As a mindset and transformational coach, I love the belief that we deserve better when seeing our own relational patterns in dating.

It’s powerful, aligns us with our needs, and reminds us that we need to not keep our expectations low. It pushes us to honor our values, to seek respect and emotional maturity, and change habits in us that block us from getting what we truly want.

Deep connection truly is our birthright. 

But I know as well all the pain, disappointment, confusion, and effort we, as women, pour into relationships. All the striving that propels us toward that sky full of stars—full of possibility and relational hope—is real. It’s valid. I see the longing, confusion, and setbacks. I see it all. And so do the people who work in this field alongside me.

But here’s what I’ve been wondering lately:

Between the one-liners of “Don’t settle!” “You deserve it all,” or “Your happiness is non-negotiable,” have we swung too far to the other side here, losing our shared humanity in the process of modern dating?

Yes, many of us have experienced hurtful and even dangerous dating experiences. We have experienced dishonesty, manipulation, abuse, fear, and anger from men and relationships. These patterns aren’t imaginary. They are shaped by history, culture, and social conditioning.

There is real harm perpetuated by these systems and the men who still don’t see how they are caught in them. 

Even so, where is the line between empathy—understanding our collective journey (we are just participants in the same human experiment on this floating rock, aren’t we)—and, well, grace—where we expect understanding without giving it in return?  

Has dating culture drifted too far into the entitlement space without us realizing it?

Before you condemn me, please hear me out. We all wrestle with these swings of over-giving to entitlement in our relational life. Know that I am not asking you to excuse poor behavior. I am not asking you to deny accountability. 

I am asking you to move beyond black-and-white thinking to expand to what therapists call “dialectal thinking.” This means holding two opposing viewpoints as equally true without collapsing them into one another. 

Collapsing one truth into the other means we let one narrative dominate: “All men cause harm.” Or we shift sides to only see the goodness without limits: “He has so much trauma. My unconditional love will save him.”

This works the same with the entitlement dynamic. “I deserve better,” which is a healthy, empowering stance, can quickly tip into “I deserve it all—the perfect man, the perfect relationship.” And sometimes it can move again, before we notice, creeping to the other end: “I deserve more than him,” where our judgment or comparison mind takes hold instead of our desire for connection. 

Entitlement is wanting our needs met without acknowledging the humanity on the other side of them. And it often is a protective stance. It means our needs may have not been met for a long time, we’ve been misunderstood, or we have been hurt without repair. 

Our internal pendulum swings from lack to grasp. 

The person we are relating with becomes less human and more instrumental, meaning they get reduced to a role or function. They are only here to soothe our pain or validate us instead of simply existing as a complex individual. Our curiosity fades. We simply want them to make us whole, not to connect. 

Cognitively, I know that at first this move to dialectal thinking can literally strain our brain. It asks us to sit with what we formerly knew as contradiction. It asks us to not quickly dissolve into taking sides. 

Physically, it may make our gut contract because our body recognizes uncertainty in thinking as a threat. We may even think about how this disrupts our version of feminism, and we start to feel a tightening in our body.

Neurologically, there is also a layer here that helps explain why this adjustment can feel so difficult. Researcher MaryCatherine McDonald points out that our nervous system can’t hold fear and hope at the same time. Like electrical circuits, one is on and one is off. If we try to use both, they blow a breaker.

When hope is present, fear softens. When fear is present, hope goes offline. 

In dating, many of us are unconsciously operating from fear, so the parts of our brain that could reach for new ways to connect or stay curious aren’t operating—our body is caught in a holding pattern and our nervous system circuitry keeps tripping.

And it is in this tension where we shift. So, this is an invitation to relationally graduate, to becoming more self-aware in the process.

Knowing that our discomfort here is a signal challenges us to consciously choose what perspective we will work with at any time. 

If it is too far of a reach for us (due to our pain, our hurt, or our stories), we may move closer to the entitlement end. We desire to find someone to give us the full-on, 24/7 “princess treatment” so the ache gets relief. To add even more complexity, we might go through multiple relationships testing the right balance of what support we need to bring us back into alignment. 

The process is about understanding when our boundaries and needs become hardened into rigid demands, and we slip into forgetting the person across from us is navigating their own fears, histories, and patterns too. 

But this is not about excusing harm. 

This is about learning two relational skills: holding our own needs and boundaries (discernment) and simultaneously connecting with the other person’s humanity (empathy). 

When to put these skills into practice isn’t something we can Google. These are relational grey areas. The tipping point varies for each of us, shifting in each situation we face.

We can’t let them tip to the point where we believe we deserve less than we need, or reduce ourselves to giving up our standards, but settle in an effort to remember the person we are connecting with deserves respect and consideration as well. 

We also can’t let them swing to the point where we overly accommodate, shrink ourselves, or constantly have to translate our soul to another, but seek understanding in how not to punish someone who is still working out what it means to be a human trying to connect with us too. 

We can hold our empathy and standards at the same time. Sometimes this may look like choosing to leave a situation that doesn’t honor our values or well-being. Sometimes this may look like staying with someone while maintaining our boundaries, communicating our needs, and holding space for their humanity as they work through their own patterns. 

The moment we see our relationships as the only way to recover from past pain, the moment our requirements for interacting become rigid and demanding, is the moment we’ve lost our humanity. 

If we let “I deserve better” turn into “You must give me everything I want, exactly how I want it, whenever I want it,” entitlement is present.    

So may we all remember our mutuality. May we see each relationship as a constellation, navigating the space between connecting and boundaries. 

Different constellations lead us to different places. 

When the stars align, we see relationships that help us shine bright. When they don’t, they show us where our boundaries, discernment, or empathy need tending.

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