Come Out About Your Love Life

Hey, hey, hey. Hello, everyone. I hope you're doing well. Oh, my God. We are going to talk tonight, honey. For those of you that do not know me, my name is Anwar White. I am the founder, the CEO, the extravaganza of get your guy coaching. I'm the dating coach. I'm the relationship coach. I help people, women, smart and successful women, transform and heal themselves, meet high quality men and get into the best relationships of their lives. So we have some very. I want to talk to you about a concept that I think that you might be really familiar with. And it's about.

Understanding your process for, for, let's say, challenges and struggling in your love life. Right. And I'm going to call it hello, fancy Melissa. Hello, Gigi. I'm going to call it coming out of the love closet. This is really important. Right. But before I get into that, I just want to let you guys know that next Thursday my podcast is coming back. I'm really excited about it. I've been recording so many amazing podcast episodes for you, and we are going to rock into the very new year. So that's something that's really exciting. So with that being said, I want to talk to you about the different stages that you may feel when you are really starting to be intentional about your love life. And in the chat, let me know if you've ever felt this way before. This is really important. Okay, so.

And I'll talk a little bit about my, my experience and my journey coming out as well as a gay man, because I think that there are some amazing parallels to this. So many people ask me, you're a gay man. Like, how can you help me with my love life? And I'm like, girl, better than you would ever understand. Right. So let's talk about that. When I was five years old, I knew something was different about me. I knew that I wasn't like everyone else. And I want to let you know that there's probably been a point in your life where you have felt the same way. This is my awareness phase days, right. Where you were like, everyone is getting into these relationships, dating, and I'm not. I'm different. Something's different about me. Let me know if you've ever felt that way before. This is something that a lot of my clients feel. And maybe it started in elementary school, maybe it started in junior high or high school or even college. Right. But this is important to understand that it first starts with an awareness that there is something different going on with me versus everyone else out there. Yeah. So that's the first stage. The second stage is all about shame. And when I talk about shame, I'm talking about this feeling like something's wrong with me. Why is everyone like this? And I'm like that. Right? When I was growing up, I felt like not only that I was different, but I felt like something was wrong with me. I felt like, why do I feel this way? Why do I act this way? Why is my voice like this? And every other young boy doesn't sound like this, doesn't act like me, doesn't have my mannerisms.

Why? And then what we do is once we start to feel because this is the shame phase, then we start to feel like I want to just fit in. I want to be like everyone else. And so for me, that was trying to butch it up, trying to play sports. Even my father, like, put me into two or three sports every season to try to butch me up. Right. In your love life, it might look like trying to do what everyone else is doing. Maybe you're dressing in a certain way that is not you, but you think, oh, because the girls that get attention from guys dress this way, I'm gonna dress this way too. Or going to places that you don't even like, or like clubs and bars.

To try to meet men or to try to be a part of the love environment. And that's not you as well. Right. So let me know if there have been ways in which you have tried to fit in because you have felt shame about your love life. Right. That's the second phase of coming out of the love closet. Yeah. Okay, so we've talked a little bit, and just for those that are joining me, we're talking about the phases of coming out of the love closet, meaning the different phases that you go through when you are actually trying to be intentional and accepting of your love life to level up. Yeah. So we've talked about the awareness phase. We've talked about the shame phase. Now we need to talk about the highlighting phase. And when I say highlighting, this is when your friends and your family start to notice something different about you. Now, for me, as a gay man, they'd be like, are you. Do you like girls? Are you interested in girls? Do you want to have a girlfriend? I mean, girl, I wish you would have seen me in seventh grade trying to go out with these girls. It was a hot mess.

But it was because I felt this pressure from family and friends to actually do what everyone else was doing. Right. And for you and your love life, it may be your parents or Your friends asking you, hey, girl, who you talking to? Girl, do you have a boyfriend? Like, what's going on with that? Like, what is your love life giving? What does it look like? And it highlights this part of your life that, one, you feel is quite private, and two, it's highlighting this void because there's not much actually happening there. Yeah. So that's when we start to come up with the different excuses. Right? Which means that we're not authentically owning ourselves, that actually we are lying to the people around us and also to ourselves. For me, it was, oh, I'm really busy with school, so I don't have time to date or to whatever. But for you it might be, hey, I'm really busy at work, so that's why I don't have a boyfriend. Or, you know, you're talking about all of the other things that you're doing, and that's the reason why you don't have a love life. This is what I call the highlighting phase phase, where your friends and family are highlighting this part of your life that they know something is going on, but they don't necessarily know what it is. And maybe you're not ready to admit that there's something going on there as well. Right? Okay. So we've talked about the awareness phase. Hey, something's different with me and my love life. Then we talked about the shame phase. Hey, what's wrong with me? Everyone's doing this, but I'm not. Then we are talking about the highlighted phase. People are noticing that you don't really have a love life and you don't have a lot of guys around you, and you're not dating a lot right now. I want to talk about the avoidance phase, which is because I don't have anything in my life around my love life or dating life. I'm just gonna avoid it. I don't need this. My life is great without it. Right. I'm gonna focus on other things, whether that be your.

Being the best daughter that you can be, whether it's being the best employee and you're just focused out in work, or being the best friend and being there for all of your friends, whatever it may be. Or also avoidance. Also looks like I'm traveling every month to a different destination to try to make myself feel whole. Right. We're just completely avoiding. We are not really understanding that connection is a human need, and we don't want to feel bad about ourselves. So we're going to numb out. Maybe we're shopping and we're getting the most fashionable labels and luxury items to try to make us feel good. But there's different ways that we will potentially avoid to not address our love lives. For me, and me coming out as a gay man, the way that I masked this or I avoided this was, I'm gonna focus in on school, I'm gonna get the best grades, I'm gonna be the best student, and also I'm gonna really focus in on sports. So I'm gonna just play after school, I'm just gonna play sports, eat, and go to bed, and that's gonna be it. I'm gonna go to school, I'm gonna play sports, I'm gonna eat, I'm gonna go to bed so that I don't have to deal with this, but I don't have to think about this. But most importantly, I don't have to think about this part of my life that, one, I don't know a lot about, and two, I feel like something is missing, and that makes me feel a little bit inadequate. That was my story as I was coming out as a gay man. So I just think that there's a lot of parallels when you are having challenges or struggles with love and the coming out process. Because there are different phases here, and I'm sure you all have heard or felt the different phases that I'm talking about here. Yeah. Okay, so we're in avoidance phase. After that phase now, we actually are starting to get to a point where we're going to admit it to ourselves that we've been avoiding for so long, we just can't avoid it any longer. We have to admit to ourselves that, I want this thing, I want a relationship, I want to be dating, I want a man, I want a husband, I want a family.