 Are modern relationships and dating doomed? Well, I'm here to talk to a dear friend of mine, Ariel Ford, who wrote the book Soulmate's Secret, Wabi Sabi Love, which is one of my favorites, and her new book, The Love Thief, which I definitely recommend you check out and there'll be links below to get it. Welcome, Ariel Ford, to talk about is modern dating relationships doomed? Hey, Jonathan, what a fun topic, you know? I think it all depends who you talk to, but here's a little stamp I keep on my desk that I stamp on everything, and it says there is no shortage of love in the world. There is no shortage of love in the world, and it doesn't matter how old you are, love is possible for you, but so many women in particular are living in this big, fat lie and this giant myth. I'm too old, I'm too fat, I'm too damaged, all the good ones are taken, I tried online dating, doesn't work, men my age only want younger, sexier women, and I've got proof that it's okay. In the last month, I've had three of my coaching clients all over 60 get engaged or get married to somebody they met on match.com, okay? Two of them have never been married before, right? Wow. So this whole thing that online dating doesn't work, well, you're doing it all wrong, that's why you don't know what you're doing, and you're going in with crazy expectations. Yes, 95% of the people you're gonna meet are gonna suck, and yes, you are gonna get ghosted, and yes, you are gonna get catfish, that comes with the territory, just like when you go out to eat, sometimes you get a good meal, sometimes you get a bad meal, but you don't quit eating. Well, you know, given that you are known as the fairy godmother of love, it's no doubt that you see it from the vantage point of abundance. I think sadly, you know, particularly those in my demographics, and I always talk about my audience tends to be midlife, which is after baby making years and before retirement, a significant percentage of that population is divorced, and many people are actually rather hurting after that experience, and they might have had multiple experiences thereafter where they felt like they got hurt, and they carry that energy into the dating process. So, since you just started this conversation talking about mindset, you know, for some it's not as easy as snapping their fingers, you know, like when Cher said snap out of it. Right, I love that line, by the way. And it's not about easy, okay? So all of us come into this life with core wounds. For some people it's insecurity, for me it's poverty consciousness, for other people it's something else. And we're all gonna die with our core wounds, no matter how much therapy we have, how many online courses we take, how many self-help books we read, you're never gonna get over your core wounds. What you can do is learn how to mitigate the pain, and learn what to do when you have the pain. There are cognitive skills you can have so that when you're in pain or suffering, you can get through it. Let me just turn off my email here, it's making noise. So. Well, let me turn off my phone so it doesn't beep and call. Right, I already did that one. So. I forgot. You know, like I have what I call my spiritual toolkit. Yeah. Right, so when I'm getting, let's see, when I'm anxious or worried or fearful, I pull something out of my spiritual toolkit. It may be EFT tapping, I may take an aromatherapy bath, I may go for a walk, I may call one of my four best friends and have a little rant. You know, I may go to my husband and get a hug, but every day I use something in my spiritual toolkit because it's our responsibility to manage our thoughts, beliefs and emotions. And that's where most people go wrong. You know, it's like, oh, I don't wanna get hurt again. Listen, you're gonna get hurt again. Whether you consciously choose to find love or not, human beings are gonna hurt and upset you and they're not gonna do it on purpose. And it's our job to be responsible for how we react and respond and to find ways to self-soothe and self-care and get ourselves over it. So, well, really quickly, I know some people are turned off by woo-woo terms like spiritual toolkit. And it made me think of, you know, and not to, you know, to make me think of it's really an emotional toolkit we're talking about. We're really talking about regulating our emotions. And why I share this is I remember watching a short video about John Glenn who was shot up into space, you know, way back in the 60s. I was a client of mine many years ago. Oh, really? Okay. Well, one of the- I represented the Mercury 7 astronauts back in the day. Wow, that is so cool. I did not know that. But in this video, it said that his heartbeat never got up above 65 or maybe 60 while he's being shot up into space. And what that was, what they were relating it to is that capacity to regulate our emotions. And I love that you have this toolkit. I mentioned EFT. Do you mind really quickly for everyone that doesn't know what that is? Because I'm familiar with it, but can you share that with everyone? EFT stands for Emotional Freedom Technique. So it's called EFT Tapping. I can't tell you how or why it works. I can only prove to you that it does work. So it's just about tapping on different meridian points on your face and your body while you're saying different statements that shift you into a different emotional state. You can go onto YouTube and Google tapping for stress, tapping for heartbreak, tapping to go to sleep. And there are people you can follow along with and do it. It's cheap, it's easy, it works. And generally in five to eight minutes, you can totally shift your state of being. Yeah. So, and I'm familiar with that. I actually, just so you might get a kick out of this, whenever I feel anxiety, and it can happen at a variety of things like, technology doesn't work, or even relationship woes, if you will. I practice the Hapono, I practice the Hawaiian forgiveness prayer. Yes, I love the Hapono. Yeah. I must say it at least 20 or 30 times a day as a way to calm my nervous system. And why I think this is an important conversation to have particularly when it comes to relationships. I think if we're operating from a place of pain, or worse, disgust, because a lot of people feel a sense of disgust in the dating marketplace, or fear, that's gonna carry forward in your experiences. In other words, all it does is attract more of what one person doesn't want. Yes, yes. And that's why I like to remind people all the time there's no shortage of love in the world, because most singles are living in this mindset that they have a love deficit. I don't have a significant partner, therefore I don't have love in my life, boo-hoo, woe is me. And one of the solutions to that is having a daily gratitude process. Yes. So what I advise people to do is to make a list. Sit down and make a list of at least 10 people that you love, that you know love you. You know, parents, kids, siblings, best friends, business partners, cats, dogs, make this list. And then every day sit down, do some deep breathing, drop your attention from your head down to the area around your heart, and then call up. Oh, Jonathan, my friend loves me. Let me send Jonathan a wave of love. Or Sherry, my friend loves me. Let me send Sherry a wave of love. Or my cat Max is adorable and loves me. Let me send Max a wave of love. And if you spend a few minutes every day, you fill yourself up with love, you raise your love vibration, your love frequency, and you become magnetic to having more love in your life as opposed to, oh God, poor me. I'm this age, I'm this way, nobody loves me. I'll never have love again. And when you have those consistent thoughts, you're gonna be right, you're gonna get to be right. You're gonna, you are now affirming the worst. Yeah. So you might get a kick out of a technique I use with my clients. I might even invite you to share this as well, or I do invite you to share this. So because today in the dating realm, a lot of people use apps, particularly this one, I'll share with everyone, it's called Bumble, okay? So when you're swiping, and oftentimes there is this view when you see a person that you may not be attracted to, you may have judgment, you may think, oh my God, they're holding up a fish or they're standing next to their Ferrari or whatnot. Oftentimes there's an energy of disgust or judgment. What I encourage my clients do in the same venue of gratitude is when you're swiping no, is to send that person love. Like simply say, I send you love or I wish you all the best on your journey to love. Like literally say that over and over and over again, instead of holding that space of judgment, disgust or fear that you're swiping so many one direction that you're not gonna find one that you want to swipe with. I'd like to hear your thoughts on that. No, I totally encourage that. I think it's great. The more love we put into the world, the better for us, the better for the world. My husband came up with this great line years ago where he calls it soulmate math because in normal arithmetic, one plus one equals two. But in soulmate math, one plus one equals 11 and your love blesses the world. So the more love you can consciously put out there, the better for you, the better for the world. So I love that practice. Yeah, well, thank you. I appreciate that. I get permission to use my technique if you'd like. And I think there's a big challenge because there is this fear, particularly after somebody has had this experience that they thought was so glorious, if you will. I think sometimes people overrate their relationships. I think sometimes when people go through a breakup, really they're breaking up over a relationship that wasn't that great to begin with, but there's this idolization, particularly if there was physical or traction or chemistry. And then there's this fear that it won't happen again. Yeah. And if you're like me, if you have poverty consciousness, no matter how much money I have, every once in a while I get plugged in and I have this fear, oh, I'm going to run out of money. Now I know that that's not really possible at this point in my life. Even if I ran out of cash, I have enough friends that would take care of me. But it's irrational. It's totally irrational. And that's what you have to manage. Wayne Dyer had this great line, which is don't believe every thought that you have. So you may, whatever these thoughts are that you have that come up, when I get negative thoughts or thoughts I don't want, I just say cancel, cancel, go away. I'm not accepting you. And that's all there is to do is to acknowledge, oh, I'm having this thought, it's not true. I don't want to own a cancel, cancel. Because we're just human beings. We're all pretty messed up, right? I don't know. I was going to say, my favorite quote is by Sam Keane. And Sam Keane said, we come into this life not to find a perfect love, but to learn to love an imperfect person perfectly. Starting with ourselves. We are the first imperfect person we need to learn to love. And then we need to know there's somebody out there who's going to be enchanted with all our quirks and weirdness and craziness. No one's looking for perfect because we know perfect doesn't exist. So if we can love our own imperfections, then we can love someone else's imperfections. Oh, well, it reminds me of the Dr. Seuss quote. Life's a little bit weird. And no, we're all a little bit weird and life's a little bit weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness we're compatible with, we join up in mutual weirdness and call it love. So many movies. I just want to say that in my book, The Love Thief, there's a version of that quote in the book. You know, I couldn't do it exactly because I would have had to pay a fortune to, you know, to the Dr. Seuss people. Okay, okay. We're all looking for the weirdness that fits and matches our weirdness. You know, it's interesting. That reminds me of the movie Harry Met Sally or even the TV show Friends. These were individuals that certainly their peculiarities were highlighted both in the television show and in that movie. And at the end of the movie of Harry Met Sally, he literally says, you know, I love it that takes you an hour and a half to order a ham sandwich. I love it that you think 71 degrees is cold. And I love it, all these other things. What he, what we, what I think he's saying and what this quote is saying and what you're saying even in your book, Wabi Sabi Love, is that I think when we actually can both appreciate our own uniqueness first and foremost, and we can be accepting of someone else's uniqueness because that's really a demonstration of love is learning to appreciate and love the peculiarities of a person because, you know, the good things are great, but it's the peculiar things that I think really creates the spice in a relationship. Yeah, Brian and I have an ongoing joke about it. So I have a notoriously bad memory. I mean, it's so bad, Brian, you know about it. So when I have a party, I make, even though the only people at the party are my friends and family, I make them wear name tags. You know, so Brian's always telling people, Ariel's memory is so bad that our life is like 51st dates. Every morning she wakes up and she looks at me and says, who are you? Is there really any truth to that? No, every once in a while, I call him by the wrong name, so yes. Well, I think, and I'm only guilty of the fact that as the older I get that seems to happen more frequently. And I think in the dating realm, certainly if you've had interactions with lots of people it's not uncommon to make a mistake. And really too, I think one of the things that you know that you're impressing upon everyone is that we're human. We're kind of fallible beings, you know, we're not perfect. And I think when dating gets boiled down to just swiping on someone instead of like when you said match.com. I'm a big proponent of match.com. It's a more curated site. There's a lot more Intel. There's hopefully an essay written about the person. It's usually you'll look at it on a bigger screen like your laptop or desktop versus just, you know, narrowing people down to just a picture. I really do, I'd like your thoughts about match.com. No, I agree with you a million percent and anybody that I work with, I occasionally work with people when I'm on coaching, they have to use match. I don't care if they use the other apps, but if they won't use match, I won't work with them for those very reasons. And over the last 20 years, the women that I have seen, particularly women over 50 who have found love, 90% of them found it on match. I only know one woman who've married off of Tinder and one woman who found love on Bumble. But really matches the way to go because you have more information and it's very clear what you're looking for. You get to tell this story, right? In a way that you can't and you get multiple pictures. And it's not, you know, it's not that there's anything wrong with the other apps, but since the women I tend to talk to are over 50, match I believe is the way to go. I have a friend named Michelle Tennant. And Michelle is a publicist and 18 years ago, she went on to match.com and she wrote a 2000 word profile, I guess back in the day you could that was super specific about what she was looking for. Part of which was she likes to do like high level, high risk kayaking, you know? And she does like very insane mountain biking. She's a very athletic woman. She's very specific about where she wants to live and the kinds of things she wants to do. And she detailed this in extreme detail. And basically said at the end, if you don't have 100% of the qualities I'm asking for, don't bother, I won't respond. And the second guy to respond is the guy she's been married to for 18 years. And they're still kayaking and biking and doing everything because she was just so clear about what was gonna work for her. And it's still working. Well, let me ask you though, many of our contemporaries where we have mutual friends would argue that is a very pigeonholed way to approach the process. In fact, you're, and by the way, I subscribe to the way you view it. So, or what you just, your friend shared. We have many contemporaries that would absolutely disagree with that. What are your thoughts on that? And I think it's a per the individual, okay? So if you're super clear, you know, that you need somebody of a particular religion or spiritual path and you definitely want somebody that doesn't have children living at home. Like if you have certain key specifics, then I would say share them upfront. Or if you're more into, you know, I believe in the divine and I believe in fate and destiny and, you know, here's what my preference would be, but I'm open to something else, then do that. I don't think there's hard and fast rules. You have to do what works for you. So I'll just give you one example. Brian and I just had our 25th wedding anniversary. We met 26 years ago and I was very intentionally manifesting my soulmate. That's how I ended up writing a book about it. I wasn't planning to write the book, but what I did work, so I turned it into a book. And it's called The Soulmate Secret. And I knew that I never wanted to have children. I knew that from the time I was five years old. And on the day that Brian and I met, before I even knew his last name, I told him, I didn't want to have children. You know, I just didn't even want to know his last name. He was 39 at the time. So, and it was great because he said to me, he said, that's totally okay with me. That's why my last relationship ended. She wanted to have children and I don't. So I think the faster you get those things out of the way, the better. These days it's about politics. Yes. You have to know up front, I'm a bleeding heart, Democrat, liberal, you know, the people on Fox would call me a socialist, fine with me, you know, and- Oh my God, I just lost a big chunk of my audience. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. It's fine. That's who I am. So if I were dating, I'd need to be able to tell somebody up front. It's like, listen, I don't mind conservatives. I don't have a problem with conservatives, but I have a big problem with people like Trump and that sort of thing. I would want to know that up front. I had a really funny experience. I was at the airport. I had a long layover and I went to one of those places where you can get a massage and a little mini spa thing. So I'm there getting this rakey foot rub thingy going on. And the woman next to me is got her head down and something getting a shoulder massage and she's talking to her therapist. And the therapist says to her, oh, well, what were you doing in Denver? She said, well, I'm from Cincinnati, but I met this guy online and we had a couple of really interesting, you know, video chats and phone calls. And he invited me to come for a long weekend. It was a holiday. Maybe it was 4th of July or whatever. And I got there and as soon as I got there, I realized I made a huge mistake because she said I'm this liberal person and he had on Fox News and he was wearing a MAGA hat, which I hadn't seen in his profile. And I just knew like how am I gonna spend three days with somebody who loves to talk politics and they're 180 degrees from what I want. And she said, I learned my lesson, you know? And I just thought that's so true. Like why would you go out to dinner with a stranger in the polarity that we live in now and not know something really big up front? Like, and it could be something like, you know, you're Catholic and you wanna have children and you want them raised in the church, you know? You might wanna know that up front. Well, I think the challenge today, and again, a lot of my contemporaries or our contemporaries say, you know, just go out and have a good time. It's all about having a good time, date to have a good time. I'm very intentional in the way I encourage people to view the process. And quite frankly, the first phone call is the first date and that's the opportunity to cut, you know, check off a few of those differences. So if someone's ideology is die on the sword for one political party and the other person's die on the sword for the other political party, probably not a fit or like what you share, whether it's children or some other factor in their life, ask those questions before you meet because then the meaning can be about fun, but you've narrowed down, that's what this article was about, is burning down the haystack by eliminating the jailbreakers. The jailbreakers right up front. And I think there's a way to be friendly about it and not put somebody on the spot and not feel like they're being interviewed. You know, our friend Evan has this great line, you know, talk to somebody as if they're your seat made on an airplane, you know, have that sort of level of casual friendliness in the beginning because ultimately I believe what you're searching for is your best friend. Exactly. You know, so get to know them in a friendly way, but also, you know, there are deal breakers in there. You know, I need to live near the ocean. You may need to live in the mountains and you're never gonna move, you know? Well, you know, where it gets tricky and I'm sharing this from personal experience when there's a lot of things that are aligned with one another and yet there's a few things that are misaligned and that it really becomes, are those core things that you can't live with? And this is where I know sometimes, I think when we're driven by attraction and chemistry, I think we get blinded to the importance of- Let's talk about that for a minute, okay? Yeah, okay, okay. Because, so I thought I knew what love was. Okay. And like most people, I thought love is a feeling. I know I love you. I feel like there's champagne bubbles going through my veins and it smells sweeter and water tastes wetter and it's all about how I'm feeling. And what I discovered that there are some good feelings to love, but when you're in the state of being in love, you're on nature's greatest drug high. It's your brain on adrenaline and dopamine and oxytocin and serotonin. And it has nothing to do with real mature adult love. Because you're having this experience with a virtual stranger. And then of course most of us have learned that that feeling of being in love only lasts six months to three years at the very most and it goes away and it occasionally comes back. So love is not a feeling. Love, ready for this? Love is a behavior. Love is a behavior to choice it to decision. It's an action. It's a way of being. And you can be happily married to your soulmate life partner and I promise you, there will be days when you don't like them, you might even hate them. And it doesn't mean that you don't love them. So for most people, we need to shift out of, oh, I know this is the person for me because this is how I feel. And really what you wanna do is be very careful when you're selecting your partner and make sure you have things like connection, compatibility, clear communication which thank God can be learned. Some chemistry, although chemistry is not the most important piece of it, the number one most important piece of predicting a long-term happy, healthy marriage relationship, a shared vision of the future. We want the same basic things. We wanna be legally married and live under the same roof and have children or we wanna be in a committed relationship and live far apart. Doesn't matter. It's just that we have this shared vision of what our life together looks like. We both work at home 24 seven or we don't. So that's the predictor, the shared vision for the future. Yeah, so I wanna dive into that. Well, I wanna dive into this. When you apply chemistry. Yeah, because I've had a very new awareness in my own life and certainly after, you know, when I was growing up I was raised by the programming is go to college, get a job, meet a girl, get married, buy a house, start a family. I was, that was the blueprint. And then after I went through a divorce, I, one of the things was I rejected the idea of getting married. Like I was like, no, I don't wanna go through that. And I very much rejected that. And even for a good half decade or longer, I really didn't want to be, I really didn't understand what I wanted because I knew what I didn't want, but what I, I didn't know what I wanted. And over the years, I've actually come to this conclusion for myself is I wanna get married. I wanna be in partnership with someone, whether that's a marriage with the state or that's a spiritual marriage. I wanna be in partnership with someone. I think where a lot of frustration lies is a, I think a lot of women think they know what they want, but they don't know what they want. That's just one observation. But there, we're also in the dating pool where there's a lot of both ambivalence, ambiguity and uncertainty as to what a person wants out of a relationship, which I feel like is what you know, I'm piggybacking on what you just shared. Right. And that's where you have intelligent conversations right up the bat. Here's what I'm looking for. I've been married and divorced three times, no need to get married again, but I am looking for a long-term committed partner to share the rest of my life with. And what does that look like? Well, I'm flexible about what that looks like. Maybe we live together, maybe we don't, but this is what I know I want, you know? And, and if somebody's in that sort of liminal phase of okay, well, I had a bad divorce, pretty sure I don't want to get married again. The question to ask them is, do you want the partnership and what does that partnership look like? And if they don't know, that's fine that they don't know, but that's not what you're up to. So maybe it's time to, you know, burn that down and keep going for what you know in your heart you're being called for. Yeah, this is where I see a lot of ambiguity as I said earlier and a lot of, you know, frustration is that I don't think people, I think a significant percentage of people, men in particular don't even know what partnership looks like. Like what would that actually look like for them? How committed are they, and how committed are they to wanting that because we've almost adopted a very casual way of approaching relationships and not an intentional way. And what I liked about this article and what you're talking about is being very upfront about what you want. And if they're ambivalent about it, then say, you know, thank you next. Exactly. Even if you have chemistry. Right, yes, you know, and if you want to just have, you know, fun in the hay for one night, then do that, you know, but realize that this is not what you're looking for. It's about, you know, it's about having clarity about what it is you want in your life and not being willing to settle because you think no one else is going to come along. You know, that's what happens. Yeah, I want to, I'm in full agreement and I'm hoping everyone listening really takes a lot of, what's the word I'm looking for, a heed to this. It's so critically important to be clear as to what you want and then find somebody who matches that. I want to circle back to something that we said earlier. As I shared with you and I've shared with my audience, I have a significant relationship that just ended. And I had high hopes for it. I'll be candid. It wasn't my choice. I had high hopes for it. What I've chosen to do is instead of grieving it with suffering, I'm choosing to grieve it with love. And what I mean to say is, and thankfully we were in a position or been in a position to have dialogue about this is we shared with each other what was most, we were most grateful for about the relationship. And I'm bringing this back to gratitude that you said earlier. By actually honoring all the things that was good and grateful for about the relationship, not as a way to hang onto it, but to have an energy of gratitude. And I believe we're both in this position of we're very grateful for the experience and we're grateful for the learning and the growth and the healing that came from it. I know this will catapult myself and her into actually attracting a partner that's probably more suitable. I'd love your thoughts on that. Even if you're not able to do this with someone else, I'd love to hear your thoughts on doing a gratitude about past relationships. Well, my sister wrote an entire book about that 21 years ago called Spiritual Divorce. Oh, that's right. I forgot about that book, that's right. So that already exists. So yes, of course it makes perfect sense. And she did that because she, her whole life wanted to be a mother. She got married at 39. She got pregnant the day of the wedding. Nine months later had this beautiful baby boy. Nine months after that, her husband walked out on her. And she decided that she was going to figure out a way to be friends with this man and co-parent this child together. And he was holding her hand when she died 10 years ago. They became best friends. They co-parented their son. He turned out remarkable out of a conscious choice. And they came to really understand that they came together like two comets colliding because karmically they were meant to have this child. And it turned out to be a good thing. So I think what you're doing makes perfect sense and it's great to have gratitude. And sometimes it takes a while to get to the gratitude. You guys were able to do it pretty quickly. But for other people, there may be a lot of hurt and pain, especially if somebody got cheated on and there's the betrayal issues to deal with. But ultimately, nobody goes into a relationship thinking, oh, how can I really ruin Jonathan's life? How can I make him miserable? What can I do to just lie and cheat? That doesn't happen, but we react to it like somebody did something to us. And maybe they did. Maybe we are a victim of something. Maybe the red flags were there and we chose not to see them or we didn't see them. And then we need to start with forgiving ourselves. And then we're gone. Well, this reminds me of something I've observed and I'd love your take on this because there is no shortage of videos out there. Basically, to some degree, throwing men under the bus in the dating, mating or relating realm. And to me, I think while there are some valuable, there are some videos out there and some creators out there that do offer some valuable tools. I think watching videos about narcissism and bad behavior and this intentionally trying to use people, if you watch too much of that, it's going to bleed into how you approach everything in the future. And as you said a moment ago, like I don't think anyone, I always say most men are good people, they're just bad daters. That's true. I don't think most men intentionally, or consciously try to hurt women, since my audience is women, try to hurt women in the dating marketplace. I think it's a byproduct of hurt people, hurt people. Well, I think that what happens is women have not learned the art of asking clarifying questions. They live in a world of judgment and assumption. He did this, it means that therefore he's dead to me. As opposed to something happens, and rather than in a nice, kind, sweet voice say, hey, when we talked last Thursday, you said A, B and C, and then Tuesday came and nothing happened, I'd love to know what's going on. Did I misunderstand, or did you get busy? And there's a kind way to get clarification. And what you might get back is, oh my God, I'm so sorry, I'm such an idiot, I totally spaced out, I'm gonna make it up to you, as opposed to you're living in, he's such an asshole. So I think learning to ask clarifying questions is always the way to go. Even on that first date conversation, they say something and you don't like it, you react to it. And you could say, okay, I think I just heard you say A, B, C, is that what you meant? And then they get to say, oh no, no, no, no, what I really meant to say is this. And then you can move forward as opposed to living in this silent judgment, oh, he's such an idiot, I can't believe he said that. And this is why I say communication skills must be learned. You may think you're a good communicator, but if you're having all these reactions and you're not asking the clarifying questions, you're half the problem. Well, let me ask you a question because, and I want your take on this, because I've observed that many women believe that they're really good communicators. Number, put that in a box for a second. I've also observed women who are literally have duct tape over their mouth when it comes to bringing up things for fear of losing the person. Yes. The third piece I want to bring up in this question is, are men really bad communicators? So I'd like if you could address those for me. I'm not going to generalize because I believe that most men are good men, right? But they're not us. They're like our friend Allison says, they're not the hairy version of us. And that's what women are going for. They want the hairy version of themselves. They want a being with a penis who's their best girlfriend, who they can talk feelings with. And you need to understand, they're different from you and me. You know, and we need to learn to love and appreciate who they are. You know, like in the world I live in, I see these women so make wish list. And number one, I want a spiritual man. Like, oh no, you don't. You do not want a new age nice guy. The new age nice guys are the ones that have so many problems that they're immersing themselves in the personal growth world because they're so screwed up. What you want and what you need is a conscious man. Now what's the difference between spiritual and conscious? A conscious man who lives his life on purpose. He knows what his purpose is. And he may not have read any self-help books ever. And he may not go to the Agape church and he may not do the things that you wanna do. He'll never go to yoga with you. But that doesn't mean he can't be a great partner. That doesn't mean that he has a lot of, doesn't have care and consideration and empathy and kindness, you know, and will be there for you, will be your safe place to land. So you have to stop looking for, you know, the guy who's gonna be drinking green drinks and going to hot yoga, you know, and thinking that's gonna make you happy because I promise you it won't. Well, okay, well let's dive into that for a second. First off, what's a conscious woman just out of curiosity if we just said a conscious man? I don't know. I've never actually pondered that. So I don't know, I don't know that I've ever had a man saying I'm looking for a conscious woman. You know, men are looking for somebody they feel good around. Most men choose a partner based on how they feel. You know, so they wanna be respected more than anything. They did a survey, you may not know, you may know about the survey back in the 80s. And they surveyed, I think 90,000 men and 85% of those 90,000 men said that their number one thing they need is respect. They thought it was gonna be sex, sex was number two. The number one thing men need is respect. You know, so do women- Well, I'll jump in because I actually am seeking a conscious woman to the extent that- So what's your definition of conscious woman? And I'm still, this is an evolving thing for me, but most importantly, to some degree that they have done healing for any wounds that have happened in their past, whether it's a childhood wound or particularly an adult trauma that relates to a past relationship that there is either a healed position or a healing position because I have found people are stuck in the past and that energy comes, that will bring triggers and things in the future relationship and coming back to regulating emotions, that capacity to regulate their emotions. So what you're saying is you want somebody with a high EQ. That would be a good way of putting it. Yeah. And I think when you say a conscious man, it's the same thing. Fairly- But when they're living a life on purpose, what I mean by that is that they have work or purpose in their life that feeds and fulfills them in a deep way. So they, because most men can't become happily married if they don't have work or purpose that fulfills them. Which is why- Well, and I'm gonna use me as an example. I certainly have a purpose. My passion is to draw attention to personal development, self-help, spiritual work in the context of the dating, mating or relating realm. I also, I have a purpose, but I also have this and I'm adding this into the equation. I have a capacity and a desire to want to be partnered with someone. In other words, my purpose doesn't override 99% of my time and I leave a sliver of time for a relationship. I think being a conscious person also is having balance in one's life to both have purpose and a desire for partnership. At least if somebody wants to date me anyway. Right, well, I'm sure you're familiar with the work of Harville Hendricks, right? Sure, absolutely. So Harville's philosophy is that the purpose of taking sacred vows and marrying your soulmate life partner is to create a safe container in which all of your childhood wounds can come up for healing. So he says that this kind of relationship is the deepest kind of spiritual path. So it would make sense for somebody who's as curious and open as you are, that you would want a partner in which to fulfill your healing and theirs to create the safe container in which to live. Yeah, it's the desire to want to heal. There's a desire to heal and move past it in the context of a partnership. I'm just reading the book by Gary Zukoff called Spiritual Partnership and I'm finding that very enlightening as well. Really quickly, you mentioned your sister's book just for everyone, just can you remind everyone the book was Spiritual Divorce? Spiritual Divorce and her biggest international bestseller was called The Dark Side of the Light Chasers and she was on Oprah many, many times and it's about learning to embrace your light shadow and your dark shadow self. Spiritual Divorce is her second book. So, and I just wanna repeat that for everyone, Spiritual Divorce because I plan on going buying it after this recording. So, since we're talking about books, is it okay with you that I talk about a book that called The Love Thief? Yes. And I wanna share with you why I wanna talk about this. You were kind enough to send me an advanced copy of the book and I was actually on vacation, I was on a guy's trip in the Virgin Islands and we had some downtime and I started to read it. I literally couldn't take, I literally plowed through the book in like a day and a half to two days. I loved this book and I was, and I'm really thinking there's so many lessons that relates to, not partially our conversation today but some bigger life lessons. Do you mind sharing briefly with everyone? I wanna just hold it up for everybody. It's called The Love Thief. Yes, it's a romantic spiritual thriller with a very juicy revenge subplot and a surprise happy ending. And the tagline for the book is he broke her heart, he crushed her dreams and then karma intervened. So it's this really juicy story about a 38 year old woman whose entire life has been dedicated to finding her prince charming, to have the white picket sense life. Her eggs are screaming at her. She can't wait to have a baby and finally she meets the guy and it's this, they're underneath firework filled sky and couldn't be more romantic and he totally loved bombs her from day one. You're the one I've been looking for. We're gonna have beautiful children. Everything's great until he betrays her. And he doesn't just betray her with anybody. He betrays her with her best friend and business partner. And when she discovers it, she plows into the back of a 18 wheeler and nearly dies. And it ends up in the hospital with her heart broken, her dreams crushed, her body crushed. And she ends up going to India not because she was spiritual, she was an anti-seeker. She went to India because she was a chef and she wanted to learn Indian cooking. And while she's in Rishikesh India, which happens to be the yoga and meditation capital of the universe, she starts to have a series of mystical experiences and that alters everything. And the book is based on actual events but everything's been changed to protect both the guilty and the innocent. Oh, I did not know that piece. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And it's going to be turned into a limited streaming series at some point. I have this big time Hollywood producer who fell in love with it. And it's been fantastic because people are not only reading and liking the book, they're calling me and saying, you wrote this book for me. This is my story that you told. And I had no idea that most of the women in the world have been betrayed by a toxic narcissist. So that's been sort of fun to learn. Well, speaking as a male reader, I just, I really, and I'm being very sincere to everyone watching here because I rarely, I have lots of books behind me. I thumb through it. They're mostly from a professional standpoint. I'm much more a moviegoer than I am a reader of stories. And this story from literally the second or third page began just, I think I shared this with you. It started to suck me in, like a Lifetime movie or a Hallmark movie film, but with a lot more class. And each twist and turn, you had a way of just really speaking, not to me, but to the experience of what a person goes through. And certainly the ending is a very happy surprise ending. So it's worth getting from beginning to end. I just want to say my producer describes the book this way. She says, it's Eat, Pray, Love Meets Dirty John. You know what? That's exactly it. It's Eat, Pray, Love Meets Dirty John. Or Tinder Swindler, it's a boot in there. So as we're coming to a close of this conversation, I'd like to kind of bring it back full circle because to the idea that, what is the quote on your desk again? There's no shortage of love. There's no shortage of love in the world. For everyone, I'd really like you to just expand upon that one more time as we bring this to a close. Sure. So let's remember you only need one, okay? You only need one. There are more than 8 billion people alive on the planet today. Yeah. Half of them are single, okay? And the other half is whatever gender you want, okay? So that leaves you with at least 2 billion potential people. And really it becomes like, are you willing to become visible? Are you willing to become visible to do what it takes? And are you willing to remember that you're the king or you're the queen? And you're in control. You get to choose. You know, people deal with dating like they're at the effect of everything. But you're in control. You have choice. It's just a visibility thing. And are you willing to feel the fear and do it anyway? As Susan Jeffers used to say, are you willing to feel the fear and do it anyway? And get out there and start dating, start looking for your new best friend, your lover, your biggest cheerleader, your safe place to land. And I want you to remember that if you have the desire for this kind of big love, it's only because there's somebody out there looking for you. So you said something that I want to piggyback on. I really want to emphasize this. To some extent, it's about being seen. You have to be seen to be asked out on a date. And whether it is you, you know, go to the grocery store and hope that you'll run into somebody there or at the coffee shop or go to meet up groups or start to go to organizations or workshops that actually bring you some joy so you can do the things you love to do, or even online dating, given that most people as they age tend to have little more isolated lives. You know, we have this medium that connects us to people we wouldn't otherwise meet in our daily lives. Rather than having disdain for it that a lot of people begin to fall into that rabbit hole of disliking it. I suspect you're a person that says, I love online dating. It's a great way to meet people. Well, just, you know, make it fun, you know? Exactly. Make a ritual around it. Like I have my gals, you know, I tell them, listen, you have to commit to a half hour every day at the same time, you know, light a candle, make a cup of tea, have a glass of wine, do a shot of tequila, get your vibrator out, whatever it is, that's gonna relax you. Take that might be a good idea. Do them all at the same time, you know? And just realize that put yourself out there, you know? And with each person that you're gonna block or pass on, send them love. That's a great idea, Jonathan. You know, you be the source for love for yourself and for the world. Yeah. Well, thank you for that reminder because I had something I emphasize over and over and over again. If you wanna be asked out, if you wanna ask somebody out, you have to be seen. And think of all the different ways to put yourself in an environment to be seen, preferably by someone who actually appreciates the things you appreciate. I've got a tip for that. So if anybody's single and they're dog lovers, even if you don't have a dog. Yeah. If you're out walking in the park or along the beach or wherever you go for walks, have a pocket full of organic dog treats. And I want you to have them in the container they come in. So if you see some hot man or some hot woman walking a dog, you could go, oh, can I pet your dog? You know, and then, oh, can I give your dog a treat and you can pull out the, you know, Paul Newman's organic dog treats or whatever it is. And you can start a conversation. You can be flirting first with the dog, but be prepared. Always have these organic dog treats in your pocket or your purse. I love that idea. Reminds me, I did, I was at Insight. I think it was Insight too. And one of the things we had to do was go out in public and spend some time with public. And what I did is the exact same thing. I flirted with the dogs as a way to connect with people. So great idea. And I like the idea of organic treats in your pocket. So to wrap this up, how can people connect with you? Couple of different ways. So my website for the book is thelovethief.com. And if you go to thelovethief.com, I have this amazing free bonus. What it is is I asked eight of the world's top yoga teachers, people like Sean Korn. And I gave each of them a negative emotion to make a video on the yoga philosophy and the yoga pose to heal, betrayal, heartbreak, anger, guilt, uncertainty. So you can download that for free. So that's where the book is. And then my website is my name, a-r-i-e-l-l-e-f-r-r-d.com. And I have this section called free stuff. I got all kinds of stuff on there. So feel free to go there. Or you can follow me on Instagram. It's r-e-l-4-d-44 at Instagram. And I will be posting links below. So for everyone, you can check out all the things Ariel shared. You know, Ariel, I am so grateful to have a chance to not only just talk about your book, which I love, but get the chance to connect with you. You really are the fairy godmother of love. And I just love being in your orbit because you really do exude love. And I'm just grateful for that. Thank you so much. Well, thanks for having me on. It was really, I love how vulnerable and deep you're willing to be. I've really enjoyed that about you. Well, thank you. Well, I end my videos the way I do in person. Can I give you a big gigantic Jonathan Bear hug? Yes, yes, yes. I'll give you a hug. Thank you so much. Everyone, check out Ariel's stuff. You will not be sorry. Ariel, once again, thank you so much. All right, everyone, take care. Bye now.