Energy & Dating: Staying Connected to Yourself in Intimacy

There is something uniquely revealing about dating. Not in the surface-level way of preferences or compatibility, but in the much deeper way it shows us the exact places where we still leave ourselves. I didn’t understand this until I began doing energy work in my own life, and then the contrast became impossible to ignore.

For a long time, I didn’t realise how quickly I could abandon myself in connection. Not dramatically. Not in obvious ways. But in small, almost imperceptible shifts. The slight tightening in my chest when I said yes to something I didn’t actually want. The way I softened my opinions to avoid being too much. The way I laughed when something didn’t quite land, simply because I didn’t want to disrupt the moment.

These were tiny gestures on the outside, but inside they were clear:

I am stepping out of myself to stay connected to you.

Energy work made those moments louder. It didn’t fix the pattern, but it made the leaving unmistakable. Once you know the feeling of being in your center — grounded, present, inhabiting your full self — you can feel the moment you step out of it like a light switch turning.

And that’s where dating changes.

It stops being about whether the other person chooses you.It becomes about whether you are choosing yourself while you are with them.

I started asking myself different questions. Not “Do they like me?” or “Is this going somewhere?” but:

How does my body feel when I am here?

Do I breathe more deeply or do I constrict?

Do I feel like I can take up space or do I start shrinking to be easier to hold?

Do I feel more alive or more managed?

These are not romantic questions. They are energetic ones. And the answers are honest long before the mind can make sense of them.

Sometimes, the hardest part is trusting that the version of you who is fully in yourself — not performing, not pleasing, not bending to be wanted — is the one who will be loved in the way your heart is actually asking for. Because intimacy is not about merging into another person. It is about remaining at home in yourself while allowing someone else to meet you there.

And yes, this is uncomfortable. Especially if your history taught you that love is something you earn through compliance or caretaking or shapeshifting.

There is grief in deciding to stop doing that.

There is fear in letting yourself be fully seen without managing the outcome.

But there is also such profound relief.

The right connection doesn’t feel like being lifted out of yourself. It feels like returning to yourself. It feels like breath. Softness. Spaciousness. A sense that your nervous system has room. A sense that your truth does not risk the relationship but actually deepens it.

The more I stay in my body in dating, the more I trust that I don’t need to contort to be chosen. I only need to remain willing to be myself.

Love that is meant for you does not require self-abandonment.

It asks for presence.

And presence is the most intimate form of love we have.