The High-Achiever's Paradox: Self-Aware But Still Single | 172
Self-awareness is supposed to make love easier — so why doesn't it? In this episode of I Think I Like You, Clara explores the paradox so many high-achieving, independent women face: years of personal growth and self-work, but relationships still feel just out of reach. She breaks down why "cocooning" and rest matter before re-entering the dating pool, how avoidance around health, mortality, and intimacy quietly shapes our relationship patterns, and what it really means to move from doing to being in the pursuit of love. If you've ever felt behind in dating despite having your life together everywhere else, this episode offers a different way to think about timing, readiness, and the inner work that actually moves the needle.
Key Topics:
The paradox of self-awareness and relationship challenges among independent women
The importance of "cocooning" and self-care before pursuing love actively
How avoiding certain life tasks signals underlying fears, especially around mortality and intimacy
The role of inner clarity in transforming dating experiences
Moving from doing to being in the pursuit of love
The influence of societal and internal pressures to "catch up" by a certain age
Strategies to understand genuine desires versus fears-driven actions
Personal stories about life stages, timing, and the importance of patience
Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction: The high-achiever's paradox in love
00:28 - Self-awareness vs. relationship struggles
01:22 - Embracing summer and prioritizing outside activity
01:48 - The benefits of weightlifting and community classes for mental clarity
02:17 - Juggling parenting, deadlines, and personal growth
02:47 - Inspiration behind the episode: conversations with women in early 30s
03:13 - The desire for independence versus societal pressure to date
03:43 - The importance of knowing yourself in your 30s and beyond
04:12 - Navigating chaotic early 30s and establishing identity outside work
04:41 - The internal conflict: living fully now vs. fear of missing out
05:10 - The challenge of dating apps and perceived "behindness"
05:42 - Balancing enjoying the present with societal expectations
06:09 - The reality of the dating process and emotional avoidance
06:39 - Success story: meeting a partner after healing and reflection
07:27 - Deep work: healing past wounds to attract love
07:35 - The importance of cocooning and self-care before entering the dating scene
08:04 - The power of internal clarity and self-understanding
08:33 - Overcoming the wiring to plan and strategize in emotional intimacy
09:20 - Recognizing avoidance behaviors in dating efforts
09:50 - The different forms of action: doing vs. being
10:17 - Facing fears and disillusionment in dating
10:44 - Common experiences: flaky dates, lingerers, and ghosting
11:27 - Gaining insight through clarity and inner work
11:56 - Personal reflections: health screenings and fears of mortality
12:23 - Confronting avoidance of self-care and life planning
13:15 - Naming fears around mortality and intimacy
14:12 - Moving forward through clarity and action
14:42 - Connecting fears to relationship patterns and living authentically
15:11 - Reflection questions for inner work on relationship fears
16:14 - The timeline of meeting a partner and life stages
16:41 - The benefits of patience and self-knowledge in love
17:29 - The societal pressures of youth and relationship timelines
18:04 - Authentic reasons to pursue love and relationship readiness
18:59 - The significance of inner work over external action
19:27 - Invitation to join coaching for deeper relationship work
Connect with Clara:
Show Transcript:
Clara Artschwager (00:00.226)
Hi everyone, welcome back to another episode of I Think You Like You the Podcast. I'm your host, Claire Artwager, and this is a podcast for women who have built genuinely impressive lives and still can't figure out why love isn't working. If you're high achieving, highly independent, the one who handles everything, and maybe quietly burning out on that identity too, you're in the right place. So you've probably done a lot of therapy, you have a lot of self-awareness, maybe you nightstand stacked with self-help books like it is mine.
And yet somehow the relationship piece still isn't moving. So new episodes drop here every week. You can also find me over on Instagram at I thinkIlikeyou.co. And if you're ready to stop diagnosing the problem and start actually changing it, my private coaching program is open. It's for a high-achieving, highly independent woman in her 30s and 40s who has done the work, has the self-awareness.
And is still waiting for this part of her life to click into place. So head to I thinkIlikeyu.co. That will be linked in the show notes. Click on work with me and you can learn more about that as well as schedule a discovery call. How are you all? This episode is falling shortly after the summer solstice. Summer is often something that seems to pass me by. I feel like I get into it too late. But the opposite has landed this year, perhaps because I have
A kid who is like, please get me outside. And quite frankly, after a long winter, we're like, Yeah, we're gonna do all the things outside. we are knee deep in sunscreen and strawberries and scraped knees. I didn't even mean to make those all nests, but there they are. my oven actually seems to be on the fritz, which is leading me to prioritize all meals on the grill, which is not a bad thing.
And I'm totally that 40-year-old, y'all. It's like, my God, I feel so much better after lifting weights. I started a local workout class about six weeks ago after years of just doing workouts at home. And perhaps it's all the early 2000s hip hop instructor plays, but these classes are truly not just the joy of my life, but they're also fueling me through so many things that are just hard right now, but I have to kind of grind through.
Clara Artschwager (02:17.784)
having a toddler. I am working on this next iteration of my book proposal and flooded with deadlines around when it needs to go to my literary agent and when it needs to go to publishers. And that's all very real. so I find these classes to be a place where I can really burn through a lot of that nervous energy, the slug and the fog of parenting, as I like to say, and then get through to the rest of my day. So dropping into this week's episode
The episode itself was inspired by a conversation I had with a group of women in early May who were all in their early 30s. And I posed the question to them, which is if you knew you would meet your partner by 35, would you be pushing to date right now? Would you even want a relationship? I could barely get the question out before the responses were things like, No, I definitely wouldn't be dating right now.
I want a relationship eventually, but I really want to focus on my own life right now. Like I finally have hobbies and time to do them. I'm only doing this because I fear getting behind and not meeting someone. There was one woman in the group who even said, 35, forget that. Like 38, that would be fine. And many other women nodded along. I wanted to unpack a few themes I see here because I find this sentiment to be really prominent in the early 30s for single women.
I think this period of life is one of the first real seasons where we get to know who we actually are versus who we think we are or who we're performing to be. Obviously that only grows across the 30s and then your 40s hit and you're like, my God. All that said, our twenties are kind of chaotic, can be aimless, even if we're in a set career. You know, we've gotten far enough along in our work in our early 30s, generally speaking, where
We're actually making some money. And we also have some time to ourselves and we know things about ourselves that guide all of that. So we're often like, well, who am I or what am I outside of work? It can also be a season of like, wow, I learned a lot in my 20s through work, romance, friendship, family. And now people are often saying to themselves, like, I've got the stuff I want to work on. I've got the stuff that I want to heal.
Clara Artschwager (04:41.26)
And that's the where they want to dig in. And they don't exactly want to be searching for a partner right now. There's a part of that that feels really, really good. Like I want to live my life and dig in here. And then there is another part, and this was the conundrum that I was speaking about with this group of like, but my God, I'm gonna get behind if I'm not dating. It's a way I need to be dating, but not every states are working at.
out and the apps suck and the whole thing is terrible.
There is something to be said for an experience sucking when your heart isn't in it. But I also totally get it. I sat here too, exactly in my early 30s. I was watching my friends get married and have babies, witnessing my own biological clock ticking. I wanted to meet someone, but I also really, really wanted and needed this season of life to myself.
But here is the truth that cannot override any app or matchmaker or tool that promises like better dates, better connections. If you are dating largely from a place of I'm going to be behind, all the good ones are taken. So I better work on this. And I have to do this now, otherwise it will never happen for me.
When the truth of your heart and what you actually feel is more, I'm really enjoying this time and space to myself. Yeah, like I'm open to meeting someone, but I'd like to focus on my hobbies, the trip I'm taking this summer, the personal work I'm doing on myself, healing from a past relationship. Like those are all very real things. If that's really what's there, you're not gonna have the dating experience that you want, even if you put in all the effort.
Clara Artschwager (06:39.118)
You're not gonna meet people. It's either gonna be a bunch of, you know, first dates, second dates that go nowhere, no one matching with you, people sending a few messages and then falling off, people being flaky, like, yeah, sure, let's meet up. And then it never comes to be people ghosting, the situationship vibe. You know what I'm talking about.
What we often do though is take all of that. We like take it all in. And we're like, dating is shit. There's something wrong with me. I'm never gonna meet someone. It's something I'm doing. This is not a fun cycle. The other week, a client I'd worked with for about the last year messaged me and said she'd met someone in person six weeks prior and they decided to enter a relationship.
I was of course over the moon for her, but I wasn't surprised to hear the news, and here's why.
Because I knew the space she was in right before this experience. So we had spent a lot of twenty twenty five, the year prior, helping her heal from a previous relationship and doing deeper work on her upbringing, all the kinds of things around her family of origin to understand her relationship patterns. That is the deeper work that I do with people. And what I always witness after a season of that type of work is we need to cocoon a bit. We need to focus solely on
Undoing things that serve us and nourish us. Is that another way? We need to integrate, right? Like we're not ready to be like fully out there and connecting with people because we need to take all that was kicked up and worked through and sit with that. We need to just be. That's exactly what she did through the winter and early spring of 2026. She took herself off the dating app and spent time not working to make this thing happen. Instead, she took care of herself.
Clara Artschwager (08:33.932)
And the thing I find is that even though I'm guiding people through this process, they always tend to land there naturally themselves because they're so rooted in understanding of what is true for me, what am I craving? What do I actually need?
But it's the space we are so afraid to enter that is always the medicine that we need. And I think that's really worth naming directly because it's so tied to who a lot of you are, myself included. High shiverers are wired to do, to optimize, to strategize, to work the problem. And that wiring has served us incredibly well in every other area of our lives. But dating isn't a project you can outwork no matter how many.
Downloadable guides to perfect the text message or do something to your profile or wait to sleep with someone that you have sitting in your inbox. The constant doing, the swiping, the optimizing your profile, going on dates you're not really feeling, that can actually be a way, flesh it often is, of avoiding the deeper question, the deeper work, which is what do I actually want? And what am I actually ready for? Double click on that.
Second question. Not doing, not being active is also a move, stepping back, going inward, letting things integrate. That's not passivity. It's just a different kind of action. It just doesn't get recognized as one because it doesn't produce anything you could point to. And high achievers are really uncomfortable here. But that's exactly why it tends to be the place where the real shift happened.
Many women I speak with and work with in their early 30s experience a similar sentiment. Like, I'm just doing this because I'm afraid. I don't want to get behind. I already am behind. I don't actually want to be doing this, though. They don't spend any time looking at why do I dislike dating so much? Why do my efforts feel so futile? Why am I having experiences like
Clara Artschwager (10:44.056)
First and second dates that go nowhere, flaky people who message and fall off or who never want to meet up, but initiated saying they wanted to meet up, lingering situationships. Like why is that my constant?
This is the stuff look at. This is the stuff to get clear on. Now, there's some inner wisdom here because this is not easy stuff to look at. And your body, your subconscious, knows that. It's afraid to go into those proverbial emotional waters. But once the clarity comes, even though it might be scary, it might be destabilizing, this is a course why I walk people through this process.
Once that clarity comes, people are like, wow. Whoa. Like, holy shit. I didn't even know that was there. I didn't even see that. I actually had an experience like this, something totally outside of dating earlier this week. I was voice noting with my dear friend Sophia, who is so many things. I mean, she's a functional nutritionist. She's a psychological astrologer. She's such a wise human being. And I was sharing with her that.
I had I'd done a few things. I needed to schedule a physical for this year. And it turns out I already had one scheduled for the fall, but I had never done the blood work from my previous physical eight months ago. And then on top of that, I'd never gone and gotten the mammogram that was ordered after my gyne exam last summer. And then on top of that, I was sort of lumping these things together.
My husband and I need to set up all the legal stuff that you do. Well, you need to do this before you have a child. I should have done it for myself as an individual. But we didn't. All the wills and the trusts and the whatever, right? To have those ducks in a row. And I have been punting a meeting with our lawyer to do that. And
Clara Artschwager (12:47.148)
Because our lawyer is associated with our financial advisor firm, there was a one particular woman that I really wanted to work with. Well, now it turns out she's leaving the firm. I missed the opportunity. Of course, there are other people and lawyers within the firm that I can work with and I can go and get the blood work now, and I can go and get a mammogram when I have my gyno exam in a couple of weeks. But I was noticing this consistency of avoiding really all of these elements of caring for myself and my family.
And I share this with Sophia. And she was like, Well, you know, okay, you're acknowledging it. So like give yourself credit. But also, it's pretty obvious to me. She's like, this is a fear of death. Like all of these elements relate to getting, you know, closer to the realities of life, like really knowing what's going on in your body, like really designating, you know, what ifs around your finances. And when she said that, I was like,
Of course, as I'm talking about with the experience of why dating isn't working out and moving in that direction, it wasn't easy to hear. It was hard. I was like, wow, okay. I clearly have some feelings there. I clearly have some fears there. But then once it was named, I was like, my God, I chill I just want to move through this then. The act of which then is moving forward with all the appointments, which I'm going to do.
So again, you see that clarity comes through that provides freedom, but it's also illuminating because it's not just a fear of death for me that came up. It also wraps around to intimacy, right? Being more tethered to my husband, my life, and as someone who really still struggles with intimacy and living in that reality, I can still kind of push back on it, even though we have a marriage license, even though our names are both on the deed of this house, right?
doing a trust, living will, et cetera, et cetera, is another element of that. So again, confronting that was actually really empowering to see that within myself and say, like, okay. Okay. That's there. That's that's something for me to observe, to journal on, to think on when I'm driving in the car and trying to ignore my child that's screaming in the background. That's probably not the best time to do it. But you get what I'm saying.
Clara Artschwager (15:11.582)
the same thing applies here. And and this is again a lot of the folks that I do, a lot of the work I do with folks in their early 30s. It could be at any point in life, but it often lands there. And we slip into deep work while taking a dating break. That said, you can tackle these questions for yourself. And y'all know I'm going to say, grab a pen, grab some paper, grab your journal, and here are your questions to go ham on.
Why do I dislike dating so much? Why do I force myself to do it? Why do my efforts feel so futile? And what have my consistent experiences been? Like what are the dates like? Are they meh, you go, they're nice, but nothing beyond that? Are you still stuck texting with someone, you know, for the last five months that you've maybe slept with twice and you think it's going to become something and you have a big crush on them, but it's not going anywhere? Like, what is your experience?
Why do you think it is that way?
Clara Artschwager (16:14.904)
I'm gonna go back to where we started, which is this predicament around 35. I think meeting something and dis I think meeting someone at 35 and the desire to do so is really interesting. I didn't plan it this way, but I did happen to meet my husband at 35 and have a baby at 39. And this landed as really right for me. Maybe I'm just saying that in hindsight because it is my life, it's the life I'm living, but it is how I feel.
I had a lot of runway to build my career, which feels really good. I know myself better as a person. even with having a child and slowing down work-wise a bit, I I haven't lost a lot that I've built and I'm able to ramp back up. I enjoy being a mom of a one and a half year old at 40. I enjoy it. And I can connect with other mothers who, you know.
look at and I think, my God, how are you doing it? I would be so tired. And that's the reality we know. but I find that to be really true for me. And I think that's true for a lot of women in terms of what they experience in the early thirties and that thirty five to thirty-eight, let's call it, or thirty five to thirty-seven, whatever it is for you marker.
There's a lot in life we do from a place of, you know, I have to do this thing, otherwise said there's something wrong with me, or I'll be an outsider, I'll be abandoned.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to meet someone and loneliness is a legitimate thing. But I think in the era of online dating, especially when it's so easy to just like download an app and swipe mindlessly, we don't drop in and deeply consider, do I really want to be doing this? And why am I doing this?
Clara Artschwager (18:04.214)
The fear of being behind is not a reason to date. There has to be more behind it if you want to see something actually happen, which again, PS, is why you're not seeing things happen. You don't actually want it. And you probably fear intimacy. Rich, grounded, truthy reasons to date look like I want to open my life up to someone. I know myself deeply and I want to get to know someone else in that way. I want to build a life with someone and I'm ready.
To do that. Sit with those. Notice if any of them are like, ooh, mm, I don't know about that. Or notice if you land more in the space of yeah, the only reason I'm doing this is out of fear. I'm watching my peers couple up, pop out kids, and I just think I gotta stay on the hamster wheel. But again.
Going on the actual dates is one type of action. Taking a break and coming into this part of yourself is another type of action. It's any of this is landing if you recognize yourself as someone who's always on, always handling it, always moving to the next thing, and you're starting to wonder if that's the very pattern that's keeping love a distance. That's exactly what I do in my private coaching program. Again, it's for the high-achieving, highly independent woman in her 30s and 40s who has done the work, has the self-awareness.
And is still waiting for this piece here to come to fruition. As always, you can find out more information at IthinkIlikeyou.co. If you have questions, thoughts, or concerns, you can drop those in on Instagram at IthinkIlikeYou.co. It's funny the way I just landed on concerns, y'all. Like, well, you can tell me what concerns you have. All right. I hope you are having a beautiful start to the summer and a beautiful week. I'll talk to you soon.