The Void: When Things Don’t Work Out

“The void” is what I call the feeling you have when you are dating and things don’t work out. It’s the pause between the last thing that ended and the next thing before it starts.

You come off the high of being excited about somebody and you have this in-between moment. It can have a feeling of darkness, emptiness, and discouragement.

On top of that, we start to make interpretations about what that “void” feeling means.

We start thinking something has gone wrong and we’re not doing it right. We start to have more negative thoughts about ourselves and about dating. We start to doubt ourselves.

What I want to communicate to you is not how to make that feeling go away or how to never experience it again.

Rather, I want to clarify that the void is a natural part of the process and you’ll probably feel it several times before you meet somebody that you really hit it off with.

The dating journey is like a hike where there are a lot of different landscapes that you see along the way.

You might see an amazing meadow with beautiful flowers, but it wasn’t your destination… so you keep walking.

And as you keep walking, you have to go pass through the dark forest where the sun isn’t shining and it’s colder. Plus, it’s kind of boring because there’s nothing picturesque to see.

That would be the void in dating.

If you keep walking, the landscape changes again and you might be really excited about the next thing you see.

You might have several experiences like that along the way until you get to your destination, which is the relationship that you’re looking for.

The key is not necessarily to avoid the void or to let it influence your actions in a big way. but actually to treat it just like any other passing emotion that you have.

It’s good to have rituals that tend to your emotions, such as doing mindset work, talking to a friend, exercising, or meditating.

Sometimes when these big overwhelming emotions come, we feel like they need big overwhelming actions to match them.

The void comes and we start to reconsider everything with questions like, “Should I even be dating?”

As much as possible, think of that metaphor of continuing to walk through the forest until the scenery changes. That’s what you want to do with this emotion as well.

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This content was originally published on the Women's Dating and Confidence Podcast. Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.