We were sitting across from each other, mics hot, and Katie — one of the most magnetic women I know — said the thing I have heard a hundred women say but never quite like this.
“I was so convinced that I was too much that I believed I was also asking for too much.”
I had to stop her.
Not because it surprised me. Because it didn’t. Because I have heard that exact sentence — in different words, in different voices, from women who run companies and raise children and build entire lives with their bare hands — and it never stops breaking my heart a little.
You are not too much.
You have just been in rooms that were too small.
Katie gave her partner the playbook. She was not passive aggressive about what she needed. She was not mysterious or withholding or difficult. She said, out loud, with words, exactly what would make her feel loved.
And they didn’t run the play.
And instead of concluding that he wasn’t the right man — she concluded that she was the wrong woman.
That is what years of carrying everything alone does to you. It trains you to mistake your standards for your sins. To look at a man’s lack of effort and search yourself for the explanation. To ask what is wrong with you instead of what is wrong with this.
Nothing is wrong with you.
You have just been matching your energy to people who could not hold it.
Here is what changed for Katie.
She met a man who, when she finally told him her marriage was over, said I have been in love with you for a long time.
Not playing it cool. Not protecting himself. Not making her wonder.
Just — here I am. All the way in.
He bought the ring three months after they started dating. He gets her daughters ready for school every morning while she is on air. He brings her coffee upstairs and helps her take off her sleep apnea mask and his favorite moment of every single day is when she opens her eyes and smiles at him.
She was never too much.
She was exactly enough for the man who was built for her.
I want you to sit with something before you close this.
Think about the last time you apologized for wanting more. The last time you dialed back your expectations because you were afraid of seeming high maintenance. The last time you convinced yourself that the bare minimum was actually fine, actually enough, actually what you deserved.
That was not humility. That was a woman who had been told one too many times that her magic was inconvenient.
Your magic is not inconvenient. It is the whole point.
Find someone who makes magic back.
That is the play.
If this landed somewhere real in you, I want to talk to you.
I keep a limited number of Dating Strategy Calls open every month for women who are done leaving their love life to chance. This is not a sales pitch with a nice name. It is 45 minutes where we look at your specific situation — your patterns, your history, your dating life right now — and we build a real plan together.
You will leave knowing exactly what has been getting in your way. And exactly what to do next.
If you have been the woman giving the playbook to men who won’t run it — this call is for you.