If you find yourself having done OODLES of self-work — done allll the therapy, read alllll the self-help books, maybe even taken a self-love course or two — and you’re STILL struggling with dating: this one is for you.
You've been in therapy for years. YEARS!
You've read allllll of the personal development books, done allllll of the workshops, tried allllll of the "inner work" methods.
You've even taken a self-love course or two.
And you're still just as single as the day you signed up — you just FEEL a little bit less bad about it.
What's the deal?
It's not just you.
Time and time again, I see clients come to me frustrated because they’ve done oodles and OODLES of “inner work,” and dating apps STILL aren’t working for them.
Here's the thing.
(Hear me out.)
I’m a big proponent of doing the inner work in dating.
It’s a critical piece of the dating puzzle.
AND . . .
You can’t just “inner work” your way to dating success on the apps. You just can’t.
The same way that we can’t just “inner work” our way into running a successful business or losing weight.
“Working on ourselves” and “healing” is an important piece of the puzzle to our success, AND . . .
The inner work is great, but the inner work is not a dating plan.
It’s not a strategy.
It doesn’t tell you what relationship science says about what makes a red flag a red flag, or what behavioural science says are the best places to go to meet the kinds of people who are the best match for you.
It doesn’t tell you what keywords to put in your dating profile to attract partners who are at your level, or how to filter out the people who “just aren’t ready for anything serious” from your Hinge queue so you don’t waste time (and, worse, your fresh, clean, bouncy blowout!) by going on a date with them.
And, let’s face it — if you aren’t getting dates, period — having done all of the inner child work in the world isn’t going to do you any good.
The thing is: there are concrete, science-backed behaviours, habits, and skills that we need to have in place in order to get the results we want in dating.
Time and time again, I see dating coaches on social media telling people that they just need to “trust the process,” lean back, do the inner work, and wait for their dating results to magically appear out of thin air.
Time and time again, I have clients coming to me frustrated because they’ve DONE so much “inner work,” and dating apps still aren’t working for them.
NOPE, NOPE, NOPE.
Here's the thing: “Trusting the process” works. But “trusting the process” won’t work if we don’t have a process TO trust.
This is where science-based dating strategy comes in.
Having a plan in place that we can trust and that’s been PROVEN to produce results, is how we’re able to RELAX in dating.
The process gives you a plan to follow. So that you CAN trust it. So that you can just kick back and let your plan work for you.
If you have a part of you that resists structure, and you just want to go with the flow and “trust the process” — strategy is actually how you do that.
Having a science-based dating strategy is like having a workout plan based around exercise science. You can TRUST that if you go to the gym every day and follow the training plan your fitness coach gave you, you can expect to build muscle and to lose weight. You know that, if you put in X effort, you will get Y outcome — it’s science.
But we would never tell a gym newbie to skip the gym and go straight to working on their “inner game” and then expect them to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, right?
That would be nuts.
So — dating coaches — let’s PLEASE stop telling people that they can “inner work” and “trust the process” into results in dating without HAVING a process TO trust.
The “inner work” is great. It’s important. It’s NECESSARY.
But the “inner work” is not a dating plan.
PS. What IS a dating plan, you ask? Learn more about that HERE.
PPS. If you're drained from drowning in a sea of dreadful dating dossiers and want nothing more than to just find someone attractive and normal for once — I see you, I was you, and I'm here for you!
I walk you through how to spot the sneaky red flags that are lurking in your Hinge queue and how to gain the CONFIDENCE to walk away from them inside of my FREE workshop, Confident & Clear Dating. Confident & Clear is my FREE workshop where I walk you through how to avoid red flags and date with confidence — EVEN IF you hate dating and never want to use a dating app ever again. (I get it!)
If this sounds like your thing, get the free workshop here.