Love Starts With Me
Hi, I'm dating coach Hayley Quinn, and I'm here to help you to enjoy this time being single, to get to know yourself, to love yourself, and build an amazing process for finding a great partner for you.
So today, I'm really lucky to be doing this session with Match.
Hello to everyone who's also joining from social media Land on Instagram and TikTok tonight.
So before I get started, I'm just going to tell you a little bit about how our session is going to run this evening and kind of what you can expect.
So for those of you who have watched on Match before, this is going to be slightly different sessions than we've run in the past, but hopefully, I think even better.
So, to start with tonight, let me talk to you about how you can create a dating process that feels just a bit more enjoyable for you.
So, if dating currently is getting that job interview feeling about it, I'll be helping you to rebuild your motivation and looking at how you can overcome some common frustrations with the dating process.
After that, I'll to be talking to you about your standards, so how should somebody be treating you, and also what expectations you should have for your time dating someone.
As we've all experienced before in the past, when we expect something of a relationship and then the reality of the relationship feels really different, that can feel really uncomfortable.
So, I want to be going into how you can manage that part of dating a little bit better.
Along the way, I will be answering a couple of your questions.
Then we're going to have the opportunity to meet a very interesting couple who actually met via Match. So they are going to be sharing with us their incredible love story.
Then after about half an hour, so in half an hour's time from now, I'm actually going to be answering your questions live for a full 30 minutes.
Even if you haven't done so already, This is a great opportunity for me to answer your questions.
You can send those in now live either via social media or if you're viewing via Match, as ever, there's a little chatbox there, where you can write your questions to me.
Also in this chatbox if you're watching via Match, you have the opportunity to vote in a survey.
I love the survey because we get to figure out how everyone else is thinking and feeling about love and dating.
That survey question is just going to pop up in the chatbox for you to answer, and we will get the results halfway through this one-hour session.
If you're watching on Match, I may happen to say something you like.
You're welcome to give me a little love heart and a like using the Heart button.
Now we're going to get started by looking at our first chapter, which is all about how you can develop a more enjoyable dating process.
Enjoying the dating process
If there's one thing that I would say is so important, I see as a coach that we really rarely talk about is your personal motivation and energy levels to date.
If you find dating demotivating, tiring or a little bit like a job interview you're going to quickly run out of steam to actually be proactive and meet new people.
As your coach, one of my jobs in life is I want to keep encouraging you to be open-minded and to keep engaging with dating.
So during this first part of the session, I'm going to be looking at some common frustrations that can sort of get in the way of you taking action and really engaging, in your dating life and some workarounds for them.
Bigger picture, I guess.
Being very practically minded, I also want to encourage you that though this area of our lives can make us feel really vulnerable and it can have plenty of obstacles that can throw in your way, that there are ways that you can also create a process for yourself around dating which is motivating, which is enjoyable, which also isn't dependent on you immediately getting that outcome of finding that incredible partner for you.
Before I get to that I'm going to ask my survey question.
This is for people who are watching via Match it's a bit of a controversial question, I won't lie.
The survey question, this evening is, "Do you enjoy being single?"
Even if you're not watching on Match, and watching on Instagram or TikTok right now, share your feeling.
Let other people know.
Do you enjoy being single right now?
So, I say it's controversial because I think being single can be the most incredible time for self-discovery, for learning what you want, for having interesting experiences, but I'd not be authentic to say that you'll always love, always feel happy about being single.
Being single can present challenges, that's feeling a bit worried about who will be the plus one to your wedding invite this summer, or perhaps hearing one too many of your friends giving you helpful comments on your dating life, maybe you're too picky, or not picky enough, you're trying hard, you're not trying hard enough, or maybe you're just having an experience of being out there, fighting the good fight, dating for a while, but you haven't yet met that person who really excites you.
So. I think dating and single life is this incredibly valid, interesting life stage, but it also presents some challenges to us.
So, I want to start to use this little bit of this section to work on how you can perhaps see some challenges slightly differently and feel really good about being single.
Shift your point of focus
So, in terms of a mindset shift, probably the biggest and also easiest way that you can change how you feel about being single and start to enjoy the dating process is just to create a shift in your point of focus, and that shift is away from the other person and actually toward yourself.
I don't mean this to be that you're not being empathetic or considerate, but rather you change what you're thinking about during dating.
A lot of the time when you're dating, you may be wondering "What do they want?What are they thinking or feeling? What do they like to talk about?"
When we're thinking a lot and our focus is really on that other person, it can lead us into a lot of anxiety and it can be a hard place to deal with because we just don't know what the other person ultimately thinks, feels and wants because we're not them.
Actually, to start to crack this dating thing, an easy mindset swap is just every time you catch yourself asking that question of what they want, do they like me?, what do they want to talk about?, flip that back to you. Which is, am I enjoying the dating process? Am I comfortable with the pace of this relationship? Am I really enjoying this process of getting to know this person?
We can always know what's true for ourselves, but it can be really challenging to read and interpret somebody else.
We're going to start by bringing that focus really back to you.
In the next chapter, we'll be looking at when you build up a clear sense of what you're looking for, how you can really communicate that effectively to the other person.
The most common frustrations
Before we get there, I also want to spend some time just addressing some of I guess the most common frustrations that people may feel during the dating process.
Really, there isn't one perfect way to date.
Each of us as individuals have to explore and discover a way of dating that works for us so even if we're not immediately getting that outcome of meeting the partner we want, that we're able to learn and grow through this process.
Frustration #1: endless online chatting
Frustration one that I hear a lot is for people who feel like they don't want to chat endlessly online.
They really want to get to the point where they're having those in real-life dates.
I'm saying I'll lead you to it because I think in real life is where it counts.
It's great to be able to meet someone online.
However, to build that connection, you need to be face to face with someone.
If you find yourself continually chatting to people, but you don't really know how to progress things forward and you feel that your interactions run out of momentum or you find it difficult to keep the conversation going, then a workaround to this is obviously feeling more comfortable suggesting doing an in-person date a bit sooner.
You may hold back from suggesting that because you have again that fear of, is that going to be too fast for them? or, will they lose interest in me.
Of course, this is about balance.
As much as it might seem time-saving to, in your first message to people, say, "Hey, you said you want to grab drinks this weekend"
We should all know by now that's not really an effective way to engage with people.
It's because before someone can really feel interested and excited to meet us in person, there needs to be some interpersonal interaction.
If someone feels you would go on a date with them just based on their profile or what they look like that's not very rewarding for the other person That's why, as much as it might feel efficient in the moment, asking somebody out on the first message is never going to be that effective.
But likewise, the other end of the spectrum where perhaps you're constantly not asking for what you want because you're worried about losing somebody else's interest could also keep you a bit stuck with putting a lot of energy and effort into maintaining online communication when actually you'd like to move things forward.
We can tell it's a good moment to suggest moving things forward when you feel like you have achieved a bit more of a personal connection with someone.
I always say like if you can get to the point where you're messaging someone and you can emote something, you can say I'm really enjoying talking to you, or that just made me laugh out loud, or that made me smile. If there's an emotional exchange that's happening in your messages, that's a pretty good indicator that the conversation is in a good place for you to suggest meeting up and going for a date.
What's cool about you suggesting meeting up and going for a date is you get feedback.
Feedback is really, really interesting because again, rather than seeing this interaction with someone as something you can't mess up and you have to get the timing exactly right again, remember that flip that I just spoke about.
Instead of thinking about when is the perfect time for them, it should be equally when feels good for you to want to move this forward because a huge part of compatibility is that you're going to be on relatively the same wavelength about progressing through the relationship.
If there's a time when you fall out of sync, for instance, you'd like to meet up with them and they're not ready to do that, then their ability to communicate that to you, for you to accept the answer and to find a middle ground, like a video date, again is really important for compatibility.
That's frustration one.
Frustration #2: being unhappy with you dates
Another frustration that I hear a lot about is feeling that going on dates can cost much money or is very time-consuming or the dates don't feel rewarding in another way.
Perhaps it's that you feel that you're trapped in a cycle of agreeing to just going on last-minute dates or hangouts with someone when actually, you really want a real date.
So again, how do you address this?
Again, it comes back to advocating for yourself more within this process.
It is totally okay to offer a counter-suggestion to someone's first date, provided that the tone that you do that in is playful and warm.
This is actually an attractive thing to do because it shows at this point, you're not willing to do everything to meet this person, and instead, you're looking for something that mutually works for both of you.
So for instance, if the date they've suggested feels like it's going to take too much time, too much money, really long journey, for you, you can say "That sounds really tempting or that sounds great. Can we start by doing this though?"
So don't be afraid to make a counter-suggestion.
In fact, if you use the magical phrase "How about we…?" If you say how about we..?, it can come across as collaborative.
Remember, this is about you not over-giving in those early stages of dating because, as we all know, if we spend too much money or time before we know a person, it's quite an easy way to feel drained and depleted and we don't want it Remember, we want to keep you really motivated.
Finally, a good way to make you feel motivated could be, again in a nice way, saying no to a date.
If the person you're communicating with is only seemingly able to offer to meet really last minute, then again, it's okay to say, "I love this idea, but busy tonight. Let's try next week"
Maintaining boundary for yourself, again, this just makes you more attractive and is an effective filter to you having more of the dates that you want.
Frustration #3: not seeing progress
My final frustration that I'll deal with in this section is feeling like your dates are just not progressing past date 1 to date 2.
If this is you, I just ask this one question that is: Did you really want to see them again?
I know it's nice to be liked, and maybe some part of all of us would like all the people we go on a date with to be really keen to see us again.
However, before you feel let down that someone doesn't want to progress things with you, it's also good to question to yourself, "Was I feeling it? Did I actually want to see them again, or have they just kind of called it and acknowledged that there wasn't that level of connection there?"
If you feel like you would like to see them again, but things aren't still translating into second dates.
This is a huge topic so if you want me to cover more of this, please ask us in your questions.
I think the kind of secret recipe there is really…
I know it sounds a bit cheesy, but it is about authenticity.
When we're able to be more authentic we're more candid, we're more emotionally intimate we're more able to express our opinions to someone, we're more able to be funny.
So that candor or authenticity is just attractive and a good way of filtering for you meeting the people that you want to meet.
Because remember, we're not here to impress everybody, we just want you to progress on the dates with people you do have that compatibility with.
So before I do a quick recap, I have a couple of questions that people sent before I'm going to answer.
How can I get better self-esteem?
The first of these questions is, how can I get better self-esteem?
Again, that is a big question.
The simplest answer I can give you this evening is to think of self-esteem like links in a chain.
Every time you make a decision that supports your bigger life goals, it adds a link to that chain That could mean if your goal is for a committed relationship, saying no to that situationship or that last-minute hangout, that's that link in that chain.
Or if your goal is that you want to meet more people, every time, even if you're a bit tired, you drag yourself out after a long day at work and you go to socialize, again, that's a link in that chain because your actions are really in line with what you desire and what you want to create in your life.
How to deal with ghosting
The second question I got in advance was how to deal with ghosting.
I know, ghosting, we've heard about it a thousand times before.
It's our least favorite dating trend or dating term Here's what I'd say about ghosting.
Remember, ghosting, it isn't personal.
It's, in my opinion, a reflection of what that person is able to offer to their dating life and the level of communication they can bring to the table at this moment in time. If their communication is no communication, you kind of got your answer there.
If you're finding it hard to process ghosting, I'd also suggest one quick exercise that I call the circles exercise To do this, you need to draw three circles on a piece of paper.
In the first circle, you need to write what happened, which is they didn't respond my message.
In the second one, that's where you put down all your negative unhelpful thoughts about why that is. I wasn't funny enough, I'm not attractive enough, they met someone better, blah, blah, and you keep it in that circle.
In the third circle, you write down true but positive interpretation of what just happened, which is this is the level of communication they are able to offer me It doesn't actually match my standards, so I'm happy to let this one go. Or this has given me clarity that that's not an opportunity I want to pursue with this person. Or I'm not taking this personally and I understand this action is probably a reflection of who they are and where in their life.
By trying to unpack and get away from choosing that negative interpretation, remember there are some positives, dare we say, that you can get out of the experience of ghosting as well.
Takeaways
So before we move on to the next chapter, let's do a really quick recap of what's happened.
So remember, the right moment to suggest a date is when you've formed a connection.
So it's not about how many messages you exchange, it's when you feel a connection within the conversation.
It's totally okay to suggest dates that work better for you.
Be okay to advocate for yourself.
Even if you don't find love, what can you learn from your date?
In this next chapter I'll be talking about what happens when you don't feel the spark and what are some really good standards to bring in to early dating experiences.