7 Brutal Truths I Wish Women Knew About Dating Men
24 Sept 2025 · 19 min
This podcast/video by Adam Lodolce (CEO, Love Strategies) delivers seven “brutal truths” and coaching reframes for successful women struggling to attract committed partners. Using a client anecdote and 15+ years of coaching data, Lodolce explains confirmation bias, argues that overly rigid standards can become protective "walls," notes a smaller but higher-quality dating pool for older women, reframes men over 40 as people with life experience (not "broken"), emphasizes building emotional connection before sex (oxytocin vs. testosterone), urges personal ownership of dating outcomes (not blaming others), and presents past relationship experience as a strength. The episode references the free Attraction Archetype assessment (based on data from ~40,000 women) and ends with a call-to-action to apply for coaching.
Hate to tell you, but if you are successful, high achieving woman looking for love, it is very possible that you're lying to yourself about why you're attracting the wrong type of men. If you're finding that you're only attracting immature guys who are full of red flags, who are total commitment folks who are what you might consider to be man children. And guess what? This video today is all about you and helping you understand the brutal truth. Some of these truths that might hurt a little bit to hear, but it's gonna actually help you break free and get you some real results in your love life. My name is Adam lodolce. I'm an executive love coach and the CEO and founder of this company called Love Strategies, where we have been over the past 15 years coaching tens of thousands of the most successful women on the planet to get out there and attract love. And we now have a team of over 30 people. This is all we do is we coach women just like you. And we get so much data and so much information about what really works when it comes dating and attracting the right types of guys for all of you and what really doesn't work. And so I wanted to create this new series which is all about authenticity. It's all about just you and I connecting me, sending a message to all of you. I'd love to hear from you in the comments if you enjoy this. And my goal of this is to just be speaking my truth to guide you in your love life. Because that's really why I believe I'm here on this planet, honestly, not to get cheesy. I'm here to guide and help you. So this video in particular is the first part of this series, comes from a very interesting moment I had about a week ago with a brand new client who just joined to start working with us. And I love our new clients. It's so fun to meet new people and to get them involved and get them started with this process. But this was a bit of a spicy conversation. I appreciate that. I'm ready to rock and roll. But she came in just guns blazing, ready to rock and roll. And I knew about her client profile because we track all that and she' what I would consider to be a big wig attorney. She's a big deal, all right. And she comes in to our zoom sessions or to our zoom session and she is ready to rock. And she said, adam, I've been single for 10 years. I don't know how it is that you're going to help me because I'm just too Successful like there are no men who are actually on my level. I promise you, Adam, there are no men out there who can rise to my level. Because she had this kind of idea in her mind that because she's ascended so high that suddenly she's just kind of seeing the sea of immature men who could never truly be a life partner for her. And I get that, I get that, I hear that a lot. But here's the kicker, and this is what I started working with her on. Just as a starting point with everything we do, I want to reframe some of these beliefs because there's a well known psychological bias known as confirmation bias. What that means is what we as humans believe to be true becomes true because we as human beings will seek any piece of evidence that reinforces our existing belief system. So in short, if she believes that there are no good men out there, I can promise her that she will only see evidence of men who are not good enough for her. She will just constantly be looking for evidence that supports her pre existing, like belief system. And this is why it's really hard to change people's minds, right? Have you ever been in a debate with someone, let's say it's a political debate or religious debate, and they just cannot see through the fog of their beliefs. And so if you're saying to yourself, well, I don't have confirmation bias, I, there's no way that I, you know, any of my beliefs are fogging my view of reality, then this is a really good video for you because it's going to help you break through some of those beliefs. Because I guarantee if you're a human being, you are walking around with a set of belief systems that are absolutely holding you back, especially in your love life. And once we can kind of break through that fog, cut through the BS and see the world for what it really is, suddenly you will be set free in your love life. And that's what we do around here. And that's the goal of it. And, and let me tell you something, I also have confirmation bias. There's no doubt about it 100%. But by understanding the psychological bias, I can at least admit to myself that a lot of the beliefs I have might not be true. So it allows me to at least go into the world understanding, with a bit of curiosity as to, like, where it is that I may be missing the truth and where it is that I might be telling myself a lie that's not serving myself. So I really ask all of you today to lean into some of these ideas as potential truths or just fully accept them as truths. Because again, this is Based on over 15 years as an executive love coach helping women just like you. So hopefully that gives it a little bit of credibility going into this conversation. So the first truth that I spoke to this woman about is that she has been building walls, not standards. A lot of people, when they're dating, especially women in particular, have this idea that their standards are so high that they will never, never lower their when it comes to love. That they're building their standards in a way that's actually building this invisible wall that's breaking them apart from men out there. And in some ways, it's a way of actually emotionally protecting yourself from the pain of things not working out. And so if we can start. Look, I'm all about having standards. That's one of the first things we do here at Love Strategies. We work with our clients to create. We said we don't call them standards. We call them a love vision. It's a very clear set of criteria that we're looking for in our partner, and that's fantast. But when our standards are so specific and so high in a way that no one could ever reach them, I call those walls not standards. And so just using a little bit of a reframe there and taking a look at. Are my standards just walls that I'm using to protect myself emotionally? If so, it's time to start taking a hard look at those standards and recognize that, you know what, maybe it's time to just have a vision for my life and be open to possibility of different types of guys walking into my life. Second truth that I think is very worth discussing, especially if you're dating in your 50s, 60s, and beyond, is that your dating pool is definitely smaller than if you're in your 20s and 30s. And that's a wonderful thing, and that's okay. So let's face it, the older you get, the pool of available men, it shrinks. There's no doubt. But let me tell you, when we are finding love a little bit later in life, our ability to be able to decipher the right types of men for us versus the wrong types of men is much, much better than when we're in our 20s and 30s. So there's actually a way of looking at this where when we're dating in this dating pool, yeah, sure, the quantity might be a bit lower, for sure, but the quality of men out there actually can be much, much higher because we can very quickly cut out the wrong Types of men, the men that are just there to waste time. The men who are not emotionally on the same scale as you and who aren't really looking for relationships. And I've coached women in their 20s and 30s all the way up to in their 80s and 90s. And I found that when we're a bit older, as we, I want to say wiser, as we're wiser and we're growing in age, we're much more able to actually decipher and cut out the wrong types of guys. So I want us to reframe this idea of oh my God, my dating pool is so much smaller. It was so much easier in my twenties. It really wasn't. Now, the third truth is that the solution to your love life's challenges, it all starts with you. One thing that every one has in common, both men and women, when it comes to their love life, is that they want to somehow, if they're heterosexual, want to blame the other gender for all of their challenges. When I worked with men, they would always want to blame women as the reason why they're still single. When I work with women, they always want to start with men as being the problem. But the challenge with that is that we cannot control. First off, it's not true at all. But secondly, we can't control all the genders out there. We can't control what men are doing, we can't control what women are doing. What we can control is what you are doing. How does that you're showing up, how much we're actually getting out there, how many dates we're going on, what kind of energy we're bringing to those dates, how disciplined are we being about cutting out the wrong types of people? The solution always starts with you. And here's the the biggest kicker of it all. Where we put the blame is where we give the power. So if you're always blaming men or blaming anyone else other than yourself, you're just passing off the all of the power over to that blame. When you start actually looking inward. And I don't want you to blame yourself, I just want you to take ownership of your current situation, what's going on in your love life, the decisions that you've made when it comes to men relationships, how you've handled those relationships, how we've shown up with communication. If we can start actually looking inward, the solution starting with you, suddenly you're in full control. I would way rather that any day than to have to always be just blaming men walking around saying, oh my God, it's it's men, it's the dating apps you can't do. You know, you can't find love nowadays. There's these dating apps where there's all full of scammers, yada, yada yada. Once you start doing that, guess what? You're screwed. So why even try? So one assessment that we have created here at Love Strategies that really helps break free from this what I call victim mindset. We, we've created this assessment. It's called the Attraction archetype and it's free for everyone. So you can check it out. It's@attractiontype.com I'll leave a comment to it in the description below as well. But what this allows you to do is understand some of your relationship patterns, why it is that you might be showing up the way you are and how does it you can break free from some of those patterns. And this is based on data from over 40, 000 women that we've worked with. So this is very Scientifically backed by Dr. Gary Lewandowski, our chief love scientist here at Love strategies. He's our PhD around here. He knows stats. You're going to really enjoy that. I would check that out. It's going to help you take the ownership of your love life so that you can move forward and be able to actually have the power and the control in your love life. All right, the fourth truth. Let's get into it. Men over 40 aren't broken. They've just been through some shit. Right? A lot of times when we're dating in this older age bracket, we want to look at these guys who are divorced, they have kids, they have some career struggles, they've been through some heartbreak. They're grieving the death of a parent or the death of anyone in their life. We look at that as them being broken or having an excess of baggage. And the reality is that any person over the age of 40 and beyond has some level of baggage. We all carry just a backpack full of stones and weights with us wherever it is we go. And that's called life experience. And so if we're going out there and we're dating in this age bracket and we're just looking at every guy and say he's broken, he's broken, he's broken. He's not right for me. No, no, no, no, no. I need the perfect man who has never married, but also that's a red flag. Or no, I want a man who's divorced, but healthily divorced in a way that actually makes sense to Me, it's not going to work. We have to just accept that these guys who are an older age bracket, they bring some life experience with them, and that's a great thing. When you find the right type of high caliber guy, suddenly that is going to give him wisdom in his love life. It's going to give him wisdom when he's dating you and spending the rest of his life with you, rather than a guy in his 20s who has no life experience. He hasn't gone through divorce, he hasn't grieved the death of anyone in his family. He hasn't gone through the tough things in life. That's actually a greater risk than a guy who's been through some stuff, who might have some baggage. Just keep that in mind when you're getting out there and meeting some of these guys. The fifth truth, and this is a big one, and this is something that we certainly talk a lot about here at Love Strategies. And it's easier to say but harder to do in reality. But it's so, so important is it's so critical to build emotional connection with someone before sleeping with them. And I get it. We live in a day and age where sex is normal. You know, you go on a couple dates with someone, just jump into bed. And I get that. I've done that thing. It's all good. I understand it. And if you're at a stage in your life where you really don't want a relationship, you're very serious about it. You know, that's your prerogative if that's what you want to do. I don't judge. But it's important to understand why it is that we teach this principle. And this is a very important one that I think resonates with a lot of our clients. And it's understanding the interplay between oxytocin versus testosterone. So when a woman sleeps with a man, women tend to release oxytocin during intimacy. And oxytocin is a chemical that is released through our body that creates an emotional bond between the two of you. So when a woman sleeps with a man, it actually creates an emotional bonding mechanism. Here's the difference. When a man sleeps with a woman, it actually releases testosterone and it lowers a man's oxytocin, which can cause a little bit of distance. So if you've ever slept with a guy and you've wondered why he was so into you right before sleeping with you, and then afterwards he's like, you know what? I'm gonna go play golf with my buddies down the street. Bye. That's because of this release. And so it's so important for us to build emotional bond before sleeping together so that we don't have this really toxic combination of you growing closer to him while he starts pulling away. The best part of all of this is if a man is already bonded to you emotionally, he cares for you, he sees you as a friend. Then here's the best part. Sex will deepen that intimacy. This is only a problem if he does. He doesn't see you as a friend if he's not a bonded to you yet emotionally. If he doesn't care for you, if he doesn't know you yet, then the moment you have sex, it's going to create distance between the two of you. So keep this in mind when you're getting out there and dating and meeting new guys. And also recognize that sometimes you might be in a place in life where you say, you know what? I don't actually want a relationship right now. I just want to keep it casual. But then you sleep with a guy and the bonding starts to happen, that emotional bonding. And then you wake up and you're like, I'm in love with him. Bear in mind, there's a risk there. So we do not recommend with any of our clients because we work with only women. We do not recommend sleeping with a guy until there's an emotional bonding. We call it pacing. It's part of our whole process that we work on with our clients. I won't get into that because there's a lot there. But it's just very, very important when it comes to sleeping with people and meeting new people to not just kind of jump right into bed. This sixth brutal truth is that your past has actually prepared you for your future love. Now I understand if you're finding love after the age of 50, 60 and beyond. You've also been through a lot. You've been through divorce, you've been through heartbreak. You've been through past relationships. You've dated narcissists. And you might think to yourself that all of this life experience is actually blocking you from finding love. But what I will tell you is that a lot of this experience you've had is actually your superpower. It's called, once again, wisdom. When we're dating in our twenties and certainly our teens, we have absolutely no wisdom. And we're full of just. We're naive. We just think that the world is perfect, that love is easy, love cures all. Now all of us understand that love is a verb. It's not a noun. It's something you need to work for. It has its ups, it has its downs, it has its challenges, and that's perfectly okay. And so I want you to take a look at your life experience is actually a major asset that you have in your life when you're getting out there. I mean, of course, do the work, heal, forgive, and let's start moving forward so you can attract the right type of guy and start dating with an open heart. And that ultimately leads me to the final point. And this is something one of our coaches say. Coach Robin, who's in her 60s, she followed our process and is now happily married to the man of her life. And she always says this, and I want to leave you with this. And that is true love is more beautiful in the second half of life. It really is. You know, when we're older, it's easy to idolize love. When we're younger and thinking that, oh, my God, everything was just so easy, it was carefree. We think back to that first time we really fell in love and the dopamine hits and all the love chemicals that are flowing through our body and the excitement. But we also tend to forget all the really difficult things that occurred when we were a lot younger. We have what is known as nostalgia bias. So we're very nostalgic to the past, and we forget all the slime and the sludge and the terrible experiences we had back then. And so I want you to reframe this time in your life as truly one of the best times to find love. You know more of who you are. You are more established. We don't have the same insecurities that we had when we were younger. And use that as your asset, because men do want a woman who is on the same emotional level as he is, and there are plenty of guys out there who are on that level. And so if you're really ready to start tackling your love life and start moving forward, not looking backward, then we're here for you. This is all we do. If you enjoyed this video, please leave a comment right there below. Let me know what you think. If you have other topics you want me to hit on, I'm happy to do that. And if you'd like a little bit of help in your love life, just head on over to loveapply.com it's where you can apply for a love strategy session with someone on my team who's going to dive deep into your unique situation and see whether or not our coaching works for you. If it's not the right fit for you. No problem. If it is, we would love to walk with you on your journey to attracting that man and that relationship that you can really spend the rest of your life with. I'm so excited for you. Let's get it. All right, leave that comment. I'll speak to you soon. Bye. Bye.