When Someone Can't Give You What You Need

When Someone Can't Give You What You Need

To send a question or if you have topics you'd like me to explore on future episodes, email me at: www.savannanoelle.com/support. Savi Chats: www.savannanoelle.com/savichats Coaching Program: www.savannanoelle.com/comeback I’ve spent a number of years making someone’s capacity and inability to sit with their discomfort my own worthiness problem. And for an even longer time, I didn’t realize they were just not available and neither was I to myself. I did not understand this because the familiarity of abuse, unavailable people, and emotional neglect was extremely high in my early years. Someone can love you and still not have the capacity to meet you where you need them or want them to be. In this next podcast episode, I talk about what unavailability actually looks like, and what we do in response to unavailability. I speak about the ways we play small, we shrink, we carry the emotional labor for both people, avoiding speaking up for our needs or how we feel. I share what self abandonment really looks like and how to walk the path back to ourselves. I also share a personal story about a relationship I had where I had to draw a line in the sand and walk away from someone I genuinely loved because staying meant leaving myself. This episode is for anyone who is waiting for someone to change, waiting for someone to become who they’ve shown you they’re not ready to be. Some people can’t meet you, and when they show you this, believe them. Then grieve. And return to yourself. Listen on Spotify, Apple, or here on Substack. In the meantime, if there is a topic you are wanting me to cover on the pod, please do reach out here in a message, reply to this email, or send it to www.savannanoelle.com/support. I’d love to address any comments, questions, or topics you’d like me to explore further. I hope you enjoy it. -Savanna Get full access to Savanna's Substack at savannanoelle.substack.com/subscribe [https://savannanoelle.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

What It's Costing You: Over-Functioning in Love Part 2

Savi Chats Monthly Group: www.savannanoelle.com/savichats 1:1 Coaching: www.savannanoelle.com/comeback In part 1, I told you about the three and a half years I spent over-functioning in a relationship with a man who was never fully in it with me. Ugh. Well, what I didn’t tell you is what it did to me. It is incredibly lonely to be involved in a relationship that you know is full of potential and chemistry, but the person you’re with is simply unavailable. And you don’t want to admit it to yourself. You don’t want to believe this is true. You want to believe that the breadcrumbs they give you is care, and you don’t realize how much effort and emotional labor you’re carrying in the relationship. You tell yourself they are just busy or going through a hard time. They still want to see you and get all the benefits of a relationship, but the moment you want to talk about your relationship status or about doing things together, they’re too busy, they don’t want labels, or they only want to “keep it light.” There is an illusion with this dynamic that if you love harder, support more, do more, make everything easier for them, then eventually they will choose you fully- it will someday align. And eventually, the disappointments start to become greater, needs go unmet and you find yourself angry and resentful because of how very little about them has changed. Choosing potential and people pleasing has a huge cost: your self respect. You stop trusting yourself, and your nervous system and fears of disconnection and ultimately abandonment is running the dynamic. You forget what you really want because potential seems more appealing than the facing the truth that they really don’t want the relationship you want. It isn’t until we get radically honest with ourselves about the lies we continue to believe that we will be free. So in the case of that relationship and all that effort I was making? It let him off the hook. He never had to show up because I was already doing it for both of us. Then I’d be quietly furious that he wasn’t trying harder. He got to live in the dynamic without having to work very hard to keep it intact or show up fully because I did it for us. I was so afraid of losing the connection that I abandoned myself over and over not realizing that I could have better. This episode is about the actual cost and what over-functioning takes from you. My hope is that as you listen, you remember that when you stop over-functioning and accepting bad behavior from the people in your relationships, not only do you start to respect and trust yourself more, but you start to attract people who are aligned with you. I hope you enjoy the episode. Love, Savanna Get full access to Savanna's Substack at savannanoelle.substack.com/subscribe [https://savannanoelle.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

You Are Not the Glue: Over-Functioning in Love Part 1

I once spent three and a half years staying in a relationship with a man who was never really in it. I adjusted my life around his. I rearranged my schedule, flew to his country to make seeing him easy, told myself that if I just kept showing up, eventually he would choose it and reciprocate. He didn’t. Not fully. He was never in it the way I was. And the whole time I called my efforts unconditional love and care, when really, I was doing too much. I was holding on to hope and potential. He would give me crumbs, not because he was malicious, but because it did not cost him much- except maybe his own integrity. I was not being honest with myself about his capacity even though I intellectually knew what was happening. I over-functioned. I made everything easier for him, became smaller and quieter, shrinking my needs and not speaking up about my frustrations about his unavailability because I worried I would lose the connection. Over-functioning can be so deceiving. You think you’re being helpful, caring, useful, helping hold it all together. You think you’re being low maintenance, the understanding one, the easy girl who he will want to be with. When really, you’re abandoning yourself and not facing the truth about his capacity and your need for control and certainty. This episode is part 1 of 2 where I get into what over-functioning actually is, why it operates on anxiety and control, and how it shows up in your relationships as detrimental behavior. If you’re the capable one, the glue, the one everyone says they couldn’t do without, start here and listen. I hope you enjoy it. Join my bimonthly Live group call starting July 1st! Register and check it out at: www.savannanoelle.com/savichats Get full access to Savanna's Substack at savannanoelle.substack.com/subscribe [https://savannanoelle.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

The Closure No One Can Give You

For my coaching program, go to www.savannanoelle.com/comeback. I’ve always been a writer. As a teen I was the girl filling up the back pages of yearbooks, scribbling whole paragraphs, writing affirmations with the date inside the cover of a book before I gave it to someone. Writing has aways been where my voice goes when I don’t feel heard. So it makes sense that for most of my life, when a relationship ended badly, I reached for a letter, a text, an email, something. While it would’ve been decent and emotionally mature to be met with an actual conversation, often, the only way I’d finally get to have a conversation was this way. This week’s episode is about that. About closure. But it’s not the version you’ve heard a hundred times on TikTok, where closure is the silence, closure is them not choosing you, closure is no response. Those are for sure real. I’m talking about the closure of choosing a new behavior, of holding a higher standard. In this episode, I tell you about a breakup that gutted me, what it had in common with the one relationship I've never been able to write about, and the thing I finally understood that changed how I see closure now. And I get into the question I think actually matters when someone disappears on you. Not “what is wrong with him,” but “what is the standard I am willing to hold for myself?” Here’s what I continue to come back to: You want to get to the place where no matter what, you got you. The full episode is right here. Go listen. And as always, please share with a friend, like, and review on Apple and Spotify to help this podcast grow. I’m grateful. If you’re sitting in his silence right now, the not-knowing, the spiraling, the checking your phone for the hundredth time, I made something for you. It’s a free 10-minute audio called “When He Goes Silent.” You can grab it here: savannanoelle.com/freeaudio. And if you’re tired of running this same pattern and you’re ready to actually come home to yourself, that’s the work I do one on one inside “Come Back to Yourself,” my 4-week intensive. www.savannanoelle.com/comeback. Remember, You’re amazing. Savanna Get full access to Savanna's Substack at savannanoelle.substack.com/subscribe [https://savannanoelle.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Your Nervous System Is Running Your Love Life

For a free audio of "When he ghosts, goes silent, or pulls away," go to www.savannanoelle.com/freeaudio. I moved to Cairo for a man during the Arab Spring back in 2012. I left a cute apartment and a corporate job at a temporary agency in Downtown Denver because I didn’t want to regret every wondering “What if?” I was in love and convinced this was the great romance of my life. And for a while he was. To be fair, he was and still is an amazing human. I just had to know if this move and our relationship could stand the test of time and, well, a freakin’ revolution. The streets weren’t that safe then, and I didn’t speak the language very well. Everyone back home thought I was nuts for moving there during such volatility. Military in the streets, protests, bombs going off across town, men following me along the non-existent side walks side streets when I tried to do anything as small as buy groceries or take a taxi somewhere. My Egyptian boyfriend was photographing the happenings in Tahrir Square, often in danger of being tear gassed or right in the middle of the conflict. And I — strong, independent, “I can handle anything” me — was depending on him for mostly everything. I often felt tense and crazy, unsure how to navigate each day. I didn’t realize until years later that I lived that entire chapter of my life in nervous system activation. There was no rest. No regulation. Every nerve was on watch constantly. And eventually, it came out sideways. I lashed out at him in a way I didn’t recognize. He saw the scared little girl underneath the woman I’d built, and at the time I could not understand what was happening to me. I didn’t have the tools yet. I hadn’t built the capacity. My window of tolerance was paper-thin — and I called it love. I mean, it was definitely love. But what he represented for my nervous system was both safety and familiarity in his unavailability. He was physically and somewhat emotionally safe, but also mirrored the unavailability I felt as a child. Most of the time, when we think we are choosing partners — choosing to stay, choosing to leave, choosing to text back too fast or pull away or get small or get loud — we are not actually choosing. Our nervous system is choosing for us. Based on what it learned was safe a very long time ago. Usually before we had language for any of it. And when your nervous system is in chronic activation, what you experience in love is not love. It’s relief. Brief moments of relief when he texts back. Brief moments of relief when he says the thing you needed him to say. The relief feels so much like love because it feels so much. The contrast is what’s electrifying. The relief is what’s addicting. It breeds codependency. You weren’t crazy. You weren’t broken. You were hooked on the relief. This week’s episode is the first time I’ve put this all in one place in a succinct way— how anxious attachment lives in the body, why self-abandonment isn’t a moral failing, why chemistry is so often recognition rather than fate, and what it actually takes to do the work. (Spoiler: you cannot think your way out. I tried for years.) If you’re in the middle of a silence right now and you don’t know what to do with your body — I made a free audio for that exact moment. It’s called ‘When He Goes Silent.” Grab it at savannanoelle.com/freeaudio. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. I’d love to know what landed for you. I’d be super grateful. With love, Savi *If you want to go deeper into this work with me, my 1:1 coaching program Come Back to Yourself is built on exactly what we talked about here. You can find it at savannanoelle.com/comeback. Mixed, Mastered, and Recorded at Luna Sound Get full access to Savanna's Substack at savannanoelle.substack.com/subscribe [https://savannanoelle.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]