10 Harsh Truths about Dating Men You Wish You Knew Sooner

Real quick, before we start the pod, if you know a single woman in your life who is struggling, looking for love and needs a little bit of guidance, don't be afraid to share this podcast with her. It would really help us out a lot, and I know it would help change her life. Go ahead and share it with a friend and let's jump into it. Gary, there's some love advice out there that I think is completely useless. You deserve love. You're amazing. Oh, my God.

Love.

It'll just come when you least expect it. Just sit back and just let it come to you. Now here's the thing. For those listeners right now who enjoy that advice, if you enjoy that advice, this podcast is not for you. Because we're gonna be getting to some real harsh truths about love. And the thing is, if you're able to take this in today, it's going to drastically, drastically improve your results in your love life. So don't fight it. Sit with us. But we're going to have some harsh truths today, aren't we, Gary? Welcome to the Love Strategies podcast where we help successful women attract high value men, date with a strategy and improve their relationships. Now, whether you're single or dating or in a new relationship, we're here to help you dive into the male mind and provide raw insights found nowhere else, backed by science, psychology, and our own personal experiences. Your hosts today are myself, Adam lodolce, a professional dating coach and founder of love strategies, and Dr. Gary Lewandowski, a relationship scientist, professor, and our head relationship coach here at Love Strategies. Please share with a friend and enjoy.

We are, and it's, I think a lot of times exactly what people need. Like, we all need to have that person in our life. And hopefully you have this person like that friend who will just tell you how it is. It's not always just trying to make you feel good, but actually help you do better. And that's a really big distinction. And it's typically the role of a best friend, but today I think you and I are going to play that role quite capably. It's something that we do within our program. We have our tough love sessions with our clients, which they absolutely love. Right. It's something that they talk about all the time and it's like this big brother advice, protectiveness almost. But it's like we need to sometimes just help people see how it is to help them from keep continuing to make the same mistake over and over and over.

Yeah, I mean, speaking of masterminds, like, as a love coach, one thing we look at internally is what type of feedback are we getting from our mastermind sessions, our coaching sessions? And I gotta say, we get a lot of 10 out of tens. But as the CEO of the company, sometimes if I'm seeing too many 10 out of tens, I'm like, are we being too soft? Like, maybe we need to ruffle some feathers. I will say, like, when I would do masterminds, I was getting too many 10 out of tens. I would start going tougher love and getting some pretty rough feedback sometimes. Like, I'd get like a 2 out of 10 or a 3 out of 10. But the thing is, I would track that client and then a month later see massive results. So they don't like me in the short term for the things that I'm saying. They don't like it. It doesn't feel good, I get it. But your feelings aren't in line with reality sometimes. So sometimes it requires swallowing the pill, being like, okay, I need to take a real look at the reality of my situation in order to create change. Then you create change and you're happy again and that's it.

This is the whole purpose of a coach. This is why people hire coaches in all different contexts. This is why people hire personal trainers. It is not for short term lovey feely, nice and soft, any of that kind of stuff. It's like short term pain, long term gain. And sometimes you need to hear some things you may not want to hear or what we're calling today, some harsh truths. But it comes from a place of love, it comes from a place of growth. It comes from this whole idea of just broadening your comfort zone to take you to a place not maybe today, not in the next 35 minutes, but, you know, for the longer term horizon, we're going to get you there to someplace much better.

Amen. So we're going to walk through 10 harsh truths that truly we are constantly reiterating with our clients. And we're. The good news about everything we're about to go over is everything is within your control. They're not harsh, as in they're hurtful because you can't do anything about it. That's once again useless advice. Everything we're about to go over is completely within your control and thus allows you to dictate your future. So, Gary, you want to walk us through the first one?

Sure. The first one is you're complicit in what's holding you back. Not that you're to blame, but you're just part of the problem. And so in nerdy psychology speak, we call this self handicapping. Basically, you're creating obstacles that are impeding your progress towards a goal that you say you want, but you're putting things in the way that just make it harder. And so you really, really want to find love, right? But you refuse to do online dating. Self handicapping, that's a problem. You really, really want to find love, but you insist on only dating 6 foot 2 guys that make 6 figures that are also kind and gentle and sweet and write poetry and like, you just have this huge long list of all these things and you're like, guys don't exist. There's no such thing as a good guy. But your list of requirements is 50 items long. That's self handicapping. You're part of the problem. You're creating obstacles where there don't need to be obstacles, Right?

And I think one thing I see a lot with very successful women in particular and people in general when it comes to love, is using work as their ultimate obstacle. So you start to get some momentum in your love life. You start dating a few different people and the fears erupt within you and you're like, oh my God, like, this is scary. This is all again, so what are you going to do? Fill up your calendar with work? Because then that allows you to then pull away from the fear and lean into something that is comfortable again. And so any type of obstacle that you're putting in your way throughout this process, we really need to take a look at that. And the thing is, sometimes through the dating process, we need to be willing to expand our comfort zone and do the things that are sometimes uncomfortable in order to get that result that we really want. Humans are so likely to go with the path of least resistance. Like, so many people will just do everything within their comfort zone in order to avoid the hard thing. And I remember in particular for me, like going into the wayback machine back when I was single in my twenties, although today I'm wearing a backwards hat. I kind of look like a real bro today. But when I used to look like this every day, for those who are watching on YouTube, my go to my comfort zone was going out to random local bars with some buddies that I was comfortable with and try to meet women, right? And this was before I was a dating coach. It was like my early 20s and that was my comfort zone. Like I could go to a bar. It was great. It was like a dive bar and it's fine and like, people are friendly. But very quickly I realized that it wasn't the type of caliber of women that I wanted to meet. And so quickly I realized that I needed to step up my game and start going to certain type of events where those types of women might be or least really high end restaurants or places where this type of archetype of female would exist. And the problem was this, these places scared the living crap out of me. Like it just wasn't, it wasn't within my comfort zone at all. But it required me to push through that, that initial fear in order to get what it is that I wanted. And luckily, of course, it did work. But it's something everyone needs to think about is like, what is holding you back from achieving that in your life and what fears are you using as an excuse to, you know, to get the results you want? So I think this is a really important one.

I love it. And I think, you know, this idea of what's holding you back brings us really nicely to the second one, which is something that's holding a lot of people back that they don't even realize, which is just that, you know, are you really ready for a relationship? We all want a relationship, right? That's the easy part, is wanting a relationship, wanting someone to spend time with, not wanting to be alone. Like that's the easy part. But are you actually ready to be half of a high functioning couple? Are you prepared emotionally with who you are as a person? Are you ready? And so step one, and this is exactly what we do with our clients, is we focus first on being a full, complete, amazing person. You know, something I say at least once a week is you have to be the right person to find the right person in that order. We all want to jump to step two, find the right person. If I find the right person, that's going to fix all my problems. No, it won't. It's not going to fix any of your problems. You're now going to spill some of your problems onto some unsuspecting other person. You're going to put a lot of your baggage onto them, hoping they fix a lot of things for you. Spoiler alert. Not going to happen. Right? You can't be incomplete, flawed, broken and put that burden on somebody else to fix you. It's your job to fix yourself. You have to make sure that your relationship ready, it's ineffective to expect someone else to do it. And it's just, frankly, it's not fair. And then here's the really dangerous part of this is if you're broken, flawed, incomplete, you're likely to attract partners who find broken, flawed, incomplete people appealing. And that can open yourself up to some predatory dating behaviors which you completely obviously want to avoid.

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I think the key thing is here, and I, I know you'll agree with the statement everyone is going to have flaws, right? Everyone is going to have challenges in their life, and that's okay. Where we want to make sure the thing we want to avoid doing is believing that a relationship is suddenly going to solve all of those problems for us. So if you're a type of person who's highly anxious or you are really struggling even with depression, or if you have issues with your health or discipline and you think to yourself, oh my God, if I could just have someone in my life, suddenly all these things will disappear, doesn't mean you have to solve all of those issues right away. Obviously we want to on ourselves consistently and constantly and be the best we can possibly be. But don't kid ourselves in thinking that once we meet this perfect guy, all of those things will suddenly disappear. That's the big flaw. Because then a lot of people will find themselves in relationships, then these problems don't go away and they're like, oh, he must be the wrong person for me. And then they walk away from the relationship. Whereas this, like, it was a flawed premise from the beginning. No one was ever going to solve those problems for you. If your social life sucks today, you get into a relationship, it's probably gonna suck when you're in a relationship, you know, like think of any area of your life. If your work right now is really not going well for you and you're unhappy, don't think that being a relationship, suddenly you're gonna be happy with work.

Yeah.

For the first three months of the relationship, when you're on a honeymoon period, yeah, everything is great. It's so much fun. It's all good. Like, oh my God, I'm so happy. But then three months from then, once that wears off, you're going back to your same crappy job with your lack of hobbies, with your lack of interest, with your lack of social life. And you'll be wondering what's wrong with this relationship. It's not the relationship. So work on those things now so you can attract the right type of person in your life. And I get it, this stuff is hard. This is the hard stuff. But this is what really does attract those truly high value men and not the types of guys who, who are just going to use you, as Gary alluded to.

And this Will sound like a little bit of a tangent, but I promise it's not, you know, throughout my life, like, interacting in a lot of different business settings, there's one type of person that has always been unsuccessful and miserable. And it's the person who says something along the lines of, I'll do the thing once I get the promotion, once I get the recognition, then I'm going to do X, Y and Z. But they have to give it to me first and then I'll show them what I can do. Those people never get promoted. Those people never get the better job. Those people never get the other responsibilities, because that's not how life works. You have to do the thing, you have to do the work, you have to earn the promotion before you get it. Things aren't just handed to you. And I'm saying this because we know how this works in other settings. When I say all, everything I just said, you're like, yep, makes sense. I've seen that in my career too. But then for some weird reason in relationships, we want to skip that step. And that's where, you know, some of this is harsh, but it's actually critically important in exactly the types of things you got to kind of get a handle on.

All right, real quick, before we get to the rest of the pod, I want to give you a special gift for being here and investing your time in life, learning relationships and dating strategies that are going to help you in your love life. I have a special virtual dating coaching training. It's 100% free@thelovesteps.com get into that right now. You're going to learn a step by step process to be able to get out there, feel more confident, and attract high value men that you truly deserve. All right, let's get back to the pod. Amen. Which I think somewhat segues us to the next one. And this is a little bit of a controversial one. I get it. With three men talk, two men talking to women. All right, so bear with us here and let me explain. And that is exercise enhances attraction, physical health.

Ooh.

Before we go there, I want to say a very, very important caveat to all of this. We are not exercising to attract men, all right? It's not about men and being in better shape for men or we do it for you. I want you to be able to look in the mirror and be like, damn, I feel good. And again, it's not even about how you actually look. It's about how you feel. One week of just moving your body, it could be 20 minutes of walking a day, three days a week. Or it could be going to the gym three days a week. Whatever it is, moving your body releases an incredible amount of endorphins, hormones through your body that is just going to radiate a new level of energy into your social life and your love life. It's good for mental health, it's great for confidence. It's a great chance to just meet people, talk about meeting great people, going to the gym or shoot. It could be pickleball. I don't care. Some type of physical activity is an amazing way to be able to get out there and meet people. But what I guarantee is going to hurt you in your love life is not moving your body once you start actually moving your body. And that for me was very important. I never exercised until about 12 years ago. I was never the type of guy who did it. And for me, it just. It gives you so much more energy, it gives you so much more confidence. And once again, it's not about your physical appearance. It's about how it makes you feel on the inside. So that is such an important point.

The other piece that I really like about exercise that's not physical at all is when you take time to exercise, physical movement, whatever. It's sending a message to yourself that you're worth it. It's putting yourself first. And that is really important because again, you're not doing this for anybody else. The other piece is, and this is, this is just a bonus hard truth. People will say, exercise, moving, going hiking, going for a walk, pickleball. I don't have the time for that. Bull you do. Everybody has time. You have time for whatever you want. And remember, behavior reveals priorities. So if you say you don't have time, it's just basically saying it's not making exercise a priority or movement a priority. Okay, fine, but just be honest with yourself about that. You have time for whatever you want to make time for, right?

Which I love. When a client will say, oh, I don't have time for this. And I'm like, you have time for a mastermind session right now. You have time for a coaching session, but you don't have time to go on a date, you don't have time to exercise, or BS. I call BS 100%. I just. Everyone has 24 hours a day. And you look at some people who just maximize their time. It's all about, just prioritize, where do you put your attention in life? And this is one area that I highly recommend, whether it's Your love life or exercise. Both of them combined. Those take the driver's seat at this season of life that you're in. If you're listening to this podcast, it means that it's a priority to you, and you're probably putting other constraints on your love life, such as filling it up with activities that don't lead to love because of fear. Don't let the fear get in the way.

So, number four, harsh truth. Leaving your love life to fate is foolish. And this goes back to one of the worst pieces of advice that people get when it comes to relationships, which is love will just find you. No, it won't. It's not going to find you sitting in your living room on your couch, watching the news again. That's not where love goes ever, ever. Right? You can't find love from your couch. There's a saying that I. That I love, that I repeat to myself a lot when I'm having a hard time getting started or doing things. And this is, like, something that's for writers and creatives, which is the muse will visit you, but it must find you working. And so sometimes, like, I will be like, I gotta get myself in the mood. I gotta get myself in the mentality and the frame of mind to, like, start writing and doing. And it's like, no, no, no, no. That's not the way to do it. Just start. Just start writing. And all of a sudden, you start writing a couple bad ideas, and then good ideas follow, and then it just all starts clicking. But it's like, if you wait for inspiration, if you wait for love to find you, you'll be waiting a pretty damn long time. And so we have to take some active steps. And that's the harsh truth.

There was a book I read a few years ago. I forget the name of it, but it was related to writing. And he called it the Resistance. And I thought it's just the best word. Are you familiar with that book, by any chance?

It's Steve Pressman, I think.

Steve Pressman, Is that right? Yeah, yeah.

The Art of Something.

Yes. All right. We'll have to look it up. But that is something that is so true in all areas of your life. There's just this resistance where, you know, when it comes to going out to that social event, when it comes to going to that singles event, this resistance comes in, and every excuse in the world will come up where you're like, no, but tonight's not the night. I don't want to have to put on my makeup. Or I can do this other thing, Gary, did you find it?

I found it, Steve. We were close. Steve Pressfield, the war of Art.

The war of art. Yes. Yes. And it's something with writing that I very much so struggle with. Because you're always told with writing that creativity comes when you're just going for a walk or when you wake up in the morning. And that is true to a certain extent, but true writing and creativity comes with sitting at your desk, putting away everything else, shutting down all notifications, sitting there for an hour in complete boredom before anything good comes up. And there's this resistance that always comes up every time where you're like, you know what? I can be doing something else. I should go make a cup of coffee. I should go talk. In my case, I go talk to my wife. Same thing is with physical. Like, when I went to the gym today, I had a lot of resistance. I was just like, I don't feel like being here. I think I'm going to do the sauna. And if you can call it the resistance in your brain, I. I do it all the time. Just like. That's just the resistance talking. That's just someone trying to convince me that this is not worth my time. Push through. Don't listen to that voice. And I think the same thing is with your love life, because the activities sometimes that we need to do to meet people, it can be unfun. It can be really unfun sometimes, especially the first 30 minutes to an hour. Walking into a room when you don't know anyone in that room is kind of terrifying. But you get through the resistance the first 30 minutes, and then suddenly it's great, and you're like, oh, this is. This was. This is amazing. And then, boom. You do it a couple times. You meet a great guy. Boom, found love. But no matter what, you can't kid yourself with this false narrative that fate is the most important part of all this. We can just sit back and hope that you're walking down the street, some guy's carrying some pieces of paper, and you are as well. You bump into each other, the papers go flying, and suddenly you're now married. It. It doesn't work that way. It's got to be consistent, and you got to push through the resistance.

It works like that on the Hallmark Channel, just to be fair.

It does.

It does.

It does. Oh, my God, it does.

Disney movies, Hallmark Channel. It does work like that there. But, you know, if that were only real life. So that brings us to the fifth harsh truth, which is you need to Be the person you say you want to date. We're really good at dating with saying, I want this, I want this. This is who I'm looking for. These are the qualities I want. I want X, Y and Z and A, B and C. All this great stuff. Guess what? All those things that you want, you need to also be those things. You want someone that's high value. Be high value. You want somebody that's physically active, be physically active. You want somebody that kind and considerate and supportive. You need to be kind, considerate and supportive. Because we know, we like similarity. So if you want someone who has these traits, express those traits. And that other person is going to be like, oh, wow, you're kind and considerate and supportive. I like that. Because I'm those things. And you're going to attract those kinds of things into your life. This sounds harsh, but you have to kind of ask yourself, would you date yourself? Like, would you date you if you saw a description of yourself on an app or someone was describing you? Like, would you sound appealing to yourself? And I think a lot of times the answer to that is, eh, I don't know, maybe not. And so we don't get the relationship we want, we get the relationship we deserve. And so if you're not getting the attention from a certain type of guy, a certain level of guy, raise your level. That simple.

Right? Right. I would go through this a lot with men when I was coaching men because women appreciate this. Like, I would have my initial consultation when I was coaching a guy and be like, so what are you looking for? And by the way, he shows up in super baggy jeans, doesn't look like he's showered in three days, his haircut is an absolute mess, doesn't look like he's even socialized in four weeks. And he'll go on to tell me the numerous things that he's looking for in the top 1% of women. However, he would define that thing. And with men, I could be a lot tougher. I was so I become such a softy as time has gone on because what can I say, you know, I'm not men. I think you can just be a little bit more direct with in some ways. And I'd be like, dude, look at yourself. There's no way this woman would date you in your current state. The good news is all of this is within your control. If you want it, you can make it happen. But you better be ready to put in the work, dude, because she has options of many, many other people that she could choose from. Why would she choose you? And I would say these things and it was tough. That's where I'd get like that one star review. But then he'd come back and then he'd be making those changes, and then you get the five star review later. But it's true. And I had to look at myself in the mirror at one point in time, certainly in my early 20s, when I was like, dude, you're a mess. You're emotionally volatile, you're all over the map, you're drinking too much, you're a party guy. You know, you're overweight, you haven't talked to any woman in like two years. So you don't even know how to talk to women. Good luck. Like, you got a lot of work to do. And I like, it's an important. Just like looking in the mirror and acknowledging that, because now you're on the road to change. But if I just kept telling myself, oh my God, I deserve love, I deserve it. Like, the thing is with men, no one tells men that they deserve love. It's very rare. I feel like that's something that women are told, oh, you deserve it. And I'll say that a lot to our clients because I do believe they deserve it because they're putting in that the work. But I don't believe everyone deserves love. I just don't. I believe that people deserve love if they take actional, actionable steps to go make it happen. And men are just not fed those ideas as much. Men are told, like, hey, if it's not happening, you got to step up your game, bro. You gotta really step it up and, and be the man that she would want. And so that was my rant of the day.

I, I like it. I like this idea because I. It is so true that guys are treated more harshly and are given more harsh, direct feedback. But that's a gift that is an advantage men have that women don't get, Right? When you can give someone harsh feedback and like this harsh truth thing, it's because, you know, the other person can change. When I used to coach youth sports, all my daughter's stuff, I would. And I say this to my students too, because I think teaching, coaching and parenting, actually, it's all the same. But it's the fact that I'm giving you harsh feedback is completely out of a place that I have faith in your ability to change and improve. I see more in you than what you're showing me right now. And so this harshness that can seem at the Moment, like a one star kind of feedback is going to very quickly be perceived as a five star kind of feedback. It just takes a couple, couple days, couple weeks. It takes a little time, but it comes from a place of love. And sometimes it's exactly what you need to hear.

Yeah, it's almost condescending to tell someone, you're so great, you deserve everything. Look, it's. It's kind of con. It really is condescending. You're just, you're not telling the truth. It's. It's because everyone has work to be done. There's no doubt. And you know me, Gary. Like, one thing I do love about you is you always push back on me and you're like, hey, man, we need to step up our game here. We need to do better here. I always hate, like, professionally working with someone and they're like, everything we're doing, you're doing is so great. It's like, that's not helpful. It's just not helpful. So let's actually get to work, get results, make it happen.

Yeah. And it's all about, I think on some level, embracing the hard. And that's the number six harsh truth here, which is dating can be hard fact. That's okay. Sometimes I think people make the mistake and will gravitate towards relationship advice where it's like, dating is easy. It's really easy. Here's how it's easy. And it's like, no, that's actually just not true. It's hard, but it's okay. And it goes to that high opinion of people is like, it's okay that it's hard because you can do hard things. You know, else is hard, though. Being lonely, not having anybody to share your life with, that's hard too. And so I love this idea of choose your hard life is not. There's no easy path. The fact that there's an easy path is a complete myth and mirage and doesn't exist. It's hard. Choose your heart because you can do the dating hard thing. You can, because you're listening to this podcast. You're already at an advantage compared to 95% of the people out there. Because you're out here seeking knowledge. You're looking for ways to improve skills. You're seeking out expertise. And you know who seeks out expertise? Every high performer in the world. Every high performer seeks out coaching. They seek out expertise because that makes hard things easier. And someone who's high level, that seeks out coaching, they're not saying, oh, gosh, I want it to Be easy. They're not. They're not saying they want it to be easy. They're saying they want to be better. And that's what we need. That's the mentality we need going into things in life, in dating and everything. Just. I don't want it to be easier. I want to be better.

Totally. I love that you said this one because I think, you know, we have now become one of the largest, if not the largest, love coaching company on the planet. And I'm not saying that to brag. I'm just giving context about what I'm about to say. And back when I started over a decade ago, there were so many coaches that would be like the three magical texts that make any man fall in love with you and, you know, say these four words and suddenly he'll be yours forever. But they're all gone because I think it's so sim. So many of those coaches are now gone because they. Everyone read through the BS and knew that it wasn't real. It's kind of similar to the people who are like, here's three simple steps to make a million dollars a year. It's like the get rich quick scheme. It's not real. Everyone reads through the bs. And I think one thing that I love about you as our chief love scientists is you're willing to say dating is hard. And that's okay. We're going to push through it. And by the way, the very fact that it was hard means that when you get there, you're gonna look back and be like, it was so worth it. Because if it was easy, what's the fun in that? You know, like, everything in life that is worthwhile, everything, like every single thing in life that really matters requires energy, intention, and getting through the shitty stuff like it really does. And sometimes you get through it. You're like, am I gonna make it? And you push through it, and then you learn, oh, my God, I'm strong. Like, I can do this. And it's like those moments that are the learning experiences. And then when you find it and you get there and you're in an amazing relationship, you're gonna look back and laugh and be so proud of yourself. Because, hey, if you. If you did find love and it was just walking down the street with a couple papers and that was the first guy you ever met, you wouldn't appreciate it. So embrace the suck. Embrace the hard.

We like hard things. Something I would say to my daughter a lot, coaching. She was a pitcher for a while, and pitching's hard. And she'd have, like, something wouldn't go her way. I'd be like, you know what? If it was easy, everybody would do it, right? It's hard. And you knew that. And that's why you picked to do it this way. And that's why you're going to do well, because it's hard. And you're not scared of hard. Don't be scared of hard. No successful person is scared of heart, right? You want to be successful in dating, can't be scared of heart. Speaking of not being scared of heart, number seven, harsh truth. Some of the problems you blame are really just excuses, right? You say, there are no guys where I live. That's not true. Other people are finding guys where you live. All men are terrible. Not true. I know a couple of guys that are pretty okay. Other people where you live. No guys that are okay. Online dating is fatally fault. No, it's not. I mean, it's not perfect. Nothing's perfect. But it's not fatally fault. Tons of people are successful. And so you have to. Instead of blaming all these things, which is convenient and saves face in some ways, you just have to accept the reality, like there are other ways that this does work for other people. You just haven't learned them yet. And it's not that you were. Some people are born better online daters. That's, that's. It's not that at all. It's just that they've learned some skills and techniques and ways about doing it that are just frankly more effective. And you just. You don't know the secret sauce yet. Once you do, you'll be fine.

I'm going to pose a controversial idea here, but let's just say all of these things were true. There are no good guys in your area. Let's just say that that's true. There's zero guys there. All men are terrible. Let's just go with that being the truth. Online dating doesn't work. Let's just say it's true. So what? How is that helping you if you even believe it? So you might as well believe, first off, it's not true. But let's just say it was reality. Just in this crazy Narnia land, believing it still isn't helping you. So you might as well go with the optimistic side that there are amazing guys out there. I only need to meet one. Men aren't all terrible. Yeah, some guys suck. Totally agreed. Most guys are good people. Great. Lean into the good third one. Online dating. Yeah, it sucks. Sorry for my rough language today. I'm in. I'm in tough, tough love mode. Online dating. Yeah. It's not fun. There's scammers on it. There's all these people that are just trying to get short term feelings. Sure. Are there incredible nuggets of gold on there? Great guys. Yes. So lean into that perspective. You can choose which perspective you want to take. Go optimistic. Because what is the other option? You'll live alone for the rest of your life with a bunch of cats and you die alone. That's it. Not to get hyperbolic here. That's it. Might as well go with the optimistic one and then hit it with a vengeance. And then go for it and go hard. Because what ends up happening is if you can truly start embedding those beliefs within yourself, then suddenly your brain starts to look for solutions. You start to find it once you truly believe that there are men in your area and you're like, okay, this is 100% of the reality. There are great guys here. Guess what? For the next 24 hours, your brain is going to be like, oh, well, you know, actually someone mentioned a couple months ago this really interesting event where there's some good people. Maybe I'll try that out. Or maybe I could go do pickleball. Or maybe I could go to a different gym. Oh, I heard that that gym has like really high level people there. Great. Suddenly now your brain just seeks different answers. If you believe that there are no good guys there, guess what? You're just going to look at all the guys that are terrible in your area and just believe that to be true. So once again, go with the optimistic outlook. That's what will serve you.

Love it. Love it. I love, I love scary. We don't do this very often where, like in the middle of this, I just want to pause to just say, I love this episode. I love it.

I had to like get fired up before this and I'm. I'm ready to go. Let's go. I think we needed this. We needed like a good release today. It's good.

It's just I, I love being able to. Because this is a. This is coaching, right? Like, this is what we do on a regular basis. And it's. I don't know, it's. It's nice to put it in this format too. Number eight, Harsh truth. I, I love this one. I, I like this X stuff. But staying mad at your ex is a way to keep them close, right? The people that dwell on their past partner and they're complaining about their ex. My ex. This My ex did that. It's really just a way to keep them in your life. When an ex partner wants to keep having little fights with you, that's them trying to keep you close in their life. Because if you really didn't care about something, it wouldn't be on your mind. You wouldn't bring it up. You wouldn't dwell on it. You wouldn't check on what your ex is up to on Facebook. Right. And the important part about this is by keeping your ex close, it keeps you away from finding your next partner. You can only have so much. We talk about emotional bandwidth. Like, there's only so much emotional bandwidth you have. And if you keep your ex close and even if it's by complaining about them, that's taking up emotional bandwidth that you then don't have available to find your person in the future.

Yeah. I mean, how often do we hear of clients talk about their narcissistic ex husband or ex. And I am very empathetic to our clients and the experience that they've had. Now, with that said, I have to say that, with that said, by continuously talking about him and making him the forefront of your love life, you're giving him power. He is still in power in your life. You're allowing him to make decisions for you by you talking about him consistently every single coaching session or every single week. It's been six years. Yeah. Learn. Learn the lessons. We're not going back to that. Learn the signs of narcissism.

Learn.

Learn what it feels like to be with a terrible partner and then move on. Never again. We move forward. But to your point, Gary, there are some people who ruminate in this, in just wanting to just open up old scars and just talk about it over and over and over again. And some people might say, well, Adam, they haven't healed yet. And what I would respond to that with is, so what? Maybe they'll never heal, but guess what will ensure that they don't heal? Whatever the true definition is of, like, fully healing, Like, I don't know, someone's gonna have to actually explain to me what it means to be, like, fully emotionally healed from a really tough situation. Maybe it'll never happen. And what I will tell you is if you consistently talk about it and think about it, all you're doing is giving that person control and power over your life, and they're not even there. I mean, I've seen it with clients who will have had a narcissistic husband who died 10 years ago. He's not even alive. And he still has control over you. Let it go, move on. He's in the past. That's it.

Yeah. And, you know, it's a hard lesson. And I think what makes that one particularly hard is when people are talking poorly about an ex, they can't comprehend how that's actually still keeping them close and being a problem. They think that that's part of moving on. And being mad at somebody isn't moving on. Not caring about them, not thinking about them. That's. That's moving on. So, number nine, harsh truth. We get asked this a lot. Is he pulling away? Okay, maybe. But are you pushing him away? Right. So you have to ask yourself, like sometimes those. Those instances where you think he's pulling away. He's not pulling away. What's actually happening happening is you're pushing him away. And you're pushing him away because you're too needy. You're texting all the time. You're demanding attention. You're constantly asking every couple of date, like, what are we? Where is this going? What's are we? Are we for real? Are you going to leave me? Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me? And he runs. He pulls away because all of that is just too much. He pulls away because all of that is a big, huge red flag to him that says, she's insecure. I don't want to deal with this. So he pulls away. He's protecting himself. Maybe you're too guarded. It goes the other way, too. Like, maybe you're too guarded, too cold, too distant. You don't share a lot. And so you're like, how could that push him away? Well, he. He's thinking, like, I don't. I want somebody warm and caring and kind and supportive. And so if you're not sharing a lot, you're not offering a lot. He's going to start pulling away because he's like, this isn't what I'm looking for. And so you're like, why is he pulling away? Well, I mean, in some ways, you're doing the pushing. He's not necessarily pulling.

Amen. Amen to that. I got nothing to add to that. I think I'll just take us to the final one, which is the ultimate truth here, which is if what you're doing worked, it would have worked by now. What is the definition of sanity? Doing the same thing over and over again, hoping for a different result. We've all heard that a million times, but we need to hear it in the context of love and the real Question is, how much time are you willing to waste, you know, and what people do do in any area of their life? And I am as guilty of this as anyone is. When I'm trying to solve a problem in my life, whatever the problem might be, I'll always try to do the easy stuff first to avoid the hard thing. It's like for me, for example, just in a different context, I've always struggled with my weight. Like, I've always struggled with. I go up and down and weight for most of my life. For me, exercise was never the hard thing necessarily. Like, I've always liked to move my body, do things. Eating right was really hard for me. Like, I love my candy. I love my snacks. Like, I love that stuff. Sour Patch Kids every day. Let's go. But that was the hard thing. And so I would try to do everything else. I take every supplement in the world, every, you name it, every exercise, everything. Still got a gut. Oh, I also loved beer. And it wasn't until about two years ago where I said, I'm gonna do the hard thing. Just cut it all out. And guess what? It wasn't that hard in the end. And that's what actually, like, if there's anything. Exercise nonsense, eating, probably the most important thing when it comes to cutting weight. So how many of us are applying the same principle in our love life where we're doing the easy things and making us. That make us feel good makes us feel like we're making. Maybe you're just swiping on the apps and you're like, oh, yeah, I can do this. I'm dating. I'm dating. I'm swiping, I'm swiping. But you never went on a date. Like, that's not actually doing anything. Swiping isn't doing anything. That's just entertainment. Going on a date with a perfect stranger, that you have no idea what's going to happen, that's the hard part. Learning new information, learning how to flirt, learning how to put yourself out there, learning to be vulnerable. That's the hard stuff. But that's the stuff that matters. Getting coaching. Listen to podcasts like this. I mean, I congratulate everyone for listening to this podcast and getting this far. That goes to show that you are willing to do the hard stuff. And so take the steps today. Make it happen. Put yourself out there. Let's start doing something different, because that is ultimately what will get you the results that you're looking for. Gary, anything else you want to add to this?

Just one last little plug for the idea that the hard stuff is okay because you can do the hard things and the hard stuff is only hard for a little while and then it gets, it starts to get easy really, really quick. So get started.

Amen, Gary. This was a really fun one. I hope everyone enjoys this and I'll be really interested to see the reviews on our Love Strategies podcast after this. But I will say I don't care. I want to put this information out there and I want everyone. Hey. And if you enjoy this podcast, give us a five star review. Oh my gosh. No. This is, this is an important one and I hope this changes many, many lives out there. You're might be mad at us now, but come back to us in a month. Let us know how it goes. Love to hear about it. All right, so that is the end of today's pod. But the fact that you are still here means that you are truly ready to invest yourself in getting out there and attracting the right person. Because you know how important it is that you find the right man and the right relationship in your life. So what I'd love to offer you is a free love strategy session with with someone on my team who can dive into your unique situation and be able to set you up for long term success. The special link is in the pod or you can go to loveapply.com, apply for that session, book your session with someone on my team and they are the most compassionate, incredible human beings that I personally know and I highly recommend you take that action today. So head on over to loveapply.com and we'll speak to you soon. Bye Bye.