Being single in your 40s and 50s can come with a plethora of unsolicited advice from friends and family. The advice can range from the pitying kind:
“Oh, I am so sorry you have to date again. I would NEVER want to date again at this point in my life. If something ever happened to my husband, I know I would just stay single forever.”
To the bossy kind:
“You know what you need to do is take up hobbies where there are lots of men. Here, I know the perfect board for you to volunteer at — this University Venture Fund. It’s practically all men involved there. Don’t worry that you know nothing about what they do; just do it. Here, I’ll text my friend right now that you’re coming to the next meeting.”
To the desperate-to-have-you-back-in-a-relationship kind (because they want so badly for you to be able to hang out with them as couples again):
“Do you think you’re being too picky? Maybe you should go out with that one guy again. He seemed nice.”
And then, of course, you will inevitably get advice from other single women you meet, suggesting that online dating is the only way to meet a man at this point in life and that no matter how much you may hate it, you have to do it anyway or else you’ll risk being single forever. This advice is often accompanied by suggestions that maybe you need to change your pictures or write different things on your profile.
The implication of all of this advice has one common theme: everyone is suggesting to you that you need to change something outside of yourself, something external, to attract love.
So, here’s a little secret I’m going to share with you: they couldn’t be more wrong. We live in a world created of energy. Quantum physics has taught us that. We are, all of us, at our smallest particles, energy waves rather than the solid matter we appear to be (if you’ve never heard this before, look it up; it will blow your mind!). When we shift our energy, we shift our reality.
That explanation might seem a bit far-fetched to some of you reading this. So, instead, maybe think about it this way: when someone walks into a room with you in a bad mood, can you sense their mood before they even speak? And similarly, when someone enters the room in a good mood, you can feel it, right? Sure, some of it is reading their body language, but notice how you don’t just read their body language and know how they’re feeling—you sense their mood, and it impacts yours, shifting how you feel. You will then behave differently with the person in the excited good mood than you will with the bad mood person. You may even want to leave the room with the latter because you don’t want to be “brought down” by them.
Our emotional state influences our energy, and our energy, in turn, shapes our behavior. It doesn’t matter what profile pictures you had up online; if your energy is closed off and guarded or, conversely, overly eager and desperate to be liked when you arrive at the date, it’s your energy that will sabotage the encounter. As humans, we are highly adept at picking up on each other’s subtle energy, primarily unconsciously. You tend to back away from individuals in the Starbucks line who exude tension. You gravitate back to the same checkout line with the cashier who consistently greets you with a smile and friendly words. If you pay attention, you’ll notice that your mood starts to lift even before you approach that person; your mood shifts in anticipation of their positive energy.
When it comes to dating, these subtle, unconscious energy patterns can be detected even online, believe it or not. While there are a multitude of neurological functions in the brain that explain scientifically how and why this occurs, a topic I delve into extensively on my social media channels, the main point I want to emphasize today is why these patterns are the sole aspect you should focus on when seeking to transform your dating life. Forget every piece of advice you’ve ever received about altering your actions or words to “land a man.” Instead, shift your attention to what you’re doing and saying within yourself.
Bring your internal self-talk and unconscious energy vibrations to consciousness. Start observing them, and you might be very surprised to find that you wouldn’t want to date yourself either! You might be the person in line at Starbucks that other people are giving a wide berth to.
I know this might be a tough pill to swallow, and some of you will have just been hit with a harsh truth that you may want to deny. But the good news is, it’s all fixable, and it doesn’t have to take spending years in therapy talking it over.
Meanwhile, some of you are reading this thinking, “But I’m not the person in the Starbucks line! I’m more like the cashier who everyone likes. I smile warmly all the time and go out of my way for others, even at my own expense!”
“Ah, but there’s a problem with this energetic style too, especially when it comes to dating. When you’re constantly people-pleasing and trying to go above and beyond to accommodate your partner’s needs, you send a subtle signal that you don’t value your own needs and feelings. Men, I believe, are generally better at reading subtle energy than women. I think it’s because women tend to overthink things, talking themselves out of the subtle things they’re sensing. Men, on the other hand, have been socialized to be more decisive and go with their gut instincts. If a man picks up on the sense that you don’t value yourself by not upholding boundaries around your needs and wishes, he will be turned off. Why? Because his unconscious mind will be thinking, ‘Something must be wrong with her.’ I promise you, he won’t walk away from the date thinking, ‘Wow, she went out of her way to meet me for a date; she must not value herself, and I’m only attracted to women who value themselves.’ Instead, he’ll walk away with a nagging sense of something feeling ‘off’ or telling himself he just doesn’t feel ‘chemistry’ for you even though he had a nice time.
This energetic stuff is so deeply subconscious that most people will go through their entire lives without any awareness of it at all. That’s why most of the advice you’ll receive around improving your life will come from others telling you about things you should do differently or ways you should show up differently. Hopefully I have you at least somewhat convinced at this point that if you want to attract in different experiences in your dating life, you need to start showing up differently. So the question now is- how?
Don’t waste another second fretting over which app is the best to find a guy your age. Instead, shift all your extra attention and energy inward. What are you saying to yourself about dating? Are your self-talk positive and hopeful or negative and dread-filled? What kind of energy are you projecting if most of your thoughts are the latter? What emotional state do you primarily reside in when it comes to contemplating your single status? Desperate and fearful of being alone forever? Bitter and resentful of the path life has taken you down? Angry and blaming others for your situation?
You need to start by taking inventory of what’s REALLY going on in your head and making a conscious decision to take full responsibility for your thoughts. You can’t change the past, you can’t change others, but you CAN change your perspective and your reactions. You can make a firm decision to take full responsibility for manifesting your dream life and you can decide that you will no longer let the advice of others dictate what you believe is possible for you. You don’t have to settle for less than the love you most desire. You just have to decide you are willing to do the internal work to clear anything getting in your way of attracting that right person into your life.
Once you’ve decided that you’re the creator of your own destiny, the next step is to dream up what that destiny will look like. Set an intention. You wouldn’t embark on a journey without a clear destination, would you? When setting an intention, it’s crucial to get incredibly clear about what you want. If you have a vague idea of what you’re looking for, you’ll attract guys who vaguely possess some of the qualities you desire. Clarity is paramount. Don’t worry about how you’ll meet him; focus instead on how you’ll feel when you’re with him. Become quiet and feel into that future vision of yourself already with your dream guy. If you’re not visual, try writing about it, using the present tense as if it’s already happened and focusing on how it makes your body feel to be in that future. Our minds and bodies don’t distinguish between an imagined experience and a real one. That’s why a sexual fantasy triggers a biological response in you. The more time you spend envisioning how you’ll feel once you get what you want, the more you move into the energy of already having it. This energy will radiate outward, attracting a multitude of men, eventually leading you to the right one.
So, you’ve created the vision – what’s next? Clear the blocks! Chances are high that when you meditate on your visions, all sorts of doubts, fears, and feelings of ‘who am I to think I can get this’ will arise. You MUST clear these blocks, or you will never shift into the energy that will attract love. In our universe, like attracts like. If you don’t feel worthy, you’ll attract others who don’t feel worthy either, but they’ll most likely appear as men who use you for a time to try and improve their own insecurities but will move on from you once they realize you can’t give them enough validation to make them feel better about themselves. No one can provide that validation; he can only do that for himself, but he may never learn that in this lifetime.
You on the other hand, know that once you’ve cleared away all your feelings of unworthiness, self-love and a strong sense of your own worth will naturally resurface – it’s inevitable because it’s been there inside you all along. You were born with it and spent your first few years as your unmasked, lovable self, but it gradually became obscured by external messages from others and society that it was somehow not okay to simply be you.
You’re going to examine all those blocks and clear them out one by one, recognizing them for what they are—nothing more than false beliefs you adopted to feel safe as a child. Now, as an adult, you can reevaluate those beliefs and use EFT tapping to clear any strong emotions that arise when you think about them. Once the emotional charge dissipates, you’ll realize that these beliefs simply have no power over you, and you’ll chuckle at the fact that they ever did.
Now, I am not saying that this process is easy by any means. I can tell you that EFT tapping will make it tremendously easier than trying to do it through willpower alone. However, it is still a process that requires focus and effort. It’s a significant unwiring of everything you have come to believe about your reality and how to create change. So it will take some persistence. But what I can tell you for certain is this: if you dedicate yourself to this process—create the vision, clear the blocks, create a clearer vision, clear the newly discovered blocks, lather, rinse, repeat—not only will you attract the healthiest and most loving supportive partner you have ever had, but you will also notice that all areas of your life begin to improve, and your overall sense of well-being and peacefulness has profoundly shifted!