 to common mistakes that could ruin your chances with any man. I'm Matthew Coast, and today with me is Wendy Newman. And Wendy is an author as well as a dating, sex, and relationship expert. And she's led hundreds of workshops to thousands of people internationally. And she also has a book called 121 First Dates, How to Succeed at Online Dating, Fall in Love, and Live Happily Ever After, really. I love that title, by the way. You may have seen her on the Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, Glamour Self, Huffington Post, Access Hollywood, and probably a whole bunch of other places. So thanks for being with me today, Wendy. Hi, Matthew, thank you for having me. So the first thing that I wanted to talk to you about is this whole idea of nurturing yourself and keeping in good spiritual shape. Can you talk to us a little bit about what that is and why that's important? Yeah, one of the mistakes that we make as women is we run around completely depleted, like we try and get everything done on our work calendar and connect with friends and do everything that we're supposed to, to be a good person. And then we try and date on top of that when we would really have known space left in our body, in our energy, in our time. So one of the things that I recommend for all women is to take really good care of themselves from a spiritual point of view, to do things for themselves that nurture, that tend, that take care of, even things that men would do for you if you had a man in your life. That's a big bang for your buck if you do something that a man would do for you. One thing that worked really well for me is I used to buy myself flowers. And yeah, sure, a man could buy me a dozen red roses and that would be really great. But if every Friday I went to the supermarket and bought $10 worth of a dozen red roses, there's something about red roses that has me feel and has a lot of women feel like they're a gift. The roses actually talk, they bring that love, that connection, that yumminess. And so I'd buy myself flowers, but within an hour or so of having them in the vase, I would forget they were from me. So it really does nurture and tend. Another thing I highly recommend is massage. And if you have the budget to do it, whether it's the $35 foot massage or a 90 minute long body massage, I highly recommend getting one from a man because having a man tend to nurture you during a time you don't have a man in your life is really delicious and it's also good to have it in the safety container of a therapeutic massage. Cool, so how does that translate? Let's bring that over to dating. How does that translate to something that you'll experience different when you're dating? Yeah, so one of the things that we sometimes hear as men and women is we have to be vibrating at our top level to attract the right person to us, to attract the very best person. We have to be at our very best all the time, which that concept seems impossible and exhausting. If I had waited to be vibrating at my top vibration all of the time, yeah, I wouldn't have been dating about 70% of the time because life is busy, right? So these are ways to keep ourselves in good shape and be in that sort of higher vibration even when things get tough and rough out there. And when we don't get enough of what we need for ourselves that nourishes ourselves, we're just gonna show up on a date with very little to give with not enough energy to attract a man. Yeah, that sounds, you know, what I like about this whole concept here is, I'm sure we've all probably been on dates where we've been with someone who just seems like they're just taking, they're pulling, they're trying to get from you. And there's nothing more attractive to a guy than a woman that doesn't really need him, but wants to have him in her life. And it's something that I've talked about a few times and it's just so powerful. And when you're coming from a space of neediness, like you're not taking care of yourself, you're gonna have this kind of draw to like pull from him, which is incredibly unattractive. So yeah, I love it, love it. It does two things, it pulls from men and then it has us settle for the few crumbs that he might throw our way when we're lonely or hungry or needy. So getting those bottom line needs met and some extra plus bonus zone of like massage or something like that or flowers can really have us be chilled out like you said, have us be present and enjoying his company instead of, are you my man? Are you gonna lock this down with me? What's happening? Yeah. Well, and I just wanna comment on that as well because one of the things that tends to happen when I'm coaching clients is that they'll come to me and they'll say, I'll give them something that's kind of similar to this, but they'll say, I just want some words to say. I want the exact things that I need to do, like give me a phrase that I should be telling guys. And the reason that this is so much more important and the reason that I think you should really listen to what we're saying right now is that this will help you out in so many different ways. Not only will it make you so much more attractive to men, but it'll also make it so that you're not just taking any man that you can get and that you're only going to get into some type of dating and relationship situation with a guy that does give to you because you're not coming from a space of, I just need to get something. I just need to get a guy into a relationship and instead coming from a place of abundance, coming from a place of having a lot. So yeah, we've been talking a lot about this. So there's another thing that you were talking about before about the whole dating buddies, like having a dating buddy. I've never heard of that before. What, can you talk more about that? Yeah, I had them by accident because I was single for a really, really long time. I mean, I was the one who went on 121 different first dates as 121 men. So I was dating for a long time and for lots of good reasons and lots of terrible reasons, lots of terrible mistake reasons that I made along the way that kept me single for as long as I was. But one of the things I noticed partway through dating was it was really hard to do alone. And especially after a really bad date, I needed somebody to just put me back together. And I don't mean that I was dramatic and threw myself on my friends for hours on end, discussing about how horrible life is and how that they should fix me. I don't mean that. I just mean a friend who, if you could have a dating buddy who is also single and in the same situation you are, that you could rely on each other, which is what I did. And I actually ended up with three of them. So I didn't burn one out. And we just, we made a pact, we made an oath that we would be there, that we would all be responsible as the ones that we're gonna be just giving out all that information to be healed from, right? So we were gonna take 20 minutes to do it. We would talk for five and then check in and see what they had to say and then keep going if there was more to say. But that they could help us just really release it, that we could help each other release that negativity from our system. Once you tell a story, once it's out of you, it can kind of start to think about letting it go instead of just letting it fester. And one of my dating buddies was a man. And he just happened to be a single man who we were not at all attracted to each other. We weren't each other's type, which is why it worked. And he was great because after a really terrible day where maybe a man hurt my feelings, I could go to him and tell him the story and he could tell me how amazing I am and to hear and be healed from a man made all the difference. To have a man say, I am so sorry, baby, that's terrible. I'm so sorry that happened to you. Just had me, okay, I can get through this. But you can't soothe yourself. You can't pat yourself on the back. Even though my dating buddies, all of them didn't live in my city. So they were all phone buddies to be able to be soothed like that, made the healing process quicker and they dating colorable had me get back out on the court faster. Now, another thing a dating buddy is really good for you is telling you straight when it's you. I once called the debrief date number. I believe it was 77 or 78. I got pretty crispy at the end there. And I was driving back, had the headset on, talking to him on the phone and I just said, oh, it was horrible. And I was telling him the whole story and he said, my love wasn't him, it's you. And I actually feel a little bit sorry for anyone you have on the books. If you have any dates coming up, you should cancel them and you need a break because you aren't you anymore. You're crispy, crunchy, burned. If any man met you right now, he'd meet some shell of you that kind of looked like you, but not very pleasant. So might want to consider taking three weeks off. And when you do that, do something that you love. I don't care if it's baking cookies or sewing a cute skirt, but have it have a beginning, a middle and an end because you need to win at something and it needs to be linear. Dating is not linear, go. And I did. And then what he did was he held me accountable for three weeks later saying, okay, cookie, it's time to get back on the site, let's go. So dating buddies are good to heal you. They're good to tell you when you're out there blowing it and they can tell you when it's time to take a break and they can make sure that break doesn't last eight and a half years. So yeah, what you just were talking about there, it sounds like we're going right back to the whole idea of self-nurturing and taking care of yourself. And it's such a big topic and it's so important. It's something that so many people don't really do. And it can make such a big difference between being your best out there, showing up and being really attractive and having a fun time and actually enjoying the date that you go on and when you do meet that right guy, a lot of people I talk to, they just wanna get through as many dates as they possibly can so that they can find the right person and they'll just go one after the next after the next and they'll show up and it's like, is this the right person? No, okay, go next. Is this the right person? No, and I think that there's something to that that is definitely incredibly valuable but there's also a point where if you're not taking care of yourself, if you're not nurturing yourself, if you're not getting into the best version of yourself so that when you go out and you do meet an awesome guy that you recognize him and that you attract him to you, it can be really destructive to your whole dating experience. So let's talk about some dating mistakes here. You were mentioning before something about a big dating mistake that a lot of women make, something about, you know, having the end in mind, starting with the end in mind. Can you talk about that? Yeah, one of the things that we do and I blame match.com, they ask you in the summaries who are you, who is he, what do you want, right? So with that summary, we decide by nature, I think it's kind of biology that has us create this essay for him that really doesn't talk about who we are as a person. It has us talk about who we are as a wife or a life partner. So we paid this beautiful picture of who we are but only from the context of partnership. I love my family and friends. They're the most important part. I cook, I'm a great nurture. And so we paint this whole perfect partner picture. And then under the men category, we throw in the laundry list of descriptors of every word we can think of, like our life depends on it. Like we can vet a man by putting, he needs to be honest and open because, you know, no liar would ever respond to that. Lie about being honest and open, right? Or he needs to be financially responsible or chivalrous, all of the things like if we put all the right descriptors in, then we're gonna attract that guy. And it's a mistake because what we're doing is we're leading with the end game in mind of either marriage or finding our partner, which is great, it might be why we're dating but there has to be baby steps along the way. You know, when he looks at your profile and he sees you designing your life as a wife in a white picket fence for a future with him and the descriptor of who he needs to be, when he doesn't even know your real name, he only knows your handle and he doesn't know if you're compatible in any way. Are you really gonna go to his family home in Ohio every year for Christmas? There are things that need to come long before what a good wife you are. And so we lead with that wife presentation when he doesn't even know your name, your favorite color, he doesn't know anything about you and he certainly doesn't know if he's gonna be able to get any of his needs met from you, which is one of the things a man would really take a hard look at before he'd consider being a boyfriend or a husband or in any sort of relationship. So we lead with that end game in mind and it's kind of like showing up on a first date and saying, okay, let's talk about a prenuptial agreement. Let's start with the end game in mind, right? No, that would be weird. And we do that and it seems weird to men and it seems, and I'd love to hear what you have to say about this Matthew, but it seems like we're putting the car before the horse and then we run around the planet saying that all men are just out for fun and that women are serious. We're seriously looking for our person but man, they're just out there for fun. Well, maybe men have it right. Maybe men marry or men partner with women who they think are fun or smart or whatever a man's flavor is, right? But there are baby steps that need to be taken and that baby step is a first live date out at a restaurant or a cafe or a park where you can actually get to know each other starting with your actual names and then you can get to what a great partner you will be but that comes much later. That doesn't come in the first date. What do you think about that? So, what, I think it's really interesting. So what do you think is a, and I'll kind of expand a little bit on what I think about this in a minute, but what do you think is a better kind of approach to if you're going on and you're going and you want to meet, get married to, what do you think is a better approach for that? Do you think it's just to, you know, because it's one of those things she also doesn't want to end up wasting a lot of her time, right? So what is she supposed to do in this situation? Well, you can use the pull downs and you can certainly say I'm on the site to look for my partner or I'm on the site to look for my husband. But let me tell you who I am and then you can just talk about who you are. Again, not from the wife filter but from what's interesting to you? What, who are you? What are you about? Who's your favorite underdog? Why? What do you get behind? What are you passionate about? What matters to you? What's your life like instead of what a great wife I will be? Yeah, I think there's definitely, it's funny because I've had this conversation, you know, not exactly this conversation, but I've had a very similar conversation for, I don't know how many last couple of months with lots of friends, with lots of clients, with lots of people, just about this whole idea of what men really want, you know, and the fact that men are very serious, like very, very serious. When I go to, I talked to lots of guys about what it is that they want and I probably asked, I don't know, hundreds of men about what it is that they want and a lot of times what I'll get is, you know, when I go and meet a guy, even if it's a brother or friend, you know, somebody I meet on the street and I start talking to him about dating. Most men that I talk to, sometimes you get the guy that's like super serious and he's like, hey, I'm finding a wife right now, you know, but a lot of the guys that I talk to, they tell me that, you know, they're dating, they're just going out there and dating and they want to meet some girls and, you know, have some fun and all that kind of stuff and usually at some point I'll look them in the eye and I'll be like, yeah, but, you know, don't you want to find like, you know, somebody to settle down with, like if you found somebody that was really awesome, like wouldn't you want to like, you know, get married to her or something and I almost every single time I always get the same answer. Guys are like, well, yeah, you know, of course I'd love to, you know, get married and, you know, commit to a woman and find the one and, you know, and, you know, get married again, maybe or, you know, whatever their situation is, you know, and usually what I'll hear from them is they'll say, but I just don't think she's out there, you know, and I think it's really important to think about that, you know, like most guys that I talk to, they want to find a committed relationship and when they meet a woman, if he doesn't feel like she's the type of woman that he could be with in a long term, like if he doesn't look at her and he sees her as somebody that he could stay with for a long time, a lot of times she'll just tell her that he's just looking for something casual and that's really what the big thing is and when you come to dating with this whole mindset of, you know, I'm, you know, looking for my husband, I'm looking for the one and, you know, do you fit into this description, you know, and you're like drilling these guys down, you know, trying to find out if they're the one or not, not only do you not enjoy yourself nearly as much and are much less likely to find a great guy, but guys are so like, they look at you and if you're an attractive woman to him, he might look at you and think, oh, she would be a lot of fun to, you know, casually date, but I just, there's no way that I could be in a relationship with someone like this, you know, and that's what happens a lot of the times with guys when they kind of, it's almost like this feeling that they have and it's like you're putting up this, this checklist of what, you know, do you fit into all these things and the guy looks at and he goes, no, not really, you know, like how does anybody ever fit into all that stuff? You know, half the women that I work with that they'll bring me their list of what they want in a guy and it's like a hundred list sheet of all these different qualities and I'll turn it back and I'm like, well, how many of those do you have, you know, and, you know, if a guy came to you with a list like that, you know, how would that make you feel? And it's usually like, you know, one, you know, you may have many of those things but at the same time, it's like, you know, connect with a guy, you know, it's the big thing about online dating and this is just a pet peeve and I have to talk about this right now, sorry. There's this thing about like dating a six foot tall guy, right? And like every woman, yeah, every woman from five foot two to, you know, five foot 10 is looking for the six foot tall guy, right? And like, you know, I'm guessing that there's these six foot tall guys on the internet somewhere that are just having a wild ride, you know, but most of the guys fall under, you know, like I think the average is somewhere between like five 10 and like five eight or something like that. And you know, there's a huge range of these really awesome guys who are that tall, you know, and you're like, and even shorter and taller, you know, I mean, there's got awesome guys everywhere but you know, there's all these guys that are like getting passed over that could be just amazing fits for you, you know, but your criteria is that he's six foot tall and you're five foot three and you're like, you know, it just doesn't make any sense at all, you know, and I just had to, I just had to talk about that. Yeah, 14%, there are 14% of American men who are over six feet tall. Yeah, I didn't know that, but I'm not surprised at all. That's, and how many of them are online dating right now? So there's this, let's talk a little bit more about online dating. There's, you know, arguably one of the most important things in a woman's profile, right, is gonna be her pictures, right? A guy's probably gonna go through and I'm guessing on most dating sites, especially, you know, apps like Tinder and Bumble and stuff like that. I'm, you know, guys are just looking at photos, right? What are some of the big photos, at least initially, what are some of the big photo mistakes that women make? Well, a couple of them are one mistake is women often put themselves in photographs with their girlfriends, like either a night out on the town or just her and her gal pal or whatever. And one man told me, these women, they have got to get uglier friends, every time. It's so distracting, I'm trying to see her, I'm trying to date her, and then I'm confused, I can't figure out which one is her and her friends are usually cuter and I want the other one's number, just let me focus. Just have me focus on you. So I don't recommend photos with other people. Don't put photos with other girlfriends, don't put photos with men. I had a client who I adore who had this gorgeous picture of herself sitting behind a big wheel of a sailboat. And behind her, no, sorry, a man was sitting at the wheel of the sailboat and she was standing behind the man with their arms around and bare hug style around his neck and they looked like husband and wife. And I said, what are you doing with this picture on your profile? She said, well, it's my brother. How do you know that? No, but he doesn't know your brother or your cousin. Another girlfriend put herself with a man in a picture and I called her on it and she said, oh, well, he's not my type. No man would think I would be with that man. What? No, keep it simple. Just you happy, just casual, just you. And the other thing, the other number one dating mistake with the photos that I made personally is not having a full body shot. And you can tell them a big girl but this applies to thin women, big women, medium women, all women. So men are visual and you want them to weed you in or out before they get in front of you. And if you have the wrong shot on which is misleading, it's just not gonna be pretty. In the very beginning of online dating, I never meant to lie. I didn't mean to confuse anybody. I used current photographs but in my little pea brain mind, I decided to use the best full body shot of me possible. And it was the full body shot but it wasn't a full body shot. It was an art shot. And I didn't know the difference between an art shot and a full body shot then. So what I had done is I had strategically sat myself on stairs and had these really great tights on these pattern tights and high heels. And if you sit me just right on stairs and you take the camera up Kardashian style, right? And then if I push one leg to one side and I fold and it bend a little bit, what you see is great cleavage, beautiful long legs and I've hidden my biggest heart, which is my belly area. So it was a full body shot but it wasn't true. If I stood up, you'd go, oh, okay, okay, I got it now, right? So but I didn't think I was trying to hide it. I didn't think I was trying to trick anybody. I just thought this is the best shot of me there is. Don't put the best shot of you. There is, put the best shot of you that truly shows your shape. If you don't like your butt, don't try and shove half of it in the chair to cut it off in the photo because it will bite you in the ass. Literally. I was on day number nine. I remember day number nine. I went on day number nine and it was, oh, it was dinner. And I walked up and we met in front of the restaurant at the exact same time and we walked up and he did that, he did that. And I should have just said in that moment, oh, God, so sorry, I can see I'm not your type. We're not gonna have dinner together. I have a good Saturday, right? But no, no, no, no. He opened the door and I walked through it and it was three hours of my life that I will never get back. It was horrible. So that my own fault, totally my fault. Well, and just kind of from a guy's perspective and something that you probably don't know about me, Wendy, but I used to actually be a men's dating coach way before I was a women's dating coach. And one of the things that I heard complaints from guys all the time was exactly what you're talking about. And guys would be like, so how do I get her to send me a full body shot so that I know what I'm getting into before? And you might be insecure about your size or how you look. And I've coached a woman who was really, really thin, like really thin. And she was really insecure about that too, which it doesn't matter how big or small you are, just about everybody's insecure about what's going on with them. But a guy has to, if a guy's not, if that attraction isn't there, and he looks at your photo and he shows up and you're something completely different than in the photo, they say that a lot of women in their online photos, they try to lie about their size and they try to lie about their, sometimes about their age too. And guys typically lie about their height. If a guy meets you and he sees that you're something completely different than what he saw in the photos or he feels like you were hiding something and that's not a good start. That's a really, really bad start is trying to lie to a guy about what's going on and hoping that he'll meet you and be like, oh, she's not my type, but I'm so into her, which is possible. Not really. Well, I've seen it happen before, but it wasn't from online dating. I know guys that have gone for girls that weren't their type, but it wasn't from online dating and it wasn't from a woman hiding who she was. It was from being confident in what's going on with her and connecting with a man in more ways than just that. But I would suggest that you definitely do not try to hide or lie about anything that's going on with you because it just leads down to a horrible road where a guy's like, what situation am I in right now and next thing you know, he's disappearing and we know how much women hate when guys disappear, so don't do it. You're right, I mean, don't lie to him, don't lie to yourself thinking that this is really you. If you're not sure, check with your girlfriend. Does this look like me today? And I recommend no pictures older than six months old because you might have that really great photo view from five years ago that you think looks exactly like you today. It doesn't, so I recommend not doing that. And women get really upset with men about being so shallow about the way we look, but this is biology, ladies. This isn't something that most men can change. Like you said, Matthew, a handful of people, a few people who went ahead and made a successful relationship with someone not their type, but I'd like for women to consider how would you like to go the rest of your life with someone who didn't look at you and just see you as absolutely beautiful and sexy and vibrant? It's another reason why it took me so long is I just was unwilling to partner with someone who didn't love me exactly how I looked right now, not what I was gonna be next summer. Yeah. Well, and just to your point too, I know people that have gotten into those relationships and guys that were like, hey, you know what, I'm just gonna go for it even though she's not my type. They ended up getting married and then ended up getting divorced. And the guy was like, I knew from the beginning that it wasn't right, but I kind of got sucked up into it. You're heartbreaking for men because there are women who are phenomenal and they wish they could get that attraction, but for most men, it doesn't, a man, we don't grow on men the way that women can sometimes have a man grow on us. I mean, we literally can get 100% there from thinking he was a, I hate the numbers, but let's just say thinking he was a three or four or two, four months later after working with him, seeing his integrity and his backbone and his status, he just went all the way to a 10, he's hot now. And that doesn't usually happen so much for men, which is a bummer for men because there are women that they wish they could be with, but it's just not there for them. Absolutely. So let's talk about this whole newly divorced men type of thing. Are newly divorced guys that you'd wanna stay away from? No, you don't wanna go running towards them either. You wanna step forward very cautiously and determine which one you have on your hands because there's actually two different clients and we see a lot and we experience a lot when we date the not great newly divorced man who is rebounding and looking for fun and looking for healing. And you wanna think about like this, a newly divorced guy who is not in great shape will find a really great woman and he'll become very attracted to her. And you wanna think about it like he was in a deep dark cavernous cave of a hole and then you came along. Maybe his life was sad and morose and depressing but you gave him hope, you gave him a glimmer of light and all of a sudden he had the space to come out of that cave. He comes out of that cave and he hits the earth and grass and he looks around and he sees the shiny ball happen and the bright sun and the birds chirping. Ah, he's in great shape and he takes off. You might love where the ladder going down into the hole and they never think to take the ladder with them. So oftentimes it is that rebound we're in that moment to pull him out of the yuck and the pain of the divorce and then he's gonna be gone. And one of the ways you can know that that man is the one you're dating is because he doesn't have anything to give you. He can't make any commitments, he doesn't have anything to give you and you can feel it. I want the first date after my, I was married for 12 years and so when I talked about 121 first dates that started at the age of 35 after a long term marriage ended. And the first man I dated we were both fresh out of the divorce and we dated for over a year and we both were in love with each other. I am friends with him to this day all these years later but he didn't have anything to give and I knew it. He didn't have anything to give and I knew it. I knew it, it could tell from the beginning or they'll just rebound and they'll be gone or they'll do the disappearing thing and then you'll be left wondering what did you do wrong? And you didn't do anything wrong. You, he was just showing you where he is at this stage of life but there are some men who come out of a divorce and can not rebound that can get into a relationship within a matter of a year or months or even weeks. I know a woman who was with now her husband of five years they met five weeks after he had come out of a really shocking divorce, just shocking. He did not see it coming, the divorce. And for me, I am in a relationship with Dave and he was about five weeks out of his divorce but how he talks about it is he had been mourning the ending of that marriage for about 10 years. So oftentimes if they can see it coming what's really common in our culture is couples stay together till the kids go off to college and then they divorce. So if they've been watching the end of their marriage and partnering together as friends to get through that last seven years when he becomes available he processed that ending of that divorce pretty much through the last seven years of his marriage. It's not that he's clean fresh and ready to go but he's gonna be in a lot better shape than someone that had a rug pull surprise. But again, it's not always a circumstance. I had my best friend married somebody who he had a shocking surprise and he was ready for her within weeks. So just depends on the guy and how you wanna find out which one you have is to watch how he's participating with you. Does he have anything to give in terms of his time, his energy? Is he the one planning dates and getting in touch with you and making things happen? So you just wanna watch his actions. Is his actions following his words and is he wooing you? Is he planning date after date after date? So let's talk about your 121 dates that you went on. What did you get out of that? Well, I got my partner. Yay. I learned a couple of things. One of the things that I learned was like you talked about earlier, we have these big long lists and I had some things on my big long list that actually conflicted with each other and a lot of women have things on their lists that one item will cancel out a different item. So it's one of the reasons it took me so long is yeah, I had conflicting things on my list and hardly anybody could match that list and he did. So it took 121, but I got to him. And the number one thing that I learned throughout all of those men that I dated was that I could actually date a man who wasn't my type like we were talking earlier. I could date someone, give him a chance to grow on me. I could date someone out of my type and from time to time could actually have a great relationship with him. But one thing that I could never do is I couldn't date a man and have it work if he was outside of my tribe. And what I mean by tribe is we have resonance, we have similarities. I don't mean we're the same race, I don't mean that we have the same background, I don't mean that, but that we have a very similar point of view. And in our culture, we talk about how opposites attract. It's true, they do for hot chemistry and making strong babies. But for quality of life, not so much. Imagine opposites attract, date someone that is the opposite of your presidential candidate. No, dating your tribe makes life so much easier because you have resonance and you can have the same point of view about world issues. They can easily see where you're coming from and you can be seen and understood for the person you are as you can see them for the person that they are. It doesn't have to be perfect, it doesn't have to line up neatly, but there has to be enough there, enough commonalities where it's easy. You want something easy because if you're gonna live with them for the rest of your life, you're gonna spend a ridiculous amount of time together. So you might as well pick somebody that you get along with instead of that's really hot. So how do you determine what, you know, who's in your tribe and whether it's like too much or whether it's the right amount? Like how do you know? Well, you can know if you're working really hard on a date to be understood that perhaps they're not in your tribe. And one mistake that I made a lot and that women often make is if he's really attractive or if he has a lot of status, we're gonna make this work come heller high water. So if you notice yourself contorting and becoming somebody who you're not to see if it'll fit with this guy, that's not us having low self-esteem. That's instinct trying to lock this one down. Not good, not a good sign. That is a red flag to yourself that he might not be in your tribe and you might be making him way more amazing than he really is and the opportunity of losing this potential relationship way more intense than it is because it's not real. Yeah. You know, all right, you've had that experience, right? Where you're like, don't think you are who you are presenting yourself to be right now. I simply asked you a question and you're being really weird right now. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there's definitely, there's a lot of, there's a lot of pressure, man. Yeah, you know, just this is kind of a side note, but a lot of guys out there feel, feel like they need to be somebody different than who they are in order to attract a woman to them. You know, and I'm not saying that it's, you know, women's fault that they're like that and I'm not saying that it's, you know, their fault either. I think that there's just a lot of kind of expectations and a lot of judgments that men kind of go through. And so a lot of times they'll fake things, you know, and they'll pretend that they're somebody that they're not. And you know, one of the best ways to kind of get through that in my opinion is to, you know, be impressed by the things that he says, but also show them that you're more interested in who he is and that you're not, you know, so interested in, you know, the built up image that he's trying to project of himself to you. Because if it gets really big, he might have this kind of image that he's showing you and that you've fallen in love with and that he can't really maintain or it's not actually who he is. And, you know, there's just kind of this weird thing that a lot of women don't really get and it's that guys are really insecure. We have lots of insecurities about who we are and whether we're good enough for the women that we're trying to date. And if a guy feels like he, this image that he's put out there is a lot, is a lot bigger than he is, he might end up disappearing on you because he doesn't want you to find out the truth about him. And it happens all the time with guys. You know, there's actually a culture around it, believe it or not, where guys will, you know, buy all these fancy things to impress women or even rent really fancy things to impress women. And then women, you know, and it's just not who they are. You know, and so, yeah, connect with him, connect with who he is. So the last question here that I have is this, is about should a woman wait, right? Should a woman wait to start dating? What do you think? Absolutely not. One of the things that we think we should do is wait until the right time comes when you're less busy. Do you have times in your life that you're less busy, Matthew? I don't know, I'm never less busy. And we have, we tell these stories to ourselves like, well, you know, my aunt really needs me right now and I gotta help my family or I need to wait until the kids are in a certain spot in school or I need to wait until I've finished with my college courses or the work project or even worse that I'm not gonna date until I've lost the weight. You know, until I get to that perfect fighting, competitive dating weights where I can get the right man because the right man would never love me at the weight I am now. No, no, no. And by the way, for anyone waiting to date because you're wanna lose the weight, it's a terrible strategy because what'll happen is you might lose the weight, wait, but you might not and then you might not ever date but I have faith in you, you'll lose the weight and you'll get really close to that goal weight and that's when you'll go online because you just have like five more pounds to go and then you meet him and you hope that he likes you even though your five pounds too heavy but maybe he can't see that right now and you can trick him until you lose that extra five pounds and then it will all turn out and then what happens is you start courting. Do you know what happens when you start courting? Midnight milkshakes, that's what happens. I know in the first year of being with Dave, I gained 30 pounds. They woo you, they whine and dine you, you have midnight milkshakes, that five pounds doesn't come off and then your inner critic is freaking out that you now are like, you've got 10 pounds to go now and now it's terrible and this crazy cycle happens. No, date now as you are, represent yourself as who you are right now and then just take a deep breath and know that if he's with you, yeah, he's into you right now as you are and if you lose some or gain some, it's all fine. It's a little wiggle room if you haven't hit that perfect ideal goal weight yet but life doesn't get easier. It doesn't get simpler. It doesn't get less busy. It's not like nothing new is gonna come up to take the space. So it's just an excuse. Yeah, absolutely and I totally agree with you and it's funny I meet like the women that I talked to about like how many men are they meeting typically and usually if I took like all the women that I've talked to about how many men that they meet on a weekly basis and I like condensed them together into an average, the average amount of men that most women meet is less than one and a week, new men and the rate at which you're going to meet the right guy, I mean it's possible maybe he'll show up at your door and deliver your pizza or something but most likely you're not gonna meet him that way and so I totally agree. Get out there, get online, online dating's great. I love it. I think it's amazing. I mean there's a lot of superficial aspects and there's a lot of things that dating sites are doing that make it more difficult actually to meet a great person than they are making it so that it's easier but with that said, go meet some guys. So you have a teleclass that's coming up. Can you talk a little bit about why someone would wanna be a part of that and what they'd kinda get out of that? Absolutely, it's called dating by design and it's an eight-week teleclass and every week for 75 minutes I give you the best of what I've got that I learned in over 10 years of dating, the mistakes, the wins, everything I've gotten from coaching clients because I see that there were mistakes that I made that are super common that almost all women make. Like I said, I can start to see the repeating patterns in my clients and I could help and there were also things I did all the way up to the very end that if I had known from the beginning would have made my life so much better and I probably wouldn't have had to go through 121 with all that trial and error. So not only do I help fast speed up the process of finding someone, I give women grace and one of the things that is confronting for women is having to not be disappointing to men, having to be displeasing to a man and I give really clear one-liners for women to use on how to say no, how to end a date, how to decline in advance, how to handle particular situations that drive us off dating sites all together. Awesome, that sounds amazing. So if you're interested in making sure that you don't make all the mistakes that everyone else is making out there and you want some really practical ways to make sure that you find the right guy for you, there should be a link below this video right here, down that way, just go down there and take a look at what she's got and if you're interested in it, I definitely suggest that you sign up for it. If you do, put Matthew in the code and because Matthew and I talked about it, I'm gonna give you a special deal now because you could see how important a dating buddy is. I want you to have a dating buddy. So if you sign up and put Matthew in the code because you're connected to Matthew, you can bring a girlfriend for free. Awesome, that's a great deal. Cool, so thank you so much for being with us today, Wendy. You definitely have some really great insights. Thank you. All right, and I'll talk to everybody later.