Lisa Shield

How to Make Your Photos STAND OUT While You are STAYING IN!

Don’t underestimate how important your online dating photos are. If you are serious about attracting a wonderful partner, you must be willing to show yourself in the best possible light. For my clients, this used to mean having professional pictures taken. 

Now suddenly, we’re all quarantined and that’s no longer an option.

So, we need to move to Plan B. Not THAT Plan B. Plan B to Hiring a Professional Photographer (at least for now). 

You don’t have to resort to posting selfies just because of social distancing. Besides, unless you’re an Instagram celebrity, you probably haven’t mastered the art of taking post-worthy selfies. 

I was a professional fashion photographer for 15 years, so I know a thing or two about taking photos. As a dating coach, I use my photography skills on a daily basis to shoot flattering videos and pictures of myself. This got me thinking. 

Covid-19 or no Covid-19, many of you know you could use better online dating photos. As long as you can go outside in a park, a garden or your own backyard, I can show you how to shoot your own professional quality photos just like I do! All you need is a $24 tripod and some tips from me!

Here goes… 

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

  • A camera with a timer
    Most smartphones have great cameras and great editing software. If you have a digital camera with a timer that’s great too. If you’re using a digital camera, make sure it can attach to a tripod mount. 

YOUR LOOK

Choosing the Right Clothes

Remember, the camera adds 10 pounds, so you want to be careful in choosing the right outfit. This is not the time to hide behind a loose t-shirt or a flowy frock. Wear something form-fitting that shows off your curves, no matter how curvy they are. Love your stuff, and show it off!! It’s YOU. Don’t be afraid to show who you are, it’s all beautiful!!

You’ll want to choose a few different looks to give you plenty of options. Choose colors that you know you look good in, and stay away from really busy prints. Don’t be afraid to put on a little black dress. In my 12-week Emotionally Naked Dating course I always tell women to get a shot in something red. A portrait shot in red is like a stop sign. If a guy is cruising through photos on a dating site, a lady in red will make him stop and look.

You’ll need to find the right shade of red for your skin tone. If you have a red lipstick that looks good on you, that’s the right shade. But don’t wear a red lipstick in the photo, you want to keep it natural.

Hair and Makeup

Again, you want to be your most beaming, beautiful, true self in these photos. Keep your makeup soft, natural, and light. Choose a sheer foundation (if any), and just a well-matched concealer as needed. I do a bit of natural shadow on my eyes, a light liner, a bit of blush and a neutral lip. You might keep a translucent powder handy if you tend to be very shiny in photos. Resist the urge to get dramatic with heavy makeup or false eyelashes. Keep it light, fresh, and natural.

The same goes for your hair. You want to do your best version of your everyday look. Whether that’s a few waves with a curling iron or a soft updo to dress it up, keep it real. Don’t overdo it with styling or product, just do your best dressed natural.

SETTING THE SCENE

Background

You want to choose a relatively simple background, without anything busy or distracting behind you. A cool textured wall or the plants and flowers in your yard make great backdrops. If you have access to an open space that allows for social distancing, beaches and scenic vistas are great open backgrounds.

 A simple background with no distractions will help insure that you are the focus of the photo. 

Lighting

One advantage to shooting outside is that there is plenty of natural light. You want soft, even lighting that doesn’t bring out harsh shadows on your face. Early morning or late afternoon sunlight is the best. What you don’t want is a lot of light coming from behind you. 

Try to find shade behind and above you, and soft, directional light coming towards you. Watch thevideo above to see me demonstrate this technique.

If you need to shoot indoors, try standing facing a window where soft, directional light is coming in.

You’ll need to play around with this a bit, but be patient. Once you find a lighting technique that works for you, you’ll be able to use it every time.

GETTING THE SHOT

Okay, your background and lighting is set, your hair and makeup is radiant and your outfit is bangin’… 

…let’s shoot this thing!

Rule # 1: Throw out your stock photo pose. I know you already have a “photo face.” We all do. Some are better than others. Get rid of it. There’s nothing natural about it and there’s nothing interesting about looking at five different photos of you making the same face.

When you’re ready to shoot, you’ll hit the button to start the timer on your camera, and then strike a pose. If your timer is set to 3 seconds, it’ll be button..2..3..pose…button..2..3..pose..and so on. If you have an iPhone, you can try setting it to “burst” and it will take a series of several photos. This allows you to move around a bit and get variations on the angle. 

You can also play with taking a video, and then choosing a still frame from the video that you like. The more you understand what your camera can do, the more options you will have. But it’s also fine to just take one photo at a time.

IMPORTANT: have fun with this!

Put on some music. Show your personality. After you’ve taken a few test shots, have a party. Get lots of different poses, change the lighting, change the background, change your clothes. Get different moods. Get playful, sensual, silly. Try all of your smiles and all of your laughs. 

Imagine that your soul mate is in the room with you. Imagine that you are already in love.

Make sure to get a variety of portrait (or close-up), mid-length, and full body shots. Don’t worry about looking perfect in every single photo. Remember, even a professional photoshoot of 200 shots turns out about 10 winners. Get a lot of variety and you can pick the winners out later.

CHOOSING YOUR SHOTS

After your shoot, you’ll want a good variety of looks to choose from. Make sure you pick a close-up portrait, mid-length shot, and full-length shot. Narrow down your faves, and then get a second opinion from a close friend or two. 

Your photos are your siren call when dating online. So make sure you put the time in to really get it right. Then sit back and watch the ships roll in!

This should be more than enough to get you started. Now go have yourself a photo party and send me your photos when you’re done, I’d love to see them!

Make sure to watch the video above to see the technique that I use. It will help you put it all together.  Here are some examples of photos I took:

And if you haven’t already, click here to watch my life-changing webinar. If you like what you hear, you can book a call with me and I can show you how to find your soulmate once and for all.

And you will never have to take your own photos again.

Stay tuned for more dating tips that will take you from surviving to thriving.

In the meantime, get in touch. I’d love to hear from you.

Yours in Nakedness,

Get into your heart so he can too!

I lead women on a powerful 3-month journey to unlock the deep secrets of finding lasting love.

The name of my course is “Emotionally Naked Dating.” 

Being able to get emotionally naked is the secret to attracting everything you long for in a relationship. And like any good secret, it takes guidance and wisdom to learn how to do it well.

Every week in the course I host live Q&A calls where the women often ask, “Lisa, I hear you about getting emotionally naked on a date, but how do I do that?”

I know they’re looking for simple strategies, like ask these questions, or touch his arm, or look longingly into his eyes for a little longer than you’re supposed to.

That’s what they are expecting…and all of those things work to a degree.

But the real answer to the question of how to get emotionally naked is that you need to get out of your head and into your heart.

The next question they ask is, “Okay, but how? How do I get into my heart?”

Unfortunately, this is way easier said than done. 

In fact, there’s a saying that the longest journey you will ever travel is 18 inches from your head to your heart. 

If you’re like most people in the dating world, right now you are in your head, trying to figure it out. 

Is he the right guy? Does he have this? Does he have that? Am I saying the wrong thing? Am I saying the right thing? Am I leaning back? Am I leaning too far forward? Is my dress too low cut?

When we are caught up in trying to “figure things out,”  we’re not in the present moment. If you are not in the present moment, you are not in your heart.

What we’re trying to create is love.

And love comes from the heart. It comes from a very different part of our being than what is governed by the head.

At work, you access the intellectual side of your brain, the left brain. But in love, you’re drawing from the right side, the creative part of your brain, and from your heart space.

I can tell from the tone of a client’s voice when she was totally caught in her head, trying to intellectualize the process…

…but you cannot access that space with external tips and tricks. It has to be made on the inside

When I talk about dating from an emotionally naked place, this is the journey the women in my group go on.

They begin to break the habits of relying on trying to change the outside world to make them happy, which is an impossible task.

Together, we work to identify and let go of old, repeating patterns so they can get closer to their heart. When they struggle, I guide them through it step-by-step. 

“Slow down. Breathe. Talk softer, move slower. Be present in the moment with him. Get curious and listen, really listen.” 

These are the beginning steps to changing who you are being with a man. And once you make these changes on the inside, everything on the outside begins to change.

When you’re coming from your heart, there is no wall. There’s no façade. There’s no hiding. There is no fear. There’s just you being in touch.

When you’re in your heart you don’t even have to think about emotional nakedness because your heart IS the center of your emotional nakedness.

If you’d like to know more about this incredible transformational dating process and even more life changing secrets, I have a gift for you.

This 45-minute webinar is absolutely free and will open the door to your life-changing journey.

Book your spot here.

The women I coach come to me because what they are doing is not working, and the results they get from my program are astounding. 

70 % of them find the love of their dreams within 3-12 months.

If you’re ready to stop doing what isn’t working and finally find something that does, book a breakthrough call now and let me tell you how it can happen.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Nakedly yours,

Slay Your Dating Dragons

Hello, Naked Daters.

The journey to find true love is and always has been a hero’s journey, and today I want to give a shout out to all of you who are bravely on the path.

You are on a quest with many levels and plenty of dragons to slay along the way. 

If you’ve been single for a long time, chances are you’ve already slayed a few. You survived some bad relationships, regained your energy, and have put yourself back out into the unruly kingdom of dating.

And because you’ve done some work, you figure you should be good to go.

Still a lot of times you end up at a big table in front of an empty plate pounding your knife and fork…

…and waiting for a magic feast to appear. 

And that’s just not how it works.

Just the other day, a client of mine said to me six weeks through my 6 month program, “I’m ready and I want it now!”

If you are feeling that way right now, you are likely fighting the same insidious mid-level dragon my client is fighting: IMPATIENCE.

In fact, that very feeling is a telltale sign that you are not ready.

So I will tell you the same thing that I told her. “If you were ready, you would already have met the guardian of your soul.”

When we are ready, things come to us. We attract them into our lives. That’s how it works.

You can want it until you’re blue in the face, but that doesn’t mean you’re ready to have it.

And you can’t force it to happen. You don’t get to just decide when your partner shows up. 

However, there are some things you can do to move things along on your end:

1. STOP WANTING

I know this sounds insane – because, of course, you want to find love. But wanting something to happen is passive. 

To move energy and make things happen faster you need to move into action. 

To do that, you can begin to focus your energy on evolving yourself into the person that you need to become to attract the partner of your dreams.

2. OPEN YOUR HEART TO MAKE SPACE FOR RECEIVING

Becoming the woman you need to be to attract true love into you life starts with using your dates as stepping stones to love.  Every date, good or bad, is an opportunity for you to see how you are blocking love. The goal is to learn how to take care of yourself emotionally while opening your heart to receive love.

Each date is a chance to…

get naked emotionally and ask for what you want, 

be yourself and let your dates be themselves,

become kinder and even more compassionate to others and yourself,

and learn how to listen better with an open mind and an open heart. 

If you do that, you will open up the space around your heart and you will attract love faster.

3. BE PATIENT

I know it sounds counterintuitive, but the more patient you are the faster it will happen.

When I was dating, one of the hardest parts of that process for me was t keep myself out there and stay positive and optimistic when I didn’t feel like I was getting the results I wanted.

I had to keep humbling myself and reminding myself that I didn’t get to decide when I was ready. That was up to the universe or the powers that be.

I had to accept that, when my true love did come into my life, it would be the reward for all the hard work I’ve done. That this would be the universe saying to me, “OK, now you’re ready.”

If I had met my husband, Benjamin, as the woman I was earlier in my life, he would not have been attracted to me. I was a very different person then—uncomfortable in my own skin, inexperienced in the ways of men, and emotionally unintelligent.

Using my dates as stepping stones to love, allowed me to grow up and become the woman I am today. I stopped dating like a teenager and became a real woman who could hold her own with a real man.

By the time I met Benjamin, two years and 96 first dates later, I was ready.

Don’t fight the process.

Allow yourself to learn and grow from each dating experience.

You can bang your knife and fork on the table for a lifetime waiting for a magical feast to appear.

OR…you can gather the ingredients and the recipes to create your own feast.

If you want to learn more about how I can help you get out of the quicksand once and for all and find the guardian of your soul, watch my webinar here.

And this magical link will book you a FREE 1 on 1 breakthrough call to get you started. 

This stuff is SO HARD to navigate on your own. I can help you get there way faster than you can on your own.

See you on the path, heroes. You know where to find me.

In Love and Nakedness,

All you want for Christmas is true love

Let me begin by saying that, if you’re miserably single this holiday season, there’s no need to be shy about it…at least, not with me.

Please know that I have all the love and respect in the world for you.

I’m especially glad you’re here reading this blog post… 

because I happen to have made some HOPE-SPIKED HOLIDAY PUNCH, and I bet you could use a glass.

You see, it was during an especially sh*tty holiday season that my whole love life changed.

I had spent so many holidays alone that I finally reached my limit and vowed to figure this out.

Visions of my past failures, my disappointment in myself, and fear about the future were pounding at my door like the ghosts that visited Ebenezer Scrooge.

The ghosts of the past showed me that, even though I had tried so hard to find true love, even though I wanted it SO BADLY…

…what I was doing hadn’t worked.  

I couldn’t spend more hours at the therapist’s office, do more workshops, or even read more books. I had done all of those things to no avail. 

If I wanted to attract the kind of man that I dreamed of, I needed to start going on dates, facing my fears and be open to change. 

There were no love coaches at that time so I looked to the best life coaches, teachers, mentors I could find. But I didn’t just work on me. I took what I was learning from them and I applied it directly to dating.

I’m not going to lie. It was hard. I had to do ‘the work,’ and it took me eight years.

Eight years speed dating, online dating, offline dating, you name it.

Trying and learning, trying and learning. Frustration and a lot of tears.

That eight years of problem-solving and struggle not only brought me to the most perfect magical love, my Benjamin…

…but it also formed the heart, guts, and bones of my amazingly powerful 3-month coaching program.

For 17 years now I have been a love coach and have had the profound gift of helping hundreds of women just like you find deep and lasting love. 

And not just love. Weddings and babies. Hundreds of them.

Not only does my program work, but I can also show you in just three months time what it took me eight years to figure out:

How to take down your emotional walls once and for all so you can stop spinning your wheels out in the dating world and attract the guardian of your soul.

So if you are fed up like I was, watch my free 45-minute webinar.

When you’re ready, book a call with me so that I can show you how I will guide you to the guardian of your soul.

Life is too short to struggle through this stuff on your own.

Think about it. If I’ve been around in Scrooge’s time, he and Belle might still be together.

Just sayin’.

Wishing you a very Happy Holidays, and here’s to all that’s possible in 2020!

Yours in Yuletide Nakedness,

Are YOU Not Showing Enough Interest

One of the biggest mistakes I made when I dated was that I didn’t show men I was interested in them. And, if I wasn’t showing interest, there was no way to create a spark. In retrospect, I can see that I didn’t get asked out on many second dates because men couldn’t tell if I was interested in them. Is this happening to you?

Women tell me all the time that they rarely meet men they’re attracted to. I get that. We all have our preferences for what we are looking for in a man. But that might not be the only thing that’s going on. Like me, you might have walls up that are protecting you from getting hurt. When you go on dates, it might feel like you aren’t attracted to any of the men you meet, but what’s really happening is that you are walled off and protecting yourself from getting hurt again. The only men that seem to get through that wall are the ones who feel familiar and are bad for you.

It took me years to remove the wall around my own heart. For years it seemed like I just wasn’t attracted to many men, but now I can see that it was my own fear that was keeping me from opening up and connecting with them. As I have become less guarded and more comfortable with men, I find so many more of them attractive. I am not saying that all of these guys were marriage material. They weren’t. But I can now see that I wasn’t even giving them a chance.

You might really want to have a man in your life, but you need to be honest and ask yourself if you are blocked and afraid of getting hurt.

All of us have been rejected by someone we love and we are afraid of getting our hearts broken again. It might have been your parents or the kids at school who hurt you. Maybe it was a lover, a boyfriend, or an ex-husband who betrayed your trust and broke your heart. Once this happens, it isn’t easy to trust again.

The hard part about breaking this pattern is that it really seems like you are not attracted to the men you’re meeting. The only way to shift it is to start admitting that you are playing a part in this equation. You need to set an intention to be more open and playful and open on your dates. We all want an instant spark, the kind we see in the movies. But if you aren’t connecting with any of the men you meet, you need to consider that you might be blocked and take steps to initiate a connection even if it isn’t there.

This last time when I dated, I made a conscious choice to keep my heart open. I went on dates with different men, many who were not my usual type. Because I stayed open, if it wasn’t a match, it was fine. I would just tell myself that, with each date, I was one step closer to one that was.

The more different types of men I dated, the more comfortable I became with men, and the more I was able to open up.

To truly open your heart, you need to throw away your list of requirements. Sure, I still had preferences and I knew the bar was high. But the truth is, if I knew everything to look for and how to find it, I would have already found my partner.

I didn’t know what my love was going to look like. I had no idea that my husband was going to be a bodyworker. I didn’t know he was going to be divorced and drive an old vintage car and live in a rental house.

If you’ve got that list, where the man you’re looking for needs an advanced degree, must be 6’ with a full head of hair, drive a fancy car, own a home, be at the top of his field, etc……..

…you are creating an impossibility.

So open up, get interested, and most of all SHOW interest. When you show up with open space in your heart and room to be surprised, that is when the magic happens.

If you are sick and tired of floundering out there, let’s get you some help. I know it is scary to think of facing this head-on, but I can tell you that what’s on the other side for you is beyond your wildest dreams.

If you haven’t already, check out my webinar. If it speaks to your heart, book a call.

I made it to the other side and have spent the last 17 years in the most magical relationship, and that is what I want for every woman on the planet.

Reach out, I look forward to connecting with you!

Yours in Nakedness,

The Gifts of Aunt Ruth

My mother died of breast cancer when I was 15 years old. There’s a lot that has been said about motherless daughters, and how much we struggle to find our way.

When I lost my mom, I also lost my inborn roadmap for how to be in the world.

So, I made it a point to develop bonds with women who I felt could show me how to become a quality woman.

Nobody modeled this for me more lovingly and beautifully than my Aunt Ruth.

Aunt Ruth was extraordinary. There’s no telling what she would have become today but, like most women back then, she was a housewife and mother.

Aunt Ruth was a beautiful woman on the outside, but there was so much more to her than that. There was something about Ruth that made everyone want to be around her. 

The most striking thing of all about my aunt was the effect she had on men. They adored her. She had a natural feminine essence that made men seek out her company.

I always admired that about her. 

When I was younger, I didn’t have a sense of my own feminine essence. I didn’t know how to make men feel comfortable and at ease with me.

But Aunt Ruth just did it naturally. As far as men were concerned, if Ruth was in the room nobody else mattered.

I had to find out what exactly this power was that Aunt Ruth had over men, so I asked the person who could explain it the best, my uncle Sid. 

“Uncle Sid, what is it about Aunt Ruth? Why do men just love her?“

My uncle said, “She’s beautiful inside and out. But very few women who are as beautiful as her are also as kind as her. She has a unique blend of beauty and kindness that is very attractive to men. I knew when I met her I had to act fast because so many men were attracted to her. If I turned my back at a frat party, there would be five or six men all around her in no time.“

Towards the end of her life, I visited Aunt Ruth and I had the opportunity to hear Ruth and Sid’s love story from her side. They met when she was only 15-years-old. I asked her if she regretted meeting Uncle Sid when she was so young.

She looked me straight in the eye and said, “Lisa, whatever happened good or bad, I was one lucky Jew girl…“

and that reminded me of the other reason why men loved Ruth:

She kept a dry sense of humor, but she was a straight shooter and she wasn’t afraid to call it like it was. She was also a shrewd judge of character and didn’t suffer fools lightly.

These are just some of the extraordinary gifts that Aunt Ruth gave me. She not only showed me how to be in the world but she showed me how to be with men. I will always be so grateful for that.

In one of our final late night conversations, we were sitting around talking about relationships and men and connection. At one point, Aunt Ruth said, “Lisa, how did you get so smart? I am 90-years-old and I’m still trying to figure this all out?“

Then she added, “I know that you were Judy’s little girl, but you’re my Lisa.“ 

The beauty of that moment was that she was seeing in me the gifts that I got from her…and she thought they were gifts that she was getting from me.

Feeling loved and feeling seen is so important in being able to become the women we want to become.

Think about the women who have come through your life. The ones that made a mark on you and molded you into the woman that you are today. 

Maybe your mother died or maybe she isn’t the mother you wanted, but look at all the amazing women who are around you. There might be someone in your life right now who can teach you how to become the woman you want to be. It can be a sister, a friend, a boss, a mentor, or a coach.

Set an intention to spend time with those women so you can deepen those relationships and open yourself to the gifts they have to give you.

Dating can feel hard, but you don’t want to settle. You deserve an extraordinary love. 

Don’t keep struggling and suffering out there in the dating world trying to figure this out by yourself. I didn’t get there on my own and you don’t have to either. 

I’d love to share the gifts of my Aunt Ruth and some of my own wisdom that I’ve gleaned along the way with you. 

If you’re tired of struggling and wasting time and you REALLY want to find the guardian of your soul, then I have a FREE webinar for you. It’s only 45-minutes and it will change your life.

If you like what you hear, book a breakthrough call and I will show you how to use your feminine powers to attract the man of your dreams.

Just this morning one of my clients said to me, “Lisa, before I met you I never had a role model to show me how to be kind and gentle with men. Thank you for being that woman for me.”

Don’t miss my webinar! The gifts of Aunt Ruth need to be shared!

Yours in Nakedness,

Share Your Head BEFORE You Share Your Bed

You’re on a date and the chemistry between you is hot. So hot that you find yourself imagining what it would be like to peel that shirt right off him. Naturally, when he proposes taking the date back to his place, you don’t hesitate. After all this is what you want, right?

WRONG! I hate to break this to you but if you’re looking for a committed relationship, you need to put the brakes on when a guy proposes sex. Far too often people are jumping into bed with each other right away (Time Magazine says the average number of dates people have before having sex is 3.53) before establishing any sort of emotional connection. This leads most men to jump ship before a relationship can even get started, and it leaves women feeling used and wondering, “What the hell happened?”

“Sex Becomes the Focus”

What happened is that, by having sex too soon, you make it the focus of your relationship. Don’t let the movies fool you: sex is POWERFUL. Most of the time too powerful for a brand new relationship to withstand. Without a foundation of friendship and shared experiences to lean on, once two people who hardly know each other have sex, what little emotional connection they might have had is lost in sea of hormones and projections.  And in case you haven’t noticed, many men do an about face after you’ve had sex with them. That’s because men KNOW women want relationships. Once they’ve had sex – and there’s been no real emotional investment on their part – they’ll ghost early on because they don’t really want to deal with a commitment. Or, they’ll keep coming back for more sex and you’ll get emotionally attached.

“Separating the Good Guys From the Ones Who Only Want to Sleep With You”

So if you want to find out if that new guy is going to commit to you, one who’s as interested in getting to know what’s in your heart and mind as he is getting you into bed, you need to take sex off the table. At least for a little bit. Why? Because every guy who’s horny and attracted to you sounds the same. This means it’s impossible to tell which guys are really interested in getting to know you from the guys that just want to sleep with you. In the beginning, they’re all going to say, “Babe, you’re the most beautiful woman. I’ve never met somebody like you. You’re so amazing.” So how do you tell the difference between them? By saying no to sex and seeing who sticks around.

“You Learn How to Establish an Emotionally Naked Connection With a Man”

If you’ve been using sex as your primary way of connecting with men (which many women do), you want to put the brakes on sex so you can learn how to establish an Emotionally Naked connection first. You want to learn how to really connect at a deep emotional level so that you can open up to each other honestly and beautifully. That only works if you’re seeing each other with your clothes on… at least for awhile. It’s important to build a strong emotionally connected foundation before you have sex because then you know what you share is genuine and real, and not derived from a set of raging hormones. Getting Emotionally Naked with a man is truly the best kind of naked there is, which is why you need to hold off on getting naked naked.

“You Have to Reject Him Without Making Him Feel Rejected”

How do you that? It’s more than telling a guy that you “want to take it slow.” Even if you talk about taking things slowly, once things start to heat up, most guys will try to make a move. It’s up to you to put on the brakes. And when you do, you have to be firm, yet soft. You have to reject him without making him feel rejected.

Men are unbelievably sensitive, and they hate the idea of being rejected as much as women do. You can say to him very playfully, “Wow, you know, you are so hot, and there is nothing I’d rather do that go to bed with you, but the truth is, I’ve tried that before. It doesn’t work, so I want to take the time to get to know somebody first.” Say this in a kind way. Build his ego up, and give some genuine compliments. “You’re really hot. You’re such a great guy. I’d like to just jump into bed with you, but I know that doesn’t work.”

It’s okay to let him know there will be an opportunity for sex. But be clear that it’s not going to happen right NOW. It’s not going to happen, hopefully, until you’ve talked about exclusivity (and you’ll want to watch my video on that).

Ultimately, no one can tell you how long to wait to have sex with a man. You have to decide when the time is right. But I can tell you that it’s best to wait more than 3 or 4 dates to have sex so you can learn how to create an Emotionally Naked connection with a man. You can’t keep using sex as a way to connect because chances are, you’ll never get the type of relationship you REALLY want and deserve that way. Trust me, if I could tell my younger self this advice, I would!

Share your head before you share your bed and you will find out if this man really is as interested in your heart and mind as he is with your body. Because you deserve someone who is.

XO,

Don’t Let This Be YOU!

Remember when you put your mom’s lace handkerchief on your head and then walked down the hallway, step-touch-step-touch with a broom? 

Maybe you had on your grandma’s flowy nightgown and let its extra length drag behind you like a train on a Christian Dior gown.

In the magical lore of love, nothing set your little girl heart aflutter like dreaming of your wedding day.

Mine too… which makes it even more tragic that 50% of all first marriages end in divorce.

Yeah, sorry to bring it down. But strap in; it gets worse.

Sixty-seven percent of second marriages and seventy-four percent of third marriages end in divorce.

That means that after the first one, there is an even greater chance your next marriage will fail.

Why do the divorce rates keep going up? 

Here’s the deal. When most people go through a divorce, they’re filled with heartache, rejection, and disappointment.

So, they read a few books, go to some counseling, and then they start to feel better and think they’ve got it all figured out. But 67 or 74 times out of 100 they haven’t solved anything. Even if they understand what went wrong, that doesn’t mean they know how to stop it from happening again.

You don’t want to become another victim of delusional optimism. This is when you TELL yourself that you’ve learned your lessons and that it won’t happen again, but you have no real proof that you won’t do it again. 

I get it. You need to feel positive and hopeful, but you also must be realistic. 

If you’ve had one failed relationship after the other, you must do the deeper work to stop it from happening again.

What is “the deeper work”? 

First, you must hire the best dating expert so you can get a true picture of what’s been stopping you from finding love. Trying to do this on your own is like Googling abdominal pain and deciding you have indigestion only to wind up in the emergency room the next day with a burst appendix. You might think you know what you’re doing wrong, but I wouldn’t count on it.

Next, you need a proven, step-by-step strategy for going on dates and breaking the repeating patterns that have been keeping you stuck. Just because you tell yourself you need to look for different qualities in a partner, doesn’t automatically mean you are going to be attracted to someone who has those qualities. It isn’t easy to switch from being attracted to narcissistic, emotionally unavailable, anxious, or avoidant partners to being attracted to ones who are available and secure. In the beginning, people who are safe and ready for a relationship might bore you. You won’t have to work hard to get their attention so they won’t feel as challenging or exciting as unavailable people do. If you aren’t careful, you can easily fall back into old habits. With time, patience, and the right support system, you will meet someone who feels challenging and exciting in a good way. He or she will excite you not by playing games but by holding you to a higher standard and challenging you to become an even better version of yourself. Best of all, this person will make you feel stable and secure. 

I have a very dear friend who’s husband suddenly left her and asked he for a divorce. Despite how beautiful, intelligent, and extraordinary she is, she just couldn’t see what he was trying to tell her for two years.  She sees it now, but it’s too late. The saddest part is that she’s been here before.

You don’t want this to be you. You don’t want to go into your next relationship with the same behaviors that brought about the demise of your last one.

That’s where I come in.

As a dating expert and master coach, I do more than just help you see what went wrong. In my three-month program, I take you by the hand and help you dismantle these destructive habits step-by-step.

I give you a proven method to stop finding a partner to play the same dysfunctional game with, and start finding the guardian of your soul.

My clients are smart successful women who come to me with baggage and scars and hopes and fears, and as they go through this process, they have amazing transformations. Now they have a recipe and roadmap to attract their true soulmate.

And that’s exactly what they do. In the most amazing way. Many of them find it before my 3-month program is even over.

You can too. If you’ve been through a divorce, I know you never want to go through that again. You don’t want to risk becoming another statistic.

You could keep trying to do this on your own. But first, I want to ask you one question

If you met the man of your dreams tomorrow, how much time would you have left to spend with him?

Twenty years? Thirty? Fifty, if you’re lucky? Those years go by in a heartbeat, and I know you don’t want to waste another moment of your precious time.

If you haven’t seen my free webinar yet, check it out. If you like what you hear, you can book a personal call with me and I will tell you how we can make that childhood wedding dream come true!

I look forward to hearing from you!

Yours in Nakedness,

How and When to Have the Exclusivity Talk

So you’ve been out on a number of dates with a guy. You’ve slept together, you text daily, maybe you even met his friends or his mom. You might even have vague plans scheduled in the future – like attending a concert or going to a special event together. Still, you remain in dating limbo. You’re wondering, “Where is this going?”

Here’s what you need to understand: when it comes to dating and commitment, women and men see things very differently from each other. Women need to know what page they’re on with the man they’re dating thanks to this ingrained time clock that’s constantly ticking and telling us, “We should be monogamous and exclusive by such and such a time.” However, men don’t have this clock. They’re running on “man time.”

How Men and Women see “Getting Exclusive”

If you have sex after the third date, a man is just still thinking that you’re enjoying getting to know each other, that you’re having sex and fun and that you’re just dating. A woman, on the other hand, after she’s slept with a man, and certainly after five or six dates, starts to already think they are heading toward an exclusive relationship.

Women start to get very excited about this possibility. But for a guy, getting exclusive is a big decision. When he hears exclusivity, he’s thinking of spending holidays together, meeting each other’s family, and planning trips together. Then he thinks, “Oh my God, maybe she’s going to even talk about moving in together.” Yes, ALL of these things are running through his mind when he hears the word “exclusive.” He doesn’t hear, “Let’s keep dating and getting to know each other.” He hears meeting the family, making plans, hanging out together, planning a future together. While dating might be manageable for him, “being exclusive” is a whole other ball game.

Sex Doesn’t Mean Commitment

This is why it’s so important not to sleep with someone on the third or fourth date.

I’ve seen so many women get themselves into situations with men who won’t commit to them but then they’re sexually involved and, so, of course, they’re starting to attach, and it’s not good.

In fact, I had one client who was sleeping with a man, and then she asked him for exclusivity, but he said he wasn’t ready for that. Later, she found out he was seeing other people, and she was deeply hurt because she had put herself in a bad spot by both sleeping and becoming emotionally invested in a man who wouldn’t commit to her.

That’s why I recommend to clients that you’ve got to say to a man you’re dating, “Hey, I would love to sleep with you, you’re hot. It’s hard for me to say no, but I need to be in an exclusive relationship before I do that.”  (Read my Share Your Head Before You Share Your Bed post to find out why putting off sex is so essential in getting the relationship you deserve.)

If You Want to Know, Ask

A lot of women are scared of having “the talk” with a man because not only is it open and vulnerable – or emotionally naked – but they might hear something that they don’t want to hear, i.e. the man they’ve been sleeping with for months doesn’t want to be exclusive. Or maybe he does want to be exclusive, but he’s scared to bring it up because he thinks it’s too soon and it’ll scare you away.

This is precisely why it’s so important to have this conversation. You have a movie playing in your head. He’s got a movie playing in his head. And the thing is, most people don’t share their movies. They don’t talk about this stuff, and so they’ve got completely different movies going on and you’ve got to share your movies and see if you can get in the same movie together. If not, it’s time to switch to another channel. You don’t want to keep investing your time, energy, and body, to someone who doesn’t want the same type of relationship that you do.

How to Have “The Talk”

Let’s assume you’re bringing up the conversation of exclusivity before you have sex, which is what I recommend. So you’ve dated for a few weeks, maybe even months, and you know what you want – exclusivity – so now it’s time to bring it up. Don’t give ultimatums or ask him what he wants. You must start from your own perspective. Say something like, “I am really enjoying getting to know you and I’ve decided that I don’t want to see other men. I really want to take time to get to know you and so I’ve pulled my profile down and I just want to enjoy dating you and seeing where this goes.” And then, you pause. A little silence is a good thing, so just be quiet and create that space for him to come forward and tell you how he’s feeling.

You want to pay attention to his response. Does he freak out? Does he say, “Wait a minute, I’m not ready to be exclusive, I just want to date.” Or does he say, “Hey, I really love getting to know you and yeah, I’d love to be exclusive. I just thought maybe it was too soon to ask.” Or maybe he’ll say to you, “I really like you, but I want to take it slowly, so let’s date a little bit longer and check in with each other.”

Whatever his response might be, now you know where you stand on being exclusive, and you can either move forward in a committed relationship, or you can move on and find the right person who will want to be exclusive with you. Because clarity only brings you closer to the loving commitment you deserve.

Yours in Nakedness,