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. 

...

 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...

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...

I’ll admit something...

I’m usually the last one to move on after a breakup. At least relationships where I’d actually fallen for the person. I rarely fall but when I fall, I fall fast, I fall hard, and it’s hard for me to get back up after I fall.

For this reason...

I’m usually the one still reeling after the breakup, tending to my wounds and processing the breakup while I watch my ex update her profile picture with someone new.

"I’ve been in love four times in my life. I’ve also been heartbroken four times as well. Go figure, right?"

I’m good at not giving a shit. I can not give a shit with the best of them. But every time I’ve ever given a shit in a relationship, I’ve eaten shit. Metaphorically of course.

Interestingly, there is a pattern that has presented itself.

The first girl I was in love with broke it off with me because she met a guy who made it clear to her that her and I were not the right fit together.

The...

Scrolling for love has replaced swiping for love.

Swipe rights have turned into “I dropped into her DM”.

Tinder dates and hookups are now romances conceived in the inbox.

Cheesy pickup lines have turned into “I like your content” messages.

Flirtatious displays of interest are now common place in comment sections.

Instagram has quickly become the new Tinder.

Not just the new Tinder but a better Tinder.

Tinder 2.0.

It has become the new socially acceptable and respectable way to meet someone online. Particularly among the influencer and personal branding communities, it has become the new “it” way to meet.

“We met on Tinder” stories are seemingly socially embarrassing and shame producing, while “we met on Instagram” stories now seem trendy, hip, contemporary, in style, and actually the makings of a quality love story in the 21^st Century.

I should know – I met my partner on Instagram. I dropped in her DM. Actually, to be...

I’m a hopeless romantic. I wear my heart on my sleeve. I’m the type of cheesy person who believes whole-heartedly in that old Beatles saying, “All you need is love”. I genuinely believe love is the most important thing on the entire planet. And in particular, romantic love. I believe that who you choose to spend your life with is the most important decision you will ever make in your life. And is the most determining factor that decides how happy or how unhappy you will be in your life. Romantic love shapes your life and sets the bar for all that you see as possible. If you settle in love, you settle in life. If you win big in love, you will win big in life. I believe this without exception.

When I was in high school I always dreamed of falling in love and one day marrying my high school sweetheart. While I did experience a love in high school that felt right out of a teen movie, it didn’t last long.

Then in college I always dreamed of meeting the woman...