Sheryl is my newest client. Early sixties. Attractive. Works in law. Has a few entrepreneurial side hustles. Never married. Hasn’t dated for twenty years.
If you heard her full story, you’d understand why. Without getting into the details, Sheryl has only known abusive men. She was sexually assaulted by her first boyfriend. Her father was physically abusive to her mother. For decades, Sheryl stood by men who were in and out of prison, men who resolved conflict through displays of power.
Sheryl’s entire personality is a reaction to her challenging upbringing. While she laughs easily, she also angers easily. Anger is her way of surviving, taking control, and making it clear that no one will hurt her.
Last week, Sheryl and I had a disagreement that I would consider minor, yet it threatened to derail our entire relationship. With her permission, I want to share this interaction so that perhaps, you can see yourself and maybe even learn from her story.
It happened on our small group mastermind – an intimate weekly gathering of 5-10 clients who get answers to all of their dating and relationship questions. This group has historically been known for its closeness – women often stay friends after coaching.
Anyway, Sheryl shared her feelings that men should be willing to wait 3-4 months before having sex and that, in order to qualify for sex, he needs to come down to the clinic to get STD tested with her.
I shared that while I understood her reasoning, this was a relatively high bar to expect men to jump. Since men generally move faster, a more realistic time frame would be to make a guy wait 4-6 weeks until he’s committed to her as a boyfriend before having sex.
Sheryl wasn’t sold. She pushed back that you can’t really know a guy in 4-6 weeks (which is true). I pushed back that if you’ve gone out with him 7-10 times and he’s requesting commitment, that’s reasonable. You can’t expect a guy to take you out for 4 months and not have sex. Very few men would be left, myself included.
This disagreement left Sheryl feeling upset, as if my opinion invalidated her opinion. I retreated to my line that dating advice is not about right vs wrong but effective vs. ineffective. I, for one, don’t think it’s effective to make a man with options wait that long for sex or commitment. But because Sheryl has never met a man she can trust, it’s hard to convince her to let down her guard any faster.
That’s when another client chimed in. She’s a doctor and she pointed out that STD screenings and results are available almost immediately, thus, it’s silly for Sheryl to insist that the two of them go to a clinic together. When Sheryl heard the word “silly” (a poor choice of words), she hit the roof and started cursing. I muted her on Zoom. She unmuted herself to continue the harangue. I muted her again and ended the call soon thereafter.
The next day, I got an email with this passage:
You asked me to trust you, and I kind of blindly did. I won’t say I regret it, but I’m paying close attention to what you’re saying and how you act. I’m starting to wonder if I made the right decision…I thought you had a lot of damn nerve to say that because for the money I spent, I have the absolute right to ask questions about the topic at hand, and you don’t get to shut me down. So no – it’s not your space. I paid for that space….The truth is, you shut down the conversation because you felt uncomfortable, couldn’t sit with your own discomfort and feared everyone else would become uncomfortable.
The other thing I don’t like is that you used my past against me. Don’t do that again.
I’m sharing this because it’s Sheryl’s version of events, and, in the moment, this is exactly as she felt. In reality, Sheryl overreacted to a perfectly reasonable difference of opinion (and questionable word choice) by lashing out at everyone on the call, including me.
Being quick to anger is the way Sheryl’s learned to communicate from her past relationships – a way that is not at all conducive to lasting love.
So, while I was in the car at my son’s basketball practice, I got on the phone with Sheryl for a half hour to demonstrate a few things about our coaching relationship.
I’m going to share them here because they’re important.
- The only way to have a healthy relationship is to come from a place of full trust. In Sheryl’s world, full trust is naive. And yet, a healthy man will NEVER stay in a relationship where he’s not trusted.
- As her coach, I don’t have to prove that I’m trustworthy. I’m trustworthy until I do something to lose her trust.
- Having a different opinion is not a breach of trust. Two people can agree to disagree without it turning into a fight.
- I didn’t shut down the conversation because I was afraid of Sheryl’s opinions; it was because her attacking language threatened to ruin the group dynamic.
- My main job as a coach is to show Sheryl what it’s like to be loved. I won’t yell at her. I won’t judge her. I won’t cut her off. I won’t abandon her. Whatever she does, I’m going to demonstrate to her that she is safe with me.
This is NOT most women’s life experience with men. That’s why you build up an arsenal of defense mechanisms designed to protect you from the worst men: get angry at him, tell him what he’s doing wrong, communicate your disappointment via email and text, engage in protest behavior, threaten to cut him off if he doesn’t change.
In multiple emails, Sheryl has told me that I’m failing her, that she doesn’t trust me, that she questions her choice to work with me, that she expects me to stop working with her, that she wants her money back. All because I think she should choose a boyfriend after 6 weeks instead of 12 weeks. 🙂
As you can see, Sheryl and I don’t have an actual problem. Sheryl’s issue is learning to treat me as a trusted source whose only agenda is to help her. Once she does that, she can calm her nervous system instead of overreacting to every perceived slight.
As Sheryl’s coach, I become a stand in for her future dates, boyfriends, and long-term romantic partners. My theory: if I can treat her with love, patience, and respect – even when we disagree – maybe some other guys will, too. And maybe Sheryl will do better by assuming they’re trustworthy people, not enemies to be discarded immediately.
It’s only been a month but I’m proud of Sheryl. She could have escalated the conflict, refused to listen to my explanations, or gone to Amex to request a refund.
She didn’t. This morning, she wrote to me, “I’m starting to feel more comfortable with you and starting to feel like you’re my friend.” I replied: “I AM your friend.”
I write, text, or talk to Sheryl almost every day as I lead her from a place of fear to a place of trust and confidence.
Love,
Evan
* This article was originally published here
