205. Dating Apps in 2024: Set Yourself Up For Success

Welcome back to my podcast, "Dating After Divorce." It's been a while since I've done a solo episode, and I'm thrilled to dive back into sharing practical, hands-on advice to propel your dating journey forward. Today, I'm focusing on a crucial aspect of modern dating: succeeding on dating apps in 2024.

As a seasoned coach and someone who has navigated these waters personally (I met my husband on Bumble six years ago!), I understand the mixed feelings towards dating apps. They can seem daunting, frustrating, or even cringe-worthy, but I'm here to help shift that perspective. Dating apps are tools, and like any tool, it's all about how you use them.

In this episode, we'll explore common misunderstandings about dating apps and why they may feel overwhelming. I'll debunk the myths and offer insights into why dating apps work for some and not for others. We'll also discuss the unique advantages of dating apps, especially if you've lost a significant part of your social circle during a divorce or live in a small community.

One of the key points I want to highlight is the importance of how you approach dating apps. It's not about hoping to find Prince Charming instantly; it's about understanding the apps as a tool to connect with potential partners. We'll delve into the significance of crafting a well-thought-out profile, learning the art of swiping, and setting clear boundaries.

Additionally, I'll share my personal journey and the lessons learned from using dating apps. You'll hear about my initial challenges, how I tweaked my approach, and the transformation in my dating experiences. This journey led me to meet my wonderful husband, and it's a testament to the effectiveness of dating apps when used correctly.

To provide you with actionable tips, I've outlined seven key strategies to help you succeed on dating apps in 2024. These include getting a realistic view of what the apps can and cannot do, experimenting and learning from your experiences, and being willing to go on a journey filled with learning curves.

Remember, success on dating apps isn't just about finding your partner; it's about connecting with good people and enjoying the process. So, whether you've had negative experiences in the past or are new to the app dating scene, this episode is packed with insights and advice to set you up for success in 2024.

If you're ready to change your dating game and want more personalized guidance, I invite you to join my coaching program. Together, we can tailor a dating strategy that works uniquely for you. Visit https://sadecurry.com/schedule-appointment to schedule a consultation call with me.

Thank you for joining me today, and I look forward to helping you thrive in your dating journey in 2024 and beyond!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:28

Hello everyone, welcome back to the Dating After Divorce podcast. I have not done a solo episode in quite a while, so I'm really excited to be back doing solo teaching episodes, nuts and bolts, on how to move your dating journey forward, and today I'm starting off with how to set yourself up for success on the dating apps in 2024. Many of you are using the dating apps to date and have had all kinds of experiences. I want to talk about that today. And then some of you have said to yourself I'm never going near the dating apps. They're horrible, they're terrible, I don't want to use them. And so today I want to talk about some reasons why using the dating apps feels terrible, why it feels overwhelming, maybe even cringe worthy or shameful, and what you can do about it. Because the dating apps are really not scary. They are a tool, and I want to help shift that perspective, at least for some of you who are open to shifting your perspective on the dating apps, and I've had questions about the dating apps. I want to sort of give you some insights from this end, where I am helping women day in, day out. I've been using the dating apps. I used it myself. I have now been married. I met my husband almost six years ago on Bumble, and so I'm a big believer in dating apps because I've seen them work for me, and also I've experienced all the things that everyone experiences, like the ghosting, the weird messages, the attempts at people scamming. I've experienced all those things on the apps, but the apps still work for me, and so that's why I want to dedicate this episode to really discussing why the apps can work for you, even if you hate them, even if you dislike them. So we are going to really spend some time getting into the misunderstandings around the apps, why it works for some people, doesn't work for others, and some of the advantages that you have with taking the time to learn how to use the apps. One, if you're in a small community or you lost a lot of community during your divorce, dating apps are a great way to meet people without having to spend hours and hours and hours at events or getting out and commuting to an event you know and then coming home.

Speaker 1: 2:56

Dating apps collect together people who are single or say they are single right Now. We all know there are some other people on there right, but for the most part, the people on the apps have raised their hands and said they're single and looking for a relationship of some kind. Now, of course, we've got to qualify, go see if there's compatibility, if there's a match and what you're looking for. All of those things are true. However, if you've been walking down the grocery store aisles scanning men's hands to see if there's a wedding ring on there, dating apps may be helpful for you, because the men on there at least say they are single and then you can verify. They save you time. 50% of new couples are meeting online. Like that's just. Those are just the statistics.

Speaker 1: 3:44

Now, the success rate of the relationships that start online are variable, but so are the relationships that start offline. Hello, all of us on this podcast, all of us listening, who are divorced, who probably met our person in person. You know, 2015, years ago, the results were variable. We got divorced. It didn't work out right.

Speaker 1: 4:11

So the dating apps are actually a mirror of what's happening in society as well, but it's very concentrated around romance and dating. So it can appear to be like oh my God, this is really terrible because there are so many people on here that are showing up in this way. But those people are showing up in real life too. But we'll get to that and then you might have been experiencing like just some false intimacy, like, oh my goodness, I'm expected to like fall in love with this person in two days, or this person is trying to fall in love with me, or you might be the person who's like, well, why isn't this person falling in love with me? We've exchanged two sets of texts and why is he not pursuing me, you know, and offering me a ring? So there are a lot of things that you know, we can think and feel and experience on the apps that can make it hard to use them, like the tool that they are All right.

Speaker 1: 5:03

So I want to start with a conversation that I had recently with a woman and she said, well, I was on the dating apps three or four times this year. Okay, so that was the first red flag for me on her experience on the apps. Because when she said I was on the apps three or four times, I was like, okay, so chances are she got on the apps and got off and got on the apps and then got off, and got on the apps and then got off. And sometimes we have a high time really quantifying how much time when we say we've used the apps or tried the apps. How much time did you actually spend on the apps, learning how to use them, setting your profile up, working through some of the problems, working through the kinks, figuring it out kind of like how you figure out social media or how you figure out a new piece of technology.

Speaker 1: 5:53

There is an expectation that you get on the apps and then you meet this person and then that's it. But it requires a lot more than that. So when she told me she'd been off and on the apps about three or four times, I was like, oh, that's a problem. And she said well, you know, the first time I got on, I saw people I knew and I immediately deleted it. I've heard this so many times people get on the apps. They see a coworker, they see a boss, they see an old flame, and they're like, oh my God, I got to get off the apps because these people are on the apps, right. And so she said you know, I wanted to use the apps, but I, you know, I saw these people, I got off.

Speaker 1: 6:31

And then typically what happens is that you get off the apps. Nothing happens for months. In her case, nothing was happening for months. She still wanted to date, was thinking about dating day in, day out for about two or three months. Then got on the apps again, same thing. Something else happened that she didn't like, got off the apps again, and so in her case what was kind of happening was she'd be on the apps for like a week, week and a half, didn't have a good experience, would get off and then would tell herself that she was going to date in person for like the next three or four months. Maybe would go on one date Right, and how she felt was that.

Speaker 1: 7:11

Well, I really like the way I am able to get an immediate read on people when I meet them in person. So I prefer to meet people in person, which is great, except if you're only meeting four or five people in a year in person. That's not enough numbers to get sort of traction with dating to get, especially if you're like my clients who are like really incredible women, financially successful. They show up for life in like this really high level way. They want someone who matches them Right Now in general in life, people who show up at the 5% level of energy and intelligence and growth, mindset and teamwork and the ability to love and give and be kind. You know the 5, 10, whatever the percentages of those people, it's not everyone, right? You're looking for sort of a unicorn or not? They're not unicorns in the sense that there are lots of people who are that way, but they're not commonplace. They're not commonplace in the real world and they're not commonplace on the apps either.

Speaker 1: 8:21

So if you're only meeting a really small sample size of men because you're hopping off and on the apps all the time, that may be the reason why the apps haven't worked for you. Not because the apps don't work, but because you're downloading and deleting them too frequently. So I had this conversation with Hannah, really saddened, and said hey, listen, if you're going to use the apps, you have to approach them like they are a tool that helps your dating journey. They're not like Amazon. The dating apps are not like the grocery store. Where you go in the grocery store promises you know you can buy your fruits, you can buy your vegetables. If you go in there and the box that has all the apples is empty, that means we have no apples, right. And so when we go on the apps, we're often thinking about that, thinking like, okay, I'm going to go in. It's like a grocery store. It's like Walmart or Target or you know the mall, wherever it is. You shop on Amazoncom. I shop a lot on Amazon Sorry, don't hate me when there's an inventory and when you go in there you can scan the inventory, you can type what you want in there and then it pulls it up and then if you see it, you can buy it, and if you don't see it, that means they don't have it and you can leave.

Speaker 1: 10:52

The dating apps are not that way. First of all, they are a different kind of tool. The dating apps are more like the yellow pages. Okay, for those of you who are old enough to have used the yellow pages to find what you wanted, the yellow pages are just a listing where everyone who says they offer something come and then they list their name and their number and their address book. And the book is this fat for your city because there are thousands and thousands and thousands of listings. All the residents are listed in there. It's crazy that we did this back in the day. You could find anyone by looking up their last name and their first name. You could find their address and their phone number in this book. So it's more like that.

Speaker 1: 11:41

So the dating apps are more like the yellow pages, right? Plumbers and grocery stores and cleaners and service providers all list themselves there. So when you're looking for a plumber, go on there and say, okay, I'm looking for a plumber, and then there's like a hundred plumbers on there and then you call the first five and then like, most of them are out of business. They're like, oh great, all these plumbers out of business, right? And then you, maybe, you call, you, you keep calling and you get to number 17 and now it's like, yes, I can do this for you. I will be there on Tuesday at three o'clock.

Speaker 1: 12:18

And then Tuesday at three o'clock, he doesn't show up. And you're like, oh my God, all these plumbers in this yellow, these yellow pages, are not showing up. They're terrible, right, but that's not true, right? It's not true that there are no plumbers in the yellow pages. It's not true that the yellow pages don't work. It's just that people, other people, have listed themselves as one thing and whether or not they can live up to that promise is yet to be seen. That's all it is. That's all that's happening on the dating apps. It is the yellow pages of dating. So when you're looking at a profile, you're not looking at the promise that this person is going to be your husband. You're looking at what this person says about themselves, and then you have to check it out and see if it matches or not. And sometimes when you're looking for a plumber in the yellow pages, you got to call all the way down to number 72 to get what you're looking for someone who can fix the exact problem you have, who is close enough, who has room in their schedule, who shows up on the day that they say they're going to show up to fix it, who charges a reasonable price.

Speaker 1: 13:33

So many factors and so many variables come into play when you are looking for something in this way, and this is why I feel like the reason people are not getting results on the apps is because they're just using them wrong. We're using them wrong, we're downloading them and deleting them every other day. We're frustrated when someone sends us a dumb message and then we're like, okay, great, this person would never have been able to send me this dumb message in my real world because I don't have people like this around me. You still don't have people like that around you, you don't. You're literally just going down the yellow pages, right, and that feeling of annoyance, that feeling of frustration when you experience something on the apps that isn't what you wanted.

Speaker 1: 14:16

Now, I'm not talking about unsafe situations when someone literally threatens you or is creepy or you know in a way that is actually, you know, physically unsafe for you. I'm not talking about those situations. I'm literally talking about someone who maybe you chatted for you know a week and then they ghosted you without you know, didn't say anything and then just disappeared or just unmatched you. I'm talking about someone who says, hey, do you want to hook up? Right, and then you have to like be like no unmatched block, right. I'm talking about those more benign situations where it's like uncomfortable and sometimes gross, but nothing is happening. This person is not in your space. It's literally just pixels on a screen, just words on the screen. Those things are happening in the real world too. They happen all the time. As a woman, you have to really consider how the world has it is getting better, I will say. However, in so many ways, we are constantly exposed to those messages. We're constantly exposed to that behavior, but at the same time that that behavior is happening, the opposite is always happening, right, there are men in the world who do care for women and who do take care of women and who do show up in a way that is affirming and loving and good and kind.

Speaker 1: 15:43

And this is what happens when you, you know, delete the apps and you're like I'm done, I'm never going on the apps again, I'm done with dating, not doing any of this anymore, you feel relief. You feel that immediate relief and immediate happiness. You go back to doing. You clean your room. You, you know, cook that recipe, you start planning a trip, and then you go on social media and then you see that another friend of yours has met a guy on the apps and he seems great, right, he seems great, right. And then you're like well, is she many more online than maybe I can too? And then you go back on the apps. But what's happening? As you do that, over and over, maybe out of FOMO, out of boredom, your evenings are full of empty hours when your kids are with their dad, and then you just go back on the apps just to see. I'm just going to go back just to see if maybe this time there'll be a guy on there. You know, maybe this time they've changed. What's happening is you're in this cycle of trying the apps, of wanting the apps to just serve up this guy to you on a platter, and you're doing this because you think the problem is the apps, that the problem is the people on the apps, and then you're hoping somehow the apps have changed and someone the apps or somebody is going to come on the apps and save you. But that's not the way it works. The apps are a tool, right, in some ways they're a good tool and in some ways they're not a good tool. They haven't gotten to where they need to be.

Speaker 1: 17:14

It's like email. Okay, if you're like me, 47. So I was here when we got access to email, right? Anyone remember America online? Yes, dialing up your modem to the, to the internet, and then opening up your email, waiting for you to load and just super excited that someone may have sent you an email about something, in the same way that when email started, there was a ton of spam on email. Like, young people today don't even know when you go in your spam box. Now, if you ever do, it's like oh, look at all this gross stuff that was in our inbox. It was in our inbox All the private part, enlargement, scams, all the things. They were right there. You had to wait through them to get to the email from your best friend, to get to the email from your mom or from your dad, and dating apps are kind of like that right now. Yeah, and what's what's funny is that there's so much better than they used to be. A lot of the algorithms are better at finding bots, finding scammers and moving them out. Yeah, every once in a while you still have to like wait someone move them out for yourself, but that is that's. That's just the way it is. Why not learn how to do that?

Speaker 1: 18:34

Instead of thinking the men on the apps are awful, why not think, yeah, some people on the apps are awful, but some people that you work with are awful. Some people living on your street are awful. Some people living in your neighborhood, some people go into your church or your temple, your mosque, are awful, right? Or if you see your boss or your coworker on an app freaking out and being like, oh my God, I don't want them to, as long as I ask my client like, what don't you want them to do? You don't want to date them? Okay, I mean, if you don't want to date that particular person, they're just another person that you swipe left on or ex out, right. But do you think your boss or coworker isn't like dating? Or they think that you're not dating if you're single, like if you saw your boss or your coworker at a grocery store, you might not like it but you'd be like hey, how you doing grocery shopping, see you later, right? Or you feel shame because you know there are people on there that message you and you would never want to talk to them.

Speaker 1: 19:35

All of these things are happening because of what is called the fallacy of personalization. You think that because these things are happening, you think that because these things are happening quote-unquote to you, you're doing something wrong that's causing these things to happen. But they're not really happening to you. They're just happening in the world. People are on the apps scammers, weirdos. They are on the apps looking for the next person that will tolerate their bad behavior, and they're also in the real world looking for someone who will tolerate their bad behavior. It has nothing to do with you. You are not the cause of a man sending you a racy email. You're not the cause of that. He is the cause of that right and you're not necessary. I'm like it's uncomfortable and you know it feels awful or yucky to receive that, but when you, if you make it personal, like, oh my god, he looked at my picture and my profile and he thought that I deserved that. No, he didn't. He was on the apps, sending it to every other person and looking for the person who would bite, and what you just need to be is the person who doesn't bite. Now that's you know. That's one example. Again, that's not prescriptive. I know there's a lot of nuance to that. I know there are a lot of different situations, but I'm just really trying to let you know that the things that are happening on the apps mean nothing about you. You're not the cause of it.

Speaker 1: 21:00

I've heard women say well, the people I like don't like me, and the people I don't like are the ones who like me, right. And so then they create this narrative, like, oh, there's something about me that makes all the good guys not message me back. There's something about me that makes all the weirdos message me. No, no, this is happening to everyone on the apps. The weirdos are messaging everyone on the apps every single person, right, and the good guys again, somewhat in smaller numbers than the weirdos that can be. But I don't even really like to think about it that way. I like to think about it as a lot of the quote unquote good guys are often just not a match for you, and it may not be for the reasons that you think. One they may already have found someone. Two, they might be married, like there's all kinds of reasons why they're not messaging you back.

Speaker 1: 21:49

But there is a way to find your person on the apps, your type of person on the apps, and that is the journey that you have to craft. You have to go on there, just like you would with email, and say I'm going to delete all of these, all of the spam. I'm going to find the messages that actually apply to me. You have to create that on the dating apps as well. The same way, you go in the yellow pages and say, yeah, some of these people are not going to be you know what I'm looking for, but statistically, there are people in this world, there are people in my city who would be a match for me, right, and so if you stop believing that you're responsible for all of the events, the things that people are doing these things that are out of your control. You can create space in your mind and space in your creativity to actually start to say, well, how do I want to use this tool in a way that serves me, instead of believing that the tool is there to give me what I want. I am here to give myself what I want. I am here to use this as part of my dating journey. I'm here to use this as part of my toolbox for meeting the partner that I want, right? So put aside the back and forth of downloading and deleting. Download and delete that spin cycle is keeping you stuck because you're not learning anything new. You're simply validating and revalidating the fact that the apps don't work for you, instead of changing your thinking and saying, hey, okay, is there something that I'm missing? Is there something I could be doing differently?

Speaker 1: 23:30

One example from my life really was like. I don't think it was. It wasn't immediately. I was on the apps, but quite early on, when I was on the apps, I was on okay, cupid and I was having some conversations. I was having the general negative experience. So this was very early. I had done no study. I had not certified as a coach, I had not created the process that I teach now. Nothing was happening, that I was experiencing all of the ghosting and I was okay, cupid. And okay, cupid, at the time they would ask you a ton of questions. I kind of create a profile for you and then anytime someone came in your queue, it would give you a percentage match to that person.

Speaker 1: 24:13

And my ex-husband was on there and okay, cupid gave me a 99% match to my ex-husband at the time and I could have said, okay, this is awful, I'm getting off again like, oh my God, it did freak me out. I will say it freaked me out, but I think one of the things that was different for me than I see with a lot of people that I talked to is that I didn't take it. I didn't take it to mean that, oh, this wasn't working, or it wouldn't work for me, or this is this would always be the story, right? I didn't take it to mean that, oh, yep, I matched with my ex. This is always going to be the story. The apps are always going to match me with people like this. I simply thought to myself, why would it match me with my ex 99%?

Speaker 1: 24:58

And what I realized was oh, I'm simply just mostly the same person I was when I was married to him. I haven't changed enough. I haven't grown beyond that girl who was everything that kept that marriage together, to a whole new person who would then not be a match for someone like him. And I just took it as a personal growth challenge, like, okay, that just means I need to change more. I just leaned more into my healing, into my therapy, into my coaching, into working with my coaches, reading my book. I just leaned more into changing who I was, and I did block him. So when I went back on Okay, cupid, I never got a chance to test you know what the percentage would have been. But when I did, you know go on again, changed my. I worked on changing my profile, figuring out what works, what didn't work, all of those things, and I got a completely different result, completely different. So my husband now is like completely different, like they're just so different that it means that I'm different, right, I'm so different that someone like my ex would not be someone that I would even have around me at all anymore.

Speaker 1: 26:10

So here are some tips that I want to give you and I have, you know, just like seven things that I think you should consider doing so that you can successfully use the dating apps as a tool for your dating journey in 2024 and have success right Now. Success is not just when you've met your partner. That's just the end of the successful journey. Success is when you start to meet good people on the apps. This is basically how I what I teach my clients to do. I'm like, okay, we're going to set up the app so that you are meeting people that could be your partner, and then you need to meet enough of those people that could be your partner that one of them will turn out to be right.

Speaker 1: 26:50

And so the first step, big jump that we make in the first couple of months of someone working with me is eliminating the things that they are doing, thinking and being on the apps. That causes them to be engaging in all of these lower level experiences. For some people, it's changing their thinking. It's changing people pleasing, which makes them engage with people that they don't need to be engaging with. For some people, it's their profile. Their profile is not reflecting what would attract the person that they want. They think it would, but it isn't right, and so that heavy lift.

Speaker 1: 27:27

Our first baseline of success with people who coach with me is are you having good dates and are you having like one or two of them every week with good men that could be your partner whose company you enjoy reasonably? Maybe some of them turn out to be like, ah, he's not for me, but you're not having all these weird, difficult, you know, really overwhelming experiences. And for some people it's dealing with the anxiety. They themselves have anxiety about dating. Some of them have anxiety about interacting with men. Some of them don't even know how to look a man in the eye right, and so a lot of what they're experiencing on the apps is like trying to avoid actually going on a date. So there's a lot of work, and that's why I can't really give a prescription that would work for anyone, for everyone, right here on the podcast.

Speaker 1: 28:11

But I do want to let you know there's so many variables that could be making your dating app experience a negative one. So I'm going to give you seven things that to consider that could make a difference and help you set you up for success on the dating apps in 2024. One is get a realistic view of what the apps can and cannot do for you. The apps, again, are a tool. They cannot serve up Prince Charming for you. If Prince Charming is on the app, you have to show up in a way that connects you with Prince Charming and you have to present the parts of what Prince Charming is looking for right.

Speaker 1: 28:52

And so one of the things that I would just throw out there I think this is for everyone this is one of the things that can be prescriptive stop engaging with the people who are not what you are looking for, like. If a person is like negative and they're a jerk and they just want to argue in your DMs, don't waste any time doing that. Right, like literally, don't do that. But a lot of you attract those people because you put all kinds of like Kavya, that's on your profile. Well, I don't want anyone who is like this to message me and blah, blah, blah. So you already set it up like you're in an argument and so the people who want to argue come. If a person comes into your DMs and you can tell that the conversation is not going well, if you are showing up 100% and there's a whole, I probably need to do a whole episode on what it means to show up 100% and it's not going well, then there's no need to engage. But that's a whole other conversation.

Speaker 1: 29:51

Number one get a realistic view of what the apps can and cannot do for you. Understand what the apps are for, how they work, how the algorithms work, so that you can say, okay, when I engage with this tool, with this piece of software, this is how to use it effectively. Take away all the drama, all the moaning, all the narrative, all the horror stories, and think of it as something neutral. It's just a piece of software that gives you access to all of these humans in the world. Now, how can you best take advantage of that? Number two experiment Try to figure out what's working and what's not working and change it and improve it without taking it personally.

Speaker 1: 30:34

That, right there is. My entire coaching program Is to we get on there. We look at, okay, what's working. We set up the first dating profile. We set up, you know, my client's qualifying questions, we set up where she's gonna go in person, and then we start to tweak it. Okay, this worked. Okay, this didn't work, this worked. And then we make it better and better, without making it about her, like she's doing something wrong, like there's something wrong with her, like there's something wrong with the apps or there's something wrong with the men. No, there's nothing wrong with anybody. This is just the way the world is. Then we just need to engage with what's happening effectively Part of experimenting.

Speaker 1: 31:09

This is number three be willing to go on the journey and make mistakes. So many of you are afraid to be seen making mistakes, Like you don't wanna step out because you don't wanna be criticized by your family members, by your friends. You don't wanna fall flat on your face. You don't wanna go on any bad dates right Now. If you work with me, any kind of bad dates will be few and far between. But even if you did go on a bad date where the guy turned out to be like oh my God, I definitely don't wanna second date with this guy. As long as you are physically safe, that says nothing about you, right, it's not a problem. You just went on a date that didn't work out, that's it. But so many times again back to the fallacy of personalization. So many of you are making that mean something about you, the fact that you went on a date and he wasn't the one, or he wasn't great or he said something mean you believe that you did that or you caused that, or by going on that date, you somehow attracted that to yourself. No, you're not doing anything wrong at all and of course, we may get blamed for whatever happens in the relationship realm. That's just a cultural narrative Again, topic for another podcast episode. But I wanna change that. I want you to change that. So get a realistic view. One experiment, two three be willing to go on a journey and make some mistakes. Four change your thinking Most, oh my God, so many people have deeply negative thoughts about dating.

Speaker 1: 32:37

Deeply negative thoughts about the dating apps. Right, but what if you could change those thoughts into thoughts that actually help move you forward? So, instead of thinking the dating apps are terrible, you could think okay, the dating apps are useful too. They could help me meet someone. Right, it's a little more neutral, it's a little more useful. Where it's like okay, you're not saying the dating apps are perfect, it's the other extreme. We're just saying they are a tool. That's true, they could help you meet someone. Yeah, that's happened for so many people. What could change about how you engage on the apps if, instead of thinking the dating apps are terrible, you started thinking they're a useful tool they could help me. Meet someone Doesn't mean you have to go on the apps, but at least you could take off that FOMO and that anxiety and the angst and all of the spinning that you have about the.

Speaker 1: 33:29

Another thought that could change is my person isn't on the apps. Oh, my goodness. People say this a lot to me and I have to work with them to be like how do you know your person isn't on the apps? Well, I've swiped on a hundred profiles and my person wasn't there. Okay, there are millions of people on the apps, millions, millions and millions, and the truth is you actually truly do not know if your person is on the apps or not, right? So instead of thinking my person isn't on the apps, or my person wouldn't be on the apps or this kind of guy wouldn't be on the apps, I have had clients meet wealthy men, kind men, religious men, growth minded men, business and all kinds of people are on the apps. They've also met people who weren't great on the apps, because all kinds of people are on the apps, just like all kinds of people are in the world. Again, the apps somewhat reflect our society. So, instead of believing my person isn't on the apps.

Speaker 1: 34:27

What if you could believe I actually have no idea who's on the apps. I can hold space for possibility. I can just do my part, show up and learn to use it effectively and see what happens, right? Or I already tried the apps and they didn't work. Okay One. What if you could think I can just be curious and see if I can change my results, instead of looking for evidence to validate that they don't work, so constantly agreeing with everyone who says they don't work, constantly being in the groups, constantly being in conversations where everybody's agreeing that they don't work? What if you could be curious and say let me have some conversations with some people with whom they did work and see if I can figure out what they did differently?

Speaker 1: 35:09

And if you're a podcast listener, you know this podcast is full of stories of divorced women who have used some of them have used the apps, some of who met people in person and have successfully dated after divorce. You can have that story to everyone started from ground zero of oh, I'm divorced, right. And everyone brings a different set of strengths and a different situation to this journey. So there is a path that can work for you, right? And then there's some people who are just like oh, I've given up on the apps. I see that a lot, I've just given up, I'm just done. I'm just done, well, okay, that's okay, because I believe that people can date and meet someone without using the apps. But that attitude of having given up tends to also show up in the way they show up in the real world, where they're actually not putting themselves out there in social situations asking for blind dates, all of the things that they could do to meet someone in person. Don't give up. Like.

Speaker 1: 36:07

You can get new results by trying something new, by doing it differently. Your results are up to you, right, can you say? You know what? I'm going to be committed, I'm going to change my thinking. I'm going to be committed to this journey, however long it takes. Whatever I need to do, I'm going to figure it out. You can change your thinking. So that's number four Changing your thinking, identifying the thoughts you have that are negative and being willing to own them like oh, okay, I really do have this thought deep down inside and then being willing to work on changing that, okay.

Speaker 1: 36:40

Number five taking responsibility for crafting a journey that will work for you. Again, this is what I do with my clients. I help them craft a unique journey because everyone is different, living in a different place, wanting something different, so not everyone can do their dating journey exactly the same way. But the beauty of the process that I teach is that you customize it to work for you, right, with the guidelines and the recommendations, and then with the coaching. But you have to take responsibility for that Like, okay, I'm not going to just be here and say this is the story. I'm going to say I'm going to save myself, I'm going to create this for myself and I'm going to figure out how to do it in a way that works for me, with commitment, right Commitment. Once you commit to it and you're like, yeah, I'm doing this, right, I'm going to do this.

Speaker 1: 37:23

I've talked about how I thought my husband wouldn't be in the city that I was living in, but I was still committed to meeting a new partner. I was like I don't think he's here. So, again, I wasn't perfect, my thinking wasn't perfect, but I had just enough growth mindset to have just enough thinking that I was able to move forward and I was like, well, he might not be here, but whenever I move to a better place, wherever I thought that was. I'll be ready if I keep dating, if I keep learning the skills. And then, as I went out there without that attachment, just committed to crafting that journey, I ended up meeting someone I'm like seriously, and it didn't take long either, all right. So that's number five.

Speaker 1: 38:05

Take responsibility for crafting a journey that's going to work for you. Six ask for help. Learn from those who have done it, but don't be prescriptive, right? So try to figure out why what that person did worked and then apply the thinking, not the formula. So sometimes people will hear oh, this person put these three things on their profile and then a man came and said that's exactly what he wanted. And he swiped right and they talked and they lived happily ever after. So then you take that same blurb and you put it on your profile, thinking that's going to work for you. What was the why? Why did that work for her? The why is what you need.

Speaker 1: 38:40

So when you're listening to the podcast episodes and listening to the stories, don't take them as a formula. There are no formulas. There's so many nuances, so many variables. All of us want something different in our partner, right? So if you're using the exact steps that someone used to get this kind of partner but you want another kind of partner. Your journey isn't going to be complete. So when you're learning from other people, figure out the why, spend some time thinking about it, why what they did work and then apply the principle and then create your own journey, right? So that's number six. And you know seven hire a coach. And when I say hire a coach, I mean hire me, right, like, why learn everything from scratch yourself? Right, if you're already dating, you've already tried some things, you're already moving forward, you've already fixed some things. Working with me can really help accelerate the last part of your journey, help you figure out oh, this is the missing piece. You might already have like nine out of the 10 pieces you need for your journey. You just need one piece.

Speaker 1: 39:44

I recently ended my contract with a client who met her person and she met him within four months and I've invited her to come on the podcast, so hopefully she'll come here pretty soon. And she was. She had dating down pat, like she was already doing it. She'd already gone on a ton of first dates. She had, I think, one or two really good relationships before with men who were really compatible with her before a couple of reasons it didn't work out. And then when she went back on the apps, it just she was just numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers and no one was what she was looking for. And actually what starts to happen at that stage is when you're swiping, you know, left on too many people, the algorithm starts to downgrade you because in some apps you're not winning the game Again. Dating app algorithm is a whole other thing, and so she was.

Speaker 1: 40:35

The results she was getting was starting to get worse and worse and worse, and she was really just missing one little piece in her journey. And the little piece was because she'd had so much experience dating. She felt like, oh I know what my guy's going to look like and so I'm going to only swipe on people who, like, really meet that specific specification. But she was being too picky at that stage, and so we're able to work that out, create some flexibility and some space for her to be less picky about who she swiped right on, but still as picky about who she went on a first date on right, and so we're able to craft just that room in there and she met her person, like it did not take long at all I think three months of working with me to do all of that. And I remember after they met and you know, we kind of went through okay, let's, you know, see how he goes, work it out until you're sure that this is the person. I said so, tell me.

Speaker 1: 41:30

I kind of took her back to when she first started working with me. She was kind of skeptical that there was anything new that she could learn from me. I said, so, tell me, what was the? What do you think made the difference in you meeting him? And she was like, oh, it was how I was judging the photos. She was like his photos were stupid. I don't know how I was just like his photos were stupid. If I wasn't working with you, I would never have swiped right on him with those photos.

Speaker 1: 41:55

And so some of you, you already know how to do this, but you just need that little tweak. And, honestly, if that little tweak is what you need, then paying for that is going to be worth it. Like what's the price of having your companionship for the rest of your life, right? And so these are all the things I teach in the Daytonafti Divorce Academy in my one-on-one coaching how to we do screen share. We screen share as my clients are swiping so I can really see where they're missing something. We talk about what qualifying texts they need to send to know if a man is going to be a match or not a match. Again, how not to be too picky so that you rule out the good guys, but picky enough to not spend time with the guys you don't want to be spending time with the conversations. A lot of people have trouble evaluating conversations whether they're showing up in a way that's making the conversation boring or whether it's the guy. What's going on? Are they even talking about what is relevant? That's another podcast episode.

Speaker 1: 42:49

I have so much teaching that I'm going to be doing over the next few weeks on on dating. Because I've just done so many guest episodes, I'm excited to do teaching episodes again how to move from the apps on to a first date without pursuing him, and like being needy and clingy, like there's just so many things that I taught, that I teach in those modules, that I teach directly to my clients. That can really help solve the problem of how the dating apps are performing for you. So here's the thing I want you to consider some things you want to change. Again, the dating apps do work. They do work. You all know people that they have worked for. You know me. You know my guests on the podcast. You have friends and family. There's nothing wrong with you that makes the dating apps not work. You just haven't learned how to interact with the apps in a way that makes it work just like any software. Right, think about what negative beliefs you have. Think about whether or not you're falling for the fallacy of personalization and making it about you, and then commit to learning and customizing a process that's gonna work for you. Right, think about how you could do it differently in 2024 so that you get exactly what you were looking for. And I wanna refer you to a podcast episode and again, I don't remember the podcast episode. I'm gonna link it in the show notes on this one.

Speaker 1: 44:20

I have a client who met her partner at age 63 on the apps and one of the things that made the difference for her was learning from me how to work the dating apps she had. She went on, I think, 22. We counted about 22 to 23 first dates and she was just so dedicated to learning how to use those apps the first time. So I remember one of our early sessions I said, okay, for our next session, download these apps and then we're gonna work through them. And she downloaded one of them. I won't say the name because this is just her experience. She was like that was so overwhelming I don't even ever wanna go back on that app again.

Speaker 1: 45:01

But as we worked together she got accustomed to the app. She was like, oh okay, it was just another piece of software. She just went there. She knew she had created her protocol, her, you know the steps that were gonna work for her and she met her person. I'm trying to think. I think she was closer to like five or six months before she met her person and they are this Christmas will be right around a year that they've been together, right, and she'd never been on an app, never been on an app. Her first look at the apps completely freaked her out, but she didn't have a single bad date Right, and she got her six foot guy, the full head of hair, which we have a running joke up of how. I was like, well, I don't know, but it did work for her, right, she created the time to date. She created time to learn how to use the apps, and she's been in a loving relationship for the last year. So you can learn to do something different. You can learn something new if you open up to that curiosity and that growth, that it can work for you too.

Speaker 1: 46:03

All right, I hope this was useful for you. I hope this helped change your perspective. I really want more of you to succeed at this in 2024. And so I hope you heard something in this episode that really helped inspire you to go back and start your journey again. Now, if you've been thinking about working with me, this is the perfect time to reach out and schedule a consultation call. The links are in the show notes, but for those of you that are listening, it's just shaddecurrycom s-a-d-e-c-u-r-r-ycom. Forward slash schedule dash appointment. I look forward to working with you and helping you get this done in 2024. All right, thank you for your time and attention, and I will see you next time.