POV: You’re Single AF and See Loved Up Couples Everywhere You Go

That’s the reframe I’d been sitting with for years. And honestly it helped. Seeing affectionate couples as a preview rather than a reminder of what I didn’t have yet. But if I’m being completely honest, part of me didn’t fully believe it. There was still this subtle cringe underneath it all.

And then one day it all finally made sense.

I was sitting in a café and the couple in front of me were doing everything as one person. Feeding each other, serving each other drinks, holding hands, rubbing hands, staring into each other’s eyes. My first thought was aw, that’s really sweet. But right underneath that was something else entirely.

I noticed my thoughts “ That is so unhealthy. I can’t imagine being that intertwined with someone. Ew.”

And I had to stop myself. Because why? Why was I judging two people who were clearly very much in love? Why did genuine intimacy make me want to look away?

So I started journaling. And I went deep.

I like to think of triggers as clues. Like a game. The universe drops coins along the way, they look like triggers. Every cringe, every comparison, every weird feeling you can’t quite name. In a game you wouldn’t run from coins. You’d collect every single one automatically. But in real life most of us do the opposite, we see the trigger and we run the other way. Here’s the thing though. Those coins are currency. Collect enough of them, understand what they mean, and they buy you the tools to get through the level. Face the big boss, the core wound underneath it all, defeat it, and you unlock the next stage.

That’s exactly what happened to me. In the space of one week the universe dropped three coins. Three separate triggers I almost ran from. Until I stopped, picked them up, and put the pieces together.

Coin one

The couple in the café. The one I just described. The ew, cringe, that is so unhealthy reaction to two people who were clearly just very much in love.

So this time instead of looking away, I picked up the coin.

Coin two

The day before, I’d noticed a hot guy at a café with a woman. And instantly, before I even knew what was happening, I was comparing myself to her. She’s not even that great. And the moment I caught that thought I was horrified. Because that is not me. I don’t think that way about other women. So why did I just do that?

I sat with it. And I watched the whole sequence play out:

I saw the hot guy. I compared myself to her. I started picking out her flaws. I came up with reasons why he settled for her. I noticed him glance in my direction and immediately decided he was disloyal, that was the only explanation that made sense to me. And then when they left I avoided all eye contact with him because I didn’t want to feed his ego and I didn’t want her to feel uncomfortable. I was protecting her somehow. A woman I didn’t even know.

And underneath all of it, buried so quietly I almost missed it, it wasn’t actually anything to do with them really; it was more about ‘Why her and not me.’

Coin three

The high threat man. The attractive man in a relationship who I wouldn’t make eye contact with. Already labelled as disloyal before he’d said a single word to me.

Three completely different situations. Three completely different people. But the same core wound running through all of them.

I picked up all three coins. And then I did what you have to do in the game, I went looking for the big boss.

I went back to childhood to find it.

There was a woman I was very close to growing up. Someone I loved deeply. And the man in her life repeatedly betrayed her. Over and over again. And I could not understand it, because she was so beautiful. So clearly enough. And yet it kept happening.

That experience planted beliefs in me that I’ve been carrying ever since:

Men are untrustworthy. Being beautiful and being enough does not guarantee loyalty. Attraction doesn’t make sense. And someone needs to protect the women.

So I became the protector. The scanner. The one who was always watching for signs of betrayal, always hyperaware of relationship dynamics, always trying to ease her anxiety and make her feel better. I was the rescuer.

And as an adult that looked like: hyperawareness of how men moved through the world. Immediately scanning for disloyalty. Protecting women I didn’t even know. And on a deeper level, choosing men who weren’t quite right because somewhere inside I knew they couldn’t really hurt me. Or ending up with men who were disloyal, because that was the story I already knew.

There’s actually neuroscience behind this. When we experience or witness relational trauma as children, the brain encodes it as a survival blueprint. The amygdala, the brain’s threat detection system, learns to scan for the same danger signals that caused pain before. So my nervous system wasn’t being irrational. It was doing exactly what it was wired to do. Protecting me. Protecting her. The same way it always had.

And just like Tony Robbins talks about, when you notice a car you love you suddenly see it everywhere, my brain had been doing the same thing with disloyal men. Seeing them everywhere. Attracting the stories in. Friends telling me about being cheated on, being treated badly. Women all around me carrying the same wound. I couldn’t even count the amount of stories I’d collected over the years. It wasn’t just my experience anymore. I had become a collector of the collective female wound around men and loyalty. My reticular activating system was filtering my entire reality to find proof of the belief. Not because it was true. But because confirming it felt safer than being blindsided by it.

But here’s the thing about protective patterns. They were built for a version of your life that no longer exists.

I faced the big boss. And here’s what I found.

I’m not that little girl anymore. I don’t need to scan every room for betrayal. I don’t need to protect every woman from a pain that already happened. I don’t need to label every attractive man as a threat before he’s even looked at me.

The choices of the men in her life were never about me. They were never about her being enough. They were never proof that love is unsafe.

They were just wounds. And wounds can heal.

So that’s what I’m doing. Going back to the little girl who took all of this on and telling her, you did so well. You protected everyone you could. But it’s not your job anymore. You’re allowed to put it down now.

You’re allowed to trust. Slowly. Carefully. On your own terms.

You’re allowed to let a man look at you without immediately deciding what it means.

You’re allowed to watch a couple feed each other in a café and just think, that’s really beautiful. I want that one day.

Because you do. And it’s coming.

The triggers aren’t there to hurt you. They’re coins. Little clues the universe drops along the way pointing back to the parts of you that are still waiting to be seen, held and healed.

Don’t run from them.

Collect them, put the pieces together and unlock the next level.

🤍