Julia Hartman

Julia Hartman Licensed Clinical Social Worker | Life Coach | Professor

Sometimes you didn’t miss the red flags 🚩 Sometimes someone really did show up consistently in the beginning, and you ma...
09/07/2026

Sometimes you didn’t miss the red flags 🚩

Sometimes someone really did show up consistently in the beginning, and you made a reasonable decision based on the information you had.

But relationships give us new information over time.
And once we’re attached, it can be much harder to let that new information change our assessment.

We start giving more weight to who they were in the beginning, what they’ve promised will change, or who we know they can be, instead of asking:

What is this person actually showing me now?

You don’t need to predict someone perfectly from the beginning.

You need to stay connected to yourself enough to keep assessing as new information arrives. 🤍

Four questions to help you do that are in the slides & the full breakdown is in this week’s blog (link in bio).

And if you want a tool for this, my free Marble Jar Dating Guide helps you assess what someone has actually shown you over time, so your trust and investment stay connected to behavior rather than potential.

Comment GUIDE and I’ll send it to you. 📝

You don’t have a type.Because they were all different. Different personalities, different lives, different reasons it di...
08/31/2026

You don’t have a type.

Because they were all different. Different personalities, different lives, different reasons it did not work.

What repeated was the same relational dynamic, and the version of you that showed up once you were invested.

Here is the part that gets left out: inconsistent affection is more powerful than reliable affection.

If he were distant every single time, you would leave. It’s the good days that keep you there. And because you cannot predict when a good day is coming, you stay tuned in, waiting for the next one.

You are not failing to have standards.

None of this makes his behavior your responsibility. How he shows up is fully his to own.

Understanding your own patterns is what helps you recognize emotional unavailability sooner.

Attachment patterns are learned, which means they can change. By noticing the pattern while it is happening, and doing something different while the feeling is still there.

I wrote more about this on the blog this week. Link in bio.✨

Feelings can develop faster than information.That isn’t necessarily a problem, but it can create a gap between how much ...
08/24/2026

Feelings can develop faster than information.

That isn’t necessarily a problem, but it can create a gap between how much you feel and how much you actually know about someone.

And when we really like someone, it’s easy to fill that gap with hope.

If you lean anxiously attached, uncertainty can make this even harder. You may find yourself getting emotionally invested, looking for reassurance, or creating certainty before the relationship has had enough time to give you much of it.

But slowing down doesn’t mean explaining away information that concerns you.

Some things don’t need to become a pattern before you take them seriously. Dishonesty, contempt, disrespecting a boundary, or the way someone responds when you say no are information the first time they happen.

The goal isn’t to distrust something good.

Enjoy the excitement and newness of a blossoming relationship 💕

Just let what you believe about someone build alongside what they’re actually showing you.

Comment MARBLE and I’ll send you my free Marble Jar Checklist to help you identifying the patterns and pace the relationship.

Potential is a story you are telling yourself about who someone could become. Patterns are the evidence of who they alre...
08/20/2026

Potential is a story you are telling yourself about who someone could become. Patterns are the evidence of who they already are.

One is a guess. The other is information.

Watch how someone shows up when it is inconvenient, when they are wrong, when they are stressed. Not once. Over time.

Full breakdown on the blog, link in bio 🔗

Anyone can be good to you when it is easy. Character shows up when it costs them something.The early stage of dating is ...
08/17/2026

Anyone can be good to you when it is easy. Character shows up when it costs them something.

The early stage of dating is fun and exciting, as it should be. But this is where we can get tripped up and miss important patterns.

It’s not the flowers or the great third date. It’s what happens when someone is inconvenienced, or wrong, or stressed, or told no.

Comment MARBLE for the free Marble Jar Checklist.

Check your message requests if it does not land in your inbox.

Full breakdown on the blog, link in bio 🔗

You learned to communicate in hints, because as a kid, asking directly never reliably worked.They learned to go numb, be...
08/14/2026

You learned to communicate in hints, because as a kid, asking directly never reliably worked.

They learned to go numb, because needing someone wasn’t safe.

So you signal. They miss it. You read the silence as rejection and signal harder. They feel pressure they can’t name and pull back. You both walk away with your worst belief confirmed.

That’s the anxious-avoidant loop. Not two people failing each other— two people missing each other entirely.

But here’s the part nobody says: you hint because a hint can’t be turned down. If you never asked outright, you were never actually told no.

Say it directly. Missing a hint means they didn’t hear you. Ignoring a sentence means they did.

Full breakdown on the blog. Link in bio 🤍

There’s a difference between doing your own healing work and doing the emotional labor required to keep an entire relati...
08/11/2026

There’s a difference between doing your own healing work and doing the emotional labor required to keep an entire relationship functioning.

In anxious-avoidant dynamics, one person can become so focused on communicating better, regulating better, asking for less, understanding more, and becoming secure, that they miss the bigger question. Is the other person doing any of it?

I wrote more about this dynamic in this week’s blog, including why it’s so hard to leave and what actually shifts it.

🔗 Link in bio

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