Episode 100

The Worst Relationship Advice Women Keep Falling For (And What Actually Works Instead)

This episode is for women who are done shrinking, waiting, or earning love.
19 mins
Hilary Silver dressed in a black t-shirt with the word 'AMOUR' and leather pants poses playfully, blowing a kiss against a simple background.

Show Notes

Modern dating advice that trains women to manage men instead of trust themselves and this explains why so many smart, emotionally aware women end up anxious, exhausted, and disconnected from their own intuition. When dating guidance asks you to stay chill, wait longer, or twist yourself into something more acceptable, the problem is not you. It is the system you were taught to follow.

This conversation flips the framework back where it belongs. What if your discomfort is clarity? What if your needs are not something to tone down but something to lead with? Hilary breaks down why passivity, performance, and patience keep women stuck and replaces them with self-trust, clear standards, and emotional self-respect. Dating gets simpler when you stop outsourcing your judgment and start paying attention to how a relationship actually feels.

This episode is for women who are done shrinking, waiting, or earning love. When you choose yourself early and consistently, confusion fades and calm takes its place. Love stops feeling like a struggle and starts feeling aligned.

In this episode, you’ll learn...

Episode Highlights:
  • Why so much dating advice teaches women to focus on men instead of themselves
  • How staying chill and waiting longer fuels anxiety and self-abandonment
  • Reframing your needs as essential information, not problems
  • Why impact matters more than explanations or potential
  • What shifts when you stop earning love and start choosing yourself
Episode Breakdown:
[00:00] The Problem with Traditional Dating Advice
[01:51] Five Worst Pieces of Dating Advice
[09:51] Five Empowering Principles for Dating
[17:51] Choosing Yourself for Real Love

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If you’re smart, capable, emotionally literate,

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and yet still confused, frustrated,

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or exhausted by dating, it’s

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because you’ve probably absorbed years of terrible advice,

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advice that teaches you to strategize, manage, decode,

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and predict men to soften, shrink,

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and twist yourself into a pretzel all while being careful

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not to scare him off.

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The entire dating ecosystem is built around teaching women

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how to win someone else’s approval rather than how

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to choose themselves.

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And the result is women who are anxious, confused,

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over functioning and completely disconnected

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from their intuition.

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So today I’m pulling apart the most common pieces

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of deeply unhelpful advice that keep women stuck.

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And I’m giving you what actually works.

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Instead,

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Here’s what I see every single day.

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Women crowdsourcing opinions from friends, Googling

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what does it mean when he

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fill in the blank polling group chats, consuming,

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endless dating content, trying to figure out

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what he’s thinking, what he wants,

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and what will make him stay, or what did I do wrong?

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And in the process, their own intuition just becomes

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background noise.

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Most dating advice is completely centered around men,

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what they want, what they fear, what they respond to, IE,

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what they find sexy and to turn on.

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Ew. And almost none of it has anything to do with you.

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When dating advice requires you to abandon your own needs,

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override your intuition, dilute your personality,

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or manipulate your own behavior,

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that is not a dating strategy, it’s self betrayal.

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So today we’re breaking down the five worst pieces

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of dating advice women need to stop following,

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and the five pieces

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of genuinely good advice you should start internalizing

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instead because if you’re serious about preparing yourself

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for real love, not performative dating, not anxious waiting,

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not clinging to men who can’t meet you,

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but actual emotional partnership,

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this is what you need to hear.

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Let’s start with the biggest offenders in the dating

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industrial complex,

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and that is number one, understand men, find love.

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Take a look at any of the top YouTube channels

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and you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about here,

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what men find irresistible.

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Three things men need to fall in love,

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what he’s really thinking when he does this, things

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that turn him off.

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This is what I call man-centered dating advice.

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It puts the focus on his psychology, his desire,

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his needs, his behavior.

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It’s all about him. Maybe you never notice this until now,

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but you will start to see it everywhere.

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What he wants, what he’s thinking, what he likes,

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and how to understand men.

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None of this advice encourages you to examine what you want,

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what you think, what you feel,

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what you need, what you desire.

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It doesn’t encourage you to tune into yourself to discover

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what you like or how to understand yourself at all.

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You are no longer self-centered.

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You’re him centered,

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and that is a very disorienting feeling

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that can leave you completely unmoored when attention is on

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him and not on you.

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So you slowly disconnect from yourself and lose your center.

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You’re not grounded in yourself anymore,

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and then you stop trusting your own instincts.

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It’s no wonder women lose themselves in relationships.

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We’ve been conditioned

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to think this way since we were in seventh grade.

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Man-centered dating advice turns into man-centered

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relationships, and then you wake up one day wondering

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who you even are anymore.

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It’s a big problem. So number two, here’s how

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to make him want you.

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Anything begins with how to get him to is not guidance,

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it’s manipulation, marketed as empowerment.

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It tells women that men must be handled and managed

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and maneuvered into desire.

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But if a connection begins with performance,

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it can never really evolve into a meaningful partnership.

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Wanting to be wanted is human,

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but engineering a persona

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to extract someone’s attention is something else entirely.

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And here’s what women forget the moment you start contorting

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yourself to generate his interest, you guarantee

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that you’ll be contorting yourself to maintain it.

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You can’t build a real relationship on pretending

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to be someone you’re not.

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Number three, be chill. Don’t be too much.

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This one trains women to suppress their needs instead

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of communicating them, it encourages you

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to ignore your discomfort, silence your intuition,

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bite your tongue and pretend to be unaffected

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by inconsistency or ambiguity.

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The result is women dating men

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who cannot meet them emotionally, then blame themselves

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for feeling anxious or insecure.

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But here’s the thing, and I know you know this,

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you cannot chill your way to compatibility.

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The cool girl never wins, never wins.

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The unaffected woman comes off as indifferent

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or lacking self-worth and boundaries

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and suppressing your needs never eliminates them.

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It just delays the moment when your truth

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erupts in conflict, resentment and heartbreak.

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How many times have you held it all in

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and then exploded when you just can’t take it anymore?

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This of course makes you feel and look like the bad guy,

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and it’s definitely not being your best self if you have

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to pretend you don’t have needs to keep him around.

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He is not your person.

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Number four, if he wanted to, he would

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otherwise known as the let them approach.

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This is a biggie and it’s damaging because it’s very subtle

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and insidious masquerading as definitive and empowering

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because it collapses the complexity of human behavior

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into a very popular slogan.

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It implies that desire alone dictates action

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when in reality the gap between wanting

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and doing is often filled with emotional limitations,

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unresolved trauma, immaturity,

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or just a plain lack of capacity.

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A man can genuinely like you

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and still be unable to show up in a way that feels steady,

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safe, or reciprocal for you.

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And women are conditioned to interpret this as rejection.

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To assume it means that we weren’t wanted enough,

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but most of the time the explanation is behavioral,

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developmental, or simply incompatible, not personal.

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And this is where the Mel Robbins let them theory has poured

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gasoline on the confusion.

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What began as an invitation to stop controlling other people

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has mutated into a dating strategy built on passivity.

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Women are now being told that if someone disappoints them,

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the enlightened response is to sit quietly

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and let them, let them pull away.

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Let them be inconsistent.

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Let them fail to show up

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because eventually their true nature will reveal itself.

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Now, yes, the full theory includes Let me,

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which is response, right?

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Let me decide what I’m going

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to do once I let them do what they’re going to do.

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But here’s what I see happening.

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Women stop at let them,

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they sit in his waiting room while he decides

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if they’re the one or not.

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He needs space. They give it to him.

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He needs time to figure out what he wants.

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They give him time. He has issues holding him back.

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They wait while he works through them.

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No, absolutely not, ladies.

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No, I tell my clients you don’t let him have

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time to figure it out.

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You don’t sit in his waiting room while he decides if you

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are the one you want someone who is sure about you, someone

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who doesn’t have issues holding him back from going

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after what he wants.

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Because here’s the thing,

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his inconsistency doesn’t automatically mean he doesn’t care

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and his interest doesn’t guarantee he’s ready for the kind

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of relationship you want.

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And when a relationship requires you to dim your needs

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or stall your life in hopes

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that someone else will eventually be ready,

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you are abandoning yourself,

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sitting on the sidelines and waiting.

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You’re not cultivating real love and you’re teaching him

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and sending a message to the universe

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that you’ll accept less than you deserve.

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So he and they will continue giving you less.

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But here’s what is most important about this distinction.

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The reasons behind his behavior don’t matter.

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Let me say that again. The reasons

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behind his behavior don’t matter.

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No excuses. That is none of your business

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and it is not your problem.

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The impact his behavior has on you is all

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you need to understand.

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That is the only information that you need

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to consider when you are deciding what you will do.

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If the dynamic leaves you anxious, confused,

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or questioning your worth, you don’t need to wait

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and see what he does.

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If it doesn’t feel good being with this person,

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that is enough information for you

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to make your own decision about him.

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Let them is not a dating strategy

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and neither is sitting around waiting to see who he becomes.

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The work is in noticing how you feel

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and who you become around him.

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A dynamic that requires you to mute your needs

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or pretend to be unbothered is already a

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dynamic you’ve outgrown.

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So rather than asking whether he wants you enough,

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ask a better, more self-centered question.

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Does this relationship bring out the best in me, a version

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of me I want to live with?

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If the answer is no, it is not your job to wait

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for him to fix himself.

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It’s your job to choose yourself

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and walk away towards something better.

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And number five, this is such a fun one to poke fun at.

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Just be more feminine.

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This is the most alluring

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and intriguing advice for go-getter,

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high-achieving driven women, it’s seductive

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because it plays on women’s fears and insecurities that

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because they’re successful

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and strong, they somehow are deficient in their femininity

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and oh no, who wants that to not be woman enough?

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So it pulls women in and then it has them feigning softness

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and pretending to need help.

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Wear more dresses, let him open doors,

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act like a damel in distress, be nurturing, be softer.

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If you want to a masculine man, you have

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to be more feminine.

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But here’s the thing, you can’t fake femininity

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and expect it to work out.

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There are reasons women show up in their masculine energy

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and not addressing the deep

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embedded root causes and core issues.

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Driving this masculine energy is like

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putting lipstick on a pig.

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Women who are go-getters type a high achieving don’t know

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how to be more in their feminine or what that even means.

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So they become awkward. They try to act soft.

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When they’re naturally direct,

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they pretend they can’t do things they’re

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perfectly capable of doing.

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They force themselves to be less so he can be more

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and feel needed and important.

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And it feels wrong because it is wrong.

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Here’s what I say, we want strong, powerful, driven,

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decisive women to continue being who they are.

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The cure for over-functioning in relationships isn’t

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pretending to be someone.

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You’re not pretending to be more feminine.

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It’s not about performing femininity, it’s about learning

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how to be taken care of, about how to receive the attention,

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affection and care you long for learning.

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How to receive is a wound that needs healing.

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It’s not a costume that you can put on it’s inner work.

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It’s really healing the root cause

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of why you’re over-functioning in the first place.

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So now that you know all of this,

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you’re gonna start seeing it everywhere

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and you’ll be, you will be all the wiser for it.

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And now we’re gonna talk about what actually works.

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The five pieces of advice you should follow instead at the

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core of every healthy relationship is emotional

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responsibility, self-trust, and internal steadiness.

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These aren’t abstract ideas.

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They are skills that you have to practice.

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So here are the five principles

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that actually create clarity, calm and genuine connection.

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First, start with the only person you can control you.

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Every dating struggle points back to your relationship

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with yourself, not in a blaming way,

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but in a profoundly empowering one.

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You cannot control how men behave, how quickly they move,

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whether they text back or whether they choose you.

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But you can control what you tolerate,

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what meaning you make from his behavior,

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how you communicate your needs

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and how you respond when something isn’t working.

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That’s the foundation of emotional maturity.

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So the action step with this is

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to look back at your last few dating situations

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and identify the moment you abandoned yourself.

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When did you rationalize a red flag?

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When did you soften a truth?

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When did you minimize a need or excuse a pattern

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or something that you’re seeing?

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And when did you allow something

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that made you uncomfortable?

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Your dating life changes the moment you stop

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negotiating with yourself.

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Number two, trust your intuition.

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More than any expert algorithm

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or friend group, most women have spent years outsourcing

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their judgment, asking their friends, their family,

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their dad, crowdsourcing opinions, googling analysis,

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polling group chats, consuming endless dating content,

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asking their friends and family,

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what do you think about him?

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And intuition just slowly becomes background

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noise as I stated earlier.

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But your intuition is your most accurate guidance system.

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It knows when something feels off long

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before the story in your mind even catches up.

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It’s a felt sense that you have inside of you

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that you have learned to turn away from.

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The goal at Ready for Love is not for women to do what

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I say, but for them to learn how to do

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what they think is best for themselves.

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It’s cultivating that rock solid relationship with yourself

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so that you can become a woman who leads herself.

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So the action step here is when you feel activated

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or confused, pause before responding.

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Ask yourself, if I trusted myself completely,

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what would I choose right now?

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The more you practice this, the clearer dating becomes.

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Number three, treat your needs as your filter, not as flaws.

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Women have conditioned to treat their needs

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as inconveniences rather than essential information.

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We downplay, we ignore, we minimize, we make excuses.

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We apologize for our needs

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and we most certainly do not assert them

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and ask for them to be met.

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But your needs are the roadmap to compatibility.

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That is a really powerful statement.

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But first of all, about needs.

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No one can meet your needs if they

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don’t even know what they are.

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So expecting mind reading is a trap in a

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total setup for failure.

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And a man who cannot meet your needs isn’t a bad man.

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He’s just simply not your man.

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He’s not your partner,

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and this has nothing to do with your worth, worthiness

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or your needs being too much.

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So action step here is to get clear on your non-negotiables

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and your requirements.

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These are your filters, not your flaws.

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And as I like to say, dare to be difficult, ladies,

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stop trying to be so easy.

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Number four, authenticity must be your dating strategy.

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Any action you take

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to elicit a particular reaction from him, such as waiting

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to text him back, pretending you’re unbothered,

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hiding your needs, mirroring his ambivalence is

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manipulation, disguised as confidence.

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It erodes both connection and self-respect.

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You cannot build intimacy on tactics.

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Authenticity might feel riskier in the moment,

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but it’s actually the most self-loving, self-respecting,

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and dignified way to be,

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and it’s the only path that leads to genuine partnership

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and internal peace.

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So action step here.

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Before you speak or respond, ask yourself,

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am I expressing myself

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or am I trying to manage his perception of me?

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If it’s the latter, pause

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and recenter yourself, you have to lead with truth,

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not pretense or performance.

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And five, become the woman who is ready for love,

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not the woman trying to earn it.

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At the heart of everything I teach is this,

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to find the right partner,

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you must first become the right partner to yourself.

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This isn’t about perfection,

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it’s about cultivating self-trust, boundaries,

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emotional wholeness,

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and the courage to walk away from what doesn’t honor you.

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The women who struggle most in dating aren’t

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struggling because of men.

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It’s true. They’re struggling

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because they repeatedly abandoned themselves in pursuit

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of love and connection.

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When you stop doing that, everything changes.

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So action step here is when you catch yourself spiraling

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about a man, why he hasn’t texted what he meant,

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whether he’s losing interest, you have

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to redirect yourself inward

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and ask yourself, do I even like

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how I feel when I’m with him?

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Do I even like how I feel when we’re not together?

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This single reframe shifts your dating life from reactive

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to grounded and centered in yourself.

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So here’s the bottom line.

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The worst relationship advice teaches women

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to contort themselves around men.

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And the best relationship advice teaches women

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to come home to themselves.

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Dating becomes dramatically simpler when you stop trying

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to get a man to choose you,

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and instead you choose yourself every single time, clearly,

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consistently, and unapologetically.

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That is the moment. Love stops feeling like a battlefield

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and starts feeling like alignment

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and it actually becomes so much easier

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and a whole lot more fun.

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If you’re tired of crowdsourcing,

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terrible dating advice from friends, family,

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and the internet, and you’re ready

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to actually change your patterns for good,

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you are in the right place.

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Stick around and be part of the ready for love solution.

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We have so many options for women at all levels.

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Obviously this podcast is a free resource.

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I have a relatively new substack

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where I post weekly articles.

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We also just launched the Ready for Love coaching app,

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which is so exciting.

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We have a handful of self-study courses

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and of course our flagship coaching program

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that you can apply to join at ready for love inc.com/apply.

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Wherever you go within my, within my ecosystem here,

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my promise to you is that I’m teaching you the real work.

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How to stop abandoning yourself, stop taking b******t advice

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and start showing up as the woman who creates the love

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and the life she wants.

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Thanks for listening.

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If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review.

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It helps other women find us.

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And if you know someone who really needs to hear this,

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please share it with them too.

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See you next time.

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