Are you letting fear quietly sabotage your love life? In this episode of the Love U Podcast, I uncover how hidden fears—fear of rejection, fear of settling, fear of wasting time—can keep smart, strong, successful women stuck, whether they’re avoiding dating, endlessly swiping, or staying in the wrong relationships. I’ll show you how these fears create paralysis and prevent you from finding the love you deserve. You’ll walk away with practical, mindset-shifting insights to help you date with confidence, trust your judgment, and break free from fear’s grip. If you’re ready to finally move forward, this episode is for you—tune in now.

What You’ll Hear

Full Episode Transcript

Hey, this is Evan Marc Katz, dating and relationship coach for smart, strong, successful women, your personal trainer for love. Welcome back to the Love U podcast where you can learn everything you need to know about dating relationships, sex, and men from a man’s point of view and find a relationship that makes you feel safe, heard, and understood.

Are you sick of those words yet? I sure hope not because they are the ticket to the rest of your life. The reason I do this podcast is because I deeply believe in love. I’m happily married.

It is my chief export in trying to help other people get the thing that I’m so blessed to have. If you enjoyed this podcast and are a regular listener, you’re going to want to stick around for this episode. If you haven’t already, go to Apple, go to Spotify, go to YouTube and subscribe.

Click the button to make sure you don’t miss a single episode. If you haven’t already said something nice or given us a five-star review or left a comment, please do so. It means the world and it gets us into the eyes of more people and affects my ability to help more women find lasting love and raise your standards for what you hope for a successful relationship.

Before we dive into today’s topic, which is pretty universal, I think fear is an underestimated factor in relationships, I want to just briefly announce the next installment of my Extraordinary Love series. It’s coming up next month. In the Extraordinary Love series, I do a Zoom call, a coaching call with a short lecture and a live Q&A.

Over 360 women registered for the last one. This one’s going to be even bigger. This month’s topic, The Power of Feminine Energy, How to Inspire a Man to Pursue You.

If you haven’t already registered, go to EvanMarcKatz, don’t go to EvanMarcKatz, scratch that, go to www.extraordinaryloveseries.com, putting your name and email address, and I will see you on that live call. So let’s talk about the unspeakable, which is the deep role that fear has in everybody’s life. Now, I am a dating coach for smart, successful women, women who have everything but the guy.

When I get you on the phone, I always hear some version of the same story. I am confident. I like myself.

I have great relationships with my friends and my family. I have traveled. I own my own home.

I’ve done the work and so I really like who I am and the life I’ve built for myself. The only thing I don’t have is a partner. Can you help me get this partner? Where is he hiding? What none of that acknowledges are how fear permeates everything.

You might not use the word fear, you might use anxiety to better describe your emotions, but when I get on the phone with clients, potential clients or women who reach out to me and book a call, we usually end up kind of going deep in a short period of time and talking about the emotion that led them, you in this case, to reaching out to me. Nobody calls me to tell me that she’s thrilled with her life, even if she is happy with her life. No one’s ever called me to say, Evan, everything’s perfect.

Just wanted to let you know. Thank you, dating coach from the internet. Just want to let you know how great everything is.

So there are so many fears that bounce around in our head that I think it’s almost hard to calculate them all. I’m going to throw a couple out and see if any of them resonate with you. And if not, then that’s fine too.

But these are things I hear from women almost every day. There’s the fear of dating. If you’re a woman who’s been in a relationship for 20 years and is dating for the first time, dating might be scary to you.

Online dating might be scary to you because it’s new. I’m a dating coach. If I suddenly had to start dating now after nearly 20 years, I think I might be scared too.

And I know what I’m doing. There’s something that I think a lot of women possess, which I wouldn’t say it’s more than men, but because I coach women, I hear it a lot. There’s what other people think.

You’re not just doing this in a bubble. Women are afraid of what their children think about them dating and the men that they’re going to bring home. They’re definitely self-conscious about what their friends think of the person they’re dating and whether that person is going to fit in and is up to par.

So we can’t remove the externalities of what people feel. There is the fear of sex with someone new. There’s the fear of getting naked with someone when you’re in your 40s, 50s, and 60s and you don’t look quite like you did in your 20s and 30s.

There is the fear of rejection, putting yourself out there, opening up your heart and discovering that a good portion of the people that you’re interested in online after a first date, after you hook up and mess around, that that person doesn’t feel the same way about you, the same desire, the same attraction, the same level of interest or commitment, because the default setting in dating is rejection. We’re really comfortable rejecting, and you should. 90% of men, you don’t spend any time worrying about swiping left on a guy or not agreeing to go on a second date with a guy.

That’s normal. But if there’s a guy who swipes left on you or doesn’t want to go on a second date with you, it suddenly feels very personal. That rejection, that fear of rejection is real.

There’s the fear of settling. I didn’t come this far in life to end up in a bad relationship, to end up with a guy who makes less money, to end up with a guy who’s less attractive than my ex, to feel that I could do better. I certainly don’t want to settle.

I would rather be alone. Again, no one’s arguing with this, but it is a very common fear of coming this long only to end up in a dissatisfying relationship where you’re always in your head that you could have done better. And then there’s, I wouldn’t even say it’s the converse, there’s fear of being in a bad relationship.

So if one, you settled for a guy who is not that intelligent, not that attractive, not that successful, and you spend your time thinking, I could do better. Then there’s the, I found the guy who is tall, handsome, successful, charismatic, but the relationship is no good and I’ve done that before. I’ve gotten the guy who has everything and felt unseen, unheard, small, insignificant, gas lit, needy, not like I could be myself walking on eggshells.

So there’s the fear of being trapped in a bad relationship because you might have a history of having done that. And then there’s a, another fear of what if this never works out? What if as a 37 year old woman, I’m never find the right person. I don’t, I can’t figure out the difference between compromising and settling.

All right. I go through the apps and it’s the same story. And I am in this position at 47, 57, 67, 77.

Right. And I’m alone for the rest of my life. That’s not something I really want.

And that kind of scares me. The prospect of being alone for the rest of my life when I’ve got a lot of living ahead of me, that’s scary. So what happens is these fears, and I just outlined like 10 of them, any of which could apply to you.

And more of them could apply to you. More than one could apply to you. All of these fears are eventually paralyzing and they stop you from dreaming big and living big because they contradict each other.

If you’re afraid of dating, well, then you’ll inherently not date. If you’re afraid of rejection, it’ll keep you away from dating. If you’re afraid of getting used by some guy for sex, it’ll keep you away from dating.

So then it becomes very easy to just live your life and work and travel and spend time with your friends and just keep dating on the sideline and hope that it happens eventually. All right. So the fear of that basically keeps you on the shelf and prevents you from finding love.

And then when you’re dating, there’s the paralyzing fear of, I don’t want to commit to the wrong person. I don’t want to fall into my old patterns. And then the next thing you know, you’re rejecting every single person out of fear that if you let someone into your heart, they could break your heart.

So the easiest thing to do is just stay on that dating treadmill and never let anybody in. Never make yourself vulnerable. Never let down your guard.

Keep finding reasons to reject just about every man. And then we end up in a different place. So when I get on the phone with clients, I usually use a lot of hand gestures like I do on this podcast for those watching on YouTube.

And then there’s the person who’s stuck, sitting in the driveway, hasn’t even turned on the car to get to their destination, not dating. There’s the person who’s dating prolifically, spinning around, dating one or two guys a week for years and years and years, not finding anybody good enough, not necessarily learning, just expecting that eventually it’s going to work itself out even though they’re not making any progress in dating. And so then there’s the person who spends way too long in the bad relationship.

And whichever of those people you are at a given point in time, you’re going to create some sort of paralysis because the easiest thing to do is what you’ve already been doing. The easiest thing to do is to opt out. And what happens, we end up weighing all these risks so heavily that we don’t consider the cost of our fear.

What’s the cost of not dating for 20 years? It’s that you can’t build a life with someone. You can’t have companionship. You can’t have someone wake up next to you.

You can’t know what it’s like to have someone who’s taking care of you if you don’t date or let anybody in. We want theoretically to be loved, but we won’t go through the process of dating to find love. And so then we’re internally contradicting ourselves.

I want love, but I don’t want to do what it takes to find love. All right. That’s a fear-based response.

There’s a cost to that. All right. There’s a cost to finding fault with every single guy.

And I’m not thinking, remember, you’re the CEO. Most guys are not good enough for you. But if you find flaws with every single guy, you might be avoidant, whether you classify yourself as not.

If every guy is fatally flawed, eventually you realize, oh, I have found fault with every guy for 20 years. And I’m not necessarily going to regret it. But maybe there’s something wrong with my picker.

And maybe I’m never going to have someone who is the guy who makes breakfast for me on Saturday morning. Maybe I’m never going to have the guy who chooses to take me to wine country for the weekend. Maybe I’m never going to have the guy who’s there for me when my mom dies to comfort me.

And it’s because we reject everybody. And I was like that. That’s how you end up going out with 300 people.

There’s no judgment for this. And then there’s the people who are afraid of being alone. They stay in bad relationships because they don’t think they can do better.

I’m going to do another podcast about this soon. But there’s a cost to staying in a broken relationship for one year, five years, 10 years, 20 years. And that’s every second you’re with the wrong person is the second you’re not looking for the right person.

And the next thing you know, your life has gone by. A good portion of your adult life goes by staying because you’re afraid of leaving because you don’t think you can do better because you don’t believe in yourself. You don’t believe that there are good men.

So we stay in dead end situations. So you can see all of these things are driven by fear. And where we weigh the risks too heavily, we don’t consider the cost.

And yet this isn’t how we lead the rest of our lives. Not by a long shot. You’re brave.

You’ve done big things. Whether you think about it or not, every time you get in a car, you’re risking your life. Imagine someone who didn’t drive because they were afraid of a car crash because 100,000 people a year die in car crashes or something like that.

It’s not that it’s a crazy fear. It just would be a paralyzing fear to not be able to go anywhere by car. Same thing by a plane.

Imagine someone who’s afraid of flying. It might be somewhat irrational given the infrequency of plane crashes. And yet there are people who are afraid of doing that and they miss out on an important part of living which is exploring life outside of driving radius.

Think of someone who’s afraid of changing jobs. I understand that. It is scary to start over and take a job at a different company or switch industries.

And yet if you’re not happy or you’re not properly compensated or your work’s no longer inspiring or you can’t get along with the folks around you at work, sometimes you have to find a new job and usually that leads to a better job than the one that you were leaving. What if you stayed unemployed for the rest of your life because of fear? You wouldn’t do that. So look at all the things that fear does and realize you’ve overcome these fears before.

You do drive, you do fly, you have switched jobs, you have moved homes or moved cities because you were inspired to, because the status quo is dissatisfying. So in every way in your life you have had a level of fear. What if I move and what if I switch jobs and what if I get in a car and you’ve come out on top.

Change has proven to be good for you. So there’s in love a fear that I didn’t mention which I think I should bring to the surface which is the fear of repeating the patterns of your past. Getting used for sex, falling for an emotionally unavailable or married guy.

That really hurts and so the easiest thing to do is to not date at all, not put yourself on the line, not open your heart. But that denies you some level of agency. It’s like you’re a passive victim in your own life as if men are all predators who are out to use you or hurt you.

So the skill here is having the confidence to be able to date, to be able to trust your judgment, to be able to be the CEO of your love life, to be able to know that you could attract quality men and reject men who are going to hurt you. To realize that you have more power, you do right now without ever talking to me. You have more power than you even know.

So are there men out there who are the equivalent of emotional terrorists? Absolutely. There are some god-awful men out there and worse there are men who are not god-awful but they’re selfish and they’re short-sighted and they don’t mean to hurt you and they come across as good guys and they leave you hollowed out and mistrustful and doubting yourself and doubting mankind. Those are even more insidious.

I’m not suggesting that they don’t exist. What I’m suggesting is that you have the power to learn, to date with confidence, to trust your judgment, to be able to eliminate these men in relatively short order because you’re coming from a place of confidence, you’re coming from a place of abundance, because you know that you’re number one in a field of one and that every man in his right mind would want to be with you. If you don’t actually believe that, it’s really, really hard to live that.

That’s why before I do anything with my clients we spend a lot of time talking about confidence and belief, eradicating this paralyzing fear. A dozen of which I mentioned today, all of which are somewhat reasonable and that’s why we call them limiting beliefs. They’re partially true.

All the things you’re afraid of, it’s not nonsense, it’s real. The same way that one could get into a car crash. We just don’t let it paralyze us but when it comes to dating, if you had a 25-year bad marriage, all you want to do is make sure that you don’t end up in another 25-year bad marriage.

So that’s the one thing when people work with me, I can guarantee you’re not going to end up in a 25-year bad marriage. You are never going to settle. You’re never going to be in a relationship where your core needs are met.

You’re never going to be in a relationship where you’re the giver and he takes. You’re never going to be with a guy who was great for three months and then sucked there afterwards and try to win him over by the sheer force of your love and maybe some couples counseling. You’re never going to put yourself through that ringer ever again.

So you may have been burned by emotionally unavailable men or controlling men or men with anger or addiction issues or men who are in no position to commit to you but that does not mean you ever have to go through that again. As long as you’re on my watch, I will not let that happen to you. So if you want to join the ranks of the happily married, if you do not want to be paralyzed by fear, if you want to believe in yourself and the goodness of men again because they do exist and I see them all the time, go to evanmarckatz.com/now book a time to talk with me and we’ll have this conversation and I’ll hear what’s going on in your love life and why you feel the way you feel because it’s not silly.

It’s not irrational but it is paralyzing and you never get the life you want if you continue on this path indefinitely. I’m excited to talk to you because I’m really fortunate. I get to see women like you have success every single day and if you are stuck in a pattern, a rut, where you’re not surrounding yourself by happily married people or women who are in action, you can join me in love you and I’ll show you a whole new world.

This isn’t a big sales pitch. This is free advice. You can do whatever you want with the free advice but I do want to bring to the surface that if you dig just a little bit deeper, there is deep fear surrounding you when it comes to dating relationships and men.

Fear is always the problem. It’s never the solution. It doesn’t fix anything.

It’s only protecting you from the love that you want. When you think about it that way, fear is only keeping you away from the relationship that you truly desire as long as you let fear win. So don’t let fear win.

Go to evanmarkatz.com/now and I’ll talk to you through this process so that you can get the love that you truly deserve. Before we go today, my name is Evan Marc Katz. This is the Love U Podcast.

Thank you so much for listening. I want to remind you about the next installment of the Extraordinary Love Series. Go to extraordinaryloveseries.com, put in your name and email address to join us for our next presentation, The Power of Feminine Energy, How to Inspire a Man to Pursue You, followed by a live Q&A.

If you’re a regular listener, don’t forget to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, leave us a comment or review. I am watching. I am listening.

I will respond to you wherever you are and I thank you for being a part of my love universe. I am proud of you for persevering. I know it’s not easy but it is worth it.

I look forward to seeing you there. Bye.