Hi Dr. Alex,

I’m depressed, bummed (child of 70s) and I need help.  At least I hope you read this…

Some background: I’m from Nashville, an only child, and looking back I realize I did have a charmed background. I’m not rich but my parents gave me what I wanted.

Honestly, I knew I was drop dead gorgeous. And I thought it would last forever.  Now, I’m over 50 – 56, actually. It sounds old to even write it. I’m in Tennessee, did I mention that? Key point — people in the South get married after high school. I’m still attractive but with wrinkles, etc!

So, I’ve been on the dating sites – and I have to admit most men over 50 are old in their heads.  They don’t do this or that, just because – so they tell me. Absurd to me, so I tend to be attracted to anyone that doesn’t look old and act old.

But, bottom line is it doesn’t matter what I’m attracted to ’cause I think all men see is that number, and it is over 50. It’s like you’re 49 and 23 hours and one hour later, making 356th day, you hit 50 and the world has stopped and you’re ready for the grave. It’s crazy the way the US thinks of 50 plus, and it’s a fact I’m not dealing with well. Somewhere on this planet there must be someone, some age, within reason, that still is young at heart and acts that way, too. Plus, it helps if they have good genes and haven’t gotten a pot stomach like so many down here (think Budweiser). Gross.

I’ve read that in Europe older, over-35 women are admired and cherished – not here.  Someone somewhere has got to get past the number and see me. It would take a long time to try and explain how I got here, single, and I’ve spent the last 2 years coming to grips with it and getting past the anger, though every once in a while that still creeps in, big time.

So, that might have been something someone “heard” – but not now.  Just the 56. You say we are supposed to be happy, and blah blah, I know what everyone thinks, but reality is I’m really not.  So, I’m wiritng with it all out there.  I probably should be sending you 100.00 just for answering this email, if you have time.  This is a huge imposition on my part so perhaps too, an apology is in order, for your time.  At any rate, what I’ve seen and read from you strikes home more so than anyone else out there.

Best,
Sherilyn

Thanks for the letter, Sherilyn! In general, the short ones with a specific question tend to get a quicker answer. In fact the German word for letter is Brief, hint hint :)

You didn’t really have a specific question, so I’m just going to bring some things to your attention here.

Now that it’s been over a week, re-read the letter you sent me. Notice that the darkness in it is pretty unrelenting. I’m detecting contempt for where you live and its people, contempt for their values, contempt for yourself and your age, for potbellies, for non-European attitudes, how you’re an imposition on my time, etc etc.

We need to stop that immediately. It’s okay to go a little dark every once in a while. And going 100% Pollyanna isn’t the solution either. However, indulging in the darkness and wallowing in self-pity indefinitely is a Very Bad Idea.

This letter isn’t just an apology for being old and wrinkly, as you put it — it’s sounds more like an apology for living. We tend to get more of what we focus on, and we’re responsible for creating our own world, mostly according to our beliefs. So if you’re convinced that you’re undeserving and unappealing, then that’s the most likely outcome.

Now, let’s get down to the facts: attractiveness is the name human males give for the outward signs of fertility in a woman. Naked mole rats don’t think Heidi Klum is attractive; evolution has rigged things such that human brains find certain proxies for fertility — eg clear taut skin, youth — appealing. When the woman is no longer fertile, those proxies go away. Things wrinkle, sag, widen, rearrange in inconvenient ways.

At the same time, the deterioration of those surface proxies for fertility have nothing to do with the development of your soul. In fact, the more time you have on this earth, the more opportunity you have to grow through meditation, devotion and open-hearted service. Many women attain a glow and beauty in their older age that they couldn’t possibly possess in their 20s and 30s, when they were at the height of their physical beauty.

Here’s what I suspect is going on in this particular case: the only stuff that can come out of someone is what’s already in there. So if you’ve got a torrent of contempt coming out of you, it’s because it’s always been there. It was masked until now, since things had gone reasonably well.  Now that the youth and beauty have diminished, it’s manifesting as anger.

My observation is that many gifted people — ‘drop dead gorgeous’ people amongst them — tend to have an underlying contempt for those who aren’t nearly as gifted as themselves. They use their accidental gift as an excuse to beat people down. Because of their appearance (or smarts, or athletic prowess), they always have attention so don’t realize that they have a problem. Moreover, they’re always getting positive reinforcement for whatever they’re doing, so they’re under the illusion that they have a working strategy.

This works for a few decades, during which they’re unconsciously cultivating contempt and ego-based strategies for relating to people. There’s also an opportunity cost here: they have put less time and energy into developing themselves as conscious human beings. Open-heartedness, selfless service, joy, elevating others – these are skills that are cultivated over time.  You don’t practice them, you don’t get better at them.

What happens is that one day, some of these pretty people wake up and realize, “Holy cow. I’m not pretty anymore, and I’m lonely, and I have no idea what to do to fix that.” Because they haven’t developed the skills for heart-based connection for the past 20-30 years, they have no idea what to do. They become bitter and angry at the world that seems to have taken away their power for good.

Some resort to plastic surgery, dieting or other ineffective surface measures to get their power back. They don’t realize that no matter how much they change the wrapping paper, the gift contents won’t change. These people can remain unfulfilled for a long time.

Unless they wake up in time.  Then they realize that they have a choice: at any moment of any day, they have the power to make people around them feel fantastic. A word of appreciation, a helping hand, a devoted glance — that’s often all it takes to raise someone from ho-hum or beaten down to fantastic.

Don’t be mistaken — this is real power.  My definition of real power is ‘power that cannot be taken away from you.’  Status, phyiscal beauty, riches — those can be taken away in a moment.  Spiritual beauty, on the other hand, is yours to keep, and yours to share forever.

So go ahead and dare to be the light.  Make men (and women) around you feel fantastic.  When you do that, you will start to glow.  And the good men will have no choice but to notice.

I also want to examine briefly a couple of other popular issues Sherilyn brings up.

So, I’ve been on the dating sites – and I have to admit most men over 50 are old in their heads.

This is classic poverty-consciousness.  Other versions of this: Men in their 20s are immature.  Men in their 30s are too career-minded or just want to play.  All the good ones are taken.

Poverty-consciousness, or the scarcity mindset, is the polar opposite of practicing abundance, which is the most important of the 5 themes of The Tao of Dating: The Smart Woman’s Guide to Being Absolutely Irresistible.

For every 50yr old man who feels old, there’s another one running for Congress and climbing Mt Everest.  Your job, Sherilyn, is to work on yourself and be the most radiant, open-hearted version of yourself so when Mr Right comes along, he notices you’re ready.  If the sign outside says ‘Closed’, people ain’t gonna knock, so make sure the sign says ‘Open!’.

Besdies, radiance and open-heartedness are their own reward.  It just feels better that way.

But, bottom line is it doesn’t matter what I’m attracted to ’cause I think all men see is that number, and it is over 50.

Let me ask you: does thinking this way make you feel young or old?  Which do you prefer?  Go with the story that makes you feel better.  You beliefs determine your experience.

Plus, it helps if they have good genes and haven’t gotten a pot stomach like so many down here (think Budweiser). Gross.

So let’s say a young-at-heart, handome, super-successful man comes long who abolutely adores you and gets along with you famously — but he has a pot belly.  Would you say ‘gross’ and walk away?

Ladies — make sure the criteria you have for selecting a companion serve your long-term fulfillment, not the other way around.  You may be shocked and amazed that 30% of married women report not even liking their future husband when they first met, let alone finding him attractive.

As a woman,  you have the unique gift of reconfiguring your brain to make a guy who makes you feel good look good (guys aren’t quite so versatile).  This is straight out of The Tao of Dating for Women, Ch. 5, ‘Understanding Men, Understanding Yourself’, p. 88.  If for some utterly unfathomable reason you haven’t read the book yet, it’s time to get yourself a Christmas present.

Be the light,

Dr Alex

Lisa-
Great story!  Now, this is the question you have to ask yourself: “Is this sustainable for another 6mos?  Another year?  Another 5 years? Is this how I want to feel and how i want to be treated?”

If the answer is yes, then carry on.  If not, then that means you have to break up eventually, and sooner may be better than later.  You can do it deliberately with a clear head, or you can wait for nasty circumstances to do it for you (another incriminating text, finding him in bed with someone).  I vote for the former option.

Remember that fulfillment is a feeling, not a person.  Suspicion and mistrust, which is a lot of what you’re experiencing, don’t sound like fulfillment to me.

As for saying that you ‘love’ him: that may be true, but you have a duty to yourself and to the world to love yourself first.  Being with someone who doesn’t value you and isn’t a catalyst for your flourishing into the best possible version of you, is not being loving to yourself.  That always comes first — I don’t want to hear any of this Whitney Houston martyr complex nonsense.

Two other things:

You already know what he said to his friend is not ‘just guy talk.’  If you’re with a man who’s reasonably charming and experienced with women, unless he has stated explicitly that you are exclusive together, you should assume you are not.  With the pre-existing trust issues you’re talking about, it’s a safe assumption that he’s pursuing other options.  It may not be what you want to hear, but it is the way things are.

And you should not be messing around with his phone.  I would consider that a massive violation of privacy, and he probably does, too.  That one’s on you.  However, if things were going well, you wouldn’t be snooping around anyway, so it’s a symptom of a much bigger trust issue.

Fulfillment is a feeling, not a person is one of the big themes of The Tao of Dating: The Smart Woman’s Guide to Being Absolutely Irresistible.  If you want to find the fulfillment that you truly deserve, you need to read the book already.

Recently I’ve been noticing a spate of breakups amongst my female friends.

Just last week I was having dinner with Katie on her birthday.  She was coming off a 6-year relationship with her boyfriend Dustin.  Katie’s 30; he was 41.

You could tell that the breakup was still stinging three months after the fact.  Frankly, I didn’t see why: if a guy’s 41 and still doesn’t marry you after 6 years, he’s clearly the wrong guy for the job – fire him so you can make room for the right one.

But this argument did not wash with Katie.  She still wanted him, because she loooooved him.

Oh really.

Well, I was never really convinced about this Dustin guy anyway.  Y’know why?  Because Katie’s a pretty social person.  She goes to events and parties all the time – in fact, I met her at a party about a year and a half ago

And you know what?  Not once did I see him accompanying her to any of these functions.  I’ve never met Dustin!  To me, he may as well have been a fictional character in a Jane Austen novel.  “Ohh Mr Dustin – how he makes me swoon!”

Yeah, but where the hell is he if not by your side?

And by her side is exactly where he should have been, because Katie’s kind of a babe – tall, sweet and with a smile that melts icebergs.  Only a fool would let a woman like that roam alone.

But I digress.  The point is that I needed to impress upon Katie that this breakup was a Good Thing.

So I asked her, “Well, Katie, on a scale of 1-10, how often did he give you backrubs and how good were they?”

She thought about it for a sec, and said ‘4′.  He didn’t really do much of that at all. My guess is that the 4 was pretty generous.

“And how often did he cook for you?”  That got a 3.

“And how good was the sex – quality and frequency?”  To his credit, that was an 8.

“And how often did he say ‘I love you’ or genuinely appreciate you?”  That was a 5.

“So what you’re telling me, Katie, is that out of a possible 40 points this guy scores a measly 20 – and you still want him because…?”

That got her thinking.

And thus was born the Deadbeat Boyfriend Test, aka the Dude-O-Meter.

As you may know, I wrote The Tao of Dating: The Smart Woman’s Guide to Being Absolutely Irresistible partially out of the frustration of seeing so many of my fabulous female friends who were dating duds, not dudes.

I just get sick and tired of that – and it’s still happening all around me.  Heck, it could even be you that it’s happening to.

So here are some signs that you’re in a relationship with a dud:

1. You often find yourself making excuses for his behavior, either to others or to yourself:

“Oh, but he’s really busy at work.”
“Oh, he’s just like that.”
“Boys will be boys.”

You know what I’m talking about?  You definitely know what I’m talking about.

2. You are doing most of the calling, initiating of contact and making of plans.  As in all of it.  He’ll do stuff with you if you prompt him, but otherwise it’s on you.

Love is action — especially for a guy.  What kind of action is he taking to seek you out and demonstrate that he values you?

3. He’s not with you when you’re out at various social events, and many of your friends haven’t met him.

4. Most (or all of your friends) quietly or vociferously disapprove of him, and you’re often saying things like, “But you don’t know him like I know him.”

Yeah, if they did, they’d all be running for the hills.  Your friends care for you and see things more clearly than you do, so listen to them.

5. He has said something mean-spirited and nasty to you at any point in time.

You may think that this is okay if it’s happened rarely.  But you have to understand that in good relationships, this never happens.  Not once in 5 decades.  That’s the standard you should be comparing to.

6. He has ever raised his voice with you.

Again, there’s no place for this in a trusting, loving, supportive relationship.

7. He has ever hit you.

I’d like to make it clear that if items 5-7 have happened EVEN ONCE – and I really do mean even just once – you have a duty to yourself, to your friends, to your family and to the world to get out of this relationship, like, now.  Immediately.  Pronto.  No delay, no time to deliberate about it.  This is an emergency.  If you’re having a hard time doing it, get some help.

Items 1-4 are pretty clear warning signs that you are wasting your life on this guy.

The problem isn’t that the guy you’re with is necessarily an ogre but that there’s so much left to be desired.  It’s like you’ve been eating at Subway every day and thinking, “Well, this is alright – what do I have to complain about?”

Darlin’- the problem is that alright is simply not good enough (cue Sarah MacLachlan song).  I want you to go for amazing.  For the kind of guy who sees the goddess in you every day and is a catalyst for your becoming the best version of yourself.

(Of course, ideally, you’re doing the same for him – right?  You lead with love and offer it first.  We’re assuming that you’ve read my book and gotten your own house in order first, offering amazingness so you can receive amazingness :)

So the point is this:

Since most women are ‘nice’, they’re not very assertive when it comes to asking for what they want, even when they’re not fulfilled.  So they’ll stay in a relationship as long as there’s not something grossly wrong with it.

They also have a scarcity mindset, thinking, “I know he’s a lout and a dud, but if I let him go, then I’m all alone – aiiieeeeeee…”  Well, call me crazy, but I just like to think that among the 3.2 billion (BILLION!) dudes out there, you can do one better.  And if you’re better off alone, that’s what you should be instead of being with him.

Sometimes it takes a catastrophic event to shake her up and realize they’re wasting their time (which is the stuff life is made of, incidentally).  Sometimes it takes a caring friend determined to wake her up.  Sometimes it takes a random guy reaching out of the ether of the internet with a wake-up call in the shape of an email.

If this article resonates with you, I wish you courage in taking decisive action.

And just for kicks, why don’t you apply the Deadbeat Boyfriend Test to your current squeeze and see how he does.

Oh, and if you have a friend with a questionable boyfriend, you definitely want to do it for her.  It may not be entirely scientific, but there’s a more than a grain of truth in it.

I mean, if he’s getting a low score, why isn’t he cooking for you and giving you backrubs?  Why is he miserable in the sack?  Whether it’s because you’re not doing your homework either or that he’s not that kind of dude, there’s a lesson worth learning here.

So here are the 4 questions of the Deadbeat Boyfriend Test, scored on a scale of 0-10, ten being the highest rating:

1. How often does he give you backrubs?  Rate on frequency and quality.

Backrub is a general idea.  The idea is that he likes to serve you and make you feel great.

2. How often does he cook for you?  Rate on frequency and quality.

If he’s really not the cooking type (which is most guys), taking you out to dinner is an acceptable substitute – he can get a max score of 7 on that.

3. How satisfied are you with the sex?

4. How often does he tell you he loves you or otherwise lavish you with praise?

Until we have more scientific guidelines, here’s what I suggest:

Score of 34-40: A keeper!  Good job.  Now make him feel like the man he’s always wanted to be, and he’ll never leave you.

Score of 29-33: Ok, so this guy has potential but needs some brushing up.  Maybe he’s gotten too caught up in work, or maybe he just needs some encouragement from you.  Give him some hints and see if he rises to the occasion.

Score of 25-28: This is borderline.  Neglect has already become a habit here, and unless he really steps up and starts making you a priority in his life, not an option, you need to dump his ass in about a week.

Score less than 25: Dump him. This is not a decision that needs to be delayed or regretted.  Why?  Because you deserve better, that’s why.  It’s not about him – it’s about you.  And my job is to make sure you’re happy and fulfilled.

Now that you’ve read that, I have a favor to ask you: were you in a bad situation at some point, and if you were, how did you get out of it?  I’ve found that these case studies are tremendously useful for others to read, so please share.  Either send them via email, or post them as a comment on the blog.

The power is within you

Dr Alex

Today I want to talk a little bit about confidence.  It’s probably more a yang (masculine) quality than a yin (feminine) one.  But I’ll just assume it’s of general interest and address both the men and the women.

First of all, what the heck is confidence?  It’s what linguists call a nominalization – basically a noun that stands in for a bunch of verbs.

Whenever you have a nominalization, you get confusion.  Because each one of us defines that nominalization in our own special way.  So words like ‘confidence’, ‘courage’ and ‘understanding’ effectively have 6.5 billion definitions.

So however you define confidence, let’s agree on this much: it doesn’t exist.  At least not in the traditional sense of existing.

You can’t put it in a wheelbarrow, and you can’t pinpoint its location in your brain in a PET scan.  Not even those fancy, souped up fMRI scans can find it.

It’s a state of mind — some mixture of willingness and self-possession.  It’s a catalyst to action but not action itself.  Whatever it is, like porn, we know it when we see it.

Our discussion today is mostly about social confidence, but it’s applicable to any other kind of confidence that matters to you.

There are four kinds of confidence.  The first kind I’ll call unconscious confidence.

This is a bit like ‘unconscious incompetence’, the first phase of learning, except that you’re not incompetent – you’re SUPER-competent!

This is the fearless confidence of kids. They’ll go up to any stranger and engage in conversation.  They’ll say “I love you” within minutes of meeting you.  They just don’t know any better than to be outrageous and outgoing and do their heart’s desire.

Gradually, through the teachings of parents and culture, they learn that it’s not okay to speak their mind, or just run up to strangers and ask if they want to play.  They learn about danger and hurt.  They stop being innocent in the original sense of the word, derived from ‘nocere’ – ‘free of harm.’

This is a bit like being informed you’re naked after you’ve been perfectly unaware for years that there’s anything wrong with that.  Holy cow!  Now what do I do?

So now they become bumbling adolescents, afraid of stepping on the toes of convention and propriety.  Many people stay in this state for the rest of their lives regardless of their age.  I’m sure you know someone like this.

To overcome this, most people resort to manufactured confidence, which is the second phase.  This can come in the form of trappings – playing your music loud, certain clothing or hairdo, accessories – or a devil-may-care, badass attitude.

The ploy works some of the time on some people but is completely transparent nevertheless.  There’s the outward appearance of confidence and the fervent hope that the world will buy the act in spite of the cowering little wimp living inside that shell.

But you’ve got to learn to walk before you run, so don’t make fun of people displaying manufactured confidence.  It’s a bit like conscious incompetence, the second phase of learning.  You don’t have a clue, and you’re acutely aware that you don’t have a clue.  But you’re working on it.

Which brings us to the next phase: conscious confidence.  This is when you know what’s up.  You’re actually a solid person through and through, and you stand your ground.  It’s not as much an act anymore as it is a reliable skill, like driving.

So you can call upon the skill pretty much anytime you want.  But under great stress, you still could stumble, like with any skill.

If you practice confidence for a while and really believe in yourself, you’ll be consciously confident.  It’s an attractive and powerful quality.  I’d say a decent fraction of adults get to this phase eventually.

But then there’s a whole new realm of confidence beyond that.  It’s interesting because on the surface, it looks like the behavior of the child.  The person who is in the fourth phase of confidence has the similar playful fearlessness.

With one big difference: he is fearless in spite of *knowing* about danger, not because he’s unaware of danger.

You’ve all heard about the cliché about becoming a little child again to achieve enlightenment.  And I’ve spent many moments gazing into the eyes of my friends’ infant children, lost in their full presence in the moment.

But that little Buddha is not fully enlightened, because it doesn’t know.  The key is to get back to that childlike state with all the stuff you’ve got on your hard drive already.

And that, my friend, is a challenge.

This is the phase of transcendent confidence.  And outwardly, it can look like any of the other phases without losing its transcendent quality.

It can look like manufactured confidence, since it can don a tough-guy outfit for fun without taking it seriously.  Because the essence of confidence is still inside.

It can even look like cowardice.  There’s a story about the legendary Japanese sword master Musashi illustrating this point.

A street thug challenges Musashi to a duel.  He says he wants to fight him right then and there and kill him, unless he gets on all fours and crawls between the man’s legs.

Mind you, in 17th century Edo (modern Tokyo), that’s the most humiliating thing you can do.

So what does Musashi do?  He thinks about it for a second, then gets on all fours and walks through the guy’s legs, soiling his own outfit in the process — and keeps on walking along his way.

Why?  Because the alternative would have been to kill the guy.  And he just didn’t feel like doing that.

That’s real power.

Transcendent confidence is knowing that you have options, and picking the right one.  It’s far beyond living up to any kind of image and just about ‘te’, or right action.

How do you get there?  Start by meditating.  The Tao of Dating books are a decent start, too – www.taoofdating.com/order for men and www.taoofdating.com/women.

We’ll talk more about the how of trascendent confidence later.

I have a question about a guy.  I think you stated I get one free consult question?? I was introduced to a great guy who is the best friend of my best friend’s husband so there is a lot of history there that I knew about before I met him.  This made dating him easy since I knew his awesome character! The only problem I see with this maybe not working out is that his speech is not the greatest.  He is from a small town so he says things like, ” I done, I seen and them guys”.  My question is: Can this be a deal breaker? …or does this really matter?  Or…can I get him to learn a little correct english at age 40?  I am not college educated and my english is not the greatest either, but I cringe whenever those words come out of his mouth.  Otherwise, he is the greatest guy I have ever dated. Thanks for your imput!! Diana

Thanks for writing, Diana.  Your story exemplifies the idea of getting in the way of your own fulfillment.

What matters is how he makes you feel — and how you make him feel.  Nobody’s going to be 100% perfect, so if he’s the greatest guy ever except for this one thing that he says, that’s pretty good.

My friend and fellow advisor Evan Marc Katz says “don’t hit on 20″, which is a metaphor from the game of blackjack that’s highly applicable to this situation.  Why try to improve something that’s already pretty good?

Here’s what i suggest: instead of trying to ‘fix’ him, focus on appreciating him for what he has to offer.

After you’ve done that, you can ask him if he’s interested in sounding even more intelligent.  Only AFTER he’s given his consent can you offer some tips after you have his consent and cooperation.

This is what I call leading with love.  To correct him just to relieve your own annoyance is not done out of love — it’s done out of egotism.  But once you change your orientation to genuine concern about he feels about himself, then you have license to give him a grammar tip.

In my own practice, I first ask clients, “Are you open to feedback?”  After they say yes, I ask, “Would you like me to sugarcoat my statements or to be ruthlessly compassionate?”  Once they’ve chosen the hotness of the sauce, then I proceed.

Also, it’s a good idea to focus on getting your own house in order first.  Perhaps it drives him nuts that you say ‘imput’ instead of ‘input’ and he’s been a perfect gentleman about it all along.  And who knows what dozens of other blindspots we have about our own mannerisms that our friends are too gracious to point out.

So once again, lead with love and you can’t go wrong.  Appreciate and reinforce the parts you like about him and worry less about the rest. If you are going to level some kind of criticism or complaint, remember that Prof John Gottman’s research showed that a 5-to-1 ratio keeps a relationship healthy — 5 nice comments for every one negative one.

“First impressions: Sinking gut. That lead weight feeling you get when you know you’ve really messed something up. As I read the “Introduction I couldn’t skip” I felt a wave of self pity wash over me. I was these women Dr. Alex was describing.

I had flashbacks to my last blog joking about my wild attraction to guys without jobs or enough money to even take me out on a decent date…it really isn’t all that funny. I do want a “Good Guy”. As I read the description of what I want aka The Good Guy (strong internal compass, leader, comfortable in his own skin, knows what he wants, etc) I could hear my inner optimist screaming, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”, but once I finished the paragraph my inner pessimist chimed in with, “pshaw, yeah right…not in LA.”

“When you chase anything in life, you are affirming its lack in your life”. p. 31

Wow. Duly noted. I think the greatest frustration with that painfully poignant sentence is that it goes against what has made me successful today.

Early in life we are taught to chase our dreams…”Shoot for the moon! Even if you miss you will still be amongst the stars!”. For most of my life I have been an overachiever. I busted my ass in high school so I could get into a great college and win scholarships to pay for it. I kicked ass in college so I could get a high paying job. I worked myself ragged in a high paying job with a successful company so I could be financially secure. Now what? I did everything they said to do and I succeeded.

Now I want the Man, the family, and the white picket fence to match.

“Most people think of success in terms of possession: in order to be someone, you must have something. If you have money and spend lots of is, you are rich. If you have an attractive mate, you are successful in dating.” p. 35

So true. I once had it all. A six figure income and a very attractive mate…but I was miserable. Clearly the relationship I was in didn’t “catalyze an abundance of fulfilling feelings in my life, like love, peace, and contentment”, so I got out (or more accurately he left). I also left the six figure income. I often thought that my success was a liability in my dating. I generally made more money than the men I dated. Most men will say that it doesn’t bother them, but I know it did.

***1:09 am…fading fast…will finish in the morning***

Continued….2:40pm

Okay…so a night to sleep on it. I’m still feeling a bit overwhelmed and defeated. I also found out that one of my recent prospects is going on a “date” tonight through a mutual friend. It was an odd physiological reaction to the news. Slight gut sinking. Flush feeling through my body like a warm sweat. Much like the feelings I got with the realization that I am those women Dr. Alex speaks of in the introduction to the Tao of Dating.

I KNOW I deserve better, but for some reason I settle for guys who seem to only make me an option. I deserve to be an entree vs an appetizer. What the hell am I doing wrong?

What KILLS me is that I’m having these physiological reactions to guys that I KNOW aren’t on my same level, but clearly financial success hasn’t always been a requirement with me.

“I don’t care what car you drive; I don’t care what neighborhood you live in; what matters is how you make me feel when I am with you.”

This is the first sentence of my online dating profile. Clearly, I take that to heart since most of the guys I seem to date aren’t on the same level of success that I have achieved. Why do I keep choosing these men???

I am grateful for the blessings I have. I am thankful everyday for a beautiful home, great health, financial security, and most importantly an amazing circle of friends. I have done it all. I have hiked the Great Wall of China, I’ve dived the Great Barrier Reef, I’ve climbed to the top of the Tour Eiffel, and I have completed numerous triathlons…but I can’t seem to find one man that can appreciate me as much as I appreciate them. I know, I know…the whole first chapter talks about abundance and that I must always think about abundance for me to have abundance but for just a few paragraphs of one blog let me go ahead and have my pity party.

I’m tired. Part of me wants to give up and start shopping for big crazy hats so I can be the crazy Spinster with the pack of dogs. I’m tired of feeling like I have to dumb down my intelligence, athleticism, or success just so I don’t immasculate the men I date. I am successful. I am exceptional. I should expect the same.

“What kind of person would you be if you truly believed that you have everything that you need? And what kind of people would you draw into your life if you were that person? Start there.” p. 41

That sounds reasonable. Fine. I will start there. I will put aside my feelings of insecurity and self doubt and focus on all that is great in my life (and there is a ton). I will stop chasing that which doesn’t wish to be caught. I will focus on my own abundance and fulfillment. If not now then when? Now is the time.”

“Welcome anything that comes to you, but do not long for anything else.”
-André Gide, The Fruits of the Earth

Those kids graduate and pretty much continue to have the same dating woes — only now with fewer single people around who happen to live in the same building and share meals with them every day.  So if they had challenges then, it gets about 1000 times worse once they’re tossed from the warm womb of alma mater.

From my observations, the following dating challenges seem to be common to most smart people.  In fact, the smarter you are, the more clueless you will be, and the more problems you’re going to have in your dating life.  Once upon a day I used to be pretty smart, and believe me, I had a lock on clueless.

On the one hand, this makes no sense.  Smart people can figure stuff out, right?  And this stuff is simple!

On the other hand, it makes total sense.  For simple things, it takes someone smart to really screw it up.  So whether you went (or should have gone) to the likes of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, Columbia, Cornell, Swarthmore, Amherst, Dartmouth, Brown, Oxford, Cambridge, Berkeley, Penn, Caltech, Duke, read on:

1) Smart people spent more time on achievements than on relationships when growing up.

Smart kids usually come from smart families.  And smart families are usually achievement-oriented.  Bring me home those straight As, son.  Get into those top colleges, daughter. Take piano, violin, tennis, swimming and Tibetan throat-singing lessons. Win every award there is in the book. Be ‘well-rounded.’

Well, you’re a talented little bugger.  Of course you should develop those talents. At the same time, there’s an opportunity cost associated with achievement.  Time spent studying, doing homework, and practicing the violin is time not spent doing other things — like chasing boys or girls, which turns out is fairly instrumental in making you a well-rounded human.

The upshot of all that achievement is that you get into a top college — congratulations! — and then continue doing even more of what you were doing before.  Dating is at best another extracurricular, #6 or #7 down the list, somewhere between Model UN and intramural badminton.

I’ve been co-hosting young alumni events for name-brand schools for long enough to know that these kids come out a little lopsided (which sounds so much better than ’socially awkward’, don’t you think?).  All they need is a little tune-up, or a little dating textbook like The Tao of Dating for Women or Men, to get them going — plus a little practice.

Of course, as noted above, things only get worse once you graduate.  And if you’re frustrated with your love life, you just might try to compensate by working harder and achieving even more to fill that void.  Left untreated, this condition can go on for decades.  I know people in their 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond who still haven’t figured out how to create an intimate connection with another human being.

It’s because they’ve been going at it the wrong way.  Which brings us to…

2) Smart people feel that they’re entitled to love because of their achievements.

For most of their lives, smart people inhabit a seemingly meritocratic universe: if they work hard, they get good results (or, in the case of really smart folks, even if they don’t work hard, they still get good results).  Good results mean kudos, strokes, positive reinforcement, respect from peers, love from parents.

So it only makes sense that in the romantic arena, it should work the same way.  Right?  The more stuff I do, the more accomplishments and awards I have, the more girls (or boys) will like me.  Right?  Please say I’m right, because I’ve spent a LOT of time and energy accumulating this mental jewelry, and I’m going to be really bummed if you tell me it’s not going to get me laid.

Well, it’s not going to get you laid, brother (or sister).  It may get you a first date, but it’s probably not going to get you a second date.  And it certainly won’t bring you lasting love and fulfillment.

Here’s the thing: your romantic success has nothing to do with your mental jewelry and everything to do with how you make the other person feel.  And making someone feel a certain way is a somewhat nonlinear process that requires a different kind of mastery than that of calculus or Shakespeare.

In other words, you need to earn love (or at least lust).  Sadly, no mom, dad or professor teaches us about the power of the well-placed compliment (or put-down), giving attention but not too much attention, being caring without being needy. I wrote a whole 280-page book about that, so that’s a story for a different day.

3) You don’t feel like a fully-realized sexual being, and therefore don’t act like one.

At some point in your life, you got pegged as a smart person.  From then on, that was your principal identity: The Smart One.  Especially if you had a sibling who was better-looking than you, in which case she (or he) was The Pretty One.

Now you could be absolutely stunning (in which case you’re both smart AND pretty and everyone hates you except for me — call me, like, immediately), but your identity is still bound up in being The Smart One.  So maybe you dress frumpy and don’t pay a lot of attention to your appearance.  Or never bothered to cultivate your sensuality as a woman.  Or your sexual aggression as a male.

Attracting a partner is all about the dance of polarity.  Energy flows between positive and negative electrodes, anode and cathode, magnetic north and south.  Unless you actually convey femininity as a woman or masculinity as a man, you’re not going to attract a suitable companion of the opposite sex.

Part of the issue is this: when all of your personal energy is concentrated in the head, it never gets a chance to trickle down to the heart, or, god forbid, the groin.  By virtue of being born of the union of male and female, yang and yin, you are a sexual being.  Deal with it.  Now do what you need to do to perpetuate the race already.  Use what mama amoeba gave you.

That brings us to…

4) You’re exceptionally talented at getting in the way of your own romantic success.

Here’s an incontrovertible fact: every one of your ancestors survived to reproductive age and got it on at least once with a member of the opposite sex.  All the way back to Homo erectus.  And even further back to Australopithecus. And even further back to monkeys, to lizards, to the first amphibian that crawled out of the slime, the fish that preceded that amphibian, the worm before the fish and the amoeba that preceded the worm.

And you, YOU, in the year 2009 C.E., the culmination of that miraculously unbroken line of succession, you, Homo sapiens sapiens, not just thinking man but thinking thinking man (or woman), are the only one smart enough to SCREW THE WHOLE THING UP.

Perhaps you should consider thinking a little less then.

Because heaven knows that the amoeba, worm, fish, amphibian, monkey and primitive hominids didn’t do a whole lot of thinking. Their DNA had a vested interest in perpetuating itself, so it made sure that happened.

Turns out your DNA works the same way, too.  And maybe when you’re really sloshed at a party and your whole frontal lobe is on vacation in the outer rings of Saturn, you’ve noticed that your lizard brain knows exactly how to grab that cute girl by the waist for a twirl on the dance floor.  Or knows exactly how to arch your back, flip your hair and glance at that handsome hunk just so such that he comes on over to say hi.

To put it plainly, you are programmed to reproduce.  Now quit thinking you’re smarter than the 3 billion base pairs in your genome and 4 billion years of evolution.  Actually, just stop thinking altogether.  Let the program do its work.

5) By virtue (or vice) of being smart, you eliminate most of the planet’s inhabitants as a dating prospect

Let’s say by ’smart’ we mean ‘in the top 5% of the population in terms of intelligence and education’.  Generally speaking, smart people seek out other smart people to hang out with, simply because they get bored otherwise.  And if they’re going to spend a lot of time with someone, intelligence in a partner is pretty much a requirement.

Well, congratulations — you’ve just eliminated 95% of the world’s population as a potential mate, Mr or Ms Smartypants.  Now, luckily, the world’s kinda big, so the remaining 5% of the gender of your choice is still a plentiful 160 million or so people.  Even if only 1% of those are single enough, good-looking enough, local enough and just all-around cool enough for you, that’s over a million people you can date out there.

Still, that’s less than one in five thousand people. And if you live in a smaller city, it may be just a handful of folks who are going to meet your stringent criteria.

At this point, you have three choices:

A) Loosen up

B) Do a very thorough search all over the planet and be prepared to move to Duesseldorf OR

C) Join a monastery.

My hearty recommendation is choice A.  The purpose of relationship (and perhaps all of life) is to practice the loving.  No partner is going to be 100% perfect anyway, so learn to appreciate people for what they have to offer, not what they don’t.  And love them for that.  That’s what real loving is.

Nobody’s asking to lower your standards here; you should still spend time only with worthwhile company.  But do question the standards to see whether they’re serving you or you’re serving them.

When you open your heart to love, you may find fulfillment in ways you never imagined possible — like the day you tried sushi or beer in spite of your trepidation, found it surprisingly alright, and expanded your personal envelope of pleasure.  Taking that into consideration, given a choice between happy-go-lucky and picky-but-lonely, happy sounds like more fun.

So let me make it clear: if a couple got together after a first date that involved dinner, it happened in spite of the date, not because of it.  You heard it here first.  Here are some reasons why.

1) The seating arrangement promotes discomfort.

Think about it: at what other time in your life are you face-to-face with a stranger and answering hard questions?  I can think of two: a job interview, and a criminal interrogation.  Neither rates as a pleasant encounter.

So if you find yourself in a dinner situation and would like to make the encounter more pleasant, sit side-by-side or at right angles.  The latter usually works best, especially because it makes it possible to touch one another. Which brings us to…

2) There’s usually an ocean of table between the two of you precluding the possibility of casual touch.

I remember reading a neuroscientist once say that touch is at least ten times as potent as any other sense at establishing intimacy between two people.  When you’re sitting across the table from someone, it’s very difficult to casually punctuate your witty remarks with a light tap on the wrist, a brush on the shoulder, or other contact that’s even bolder.  If touch is indeed ten times as potent as any other sensory modality at establishing intimacy, then that means you’re losing out on 90% of the possible progress of this date if you can’t touch one another.

Once again, sitting side-by-side or at right angles bridges the chasm while solving the problem stated in the previous item.

3) You’re trying to talk, but you’ve got food in your mouth.

The point of the dinner date is not the food, but rather to get to know one another. And yet, there’s the food, smack-dab in your piehole, from which you are trying to hold forth on your yoga retreat to Bali, the benefits of goji berries, or why Manolo Blahnik is god.

When you try to eat and talk at the same time, you’ll end up doing both in a half-assed way.  Either say politely that you prefer not to talk while you’re eating the main meal (awkward at best), or avoid the situation entirely by having only coffee or tea with this stranger. Add to that the Emily Post moment of wondering whether it’s more impolite not to answer a question or to do it with your mouth full, and you’ve created a needlessly complicated situation for yourself.

Speaking of needless complications…

4) It’s never quite clear what to do with that bill thing.

Well, as a guy, it’s reasonably clear for me what to do.  If you issued the invitation, you always pay, unless your date vehemently refuses to be treated.  If it’s a mutual thing, you offer to pay for both of you, and accept if she insists to pay her way.  If she invited, you offer to pay your way, and accept if she insists on paying for both.

Now that may sound easy.  But it’s not always clear who invited whom, and how mutual it is.  Does the situation change if the bill is huge?  If it’s minuscule?  What’s the rubric for a woman?

Again, for a first date, the purpose of the encounter is to get to know someone better to figure out if you want to spend more time together.  You’re better off getting rid of any distractions to that task, including the knock-kneed dance around paying the bill.  Which brings us to…

5) You’re kind of stuck with your date until you get the bill.

Let’s face it: you’re not going to be enamored of most people you go on a first date with.  In fact, some of them may irritate and annoy you to high heaven (or low hell).  Within the first five minutes, he’s waxing poetic about drag racing, and you’re thinking about your exit strategy for racing out of this drag.

But guess what: once you’ve put your order in, you’re slave to the slow plod of the dinner machine.  Sure, you could drop a couple of bills on the table and gracelessly excuse yourself, but that’s kind of extreme and, well, graceless.

On something like a coffee encounter, on the other hand, if the date’s going poorly you can get up and split at any point in the date with minimal social awkwardness.

So if you’ve been having not as much success on your first dates as you’d like, perhaps it’s because you’ve been leaning too much on this formula for failure called the dinner date.  Either do something more interactive with less focus on one another, or just make it a casual coffee date.

I talk a lot more about how to set up your date such that it has the best chance of success in both my The Tao of Dating for Men and the Tao of Dating for Women.  Check them out.

Phoenix

–noun
1. a mythical bird of great beauty fabled to live 500 or 600 years in the Arabian wilderness, to burn itself on a funeral pyre, and to rise from its ashes in the freshness of youth and live through another cycle of years: often an emblem of immortality or of reborn idealism or hope.
2. a person or thing of peerless beauty or excellence; paragon.
3. a person or thing that has become renewed or restored after suffering calamity or apparent annihilation.

How did I get here? Odds are I’m probably a lot like you or someone you know. Female, early 30’s, reside in Los Angeles, California. I think most would consider me reasonably successful given my age and well “lived”. I own my own home, financially secure, educated, and attractive enough to have once earned a living based on my appearance. I am the one that you probably ask, “why is she single?” Trust me; I hear it all the time. It’s odd since being in LA lots of people are single in their 30’s…however, in most parts of the country when people hear that I am single I feel like the Old Spinster with the pack of small dogs. (I only have one dog, by the way.)

I used to be the girl who always had a boyfriend. I went from one long term relationship to the next. The “Serial Monogamist” I was called. Once I got to college, that all stopped. Suddenly I was too focused to be bothered with a boyfriend. I was there on scholarship and had to maintain a 3.3 GPA in addition to working several jobs. Who had time to date?

After college I had two long term relationships that lasted 2+ years, but I knew that I had yet to find “the One”. I never was much of a hunter. I suppose if someone was persistent enough and willing to deal with my career focus, I would date them. It wasn’t until my last relationship that I really started to think long term.

We dated for nearly 2 years. Bought a place together (well, I bought it, but he helped fix it up and lived in it with me) and were practically married. Then things fell apart and I got my heart broken. This was 5 years ago and I suppose that is another reason why I remained single all this time…still mending a broken heart. I kept thinking that I wasn’t emotionally ready to be in a relationship. I dated, but once things got too close I would inevitably pull away.

If I don’t let people get close they can’t hurt me, right? Not an ideal way to live, but it was safe. I liked safe.

But here I am now. I am ready. I want to find “the One”. I am emotionally healthy (at least I finally feel I am) and ready to at least put myself out there. I know that I want to be in a loving and stable relationship and I will never get there if I don’t actually take some initiative.

That brings me to how I got to this blog. I am a personal friend of Dr. Alex Benzer. During a recent event he had brought The Tao of Dating: The Smart Woman’s Guide to Embracing Your Inner Goddess and Finding Fulfillment You Deserve. As I thumbed through the pages looking for the juiciest morsels of information I suggested that he find someone to actually test out the theories in the book and blog about them. Like a Sex and the City for the relationship challenged. Little did I know that in making that statement I had essentially volunteered myself as the first subject.

What do I have to lose? Nothing, but I have everything to gain. Clearly my own tactics and strategies have not worked, since I am still single and would prefer to not be. I am constantly told that I am a great catch, but seem to lose interest in the guys who show interest in me, and vice versa. I’m sure that I am probably making the same mistakes a lot of women make, but never really took the time to figure out why.

I do not have a problem finding dates. I do have a problem finding meaningful connections with the guys I date. I am assertive and dominant in my professional life, but when it comes to dating I am very old fashioned and perhaps even timid. I’m thinking if applying the techniques and strategies in this book can help me, odds are it can help anyone. Not that I’m a lost cause, but because I have tried in vain for quite some time to find a meaningful relationship in one of the most difficult cities to date, Los Angeles.

So there you have it. I am inviting you to join me on my quest and welcome your comments. My inner Goddess awaits and is looking forward to that elusive fulfillment that I so deserve. I am the Phoenix. Hear me roar.

One of my friends here in Los Angeles volunteered (completely unbidden) to test out the principles in the book and to document, via blog, how it affects her life in the dating realm and beyond.  She is a professional in her early thirties, successful, smart, quite attractive and single — in other words, precisely the kind of person The Tao of Dating is intended for.

I just handed her the text and audiobook, so the experiment begins right about now.  One of the ground rules is that I am not to give her too much extra coaching other than that which she receives through the blog and the email coaching that comes as part of the course.

She’s fiercely independent and brutally honest, so I didn’t have to ask for an extra dose of that. She’s doing this completely anonymously (except for me and a couple of close friends), which has made for some frank discussion so far.

If the whole thing comes out pear-shaped, it’ll be here for the whole world to witness.  Oh joy.  The good news is that you’re bound to learn a lot about the Tao of Dating course through her writings and my comments.  Join us for the adventure as Phoenix (her pen name) learns to fly again.