your growth and your right to happiness.

You are allowed to love again without carrying the weight of past hurt. When you choose healing, you choose a future defined by possibility rather than pain.

Leaving your past pain behind before starting a new relationship is an act of courage and self-respect. It allows you to open your heart with wisdom, not fear, and to create a love that reflects who you are now, not who you were when you were hurt.

Breaking the Cycle of Toxic Relationships for Women

Toxic relationships do not begin with pain. They often start with excitement, hope, and the promise of connection. Many women enter these relationships believing they have finally found someone special, only to later feel emotionally drained, confused, and disconnected from themselves. If you have found yourself repeatedly trapped in unhealthy relationships, it is important to know that this pattern is not a personal failure. It is a cycle, and cycles can be broken.

This article is written for women who want clarity, healing, and healthier love. Breaking the cycle of toxic relationships requires more than willpower. It requires understanding why the pattern exists, how it affects your emotional well-being, and what meaningful steps can help you choose differently in the future.

Understanding What Makes a Relationship Toxic

A toxic relationship is not defined by occasional conflict or disagreement. It is defined by a persistent dynamic that undermines your emotional health and sense of self. This can include manipulation, emotional neglect, control, disrespect, gaslighting, or a constant imbalance of effort and care.

In toxic dynamics, you may feel anxious, constantly overthinking, walking on eggshells, or questioning your worth. Over time, these relationships can erode self-esteem and make it harder to trust your own perceptions. Recognizing toxicity is the first step toward freedom.

Why Women Stay in Toxic Relationships

Many women blame themselves for staying too long in unhealthy relationships, but the reasons are often deeply emotional and psychological. Fear of loneliness, hope for change, emotional attachment, and past conditioning all play a role.

Toxic relationships can create strong emotional bonds through cycles of affection and withdrawal. These highs and lows can feel addictive, making it difficult to leave even when you know the relationship is harmful. This is not weakness. It is how the nervous system responds to inconsistency and emotional unpredictability.

The Role of Early Emotional Conditioning

Your early experiences with love and attachment strongly influence the relationships you choose as an adult. If love in your past felt conditional, inconsistent, or required self-sacrifice, you may unconsciously recreate similar dynamics in romantic relationships.

These patterns are familiar, even when they are painful. The subconscious mind often seeks resolution by repeating what it knows. Understanding this helps you replace self-blame with self-compassion and curiosity.

How Toxic Relationships Affect Your Sense of Self

One of the most damaging aspects of toxic relationships is the slow loss of identity. You may begin to prioritize your partner’s needs, moods, and approval over your own. Boundaries blur, and your voice becomes quieter.

Over time, you may struggle to recognize what you want, feel, or need. Reconnecting with yourself is a crucial part of breaking the cycle. Healthy love supports your individuality rather than diminishing it.

Why Chemistry Alone Is Not Enough

Many toxic relationships are fueled by intense chemistry. Passion, emotional intensity, and attraction can mask deeper incompatibilities. While chemistry is important, it does not sustain emotional safety, respect, or long-term fulfillment.

Healthy relationships are built on trust, consistency, and mutual care. When chemistry exists without these foundations, it often leads to instability rather than intimacy. Learning to value emotional safety as much as attraction is a powerful shift.

Recognizing Red Flags Early

Breaking the cycle requires learning to notice red flags before emotional attachment deepens. Common warning signs include inconsistent communication, lack of accountability, dismissive behavior, controlling tendencies, and emotional unavailability.

Red flags are not meant to be ignored or rationalized. They are information. When you honor what you see early on, you protect yourself from repeating painful patterns.

The Importance of Boundaries in Healing

Boundaries are essential for emotional health. They define what behavior you will accept and how you protect your energy. Many women in toxic relationships struggle with boundaries because they fear rejection or conflict.

Setting boundaries does not make you cold or difficult. It makes you self-respecting. Each boundary you uphold strengthens your confidence and reinforces your sense of safety in relationships.

Healing Before Entering a New Relationship

True change often requires time and space for healing. Rushing into a new relationship without addressing old wounds can lead to repeating the same dynamics with a different person.

Healing may involve therapy, self-reflection, journaling, or building supportive friendships. This process helps you understand your triggers, strengthen self-worth, and develop emotional resilience. When you heal, your attraction shifts toward healthier partners.

Rebuilding Self-Worth After Toxic Love

Toxic relationships can distort your sense of worth. You may internalize blame or feel undeserving of healthy love. Rebuilding self-worth is not about becoming perfect. It is about remembering that you are inherently valuable.

Self-worth grows through consistent self-care, honoring your needs, and choosing relationships that reflect respect. As your self-worth strengthens, toxic dynamics lose their appeal.

Choosing Healthy Love Over Familiar Pain

Breaking the cycle often means choosing something unfamiliar. Healthy relationships may feel calmer and more predictable than toxic ones. At first, this can feel uncomfortable if you are used to emotional intensity.

Over time, calm becomes safe rather than boring. You learn that love does not need to hurt to be meaningful. Choosing healthy love is an act of courage and self-trust.

Creating a New Relationship Pattern

Breaking the cycle of toxic relationships is a process, not a single decision. It involves awareness, healing, boundaries, and conscious choice. You may still feel drawn to old patterns at times, but you no longer act on them.

With each healthier choice, you create a new pattern rooted in respect, emotional safety, and mutual growth. You are not defined by your past relationships. You are defined by the choices you make moving forward.

You deserve a relationship that supports your well-being, honors your boundaries, and allows you to be fully yourself. When you commit to breaking the cycle of toxic relationships, you open the door to a future built on genuine connection and lasting emotional health.

Why You Keep Falling for the Same Type and How to Change It

If you have ever looked at your dating history and felt a quiet sense of frustration, wondering why every relationship seems to follow the same emotional script, you are not imagining it. Many women repeatedly fall for the same type of man, even when the outcome is disappointment, emotional distance, or heartbreak. This pattern can feel confusing, especially when you genuinely want something different and healthier.

The truth is, repeating dating patterns is not a flaw in your personality or a sign of poor judgment. It is often the result of unconscious emotional conditioning, attachment dynamics, and deeply ingrained beliefs about love. Understanding why this happens is the first step toward changing it for good.

What “The Same Type” Really Means in Dating

When women say they keep falling for the same type, they are not usually referring to physical appearance alone. More often, they are describing an emotional pattern. This might include men who are emotionally unavailable, inconsistent, overly charming at first, controlling, avoidant, or unwilling to commit.

The “type” is defined by how the relationship feels rather than how the person looks. You may notice a familiar cycle of intense attraction, emotional highs, confusion, self-doubt, and eventual disappointment. Recognizing this emotional pattern is far more important than labeling a specific personality trait.

Why Familiarity Feels Like Attraction

One of the most powerful forces in dating is familiarity. Your nervous system is naturally drawn to what feels known, even if what feels known is unhealthy. If early experiences with love involved unpredictability, emotional distance, or needing to work for affection, your body may associate those dynamics with connection.

This is why healthy, emotionally available partners can sometimes feel unexciting or “not your type” at first. Calm, consistent love may feel unfamiliar if your system is used to emotional intensity and uncertainty. Attraction is not always a reliable indicator of compatibility; often, it is a signal of emotional memory.

The Role of Attachment Styles in Repeating Patterns

Attachment style plays a major role in why you keep falling for the same type of partner. If you have an anxious attachment style, you may be drawn to avoidant partners who reinforce the fear of abandonment. If you have an avoidant attachment style, you may feel safest with emotionally distant people who do not require deep vulnerability.

These dynamics create a push-and-pull pattern that feels emotionally intense but rarely stable. Understanding your attachment style helps you see that your attraction is not random. It follows a predictable pattern shaped by your emotional history.

How Unmet Emotional Needs Drive Attraction

Unmet emotional needs often sit at the core of repetitive dating choices. The desire to feel chosen, validated, or emotionally secure can unconsciously guide you toward partners who seem capable of finally fulfilling that need, even if they never do.

Many women are not chasing the person themselves but the feeling they hope the relationship will eventually provide. This creates a cycle where you stay longer than you should, ignore red flags, or invest deeply in someone who cannot truly meet you emotionally.

The Illusion of “This Time Will Be Different”

One of the strongest forces keeping dating patterns alive is hope. Hope that this person will change, that your connection is special, or that if you communicate better or love harder, the outcome will be different.

While growth and communication matter, relationships rarely transform without mutual effort and emotional availability. When the pattern repeats despite your best intentions, it is a sign that the issue is not effort but compatibility and emotional alignment.

Why Self-Awareness Alone Is Not Enough

Many women are intellectually aware of their dating patterns but still struggle to change them. Awareness is a powerful starting point, but real change requires emotional rewiring. Attraction happens in the body before it reaches the mind.

This is why simply telling yourself to choose better often fails. You must work with your emotional responses rather than against them. Learning to pause, regulate your emotions, and make conscious choices even when attraction feels strong is a skill that develops over time.

How to Start Changing the Pattern

Changing your dating pattern begins with slowing down. Instead of diving quickly into emotional intimacy, give yourself time to observe behavior rather than potential. Notice consistency, communication style, and emotional presence over time.

Ask yourself how you feel around this person. Do you feel calm, respected, and secure, or anxious, uncertain, and emotionally drained? Your emotional state in the relationship is one of the clearest indicators of whether this connection aligns with your well-being.

Redefining What Attraction Means to You

To change who you fall for, you must redefine attraction. Instead of focusing solely on chemistry, begin valuing emotional safety, reliability, and shared values. Attraction can grow from trust and mutual respect, even if it feels quieter at first.

This does not mean settling or ignoring desire. It means expanding your definition of desire to include emotional maturity and availability. Over time, your nervous system learns to associate safety with attraction.

The Importance of Boundaries in Breaking Patterns

Boundaries are essential for changing dating habits. They are not about controlling others but about protecting your emotional health. When you set clear boundaries around communication, respect, and effort, incompatible partners naturally fall away.

Each time you honor a boundary, you reinforce self-trust. This makes it easier to walk away from familiar but unhealthy dynamics before becoming emotionally invested.

Healing the Parts of You That Cling to Familiar Pain

Lasting change often requires healing the parts of you that believe love must be earned or endured. This healing may come through therapy, self-reflection, journaling, or supportive relationships that model healthy connection.

As you heal, your attraction shifts. You stop mistaking emotional unavailability for mystery and start recognizing it as a deal-breaker. The same type no longer feels exciting; it feels exhausting.

Choosing Growth Over Familiarity in Dating

Breaking a dating pattern is not about never feeling attraction to your old type again. It is about choosing growth even when familiarity pulls at you. Each conscious choice you make rewires your emotional responses and strengthens your sense of self.

Over time, you begin to attract and choose partners who align with the woman you are becoming, not the wounds you are healing from.

You are not destined to repeat the same relationship story forever. When you understand why you keep falling for the same type and commit to changing it from the inside out, dating becomes a space for growth, clarity, and genuine connection rather than confusion and pain.