Dear Olga,
I’ve been dating a warm-hearted, loving man for two months. We are incredibly comfortable together and have been working through our issues and growing a lot. However, my heart doesn’t race when I am with him or anticipate seeing him. I just feel very happy to see my good friend. He says I’m his dream girl but I do not feel he’s my dream guy. He’s definitely a dream friend. I am interested in continuing the romance in order to practise moving through my fear of intimacy and trusting someone again. However, I don’t want to build a long-term intimate life with him and I’m torn between enjoying what I have now, because it’s better than what most people have, and striving for more. Should I simply live in the moment, not worry about the future, and wait until there’s a good enough reason to let him go, or call it quits before we get too involved?

I asked my husband how he’d feel if I stayed with him just because he was a good friend. “Yuck,” he said, being the intellectual that he is. But what if I really loved you as a friend and knew the relationship was a healing journey for us both? “Double yuck,” he said, and rumbled off, dragging his club behind him.

Relationships are a bit more sophisticated now than they were for our ancestors, but some things never change. We still want to be loved and to be “No. 1” and we want to feel the same way about our partner. Being a stop-gap never feels good, even if we try to convince ourselves it’s a good trade-off. A relationship can never really flourish unless you are fully in it, and fear of intimacy means a fear of sharing all of yourself.

You’re with your friend for a purpose. Try to delve a bit deeper to see what it’s really about. How do you feel about dumping your friend if someone better comes along? Are you holding onto him because you doubt the dream guy actually exists? If so, you are probably making compromises based on the belief that you cannot have what you want.

Think about what this is costing you. What compromises are you making in order to maintain this dynamic? What part of you is not being nourished? Your answers will give you some idea of how worthy you think you are. They may also prompt you to bring these suppressed parts of yourself into the relationship, so that it can either flourish or come to a healthier, more authentic conclusion. Either way, you win because being yourself is always the most powerful way to attract what you want.

What’s missing from your relationship? Think about it and you’ll get some clues about how to move on to something better—either with your friend (if the relationship evolves) or with someone else. Is passion missing? Is it also lacking in your life in general? Did you get hurt in another relationship and shut down part of yourself? Dare to passionately engage in this current relationship—even if it’s only in the way you express your feelings. You’re holding back the most intimate parts of yourself, for fear of being disappointed. But that fear will keep you stuck in your comfort zone, stopping that special guy from getting to the heart of you.

For now, you’ve got a partner who is a perfect reflection of what you think you deserve—wonderful companionship but not the heart-swelling love that brings a resounding YES!! If you can start to really be you in this relationship, you will either go deeper with your friend or move on to the dream guy, because when you engage the deeper parts of yourself, you connect with a deeper love.

Olga Sheean is a Vancouver-based relationship coach and the author of Fit for Love—Find Your Self and Your Perfect Mate (olgasheean.com [1]; fitforlove.net [2]). Please submit your relationship questions to editor@shared-vision.com.