What do you vet for in the dating process?

What are you attracted to? What gives someone a place in your romantic orbit?

This is often something I will ask a client early on in our process when I’m coaching someone around love.

They may say things like: 

Physical attraction. Chemistry. Sense of humour. Extroverted personality. Outgoing. Positive energy. Ambitious. Successful.

Those things are great but those qualities are how you vet someone for a really hot fucking fling. It’s like, yeah, it all looks on paper but how does this translate to great love?

I mean, if you want more of a surface level connection with a partner, then fine. Those are all great qualities to sustain a surface level relationship. 

Surface level characteristics can make for an exciting and novelty filled beginning but they don’t stand the test of time, relationally.

If you want a soul bonded connection, you need to claim that level of connection to yourself. 

...

I’m often asked what my NUMBER ONE most important piece of advice for a single person is.

My answer? It’s always the same:

Get your affairs in order.

And prepare to die alone.

I mean, cause, we die alone anyway. Even if you’re married your entire life, you still die alone. Even if you died at the exact same time as your loved one you still would be buried separately.

I mean maybe there is a story out there of a couple who put it in their will that they wanted to get buried in the same coffin?

Which is equal parts deeply fucked up and cute and romantic.

But if there is a story like that I’ve never heard of it. And I feel like if there were a story like that I would know about it.

Anyways back to my point…

Don’t just prepare to die alone but die a super shitty miserable death where you’re buried all by yourself in the corner of the worst fucking cemetery in your city.

“You know, with a horribly non durable headstone that’s...

 If you don’t put any work into your relationship, your relationship will suck.

If you take your relationship for granted, your relationship will suck.

If you simply expect your relationship to be awesome, your relationship will suck.

If you take take take from your relationship but never give to your relationship, your relationship will suck.

If you think your career is more important than your relationship, your relationship will suck. And your career will suck also.

And most definitely, if your relationship sucks, your life is going to be ONE GIANT SHITTY SUCK FEST.

THAT IS FOR DAMN SURE.

Yet, there are so many people who just EXPECT awesome relationships without putting the work in to create awesome relationships.

Put it this way: your primary romantic relationship sets the tone for every other relationship in your life.

Actually, let’s reframe that:

YOUR ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP SETS THE FUCKING TONE FOR YOUR ENTIRE FUCKING LIFE.

It becomes the benchmark for all...

How did we get here? It wasn’t supposed to end like this.

We had plans. We had dreams. We still had so much to do. I thought we had so much time.

Maybe one day we will meet again. So maybe I should be at peace with letting you go. I should just let the universe do its trick. But baby, I’m afraid we’ll get lost out there.

I want to move on. I want to let you go. But I don’t want to stop missing you. I’m afraid to no longer miss you. It hurts to miss you. I want this pain to stop. But if I let the pain stop then you will be gone.

I know once I move on, what we were no longer will have life, like an ancient stone etched in the ground, you will become history. I’m just not ready to put your memory into the ground just yet.

Baby, I’m just not ready to move on just yet.

Your memory haunts me and comforts me at the same time. I wish I would stop thinking about you all the time. I wish you would leave me alone. But I just can’t give up that...

This is a common thing we hear from one partner in a relationship…

MY PARTNER HAS A LOT OF WORK TO DO.

THEY’RE NOT READY. I’M READY. BUT THEY’RE NOT. THEY STILL HAVE A LOT OF WORK TO DO.

THEY NEED TO FIGURE THEIR SHIT OUT.

THEY NEED TO WORK ON THEMSELVES.

MY PARTNER NEEDS TO LEARN HOW TO COMMUNICATE.

THE ONUS IS ON MY PARTNER TO WORK ON THEMSELVES.

I MIGHT HAVE WORK TO DO, BUT MY PARTNER HAS MORE WORK, OR HAS DEEPER WORK TO DO.

It’s this self-inflation from one partner, pinning the sole weight of responsibility onto their partner’s shoulders as to why they’re having issues in the relationship, or drowning in a sea of relational dysfunction.

This is PARTICULARLY common when one partner is in the personal growth space and the other is not.

The partner in the personal growth space sees that if their partner just started doing the work they’re doing, all their relational quarrels would finally be resolved and they could have the...

Just because you’re married, it doesn’t mean you’re committed.

Just because you don’t cheat on your partner, it doesn’t mean you’re committed.

You see this all the time, people holding the bar of commitment to some form of external commitment.

You know, they must be so committed because they have been together for 30 years!

Okay, well how committed are they to actually being connected in their relationship? How committed are they to being present and attuned to their partner? How committed are they to actually understanding their partner’s pain points and learning what makes make them tick?

Just like some couples get married to show how “committed” they are.

Or, let’s have a kid because we’re disconnected and see if that can bring us closer.

Shit brings me to a rage!

Well, getting married is not going to make your relationship anymore committed if you don’t actually know how to generate commitment on a deep...

When I coach a client around love, the fastest way I usually create a breakthrough is by getting the client to tell me what they learned about love from their childhood. What they modelled from their parents, what they learned from their community around them, their peers, as well as their experiences in their interactions receiving love from their parents.

Usually when someone struggles in love throughout adulthood it’s because their core beliefs around love are in direct opposition to the love their soul and heart actually want. 

They have learned something, been living something, that is in direct opposition with what they actually need.

"Their programming and wiring around love is built on some form of self-rejection or self-abandonment." 

When people usually come to me who are living in chaos of some sort, it’s because their programming around love is leading to stress, anxiety and dysfunction, and they’re at this breaking point where what they...

One of the most common things I hear out in the dating space is, “I’m running out of time,” “I don’t have time,” “The clock is ticking!!”

The usual dating pattern in response to this is to go VERY QUICKLY and try to decide in the first month whether or not this is your person or the person you’re going to marry.

It all comes from this place of trying to create certainty IMMEDIATELY.

I wanna know and I wanna know quickly!!

The result is a lot of anxiety, massive over-analysis and coming into the dating place from a space of fear and scarcity.

What usually ends up happening are a lot of repetitive short-lived relationships that don’t work out.

That’s because we're showing up from this space of rushing and needing to know immediately.

We don’t think we have time, so we waste even more time by not actually vetting the human being.

You know we chase these ideas of “infatuation” and “you should just...

I was recently interviewed on a podcast and asked what men need to do in order to have better relationships.

One of the things I said was men need to build emotional relationships with other men.

Without men building emotional relationships with other men, there is zero possibility these men will build amazing relationships with romantic partners in their life.

This is because – how we do relationships in one area of our life is how we do relationships in ALL areas of our life.

You don’t have low-level habits of relating and communicating in your friendships and then walk into a romantic partnership and suddenly have incredible high-level habits of relating and communicating.

You don’t revel in gossip with your girlfriends and then move into a relational container having this uncanny ability to adeptly carve out deep, introspective, nourishing and emotionally intimate conversations with your partner.

FUCK NO.

You don’t walk through life having difficulty...

When we search for a relationship fantasy to save us, it means there’s a relationship reality we can’t sit with and are running from or are disassociated from.

There is a part of our story we have not claimed and owned. A part of ourselves in our past we’re trying to create separation from. We have abandoned a part of who we are. We have repressed the painful parts into the deep, cellular bowels of our being.

Romantic dysfunction means one thing: DISCONNECTION FROM SELF.

When we chase fantasy, we want one thing: AVOID REALITY.

This is revealed countless times when we choose someone WHO IS NOT GOOD FOR US.

This means: WE HAVE A WAR AGAINST OUR OWN REALITY.

We can’t be with reality and would rather live in dysfunctional delusion than be presented with our very own confronting reality.

The confronting reality is coming face-to-face with our unworthiness. It’s coming face-to-face with our shame. It’s coming face-to-face with a part of ourselves we...