Hi beautiesSo this happened a while back when I went to meet a nice soul outside of my current ENM relationship...Everything went perfect except that I felt like it has the potential to get messy. One of those times when you feel like the person on the other side logically understands the circumstances but is likely unable to align their inner forces with their rationale. I personally tend to see the gap between the levels of experience as the culprit but I might be wrong.Long story short I chickened out! My intuition was too strong... Neither wanted to hurt someone nor carry the burdun myself. But left wondering if there was another way... To trust the flow... Go against my intuition.. or...Would appreciate your thoughts... 🌹🙏🌹

You are like RIGHT ON POINT Sam! 😲I acted on my confirmation bias! I understand that you suggest "more clear communication" as a better way to have navigated the situation in that case.Whereas if it was truely "chickening out" I probably would have needed some on spot breathing techniques? 🙃

This is impossible. The good thing is "Love is unlimited, but time and energy aren't." Do feel the love and connection, but be conscious of how you spend your time and energy. 😊 And in a relationship, each person needs to be responsible for making their own choices and managing their own resources.

Reading all of this, I’d like to challenge your conclusions of what happened.I believe you fell for “confirmation bias” rather than “chickened out”.I know, it might sound like semantics, but those are (imho) fundamentally different things.“Chickened out” implies that it was an irrational panicky response, but it sounds like you thought it thoroughly through?!“Confirmation bias” on the other hand means that you expected a certain outcome and gave indicators that support your believe more weight than those contradicting it.The reason I believe the difference is important is that both require different actions/steps to be taken to cope better with a similar situation in the future.

I don't really have an advice, but I feel like I was in the opposite position recently and it left me quite confused, especially since I didn't have explicit intention to make 'more' out of it. I was really enjoying the emotional connection and the relaxation I felt in it, however quite quickly they started fearing I wanted too much, even though it was not anything I consciously considered before, and they started pushing me away to "protect" me from getting hurt. It put me in a very awkward position where I felt forced to explain how I simultaneously wanted all of them right now, yet it didn't mean I needed to keep them for more than that. Probably because of their own conflicting feelings, I didn't manage to make myself well understood, and I even started doubting that I might indeed wanted to grab on, since they were insisting so hard on an intention that I actually didn't have. It's ironic that this situation might have played out easier if we were both more selfish and clearly stated our own intentions, instead of projecting our insecurities on the other.