In this week’s Substack, I’m answering a reader submitted question about situationships. If you’d like to submit a question or topic anonymously, you can do that here.
“Dear Sara, I stumbled upon your page the other day and I am captivated. I too spent most of 2025 in sadness and grief, over the loss of a relationship which occupied my mental and emotional space for five years, on and off. In January of 2025, we were high on love and I thought this is it. I am 37 years old and this was the first real sentiment I had (thus far). By February, it was done. He avoidantly pulled back and left me on dry land. Fast forward a year later…when an old friend, with whom there has always been some spark and energy, came back closer to my orbit; both of us navigating the NYC dating scene, both of us recently single. He is amazing, but yet another avoidant, clear as day. Sometimes I think he would go for it if we didn’t have a religious divide at hand (his mother in particular would not accept anyone from outside their culture), sometimes I see he’s on the brink of it. But he is 47 years old and old enough to decide what he wants/ doesn’t want. All this long intro to just ask you if you think it’s more sane to just cut off contact with all these exes, what ifs, situationships? I have been struggling a lot with that and am both still in touch with my ex and still quite responsive to my ‘situationship’ friend. I am very much open to meeting other people, I am on the apps, I date, but this pull is still there.”
Dear Reader, I want to start by sending you so much love. I think there’s a particularly painful type of heartbreak that comes from yearning for partnership, receiving just enough connection for your brain to project a falsely rosy image of an imagined life together and never having it fully actualize. I’m not going to tell you what to do; only you can decide that for yourself. But I’ll offer a possible roadmap to help you bring yourself into clarity. I hope that you keep what resonates and leave what doesn’t.
The prerequisite to moving through this, regardless of what you decide, is to let yourself really feel how heartbreaking it is that these men aren’t able to meet you in the kind of partnership you want. If you’ve been trying to avoid that, your body will hold you in a state of numbness, fatigue and rumination. When you metabolize the feelings, you will move out of that state. Give yourself a set period of time to really grieve how painful it has been to desire more and continually not have your needs met. Go deep on everything that this triggers for you; maybe it brings up fears of partnership not happening for you? Maybe it makes you feel not worthy? Let yourself cry, rage, scream. Journal about it. You’d be surprised what will come out on the page if you free-write about it for 30 minutes.
I truly believe life happens for us, not to us. Meaning that every trial in our lives and every person we meet is for our soul’s highest evolution. So what were these men and these circumstances meant to show you?
Maybe they are a mirror for ways in which you don’t feel fully worthy of the kind of partner you want to call in?
Maybe they have some qualities that are more incredible than you ever dreamed of - acting as an expander for what you thought was possible in partnership?
Maybe they were here to show you where your self-work is? Often we need to hone our relationship skills with “practice partners” before we’re ready for our person. There’s an incredible podcast about this with Layla Martin and Annie Lalla, in which they discuss how every person you date is either the one or practice for the one. I love that reframe and the accountability that comes with it. Were either of these men the one? Or were they practice for the one?; and with that, did you bring your full Queen self to every interaction with your potential King? Did you communicate clearly, directly and vulnerably? Did you give yourself the love that you’re seeking from them?
It sounds like you ultimately want partnership - but maybe you’re in a season of life where you want to savor connection for exactly what it is, without asking it to be more? If that’s the case, and you are cherishing these men for what they are able to offer you - Amazing! Enjoy! One of my regrets from my 20s is that I was completely consumed with anyone I dated wanting to be my boyfriend and “choosing me”. If they didn’t, I internalized that as my own not-enoughness; not pretty enough, not skinny enough, not good enough. I missed out on appreciating each connection for what it could have been — exciting trips, new sexual experiences, interesting conversations — because I was too busy forcing it to be something it wasn’t.
If you are someone who wants marriage and children, particularly the children part, get ruthless about protecting that dream for yourself. No one else is going to. These men are not going to make sure you get everything you envisioned in this lifetime. Not maliciously, but the connection to you feels good and you can’t count on their altruism to protect your dreams. And so this part requires tough love:
Setting a boundary, and holding that boundary when you don’t want to, is hard.
Looking back on your life and realizing that the ability to have your own biological children has passed you by is also hard.
Choose your hard.
There’s a quote that I love, and think about often when I’m in states of limbo like this:
“In 5 years, will you live the life you chose? Or the life that you settled for?”
If what you’re experiencing in the present moment isn’t what you want for your life, sacrifice your short term comfort for your long term dreams. I think we’re particularly bad at doing this in the culture at this moment in time. We’ve removed friction from everything. We don’t have to speak to anyone to order and receive food at our door. We don’t have to leave our couch to get connected to a date on an app. This isn’t good for our psyche. Like most things in life, doing hard things is a muscle that has to be exercised. The good news is that when we start to flex in new ways, our bodies produce dopamine internally, creating longer lasting happiness and satisfaction than the external dopamine we get from inconsistent men.
These are my tactical tips for adding friction to your life:
Learn a new skill. I think nothing else builds your confidence like mastering a new skill. I learned to ski for the first time in my 30s and it’s now one of my favorite things in life. It took hours and hours of being terrible, awkward, embarrassed and terrified of the ski lift (I still am to be honest). But finally getting over that hump and skiing with ease has probably been the biggest confidence booster of my adult life.
Be a villager. Babysit your friends’ kids. Cook food from scratch when they’re sick. Do something completely over the top for a friend’s birthday just to spark joy. Send snail mail cards for birthdays. Or for no reason. Pour all of that love you have to give into other people, not as a replacement for partnership but to build a full, rich life for yourself that ends up magnetizing partnership to you.
Get into your body. You sound introspective and self aware, which are incredible qualities. If, like me, the other side of that coin is that you spend a lot of time overanalyzing with your logic -brain, I would do things that get you out of your mind and into your body. Your body always knows. We override it with our monkey mind, but the body always always knows. (which I write more about here).
My favorite activities for this are:
Sauna (at least 15 minutes) and cold plunge (2 minutes)
Breathwork (the Wim Hof guided videos on youtube are only 11 minutes and I find watching the on screen counting very soothing)
The guided “deep imaginings” or meditations on TBM
Getting a massage
Sometimes these things take far longer to extricate ourselves from than we want and we tend to beat ourselves up for that. I would give yourself so much love for where you are at in the process. It’s human nature to think whatever is happening at the present moment is going to continue on indefinitely. But it won’t. Things will inevitably shift and probably not on your ideal timeline; we all want to move through things more quickly than we actually do. It’s ok. You’re right where you should be.
And lastly - I will leave you with what my friend Samantha Abrams told me when I was in a similar situation and I found it to be the most comforting: “I trust that you will make the right decision for yourself when you’re ready. You will. I promise. Trust in yourself.”
P.S. Reading I Don’t Want to Talk About it by Terry Real really helped me understand and have compassion for avoidant men. It’s an incredible book.
Content I Consumed This Week
In last week’s substack, I mentioned Belle Burden and her book about her husband leaving abruptly after 20 years, but listening to her talk about the story on the Modern Love podcast is absolutely chilling.
When I first saw this article about platforms for finding a platonic co-parent, like Let’s Be Parents, my immediate reaction was to feel kind of depressed, but some of the examples seem potentially great: like side by side houses on the same ranch?
In Case You Missed It - Previous Going All In Posts
I wrote predictions for dating and relationships in 2026
We are moving into the Year of the Fire Horse
The same 2 words came to me…so good!
so good