215. When Are You Ready to Date?

If you're struggling with dating after divorce and need personalized guidance, schedule a complimentary coaching consultation with Sade Curry. Click here to schedule your session.

Dating After Divorce Episode 215: When Are You Ready to Date?

In this Sade Curry delves into the concept of "readiness" for dating after a divorce. She explores the often undefined notion of being "ready" to date and its potential consequences on one's dating journey. Sade discusses the subtle yet powerful belief that many women hold—that they are not ready to date—and how this mindset can keep them stuck.

Episode Highlights:

• Challenging Gender Roles: Discover how societal expectations and internal biases can influence women's perceptions of their readiness to date and how to challenge these narratives.
• Defining Readiness: Sade Curry explains the importance of defining what "ready to date" means for each individual, rather than relying on a vague or universal concept.
• Personal Readiness: Explore factors like finances, schedules, and children in determining your personal readiness for dating after a divorce.
• Empowered vs. Fake Readiness: Understand the difference between empowered readiness, which involves taking responsibility and working towards growth, and fake readiness, which is marked by self-pity and blame.
• Self-Leadership: Sade emphasizes the importance of self-leadership in rebuilding your life and dating journey, highlighting that there is no one-size-fits-all formula
• Empowered Decision-Making: Sade encourages listeners to define their own readiness and make empowered decisions about dating, rather than seeking validation from others.

Key Takeaways:

1. Define Your Own Readiness: Take the time to understand what being ready to date means for you personally, considering all aspects of your life.
2. Challenge Negative Self-Talk: Identify and overcome the mental barriers that may be holding you back from feeling ready to date.
3. Embrace Self-Leadership: Lead your own journey in dating and life, recognizing that there is no universal formula for readiness.
4. Develop Self-Approval: Focus on self-approval and personal growth rather than seeking validation from others.

Resources Mentioned:

• Follow Sade Curry on Instagram: @sadecurry 
• Book a Coaching Consultation: Click here to schedule your session.

Listener Feedback: We love hearing from our listeners! Share your thoughts on this episode and your own experiences with dating after a major life change. Leave us a review  and share this episode with other women dating after divorce

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Transcript

Sade Curry: 0:28

Hello and welcome back to the dating after divorce podcast. I am your host, Shadi curry, and today I want to talk about this very subtle thought. It's very it's a very subtle subconscious state that keeps a lot of women that I talk to stuck in their dating journey. Now this thought is really the thought that I'm not ready to date. And on the surface, this seems like a perfectly reasonable way to think. It seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to consider when you are dating. And I'm not trying to say you shouldn't consider whether or not you're trying to you're ready to date. However, I have also seen that line of thinking keep a lot of women stuck. For those of you that are new to the podcast, I am a life and dating coach for divorced women. I came to this work via my own journey through divorce, healing, rebuilding, dating again, meeting my partner after divorce, and then building a life that I love after a divorce. So I am here to really share my experience, share my knowledge, share my expertise. I am a certified life coach through the Life Coach School. I have an advanced certification in coaching for feminist coaching, and I am also a trauma coach through the International Association of trauma recovery coaches. So all of this is what I bring to this conversation about dating after divorce, and today we're just going to talk about what it means to be ready to date after divorce, and that's where I want to start, because a lot of people that I talk to will say, Well, I'm not ready to date, but they don't really define what it means to be ready to date. And it is that lack of definition, it is that lack of a very solid set frame of reference for the individual about what it means to be ready to date that causes the problem. So again, I'm not saying that, hey, you shouldn't think about whether or not you're ready to date. I'm saying that you should start with what does it mean to be ready to date, and what does it mean for me you as an individual, in your circumstance, your relationship journey, your healing journey, your rebuilding journey, your geographical area, your desires. What does it mean for you as an individual to be ready to date? And if you have not sat with all of this, then the thought I'm not ready to date, or I am ready to date, could be something that sabotages your dating journey. We have this brain that loves to keep us safe, right? Everything it does is to keep you safe. And so for some people, having a vague idea of what it means to be ready to date will keep will. If you have a brain that is constantly telling you you're not enough, you're not good enough, you're not worthy, you haven't done enough, that is very reactive to difficulty or situations or scenarios in the world, then it will use everything that happens to you as confirmation that you're not ready to dig and that you're doing the wrong thing, not because you're actually doing the wrong thing, but because your brain is always using things to tell you that you're doing the wrong thing. So it will use anything that happens to confirm to you that you're not ready to date and you shouldn't be dating, and that your desires are not valid, and that you're doing it wrong, and all of those negative things. Now for some other people, the vagueness of being ready to date moves them forward in hope that they're going to meet someone without any self reflection, so they think I'm ready to date, and you go out there, and then you're dating, and you're having these experiences that are not great, but you're not learning from those experiences, because your brain never really is not comfortable with self adjustment, with self reflection, with learning and adjusting and doing things differently. And the reason this might happen is because of shame. So there are a lot of women that I talk to who whenever they encounter difficulty, if they ever allow the thought in that they need to change something, that they need to do something differently. It causes them a lot of shame, because they were probably over criticized as kids, or they're very hard on themselves, and so doing things wrong or making a mistake or needing to correct something triggers the feeling of shame, and that trigger then causes them to not be able to tolerate the thought that they need to change something. And so they just keep barreling over the situation, saying, I'm gonna it's gonna happen. It's gonna happen. It's gonna happen. And then they create this pattern of constantly being in relationships that are not good for them, situations that are not good for them, not keeping themselves safe. And so. The challenge in that situation is that they also didn't define what it meant to be ready to date, and because of that, they insist that they are ready to date, and they probably are in many areas, but there might be some areas that require adjustments, and they continually expose themselves to these really challenging, painful situations. And so what I want to encourage you to do is to think about, what does it mean for me to be ready to date? I can't define that for everyone like I can give you some guidelines. However, being ready to date is a very individual situation, so you'd have to look at, okay financially, am I do? I feel like I've rebuilt my life to a place where I'm ready to bring someone in. What about my schedule? What about my time? What about my children? Like if you have children, you want to consider whether or not you want to bring someone into their lives at this stage or not. Some people are ready to bring someone in where their kids are young, and there are good reasons to do that. Some people prefer to wait until their kids are out of the house to date and to meet someone, and they're perfectly good reasons for that as well. I, as an individual, considered that I wanted my children to experience a healthy relationship, so I decided to date before my children left home, and I had my own reasons for that. That may not be the right reason for everyone else to want to date immediately after a divorce, I was ready to do that because I really just didn't want my kids to grow up and leave home and have to learn what a healthy relationship looked like somewhere else. It is not that is not a must for everyone. Some of you have other healthy relationships and other healthy models for your children that don't require you to have someone in the home. And being partnered with someone healthy is not the only way to have a healthy model for your children. Again, this is so unique, this such an individual journey, that I want you to really sit with that and define that for yourself. This brings this conversation back to what I'm constantly emphasizing to my clients and to my students, which is you need to be in self leadership. There is no formula for rebuilding your life and reinventing yourself after a divorce. There is no formula for dating after a divorce. There are just general principles that are healthy. And then there's you, there's you, your bold, powerful, brilliant, amazing self and the journey that you decide to go on. And so as a coach, I have general principles that I walk my clients through. I help them change whatever stories that they have that are keeping them stuck. Right? That's the first step. We change that story, and then they I help them choose a new story, the story that's going to inform everything that they're going to be doing next right? The next phase, the next stage. We choose a story that matches where they want to go, and then we change how they feel. We change that the negative automatic negative thoughts that create these automatic negative emotions into actual emotions that fuel a journey that helps them go where they want to go. So if you're stuck in this story of, I'm not ready, or you are stuck in a story of, I'm ready, but then that belief isn't hasn't been working for you. Let's talk about changing that story. What are some ways that you need to change your story, or you might need to change your story so that you choose a definition of ready that works for you, and you choose a story about being ready that actually works for you. So the basic, I'm not ready, thought, I believe, really comes from the way women have been socialized to think about themselves, right? We have been socialized, over 1000s and 1000s of years, to see ourselves as just a little bit above children in relation to men. So in relation to men, women have been socialized to always feel like or think of themselves as just a little less than a full adult. Now, if you were socialized as a woman, trust me, this is probably your default state, you might not realize it, because you've been socialized from the minute you were born to think this way, and so you yourself probably buy into it. You yourself probably believe it in so many ways. So your default when you are thinking about dating is that you're not ready, not because you're truly not ready, but because you've been socialized to always be just a little bit less than ready, always a little bit less than capable, always a little bit less than fully competent, always a little bit less than fully grown, always a little bit less than fully powerful in your life, and that has nothing to do with you. You didn't create that that has nothing to do with your ability to actually. Do something it just has everything to do with the narrative about women and people socialized as women, and this is something that it's just the air that we breathe, it's just the water that we swim in. And now this is the time to start to create a change in your thinking, that internal bias about yourself that you may not be ready to do something that you want to do, swallowing that belief, I'm not ready. Ho hog infantilizes you, puts you in that childish frame of mind where you're always just needing to be a little bit better, a little bit more approved of. You need just a little bit more permission to do what you want to do. You've been given a story that you are somehow incapable of this basic adult activity of dating after divorce. Dating is a basic adult activity. It's just how humans create relationships, create romantic relationships, create partner. Partnerships create companionship. It's through dating. Now, data, of course, can take many different forms. It's not all dating apps. However, we have been creating these partnerships for 1000s, millions, whatever, years. And so it's a basic in my opinion, it's a basic adult activity. However, women get given this narrative that they just quite can't quite handle this basic adult activity. And so you see this difference in men when they are going out today. And actually this causes a lot of resentment. I talk to a lot of women who are very resentful, who are very angry and very upset about their ex's ability to just go out there, pick someone and move on. Oh, well, of course, they do that because they were not socialized to not be ready when they want something. Men have been socialized to go after whatever it is they want when they want it, whether or not they're ready for it, right? I'm not trying to say your ex was ready to actually pick a healthy partner may not have been, but men have been socialized that when they think they're ready, when they think it's time for them to have something, it's okay for them to go and have it. Women have been socialized that when they think they want something, they need to ask for permission. They need to double check with everyone. They need to make sure that everyone approves of the fact that they want that thing. And that causes us as women, people socialized as women, to choke our desires, to weigh on our desires to pause, to overthink, to ruminate, ask for permission, to seek validation, to just always be in this stuck waiting, mating, in waiting hand mating, waiting, waiting, waiting to be chosen. Scenario that is not healthy and is not does not put us on the path to success and does not put us on the path to select and choose what is best for us. And so I see a lot of women because of that, not readiness. They're in this mode where they they they wait for the man. They wait to be chosen. They wait for a man to come and choose them. And if you are a sitting duck, waiting for whichever man shows up to choose you, and you place your worth and your value on being chosen by whichever man decides to choose you, then you're aimed for a really difficult right, because what if the man who shows up to choose you isn't good for you? What if he's not healthy for you? It is way, way safer for you to be in self leadership, to take this in your hands and go out and choose what is healthy for you, right? So a blanket I'm not ready is not a really great thought for you. What I would love for you to do is to define ready. What is what is ready for you, okay? What would ready mean for you? Is it based on your, you know, your financial circumstances? Is it based on your physical health? Do you have other go? Have other goals you want to achieve before a partnership? Do you have a Do you want to move before you seek a partnership? Do you even not want to seek a partnership at all? Do you want like, what is ready for you? Okay, and this is a question that I always ask women who come on my consultation calls so that I know that they are fully on board with themselves. They're fully backing themselves up on that journey. And if this is something you would like to talk about, book a consultation call with me. The link is in the show notes. The consultation call is complimentary, so this is free, and we talk about whether or not you're ready today, and I can ask you the questions that apply to you to to solidify and help you get to clarity about whether or not you are actually ready to date. And once you hit that point where you're like, Oh, I'm actually ready to date, then you want to take all of your attention and your resources and your energy and put it behind that desire that you want. And this is why this is so important. So when you're in a state of uncertainty and confusion about being ready to date, you waste away your attention and resources, because sometimes you're applying your attention, your energy and your resources to dating, and then when things get hard, you're like, Oh, you backpedal. So then you've wasted that effort, and then you're like, Well, I'm just gonna go do this other thing, and then you go and you do that other thing for a little while, and then, but deep down inside, you really wanted to date. So then you get lonely and bored, and then you go back to date. And so you're frittering away your energy, your resources, your attention, on all of this, like one step forward, one step back, one step forward, one step back. And so you're just treading water. You're just in the same spot? And years can go by. Years can go by. I've worked with women who treaded water in their relationships and in their dating journey for 12 years, 1012, years, and then finally came to work with me and met their partner in six months. Because if they had made that decision and gotten out there and learned what they needed to learn and practice, what they needed to practice, and made it work. They could have been in a relationship that entire time. So let's get to clarity where you're not uncertain and confused. Some of you are uncertain and confused, and you are using the uncertainty and confusion to you're interpreting it as you're not ready. No, no. It's not that you're not ready. It's that you haven't consciously brought your mind into the conversation and sat down and defined things for yourself and stepped into self leadership to decide whether or not you're ready. Whether or not you're ready is a decision. It's not a state of being. It's a decision that you make as a grown person as a mature, grown person who owns their life. It is a decision that you make. It is not a state that you are in. Again, we're socialized to think that we are in that state of being uncertain and confused and unsure. But being ready or not being ready is a decision that you make. You sit down and logically with clarity, look at your life and the things that you want and the life that you want to live and decide whether the timing is right for you to date or the timing is not right for you to date. It is up to you. It is not a state that you are in or some kind of like physical mental No, no. It's not that I have worked with women who were still grieving their divorces, and met a loving, healthy partner. I know it's the narrative is that this is impossible, right? It's not impossible. It's a decision that you make. I worked with a client, and if you go back in the podcast, it is this episode with B, and she told her story. B, self proclaimed, had low self esteem. She was working with a therapist at the time, and I agree with her, yeah, girl, you got a lot of low self esteem. But she was like, I want to, but I still want a partner. And I'm like, let's do it, because she can decide that, yes, she's working on her low self esteem because of her childhood trauma, and there was a lot of it, and it was just gonna take years for her to get to where she needed to go with that. And that was fine. She had a lot of healing to do, but she didn't want to be single while she was healing all that stuff. So she did the things that she needed to do, because she decided that she could have a partner, and she sent me a text week or a week or so ago celebrating two years in a healthy, happy relationship, and those are the things that make me so happy, because, listen, there are men who have this you all know. You all know that your exes are in these relationships that seem happy, and maybe they are happy. How is that? How is that possible? And you're wondering how that's possible, and what makes you angry makes you upset. It's because your ex decided that he was going to be in a relationship. He decided, but you haven't decided because you think somebody needs to give you permission. No, you decide. Okay. Another thing that I see that keeps women in this not ready situation is mistakes that they make along the way. So maybe you said, Okay, I am ready. And you went and I started dating, and you made some mistakes, and then you decided that those mistakes meant that you weren't ready, but you still didn't define what it meant to be ready, because if you go out there and you date and you make mistakes, that's not a nest that's not a sign that you're not ready. It's a sign that there's some things that you didn't know that you needed to fix. There's some things that you didn't know that you needed to adjust. That's all it meant I made. I made my own mistakes. You guys, I talk about the podcast all the time. It didn't mean I wasn't ready to date. It meant I needed to fix some stuff. It meant I needed to learn about future faking and understand, oh, when a guy's doing this, that's future faking. Don't fall for it. I'd never heard of future faking before, right? And it wasn't even called when I was dating in like, 2017 2018 I didn't it wasn't even called Future faking at the time. It's called Future faking now, at the time, it was just something that was. Happening that many of us didn't know what's happening, right? So just because you've made mistakes dating doesn't mean you're not ready to date. It just means you've made some mistakes because you didn't know some things and you just needed to learn those things, okay? And if there are things you need to learn, I can help you. You can come on my consultation call. We can talk about mistakes that you've made, and I can tell you how I can help you fix those things if you work with me. All right, same thing with experiencing challenges. Maybe initially dating doesn't feel good. You're not seeing men that you like. I'm working with a new client who signed up with me about a month ago, and her thing was, like, I just keep not seeing guys that I like. And I'm like, Yeah, you're experiencing some challenges. You think all the other people who dated only saw guys that they liked on the apps. That's not a thing. That's not a thing, right? But the goal is to say, Okay, here's this challenge. How do I fix it? And that's one of the things I help my clients fix. If you are attracting, when I say attracting, you're not attracting them in your person. It's just you where you're using the algorithm isn't bringing in the people that you want. I can help you fix the algorithm on your dating app so that you are your your dating behavior that the algorithm is clocking is the behavior that gets the algorithm to show you to the really great profiles. So experiencing challenges in dating doesn't mean you're not ready. It just means you're experiencing challenges, and you need to fix those challenges. You're experiencing some obstacles which are perfectly normal, and we just need to fix that. Now, another thing that I that I see that makes women stay in the state of feeling like they're not ready is feeling fear and anxiety when they're dating. So they think that when they feel confident and bold and powerful, then they're ready to date. No, sorry, I wish I could tell you that that's the case. That's not how he works, and it's not how life works. Our brains are designed, beautifully designed to feel fear and anxiety whenever we're doing something unfamiliar. It's literally designed that way. It is a feature. It is not a flaw, even though it feels like a flaw and we experience it as a flaw. It's designed to keep you safe. It's designed to keep you safe in a jungle when you see an unfamiliar animal and it's like, hey, check out. That animal might hurt you. So when you get on a dating app for the first time, your brain is going to kick into overdrive fear, because it's like, hey, this environment is very scary. We don't know what's going on. I'm gonna pump in that fear so that you keep yourself safe. That's all that's happening. Feeling terrified while you're dating, feeling afraid, feeling confused, feeling uncertain, all those emotions do not mean that you are not ready. They simply mean that you are in unfamiliar territory, that you need to work on mindset. You need to work on creating safety in your emotions. You need to work on a narrative that helps you understand where you're safe and what you need to watch out for in a more logical way so that you can move forward. It doesn't mean you just ignore the fear that will burn you out trying to just override fear and just go for it. You can only go so far, and then you just feel exhausted by the effort of just like ignoring the fear. You have to work with it. You have to process it. You have to dance with the fear, make friends with it and learn how to speak to it for yourself, like the words that you would speak to it would be different for every for every person. When I am in that state where I'm doing something unfamiliar, I'm going for something bigger than I've gone for before, I will often slow things down, right? I won't stop, but in order for me to work with the way my body and my mind experiences fear, I can't rush. I can't be in a hurry. I can't pressure, I can't I have to be like, Okay, I'm still gonna go do the thing, but I have to slow it down so that I am sort of working compassionately with my own self in that process of doing something really, really big and scary for me. So for you, it might be something else. That's another thing that we can talk about. We book a consultation call with me if you're experiencing high levels of fear and anxiety when it comes to dating, let's talk about where that's coming from. Let's talk about how you can dance with it, how you can work with it, how you can shape it to serve you in getting all the goals that you want. So that's feeling fear can make you think that you're not ready, but you might be ready. Now here's another situation that makes people think they're not ready. The landscape of dating, the world of modern dating, the men out there and listen, I am with you. I have been there and experienced the men out there. There are plenty of men out there that are not great. Okay, the dating apps are. They're. Whole thing. Okay, so I'm with you. I get that however, the fact that the landscape is challenging and you need to learn new things, the fact that there are some men out there who are out to not do the right things, does not mean that you're not ready. It doesn't mean you're not ready. It just means that there are things you need to learn in order to navigate the landscape. Because if you are waiting for this landscape to change, it is not going to change. This landscape is the same landscape that got you into your past relationships that were horrible. I met my ex husband on a college campus. That landscape, all of us would be like, Oh, I would love to be on a college campus and in my in my late teens and early 20s, and everyone is single, okay, so we were, weren't we? We were. It is not the landscape that is causing the problem. It is our ability to navigate that landscape in a way that serves us. It is our ability to lead our journey to a healthy relationship. And so whether or not you are using a matchmaker, using dating apps, dating in person, dating through blind dates, dating on a reality TV show, it doesn't matter what, what landscape you're in. What will get you into a healthy relationship is not the landscape. It is your ability to navigate whatever that landscape is confidently with discernment, so that you are select, putting yourself in front of and selecting a healthy relationship. It's all up to you. It is all up to you. There are people who date in person and end up in narcissistically abusive relationships. There are people who date online end up in narcissistically abusive relationships, date whatever you name it, and then there are people who date online and meet healthy partners. There are people who date online in person and meet healthy partners. It is not the landscape. So waiting for the landscape to look and feel better is not going to get you where you want to go. You have to get ready in your own in your own self, being ready to lead yourself, being ready to work with the dating landscape in a way that is powerful, that is empowered, that is certain, that has clarity, that is very boundaried, while also being completely open to the healthy relationship that you want. So looking at the landscape and thinking, Oh, I don't have the capacity to navigate this landscape. That's also that, like child mindset, where you're like, I don't have the capacity to navigate this landscape, the landscape isn't going to change, so you have to develop that capacity as a grown person. This is something I can definitely help you with. If you feel like, oh, I actually truly do not have this capacity, you're going to have to develop that capacity no matter what the landscape is, whether you do it now, whether you do it later, the key is still your own capacity to be in that landscape. All right, so it's not about the men out there again. It's about your capacity to navigate the men out there, both the good and the bad and the ugly, all of them. Now, another thing that keeps women not ready, that is not a great way to not be ready is that they are looking for permission from the people around them. They know that they have family members that are judging them. I've talked to women whose adult children disapprove of them dating, honey, if you're 30 something, is telling you not to date at I don't know. I don't know what to tell you. We need some boundaries here. This is an adult kid that is out there living their life. They their say in your dating really needs to be reconsidered. Really needs to be reconsidered. Like, I totally get it. If you have young children and you're making an empowered decision to focus again, you're making a decision to focus your time, energy, attention resources on your young children. Totally endorse it again, because it is a decision, not a something that you're like doing to for other people's approval. And a person who truly makes that decision is not lurking on the dating apps, is not entertaining DMS from men you are, you have made a decision that you're going to focus on your kids, and so your attention and resources go there. But if you actually want to date, and you want to channel your attention and resources and energy to dating, but you're afraid of being judged by your kids. You're afraid of being judged by your family members, being judged by your friends. You're waiting for their permission and approval. You are the one infantilizing yourself. You are the one putting yourself in a disempowered victim situation where you're putting the responsibility for your life on other people. It's not healthy and it won't get you where you want to go. Okay, um. Um, some of you are not over your ex, and that's okay. But not being over your ex does not mean you're not ready to date. For some of you, dating is the activity getting out there and focusing on yourself and focusing on what you want is the thing that will help you get over your ex. Oops, it is for some people, not for everyone. For some of you, getting over your ex is literally making the decision that you're going to stop thinking about your ex and you're going to start thinking about a future relationship that you want to that you want to create. All right, so let's just say there are, there's a healthy I'm not ready, and then there's an unhealthy, fake I'm not ready. And I want you to kind of listen to this podcast episode and say, Where am I? Am I in the healthy I'm not ready to date, or am I in the fake I'm not ready to date? The healthy I'm not ready to date is an empowered decision, not a state of being, decision that you make, and you know why you made that decision, and you are confident and settled, and you feel peace about that decision, like, Yep, this is me. I'm living my best life. I'm channeling all my attention and resources to these other things. I'm traveling the world. I'm focusing on my kids, I'm focusing on my education, I'm focusing on my money, I'm focusing on my self care. I'm focusing on just being alone and I love it. That is an empowered, healthy I'm not I'm not dating. I'm not ready to date. Then there's a fake I'm not ready. That's a cop out that gives you the perfect excuse to lurk secretly on the apps, to check out the guys, to entertain DMS, to blame other people for the fact that you're not in the relationship you want to feel sorry for yourself because you can't have the relationship you want, because you're not ready, because the men out there are this, and because that, and because I don't have this, and because, no, that's a fake I'm not ready. I'm not ready because I went out there and I did this, and I'm in this state of not knowing how to do it properly, so I'm not ready. But that doesn't get you to the place where you're actually learning the thing that you need to do, right? So really sit with yourself and say, if you are not ready to date, is it an empowered decision, or is it a fake state of being that sort of swimming these negative emotions and things like that? Even if you are still grieving your relationship, you're still feeling the pain of betrayal, and you're like, No, I want to get out of this negative feeling state before I date. That's an empowered decision. You can be like, No, I'm healing. I'm working on my healing. I'm working on myself. I have got a lot of icks around me in my life, a lot of things that are working. I haven't figured out co parenting, that's fine, but it is an empowered decision, not a victim state where somebody has forced you into this situation where you can't date because all this is going on. No, you want to make the decision. You want to be empowered and say, No, I want to be in a more joyful state. I want to be in a more healthy emotional state before I date, and here's what I'm doing to get there. It goes back to just making that decision, and in that situation, all of your energy, all of your resources, go into your healing. They go into focusing on becoming the person you want to be before you date because you decided it not because somebody else told you you needed to do that, not because someone else said that there's something wrong with you. No, because you decided to do that. And when you change that, when you when you do, decide to date, you'll be able to take those actions. You'll be able to do the things you want to do, because at that point in time, you've decided to do it. So the key word here is decision. If you are not ready to date, was it a decision, an empowered decision, that you decided to take, or was it a victim situation that you found yourself in? Okay? And if you started with the victim situation, that's fine, you can change it into a decision today, like, yeah, I've got a lot of sucky things happening right now, and I'm deciding I'm not dating until I take care of all these things, and that's awesome, or, you know what, based on who I am, what I want my situation, I decided that I am ready to date. I'm gonna learn what I need to do to date, and I'm gonna go for it. Okay? Thank you all for your time and attention. I really hope this podcast episode was useful for you. If it was, I hope you will share it with someone who needs to hear it. If you are listening to this on a podcast platform, I would love it if you would leave a five star review and tell me what you love about this podcast. I love hearing from all of you, and for those of you who are ready to do this work who would love a coach to support and mentor you through your dating journey, please go to the show notes, click the schedule a call with me, link and schedule your complimentary consultation call with me, and I look forward to seeing you there you.