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The Queens Are Off to Baggage Reclaim with Natalie Lue!
32 Plays4 years ago
The Queens welcome Natalie Lue! Most famous as the creator of the extremely popular Baggage Reclaim blog in addition to being a published author, podcaster & columnist .
Over the last 15 years, she's focused on helping women break the cycle of unhealthy relationships and the pattern of unhelpful habits so they enjoy more success in different areas of their life. The blog dives deep on topics including emotional unavailability, people pleasing, perfectionism, shady relationships, healing old wounds, and so much more.
https://www.baggagereclaim.co.uk/
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Transcript
Introduction and Patreon Updates
00:00:00
Speaker
Before we get started, I'd just like to tell you about some recent changes we've made to our Patreon.
00:00:04
Speaker
We now have a Discord server that's exclusive for our Level Up and Queen Shit members.
00:00:09
Speaker
So if you'd like to chat directly with the hosts of this podcast and make friends with other like-minded queens, sign up for our Patreon and select either the Level Up or Queen Shit tier.
00:00:19
Speaker
As always, Patreon members have access to weekly bonus content on Fridays.
00:00:23
Speaker
Thanks for listening, queens, and on to the show.
Introducing Guest Natalie Liu and Her Blog
00:00:32
Speaker
Welcome to the Female Dating Strategy, the meanest female-only podcast on the internet.
00:00:36
Speaker
I'm your host, Ro.
00:00:37
Speaker
And this is Savannah.
00:00:38
Speaker
And today we have a much-requested guest by the name of Natalie Liu.
00:00:45
Speaker
Natalie, I just remember...
00:00:47
Speaker
Coming across your blog, Baggage Reclaim, probably, I'm trying to think like 10 years ago.
00:00:52
Speaker
I know that you were like just one of the very first people that claimed, you know, your own space in the sex and dating sphere and specifically talking about creating boundaries, starting to parse out and navigate the more complex parts of emotional engagement with the opposite sex.
00:01:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:11
Speaker
So I think I just kind of wanted to start off by asking what really just inspired you to create
Origins and Impact of Baggage Reclaim
00:01:16
Speaker
this blog?
00:01:16
Speaker
And I've talked, you've probably already talked about this and you have, uh, have like a little blurb on your website, but for people, um, who are not familiar and may not have followed your blog this entire time, can you describe that for us?
00:01:27
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:01:29
Speaker
I have been blogging for just over 17 years.
00:01:33
Speaker
So since June, 2004, and I started off with a personal blog, um,
00:01:40
Speaker
which was called Tired of Men and Other Things That Drive a 20-something Around the Twist.
00:01:46
Speaker
And it was...
00:01:50
Speaker
Relatable.
00:01:52
Speaker
How apt.
00:01:52
Speaker
And it was really, that started from, I went on a date, it was early June, 2004.
00:02:00
Speaker
And I remember coming home and being like, geez, like, what is up with you?
00:02:03
Speaker
You say that you want to go out with a nice guy.
00:02:06
Speaker
And then when you do go out with one, you're bored to tears by them.
00:02:11
Speaker
You're like, you're always going out with the more exciting, but annoying guy type of thing.
00:02:16
Speaker
And I had...
00:02:18
Speaker
I read an article about blogging in the Observer newspaper, which is part of The Guardian.
00:02:22
Speaker
And
Realizations About Relationship Patterns
00:02:23
Speaker
it was in like April 2004.
00:02:24
Speaker
And I literally cut the article out.
00:02:28
Speaker
It was on the front page.
00:02:29
Speaker
And I remembered it at four o'clock in the morning when I had bubble guts because the guy had taken me on a cheap date, like a really dodgy Mexican place that I had an upset stomach in the middle of the night.
00:02:39
Speaker
Oh, no.
00:02:39
Speaker
Oh, no.
00:02:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:42
Speaker
So I had plenty of time to think.
00:02:45
Speaker
And I just, for some reason, the article sort of popped into my mind.
00:02:49
Speaker
And 10 minutes later, I had a personal blog, as I said, called Tired of Men.
00:02:53
Speaker
And I really used that, not because I was there sitting there man bashing, but I was, I wanted to talk about my frustration with myself and with relationships.
00:03:01
Speaker
And I spent
00:03:03
Speaker
Over a year, telling stories about, you know, commuting in London and, you know, being involved with a guy who had a girlfriend and strange guys that chatted me up and all the rest.
00:03:13
Speaker
And it was when I had really a bit of an awakening and a pepnish sort of a year later, I'd been seeing a guy for about, and I say seeing in the loosest possible terms, seeing a guy for about five months.
00:03:27
Speaker
And then he was like, oh, wow.
00:03:29
Speaker
I just had a slip and fall and remember that I don't want to be in a relationship.
Cultural Attitudes and Emotional Isolation
00:03:33
Speaker
I'm not ready for a relationship yet.
00:03:35
Speaker
And I remember going onto that blog and talking out loud about my frustrations and saying that I'd had this realization that every single relationship I was ever in was with an emotionally unavailable guy.
00:03:48
Speaker
Typically one that was still attached to the umbilical cord or the apron strings and who they all very, very hard at the beginning chasing, chasing, chasing me down.
00:03:59
Speaker
And they liked me because, you know, they'd say I was ambitious and outgoing and attractive and sexy and blah, blah, blah.
00:04:05
Speaker
And then who would criticize me for that and play head games and all the rest.
00:04:10
Speaker
And inexpressiveness out loud and saying, you know, I have writing about myself for over a year has shown me that I have a problem.
00:04:18
Speaker
I used to think I was somebody who was into monogamy, but I'm realizing I have a problem.
00:04:23
Speaker
I am always with these kinds of guys.
00:04:25
Speaker
It's like, I've got a neon sign in my head and I thought I was weird.
00:04:30
Speaker
Like I did, I genuinely thought that there was something unlovable about
Authenticity and Vulnerability in Relationships
00:04:33
Speaker
me.
00:04:33
Speaker
So you can imagine my shock when I'm inundated with messages from people saying, you're talking about me like you're describing my life.
00:04:41
Speaker
When I talked about daddy issues, when I said, you know, I feel like this runs back to my daddy issues, my mommy issues, because I've gone out with every single, every guy has been a variation of my parents.
00:04:50
Speaker
And I think some of the isolation that women feel in those emotions is because prior to maybe the disposition of the Internet, women were very much made to feel like it was their fault or that they were sort of an isolated.
00:05:05
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:05:06
Speaker
So there's sort of an isolated factor to what we now kind of know is sort of a pervasive attitude that's perpetuated by our overall culture and society, which does privilege men and I'd like to say supports a lot of their...
00:05:22
Speaker
ability to exploit or isolate women or put all their emotional baggage on women or project all of their negative behavior onto women and then use that as a justification to mistreat women.
00:05:33
Speaker
And if you didn't know that that was happening to other women and that a lot of the same things that were being said to you were being said to other women, you would think it was just a personal problem.
00:05:40
Speaker
But now having the bird's eye perspective, you can say, no, this is actually a pervasive cultural thing.
00:05:46
Speaker
Amen.
00:05:47
Speaker
I mean, I just want to do a testify dance like here and all of this because it's like...
00:05:51
Speaker
Because actually that's exactly what it was.
00:05:53
Speaker
You know, I'm 44.
00:05:54
Speaker
I grew up in the cosmopolitan, more magazine, just 17, you know, position of the fortnight.
00:06:01
Speaker
And when you looked at what was in books or what was on the magazine shelves, it was 50 ways to please your man.
00:06:08
Speaker
Every problem was put on some lingerie, sex them up, you know, sweet talk them, whatever it might be.
00:06:16
Speaker
And none of it ever really spoke to my experiences.
Criticism of Media Portrayals of Feminism
00:06:20
Speaker
And I was somebody who was very used to blaming myself.
00:06:22
Speaker
You know, I've been practicing that since I was a kid.
00:06:24
Speaker
So it really parlayed very well into going out, you know, with emotionally unavailable men and realizing, oh, hold on a second.
00:06:35
Speaker
I thought I was weird, but all of these people are saying they're just like me.
00:06:41
Speaker
What's going on here?
00:06:42
Speaker
And about a month later in September, 2005, I started baggage reclaim.
00:06:47
Speaker
And it was because in just those weeks alone, in between me having these realizations and talking out loud about what I was realizing,
00:06:57
Speaker
I wanted to create a space really where I explored these themes in my own life and in other people's lives.
00:07:05
Speaker
And the idea was, is that if I could help at least one person avoid what I had been through, or I can help one person get out of
00:07:14
Speaker
a situation, then I felt like I was giving back in some way because, you know, me writing on the internet and sharing my stories and taking the piss out of myself and, you know, sharing actually the patterns and struggles that I and my family have been through has given me a lot.
00:07:32
Speaker
Like people have really supported me.
00:07:34
Speaker
You know, at the time when I had my epiphany, I had an immune system disease and it was suggestions from readers of my blog that, you
00:07:41
Speaker
helped me to find solutions to that when they were telling me I had to go on steroids for life or die type of thing.
00:07:46
Speaker
And so I was like, okay, I'm just going to talk out loud on what I'm realizing about myself and see if that can help somebody out there.
00:07:56
Speaker
And so here I am like 16, just over 16 years on with baggage reclaim.
00:08:01
Speaker
That can be really powerful.
00:08:02
Speaker
It just takes one person to have the courage to stand up and be honest about their experience.
00:08:07
Speaker
And I think that's, um, that's a criticism we've
00:08:10
Speaker
we've had of mainstream media as well is that they, I, first of all, I think half the time the letters that are being sent in are fake and just a prompt for some of their sex and dating writers to just like quote unquote show their expertise, which is often just, you know, some diploma mill certificate that's essentially meaningless, but also comes from, you know, specific ideological framework that can be very harmful ultimately to women.
00:08:36
Speaker
But I think that,
00:08:38
Speaker
Like you with female dating strategy, there was sort of a meeting of minds and a lot of different women who have now seen each other and said, hey, what's being reflected in our general culture and what's being pushed on us as far as values from even even from so-called feminist media is just not reflective of reality.
00:08:58
Speaker
And when we started to just be honest about these things, that's where the magic started to happen.
00:09:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:04
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
The Importance of Boundaries
00:09:05
Speaker
I think that what I've realized is there's real power in, I know it sometimes gets overused, but there is real power in authenticity and sharing our vulnerability, but not in like one of those unbounded ways.
00:09:21
Speaker
Like you never catch me like online talking about something in this sort of let me vomit it out situation.
00:09:27
Speaker
you.
00:09:27
Speaker
Um, like I, there's, I share in a, in a boundary way, but I also, I find it's really important for me to talk about the things that make us weird, the things that we're absolutely convinced that makes me a weirdo.
00:09:41
Speaker
It makes me unlovable.
00:09:42
Speaker
It makes me an outsider.
00:09:43
Speaker
It makes me abandonable, whatever it might be, because the moment that you open up your mouth,
00:09:48
Speaker
Other people go, oh my gosh, like that's me.
00:09:50
Speaker
Like, I feel like I also speak up for anybody who has actually felt like they've been abandoned.
00:09:57
Speaker
And there's a lot of us that feel that way.
00:09:59
Speaker
And so I speak up for those people who have felt that wound of abandonment, who have what we'd call the mommy issues or the daddy issues, who have less than perfect relationships with their family, who feel embarrassed about the fact that they've never had a good relationship or that they've only had one good relationship.
00:10:17
Speaker
who struggle with friendship, who sometimes cry themselves to sleep after getting home from work because it's like going into flipping warfare every day.
00:10:26
Speaker
And so I'm going to speak up for this because at the end of the day, we give ourselves a hard time and we're like, oh my gosh, why don't I know this?
00:10:34
Speaker
And of course, we've been socialized and conditioned and not just by, like, for instance, who we grew up around, but we've been bombarded with messages from the media through film, TV, books,
00:10:46
Speaker
It's coming at us all the time about what it is to be a woman, relationships and all the rest.
00:10:50
Speaker
If we don't know what boundaries are, values, needs, self-care, feelings, it's because nobody talked to us about it.
00:10:59
Speaker
it's really good that you touched on boundaries, Natalie, because it's something that we try to instill in our followers at FDS is the importance of having boundaries because let's face it, you're right.
00:11:09
Speaker
Like nobody teaches women, especially how to have boundaries.
00:11:13
Speaker
And I feel like our boundaries are tested from the time
Understanding and Expressing Needs in Relationships
00:11:16
Speaker
we were born.
00:11:16
Speaker
We did an episode on like Disney princesses and how a lot of them have really broken and busted boundaries.
00:11:23
Speaker
And there's, there's never a prince in a Disney film.
00:11:26
Speaker
He's always a bum.
00:11:27
Speaker
But yeah,
00:11:29
Speaker
They paid him as a prince because they want to sell you a romance.
00:11:32
Speaker
But really, women, they haven't been taught to have and to, you know, enforce healthy boundaries that not only benefit, you know, them, but also makes them happy.
00:11:44
Speaker
You know, which is the reason why many women, you know, seem to engage in behaviours that ultimately make them unhappy and don't serve them at all.
00:11:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:53
Speaker
I mean, so that leads on quite nicely onto my second question, actually, is, you know, if we don't have a framework for setting and enforcing boundaries as, you know, adult women or as, you know, young women, like how can we begin to set and enforce boundaries in our personal lives?
00:12:08
Speaker
You know, boundaries are a part of everything.
00:12:10
Speaker
And so...
00:12:11
Speaker
as a society, we've actually been taught that no is a dirty word.
00:12:15
Speaker
And also no has become synonymous with boundaries as if to say that's what everything rises and falls on is, is no.
00:12:23
Speaker
But boundaries are as much about what you say yes to as they are about what you say no to.
00:12:28
Speaker
And so boundaries are really about like actually the expression of your needs and your desires and your expectations and your feelings and your opinions.
00:12:38
Speaker
And it's the more,
00:12:40
Speaker
honest and authentic you are about those, especially in those times where it's oh so tempting not to be, is the better boundaries you have.
00:12:48
Speaker
But the problem is, is that we have been taught that no is a dirty word, that no hurts feelings, that boundaries hurt feelings.
00:12:55
Speaker
And so we think that the way to advance ourselves in life is to be whatever other people want us to be, to avoid conflict and criticism, to
00:13:06
Speaker
to be like, oh, I know I'm going to use like my lack of boundaries as a currency.
00:13:13
Speaker
And then because I've basically let you do whatever you want to me, you're then going to feel as if you owe me a relationship.
00:13:22
Speaker
And so now we're in the Olympics of how much have I suffered and what does that entitle me to in a relationship?
00:13:31
Speaker
I feel personally attacked right now.
00:13:34
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that is, it's so true, but it's also because we just don't have the language for an alternative, right?
00:13:41
Speaker
One of the most frustrating parts of, you know, my experience, I think, in the dating space is just, or just growing up female is like having an instinct that something was wrong.
00:13:53
Speaker
That I wanted to put a boundary, but I didn't have the language to articulate why and where, right?
00:14:00
Speaker
And that is, to me, in some ways, feels like that's the next frontier of what...
00:14:07
Speaker
really like feminism or, and then if you're specifically in a sex and dating space, like navigating a sex and dating space is because so often because we don't have any type of valid language or any type of language to describe why something makes us uncomfortable or why we shouldn't do it, then women don't have any tools to push back against narratives that are just sometimes just created out of thin air by, by men.
00:14:29
Speaker
Right.
00:14:30
Speaker
And sometimes it's individual men, but that sometimes it's like institutions, right.
00:14:33
Speaker
It could be academia.
00:14:35
Speaker
It could be,
00:14:36
Speaker
media.
00:14:36
Speaker
It could be all of these structures, which a lot of times just kind of push out these pop psych ideas
Trusting Instincts and Societal Pressures
00:14:44
Speaker
or evo psych ideas.
00:14:45
Speaker
It gets disseminated into our culture.
00:14:48
Speaker
And then women just feel like they don't even have the tools to fight back when something, although it may be light out kind of logically, intuitively feels incorrect to us.
00:14:58
Speaker
Yeah, I think that both men and women are socialized and conditioned to distrust their feelings.
00:15:06
Speaker
But the world is oriented towards men, so it privileges men anyway, regardless of whether you trust or distrust your feelings anyway in the first place.
00:15:16
Speaker
As women, we are...
00:15:20
Speaker
told to be meek and mild and sweet and kind and giving and helpful and accommodating.
00:15:25
Speaker
Very different language to what is said to boys and then men.
00:15:32
Speaker
And what happens then is that in situations where we need to actually trust our instincts, we need to trust our intuition, sometimes
00:15:42
Speaker
actually just need to pay attention to the information that's right in front of us, we then go, oh, that's not very nice what I'm feeling.
00:15:51
Speaker
That's not very nice what I'm seeing.
00:15:53
Speaker
Let me gaslight myself.
00:15:55
Speaker
and shut that all down and pretend that it's something other than that.
00:16:00
Speaker
And some of the worst things that I've experienced, the things that I've struggled with the most is when I knew with every fiber of my being that something was wrong, that I needed to say no, and I went ahead anyway, or I left it almost until the last possible moment.
00:16:22
Speaker
before I let the instincts fully kick in.
00:16:24
Speaker
And I was like, no, I mean, I can remember being, I just turned 18 and I was brought up in Dublin and Ireland.
00:16:31
Speaker
And I came over to London for my 18th birthday.
00:16:34
Speaker
It was like a little while after that.
00:16:36
Speaker
And it was like this in that summer.
00:16:37
Speaker
So it must've been like the summer of, I don't even know when I would have turned 18, summer of 95.
00:16:43
Speaker
Anyway, I'm here in London and not the time of mobile phones.
00:16:47
Speaker
And I had,
00:16:49
Speaker
I don't know.
00:16:50
Speaker
I couldn't remember where to meet my friend and, and I didn't have a mobile phone and I didn't know how to get in contact with them.
00:16:57
Speaker
This guy approaches me by marble arch and obviously can tell that I am a lost and vulnerable woman.
00:17:06
Speaker
And they, you know, bombarding me with chat, talking, talking, talking, and they're walking with me and they're like, oh, you can come to my place and make a phone call.
00:17:13
Speaker
And in my head, I'm going,
00:17:15
Speaker
There's flipping telephone boxes around here.
00:17:17
Speaker
This is England, like red telephone boxes all over the gaff.
00:17:20
Speaker
Like, why would I need to go to this guy's place?
00:17:23
Speaker
But politeness has sometimes been close to being the death of me, where I want to be polite and non-confrontational.
00:17:33
Speaker
And there's almost this fake naivety.
00:17:35
Speaker
Like, I pretend like I don't know what's going down.
00:17:38
Speaker
And so in my head, I'm computing this situation and I can feel my heart racing and I feel like something is not quite right here.
00:17:46
Speaker
I think that this guy's pulling something and he's like, oh, you come to my place.
00:17:50
Speaker
And he's just rushing me.
00:17:51
Speaker
And we're at this, I don't know, like, you know, like those little blocks of flats where it's only like three levels or whatever.
00:17:57
Speaker
I got as far as the doorway of the flat.
00:18:01
Speaker
Okay.
00:18:01
Speaker
Okay.
00:18:03
Speaker
And he opens the door and I glanced these three big beefy guys.
00:18:10
Speaker
And I went, do you know what?
00:18:12
Speaker
I'm just going to go and I said, see it.
00:18:13
Speaker
And I legged it.
00:18:14
Speaker
And I mean, I can sprint.
00:18:16
Speaker
Like I can still, I can actually still sprint pretty fast.
00:18:19
Speaker
I sprinted out of that place so fast.
00:18:21
Speaker
And I remember saying to myself, Natalie, why would you leave it until the absolute last possible fricking moments before you would finally acknowledge that?
00:18:31
Speaker
This is wrong.
00:18:33
Speaker
I don't like this.
00:18:34
Speaker
This feels wrong.
00:18:35
Speaker
I'm getting the freak out of here.
00:18:37
Speaker
And that's a metaphor for how a lot of things went down for me, where I would sometimes, I'd be like the boiling frog.
00:18:44
Speaker
You know, like, you know, they use that, I think, as some sort of analogy about to-do lists, about how the frog literally just knows boiling to the last possible set.
00:18:51
Speaker
That was me.
00:18:53
Speaker
And those allowing me to access my instincts was something that took time because this has been shamed and conditioned out of us over the years.
00:19:03
Speaker
And so when we're sitting there beating ourselves up going, oh my God, like I put myself in that situation.
00:19:08
Speaker
Actually, you passed.
00:19:11
Speaker
your training, the socializing, the conditioning, all those things that people have said to you about how you must be non-confrontational and, you know, be sweet and mean and don't make them feel bad.
00:19:21
Speaker
You know, we could be in a situation with somebody and let's just say, let's just say, let's just call it.
Navigating Dating and Cultural Expectations
00:19:27
Speaker
We're in a situation with a guy.
00:19:28
Speaker
We've been on a date.
00:19:30
Speaker
We now want to go home.
00:19:33
Speaker
This person has a hard-on and we feel that because the person's taken us out to dinner and we spent the evening with them and they now have a hard-on, we feel guilty for not wanting to sleep with them.
00:19:45
Speaker
It's like, oh my gosh.
00:19:46
Speaker
They've created these social contracts that unfortunately, I don't know why, but unfortunately there's not been enough pushback on or like collective pushback on, meaning not just from like an individual perspective,
00:20:01
Speaker
A person, meaning as a person, you obviously only have a responsibility for yourself in that moment to try to push back against that.
00:20:09
Speaker
But in our popular cultural narrative, those ideas get propagated, right?
00:20:15
Speaker
Even by so-called...
00:20:16
Speaker
feminist media.
00:20:18
Speaker
And we've been very much vocal in pointing that out.
00:20:21
Speaker
One of the common criticisms of FDS is women being like, I don't feel comfortable going on a dinner date or if a man pays for you, you're nothing more than a sex worker or a prostitute.
00:20:32
Speaker
And I'm like, who created those narratives?
00:20:35
Speaker
And why did you just hook, line, and sinker accept it?
00:20:38
Speaker
You know, you don't have to accept the things that men say, right?
00:20:40
Speaker
Like they're just saying things to advantage themselves.
00:20:43
Speaker
It's just them taking like a narrative tactical advantage.
00:20:46
Speaker
So
00:20:47
Speaker
It's frustrating because I know exactly the feeling you're talking about.
00:20:51
Speaker
I've been there many times myself.
00:20:53
Speaker
And over time, I've learned personal tools to navigate that and learning how to reassert my boundaries.
00:20:58
Speaker
But there is sort of like this lingering frustration and anger with like the overarching messages that were disseminated to me.
00:21:08
Speaker
You can maybe forgive your parents' ignorance to a certain extent because your parents, whoever they are, they might not be road scholars or doing anything in the sex and dating space or ideological space.
00:21:21
Speaker
But when you start to see that...
00:21:22
Speaker
Often the main purveyors of this are other women in addition to men, meaning like just so quick to adopt whatever narrative comes out and then put like constantly putting in this position where we're slipping and slipping and slipping away from creating healthy boundaries or honoring our instincts about situations.
00:21:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:41
Speaker
I mean, you know, women participate in patriarchy.
00:21:45
Speaker
And so what can happen is that I hear from a lot of women who get some of their most atrocious advice about what to do with themselves from other women.
00:21:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:58
Speaker
And it is so-called well-meaning advice.
00:22:02
Speaker
But it is, maybe you're being picky.
00:22:04
Speaker
Maybe they didn't mean whatever shady thing that it was in that way.
00:22:09
Speaker
And I appreciate that those same people who were given that advice have been socialized and conditioned.
00:22:14
Speaker
But we also have to acknowledge that there's a whole industry that is based on this whole us and them.
00:22:22
Speaker
And then there's this whole like real women and feminist women and others.
00:22:27
Speaker
And
00:22:27
Speaker
What happens is it's almost like weaponizing feminism.
00:22:29
Speaker
And so then it becomes, it's not just guys who would have turned around and said, oh, well, you're nothing better than a sex worker if you allow a man to pay for you on a date.
00:22:39
Speaker
Because actually some of that's coming from women who are then putting out this ideology.
00:22:45
Speaker
And then it becomes like, oh my God, now I have to feel shame about somebody paying for me on a date.
00:22:49
Speaker
First of all, no, we do not.
00:22:52
Speaker
Like what kind of hokey, hokey,
00:22:56
Speaker
stuff is this.
00:22:58
Speaker
And the thing is, is that we're constantly on this back foot because what happens is it's just another variation of rules.
00:23:05
Speaker
And I hear from people all the time, actually both men and women who are like, okay, so how should this go?
00:23:10
Speaker
What should be the timeframe?
00:23:12
Speaker
When should you have sex?
00:23:13
Speaker
When should you do this?
00:23:14
Speaker
And I'm like, may hold up a second here.
00:23:16
Speaker
What you basically want me to do is give you a relationship in a box or a blueprint that says, do this on day one, do this on day seven, do this on this and this and this.
00:23:26
Speaker
And then boom, at the other end of it, it will spit out a relationship.
00:23:30
Speaker
So people are like, well, I don't understand.
00:23:32
Speaker
I waited three months to have sex and it still didn't work out.
00:23:36
Speaker
And yeah,
00:23:37
Speaker
The thing is, these rules do not work because a rule that works for some is the same rule that doesn't work for somebody else.
00:23:43
Speaker
There are people who slept with somebody on the first night and they're still together 20 years later and happily so.
00:23:49
Speaker
And there are some people who slept with somebody on date one and I never saw them ever again.
00:23:53
Speaker
There are some people who waited until marriage and then they got divorced.
00:23:57
Speaker
And there are some people who waited until marriage and they're still together.
00:23:59
Speaker
But we use these rules as a way to control things, but also as a way to...
00:24:05
Speaker
to make people compliant and teach them to feel ashamed.
00:24:09
Speaker
And so when you're, I don't know, setting up whatever your so-called feminist media is, and you're like, okay, so what's going to be my angle here?
00:24:16
Speaker
Oh, I know.
00:24:17
Speaker
I'll say, oh, you're basically being a sex worker, which is just another way of shaming sex workers, by the way, but you're a sex worker because you allowed somebody to pay for you on a date.
00:24:28
Speaker
And it's like, no, I just allowed somebody to pay for me on the date.
00:24:31
Speaker
If we go on another date, I'm probably going to be the one to pay then.
00:24:33
Speaker
where they're setting feminism back, you know, you don't believe in equality because you have gendered expectations.
00:24:40
Speaker
But I think for us, because, I mean...
00:24:42
Speaker
We obviously like do have a kind of a rules-based system or like at least a general rubric in which we discuss how to go about dating.
00:24:53
Speaker
And it's not necessarily like, like meaning we do have a thing called the three month rule, et cetera.
00:24:58
Speaker
But I think that the major difference in what's just become like general feminist media and then us is that like, we're looking at it from like what would put you in the position to have the best outcome.
00:25:10
Speaker
Yes.
00:25:10
Speaker
Like a framework.
00:25:12
Speaker
Yeah, framework.
00:25:14
Speaker
And also self-preservation as well.
00:25:16
Speaker
So if, you know, the likelihood of you sleeping with somebody on the first date who's only interested in sex is slightly higher, it's not a complete guarantee, but it's a lot higher than, you know, somebody who's willing to wait a bit longer or who's willing to work to your timeline as to when you're ready to have sex.
00:25:38
Speaker
Or just gives you enough time to understand if he respects you or not, right?
Intentional Dating and Emotional Readiness
00:25:43
Speaker
A hundred percent because the fingers like what you're talking about is a framework and I'm very, very fond of frameworks and it's not about having hard and fast rules.
00:25:51
Speaker
It's actually about know yourself before you wreck yourself.
00:25:54
Speaker
Because at the end of the day, most of what I hear about in terms of dating and relationships and sex specifically is about what's actually taking place in those first few days, first few weeks, which of course sets the
00:26:11
Speaker
the stage, the tone for what comes next.
00:26:14
Speaker
And it's all about knowing your motivations and being intentional.
00:26:18
Speaker
Because if you want to have sex very early on, do you know what, right?
00:26:22
Speaker
Crack on, right?
00:26:23
Speaker
Go on with your bad self.
00:26:24
Speaker
But at the end of the day, if the reason why you're having sex early on is because you're trying to control things, because you think, well, if I don't have sex and they might not want to have another date with me, or maybe if I do have sex and they're going to think that I'm better than, that's not a reason to have sex.
00:26:38
Speaker
with somebody.
00:26:39
Speaker
It's also about like, if you can't handle the emotional consequences of having sex, you have no business having sex early on.
00:26:47
Speaker
You'd be far better off chilling out, actually taking the time to get to know somebody.
00:26:53
Speaker
And if they don't want to continue hanging out with you because you haven't, as such as we used to say back in the day, put out yet, then so be it because it's never going to work anyway.
00:27:03
Speaker
If that's what the person is basing
00:27:05
Speaker
their decision to have a relationship with you on is whether you're willing to have sex yet.
00:27:09
Speaker
And if you're not comfortable having sex and it's not a mutual decision, one that you will be okay with regardless of whether you continue to see each other or not, then you have no business having sex with that person.
00:27:22
Speaker
And...
00:27:23
Speaker
I think there's a lot of fast intimacy or what I just call intensity that is going on in the early stages in those, basically in those first three months, as you say.
00:27:34
Speaker
And it's not about, oh, what three months is the magic number?
00:27:38
Speaker
It's that actually...
00:27:40
Speaker
If you've got patterns where in the early stages of dating, you tend to move too fast on yourself emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually, sometimes even financially, you'd be amazed what people get up to in the early stages of dating.
00:27:55
Speaker
Then deliberately slowing yourself down, forcing yourself to be aware of what you're doing and being present to what's going on rather than introducing a whole lot of stuff that's only going to trigger you anyway.
00:28:09
Speaker
can, as you say, be a game changer.
00:28:11
Speaker
So the change for me, at least, because I remember hearing advice and actually reading your blog to that, reading your blog and hearing a lot of advice to that effect, meaning, okay, if you know that you get emotionally attached too quickly, then you shouldn't have sex early, et cetera, et cetera.
00:28:28
Speaker
And the biggest problem I found for myself was that
00:28:33
Speaker
It really just, there were so many different circumstances for which that may or may not be true.
00:28:37
Speaker
Meaning like there are some guys I might've had sex with fairly early on.
00:28:40
Speaker
I was sort of indifferent.
00:28:41
Speaker
Um, and there's other men who I had sex with later on and I was more, um, like attached to, but, uh,
00:28:49
Speaker
to be like the big difference and like how I started to think about it, not just from the perspective of like, okay, self-awareness and whether or not I can do this, but essentially like what are actually the risks versus the rewards here as far as what's going to most benefit me in both the short and the longterm versus like the immediate gratification, right?
00:29:12
Speaker
Cause the immediate gratification is obviously like the sex.
00:29:14
Speaker
And then also even not having a clue, um,
00:29:18
Speaker
how to vet for a good sexual partner.
00:29:20
Speaker
Cause like sometimes it's just a very unpleasant surprise.
00:29:23
Speaker
Like if you choose to have sex with a guy, but you think everything else is great.
00:29:27
Speaker
And then you get to the sex and it's either terrible or this guy is just not the type of partner that can be reciprocal in the way you want, even if he does have like all the right tools per se.
00:29:37
Speaker
So I guess it's like my expansion on what you're saying is like,
00:29:40
Speaker
I always wonder how much of an individualistic approach is appropriate.
00:29:46
Speaker
And then where do we find the balance when we're talking about cultural pushback?
00:29:50
Speaker
Because some of the reason why women have sex early against their instinct is not just because they're horny, but because there's become this cultural push towards the idea that, oh, sex should happen by the third date or that being able to have sex without emotional attachment is some kind of feminist virtue that
00:30:06
Speaker
you should strive to be how a lot of men are, right?
00:30:10
Speaker
That a lot of men can have sex early without emotional attachment.
00:30:13
Speaker
But to me, that's just completely divorced from our clear differences in biology.
00:30:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:18
Speaker
Well, I think it's divorced from reality.
00:30:20
Speaker
I mean, believe me, I've heard from plenty of guys as well who struggle, you know, in those sort of early stages.
00:30:26
Speaker
And, you know, it reminds me, I think it's either episode two or episode three of season one of Sex and the City, where it's like trying to have sex like men.
00:30:33
Speaker
And, you
00:30:34
Speaker
realizing, oh, hold on a second, like, why am I trying to pretend that I'm a robot, you know, type of thing.
00:30:39
Speaker
And I like what you said about like how much of this is individualistic.
00:30:43
Speaker
But of course, like this goes back to, we want ideally to have a blueprint and be like, okay, well just follow these steps and do these things.
00:30:51
Speaker
But actually what we have to pay attention to is our boundaries and our values.
00:30:55
Speaker
And then he's like, who are we?
00:30:57
Speaker
Because when we understand ourselves and we do so without shame, then we can make very different decisions about sex.
00:31:04
Speaker
Because, for instance, yeah, okay, there are some people who it's not necessarily that they're a robot, but that they can actually keep a fairly level head.
00:31:16
Speaker
if sex comes into the equation fairly early on.
00:31:20
Speaker
And if you understand that about yourself and you're truly in an honest place of yourself, then that's fine.
00:31:25
Speaker
But I think that what happens a lot in the early stages, and this is where the individualistic aspect comes in, is that as you say, like you almost have the guardrail of understanding your framework, but it is also about
00:31:42
Speaker
being in tune with yourself.
00:31:44
Speaker
So noticing the feelings that are coming up and where you suddenly get this urge to be like, oh, maybe I should sleep with them right now, or maybe I should text, or, you know, maybe I should text with them all day long, or maybe I should
Media Narratives and Casual Sex
00:31:56
Speaker
do this.
00:31:56
Speaker
And it's paying attention to what's coming up for you that helps you to guide your sort of actions and intentions.
00:32:04
Speaker
And something actually that I noticed around sex thing, and this speaks really to the cultural aspect of it as well,
00:32:11
Speaker
is that when I was talking to women who were having sex relatively early on, and some, yeah, were like, well, you know, I'm just somebody who likes to have sex early on, and I need to know about the sexual chemistry, and I was horny or whatever.
00:32:24
Speaker
Great, crack on.
00:32:26
Speaker
But I would hear from them, and I would also hear from some, and there had basically been some sort of anxiety about something going on behind the scenes.
00:32:33
Speaker
But then what was happening is that
00:32:36
Speaker
They were having sex because once they had, they felt as if they were entitled to then finally voice the anxiety that was there before they had sex.
00:32:49
Speaker
Or they felt like that they were now entitled to be like...
00:32:54
Speaker
actually, I want us to be exclusive or I want us to be this.
00:32:58
Speaker
Oh no, it's done it backwards.
00:33:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:01
Speaker
This goes on a lot.
00:33:03
Speaker
And I say to people, well, hold on a second.
00:33:04
Speaker
If you had that anxiety or those questions, why would you try to use sex to solve that?
00:33:09
Speaker
Yeah, that's our experience as well.
00:33:10
Speaker
So that's interesting to hear you say that because that's been a lot of our criticism of the people who blog in the sex and dating space.
00:33:18
Speaker
We have some names on our shit list of like particular people that have been like pushing the like, have sex, right?
00:33:24
Speaker
It's usually guys, you know, you're sexually compatible.
00:33:27
Speaker
And us feeling basically being like, we think a lot of that is a persona that they're putting on rather than reality.
00:33:33
Speaker
They're trying to project the image of an empowered, sexually in control feminist person, but actually crumbling
00:33:39
Speaker
We just did an episode a couple of weeks ago about this writer at Jezebel named Tracy Clark Flory.
00:33:47
Speaker
And she did like an article kind of dragging FDS.
00:33:50
Speaker
But in her own personal history, she'd written a book where she talked about how she was talking about sex and dating and the virtues of hookup culture.
00:33:57
Speaker
But she'd never had an orgasm with any of the guys she had sex with until like the last guy for like years.
00:34:01
Speaker
And I was just like, this feels like such a massive, massive betrayal from other women like that to...
00:34:09
Speaker
And watch them like be in basically denial, antagonize other women who quote unquote don't have sex like them or have sex early or can't have sex early.
00:34:19
Speaker
And then them like saying, I'm doing this because I want to have sex and I don't want to think about it.
00:34:23
Speaker
But then them not being honest about where the consequences have come in or like looking at it from a comprehensive picture of like, was it actually worth it?
00:34:32
Speaker
Well, the fact that they're not even enjoying it.
00:34:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:35
Speaker
Like so many women now on forums, on the, well, you know, it's like Roe, you know, like rightfully said, like the internet is a great place to find like-minded people.
00:34:44
Speaker
But there are so many women finally saying, actually, I think, you know, casual sex is just a complete shit show for me.
00:34:52
Speaker
Like there was a thread on Reddit saying, how many times have you orgasmed with a man?
00:34:57
Speaker
And the numbers were abysmally low.
00:34:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:01
Speaker
And this is from the same place that is very, it talks of a sex positive, you know, pro-pornography, like have all the sex that you want.
00:35:09
Speaker
But the same women on that forum are admitting that they don't orgasm often during sex.
00:35:13
Speaker
It is tough to watch the collective delusion.
00:35:16
Speaker
The mass denial.
00:35:18
Speaker
Yeah, collective amount of denialism.
00:35:21
Speaker
I mean, it's collective gaslighting.
00:35:23
Speaker
We're in the emperor's new, what is it?
00:35:25
Speaker
The emperor has no clothes on.
00:35:27
Speaker
And everybody's going, oh, nobody wants to say the emperor's naked.
00:35:31
Speaker
Like, we're all just trying to pretend that the emperor's still got clothes on when the emperor's there riding along naked down the street.
00:35:36
Speaker
But this is the world that we live in, this great pretense.
00:35:40
Speaker
And it's like, mate, look, I'm not saying that you can't write about sex if you're, like, not having orgasms or you're not hooking up.
00:35:48
Speaker
But there's a lack of authenticity there.
00:35:50
Speaker
And I think as well that...
00:35:53
Speaker
women are undoubtedly, it's literally based on even just how we're socialized and conditioned, we are more likely to be looking for advice and guidance on how to fix ourselves and how to understand relationships and fix our relationships.
00:36:09
Speaker
And so there's a responsibility that comes with that.
00:36:12
Speaker
And when you're then peddling yourself as whatever, and then it turns out there's a whole other thing going on, people feel fooled.
00:36:19
Speaker
by that.
00:36:20
Speaker
They feel hoodwinked because when they themselves are repeating the same lifestyle and having the same experience as her, but not knowing that she's not having any orgasms either, they're sitting there going, what's wrong with me?
00:36:30
Speaker
Exactly.
00:36:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:31
Speaker
That's, that's, that's been the, if people don't understand some of the, the frustration that came from the subreddit, as far as like just hitting back at liberal feminist media, it's because like now you have maybe two generations of women between millennials and Gen Z who were raised in like the quote unquote sex posi culture.
00:36:47
Speaker
It's just increasingly become women who are basically lying, getting media microphones, like talking about how sexually empowered they are.
00:36:55
Speaker
And then some of them, honestly, I doubt the authenticity of most of them, to be honest, at this point.
00:37:02
Speaker
I think most of what's going on is exactly what you're saying.
00:37:05
Speaker
And then a lot of times they hit their mid thirties and then they start writing like their memoirs or doing like an assessment and then saying the exact same shit that we're saying now.
00:37:13
Speaker
So the hoodwinking this is, is part of the, I think the backlash that FDS has come to embody.
00:37:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:21
Speaker
I mean, it's funny.
00:37:22
Speaker
I, for some reason, remember I watched, um, I,
00:37:26
Speaker
The Love is Blind reunion.
00:37:29
Speaker
Ah, what do you think of it?
00:37:30
Speaker
It was messy.
00:37:31
Speaker
I felt like it focused way too much on Elsie.
00:37:35
Speaker
It's like the Elsie show.
00:37:39
Speaker
But what was interesting is when Amber, I think it is, is having that sort of quite tense discussion, I think, with Elsie about, wasn't she involved with Mark or something like that?
00:37:49
Speaker
And every answer was, I'm married.
00:37:52
Speaker
We're married.
00:37:53
Speaker
I'm married.
00:37:54
Speaker
We're married.
00:37:55
Speaker
And the reason why I thought of that when you guys were talking was because I think that there is this real, like, you're doing being a woman wrong type of thing going on.
00:38:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:08
Speaker
And portraying these sort of very idealistic notions of womanhood and how to do it.
00:38:16
Speaker
And then having a whole other thing going on behind the scenes and feeling like, I mean, how are we advancing each other and supporting each other by literally taking our own position and then being like, okay, and now I'm going to use it to shame you.
00:38:30
Speaker
I mean, it doesn't, it doesn't make sense.
00:38:32
Speaker
At the end of the day,
00:38:34
Speaker
I do think that the whole, I've talked a lot about casual relationships and my thing with it is we can do whatever we want relationship-wise, obviously within, you know, legal bounds, but if you can't be casual about your casual relationship, then it's not really a casual relationship.
00:38:53
Speaker
And humans literally cannot cope with being treated casually, right?
00:38:59
Speaker
We do not like to be treated as if
00:39:02
Speaker
I can take you or leave you.
00:39:04
Speaker
You know, little or no care.
00:39:06
Speaker
We can't cope with it.
00:39:07
Speaker
I can remember reading the article, actually.
00:39:11
Speaker
And it was such an epiphany because it's so true.
00:39:13
Speaker
I find that even, you know, guys who are, you know, supposedly, you know, casual partners who don't want you as a girlfriend.
00:39:20
Speaker
They get very possessive over you.
00:39:22
Speaker
Like, they don't like it when you're not available when they are or when you're checking out other guys or when you even talk about other guys.
00:39:29
Speaker
They don't like it at all.
00:39:31
Speaker
But then I was so confused until I read your article that actually the term, like, casual relationship is a complete misnomer because nobody wants to be treated casually.
00:39:41
Speaker
We all want to feel like we matter to people.
00:39:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:44
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:39:45
Speaker
Also, and I was talking about this with a friend recently, and I have long had this theory, even before I started writing online.
00:39:55
Speaker
So because of how we are socialized and conditioned, there's a very, very interesting thing taking place between men and women in these heteronormative relationships where
00:40:08
Speaker
A guy wants to sleep around.
00:40:12
Speaker
My friend said that they're now in San Francisco.
00:40:15
Speaker
Guys are putting on their profile a term saying that they're ethically non-monogamous, which I was like cracking up laughing.
00:40:21
Speaker
I was like howling when she told me this.
00:40:23
Speaker
But the guy wants to...
00:40:27
Speaker
Like say, you know, they're sleeping around or whatever else.
00:40:29
Speaker
Right.
00:40:30
Speaker
But when you look at who the guy wants to be sleeping around with, they want to be sleeping around with women that want a relationship with them.
00:40:39
Speaker
Right.
00:40:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:41
Speaker
And this is because their ego.
00:40:44
Speaker
cannot cope with the idea of actually going out with somebody who would only want them for sex and wouldn't give a hoot about them anyway.
00:40:53
Speaker
So what they actually want is to go out with women who are like, but why can't we just be, why can't it just be me and you?
00:40:59
Speaker
Why can't it just be us being monogamous?
00:41:01
Speaker
They like the feeling of having somebody who wants to have a relationship with them.
00:41:07
Speaker
And, you know, it also goes back to this sort of slut shaming thing as well, where it's like, oh, I do want to sleep around and I want to be a hoe myself, but I don't want to sleep with somebody who I might call a hoe myself.
Recognizing Manipulative Behaviors
00:41:19
Speaker
So I need to be with somebody who is like desperate to have a relationship with me.
00:41:24
Speaker
And that's just messed up.
00:41:26
Speaker
I've often said that men do what they want and then work out the narrative and justification for it later.
00:41:33
Speaker
So often when I hear these like new, but these like new sexual buzzwords are like these new concepts that are coming out.
00:41:39
Speaker
I'm like, okay, so basically a man has some shit he wants to do.
00:41:42
Speaker
And he's trying to create like a framework in which he's not a complete tool bag.
00:41:47
Speaker
Right.
00:41:50
Speaker
perfect descriptor.
00:41:51
Speaker
And you know, the friend who's going out with this so-called ethically non-monogamous person, right?
00:41:58
Speaker
I said, well, hold on a second.
00:42:00
Speaker
They didn't tell you that they were sleeping around.
00:42:05
Speaker
You practically had to shine a torch in their face to get that information out of them.
00:42:10
Speaker
If they're ethically non-monogamous, they would have told you that up front so that you are allowed to make an emotionally responsible decision about what you want to do next.
00:42:20
Speaker
So when they're there, they're there, what are they saying?
00:42:22
Speaker
Something like, oh, you know, I, I know I'm seeing other people, you know, like, I just want to like keep this loose.
00:42:27
Speaker
And she said, I know you're seeing other people.
00:42:30
Speaker
Cause I, when I came round, like she had a date with him, Sunday night date, there was like a condom in the bin from the night before.
00:42:37
Speaker
Oh, FDS rescue mission, Ro.
00:42:39
Speaker
FDS rescue mission.
00:42:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:44
Speaker
I was like, oh, hell no.
00:42:46
Speaker
I could not believe what I was.
00:42:47
Speaker
And, you know, she turns around and says, yeah, I just saw the kind of men.
00:42:51
Speaker
Well, actually, no, she said, I know.
00:42:52
Speaker
And then, you know, if you're ethically non-monogamous and the person says, I know that you've been seeing other people, shouldn't your next response be, oh, yes, I have been.
00:43:03
Speaker
Not, what?
00:43:05
Speaker
Well, how do you know that?
00:43:06
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:43:10
Speaker
I was having a laugh.
00:43:11
Speaker
But I said, listen, when you are around on a date with somebody and you find that stuff like in the bin, you don't sit there.
00:43:20
Speaker
This is the polite thing all over again.
00:43:22
Speaker
We sit there all polite inside.
00:43:25
Speaker
We're screaming inside.
00:43:27
Speaker
We want to mash them up.
00:43:28
Speaker
I'm like, no, you leave.
00:43:29
Speaker
Like you get out of the situation.
00:43:31
Speaker
Yeah, I think I also think that that ethically non monogamy has been now uses a catch all terms for a bunch of different situations, because technically because.
00:43:42
Speaker
With FDS, we would say you should date multiple people at once until you've established, you know, if you want a monogamous relationship, have a monogamous relationship.
00:43:50
Speaker
You could call that dating stage ethical non-monogamy because you're not being, you're not committing to any one person.
00:43:56
Speaker
But when it gets in the hands of how men will take that same concept and be like, no, it means I can sleep around with whoever I want.
00:44:04
Speaker
And also you can't.
00:44:05
Speaker
It's usually like that's the arrangement when they mean ethically non-monogamous, which is like you'll often see them purport this as saying this is like a progressive relationship, but it's sometimes like de facto polygamy, right?
00:44:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:21
Speaker
Where, you know, and so these buzzwords in these terms hide a great deal of evil.
00:44:27
Speaker
And the way that they always couch it is like it's gender neutral.
00:44:31
Speaker
But then when you look at the actual practice that men are advocating for, it looks completely different than what they're trying to paint it as, as some kind of progressive way to have open and honest relationships.
00:44:44
Speaker
It's just, it's just the practical reality of what they're saying is never living up to the hype.
00:44:48
Speaker
Because it requires men to be more ethical participants.
00:44:52
Speaker
And as we've now maybe seen for hundreds of thousands of years, that's very, very difficult no matter what framework you put forth.
00:44:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:59
Speaker
And I think that, you know, in all of these situations, what you actually find is that there is one person advancing their self-interest and calling it mutual.
Unfolding Compatibility Over Time
00:45:11
Speaker
exactly yes thank you thank you thank you thank you and it's often and it's often not the woman the women are going on like that sounds like a good idea you know like we this and we're in this no no it ain't we you're advancing your self-interest and making out like this is something that we in together but i actually don't have a say in this yes oh yes i
00:45:36
Speaker
If that's the central message of female dating strategy, it's like we're a strategy for a reason because quite frankly, we call ourselves a strategy and not like just some genuine, I don't know, anything else.
00:45:47
Speaker
But because of the fact that so often people don't see that these other terms are actually strategies that are being purported.
00:45:54
Speaker
They're narratives and strategies for a specific cohort of people to benefit themselves.
00:45:59
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:46:00
Speaker
And the thing I say is that people unfold and relationships unfold.
00:46:05
Speaker
And so with the framework that you've described that is, you know, over this three month period, you are basically essentially establishing a sense of who are you around this person?
00:46:18
Speaker
Is there something going on here?
00:46:19
Speaker
What do I know about this person so far?
00:46:22
Speaker
And the thing is, is that what people are often trying to do in terms of like dating relationships and sex is they think that there's like a magic amount of information that they can try and ascertain about somebody, you know, within a few dates where they can unequivocally go, okay, that means that they're this kind of person.
00:46:42
Speaker
We're also like, all humans have bias.
00:46:44
Speaker
So even when we claim that we don't have bias, that that's just another bias in and of itself.
00:46:48
Speaker
But there is this...
00:46:50
Speaker
Bias taking, dating, I think, is very, very reliant on biases.
00:46:55
Speaker
And so it's like, I don't date this kind of person.
00:46:57
Speaker
I only like this.
00:46:57
Speaker
Bias, bias, bias, bias, bias.
00:47:00
Speaker
And then what happens is we extend automatic trust to people who fit our biases, not realizing that we're just walking ourselves into traps over and over and over again.
00:47:11
Speaker
If we don't do things from a place of this sort of instant gratification, and we actually consider, first of all, well, what is our intention here?
00:47:21
Speaker
We recognize whether we have hidden motivations.
00:47:23
Speaker
If we are genuinely looking for a relationship, we can't be working off pure instant gratification because we have to think about the medium to long-term consequences of what we're doing.
00:47:34
Speaker
It's also about as well that if we don't operate on instant gratification, we have to keep our two feet on the ground and actually be present to what is going on.
00:47:43
Speaker
If somebody is whatever shady carry on or whatever it is, that is going to make itself known if we are willing to be listening and watching.
00:47:54
Speaker
But if our head is up our backside or we're too high on sex or whatever else to basically pay any attention whatsoever, then, of course, no matter how much time we give it, we're going to allow ourselves to miss a lot of signs.
00:48:06
Speaker
And this is something that FDS is really, really big on doing.
00:48:11
Speaker
So we encourage women to vet and we have...
00:48:14
Speaker
You know, green flags.
00:48:15
Speaker
So, for example, if a man, for example, you know, the first one might be if he pays on a day, if he's considerate, if he texts back in a timely manner, all those things can indicate that he's, you know, a good man, but that doesn't mean that he is.
00:48:29
Speaker
And, you know, we've seen stories, you know, from our readers and on the subreddit where a man will pay for a day and they begin to think that that alone means that he is a good person.
00:48:40
Speaker
And you sort of have to look at it holistically as well.
00:48:44
Speaker
So you need to take all his actions in aggregate.
00:48:46
Speaker
It isn't just, you know, one action that makes him a nice person because a lot of, you know, manipulative people,
00:48:53
Speaker
For example, men, I think, as I like to say, they've started to mutate.
00:48:57
Speaker
They know what attracts women now.
00:48:59
Speaker
They know that they're expecting women to see more effort, at least initially as well.
00:49:04
Speaker
This is why a lot of women are bamboozled when the guy who was so nice to them for the first 10 days of the relationship is now a dick six months in.
00:49:12
Speaker
You know, stuff like that as well.
00:49:15
Speaker
So I think that's a really good point to make.
00:49:18
Speaker
You're absolutely right that it's important to pay attention to certain things that are taking place.
00:49:26
Speaker
Noticing
00:49:27
Speaker
what's consistent or what is inconsistent, but also not going because people will literally be simplistic about it.
00:49:35
Speaker
Well, they bought me dinner, they buy me flowers and they send me a text.
00:49:41
Speaker
So that means that they are a group.
00:49:43
Speaker
And it's like, Lord, like, no.
00:49:45
Speaker
I've literally had friends who've said that.
00:49:49
Speaker
It's the bread and butter of it.
00:49:51
Speaker
And then you go, yeah, but the person buys you dinner and...
00:49:54
Speaker
and, uh, you know, gives you flowers and sends you a text and then disappears and then pops back up in your life three to six months later and does the same thing all over again.
00:50:03
Speaker
And all you're focusing on is, but they buy me dinner and they bought me some flowers and texts.
00:50:07
Speaker
That means that they're a good man.
00:50:09
Speaker
And I say to people, if you find that when you're dating, it's almost like you've got like, you know, you're almost inventory and things going, okay, well,
00:50:19
Speaker
They replied to the text and they took me out to dinner and they said this and they said that, right?
00:50:25
Speaker
Like you're trying to, you're trying to almost latch onto these things to avoid the vulnerability of actually having to get to know the person in their entirety, like the holistic.
00:50:37
Speaker
And I said to people as well, what people want to do early on is ascertain compatibility in the sense of they want to be able to go, they said this, they did that.
00:50:49
Speaker
This means that we share the same values and that we're going to live together happily ever after.
00:50:53
Speaker
And what I've said is actually all you can ascertain in the early stages of getting to know someone is whether you are incompatible.
00:51:06
Speaker
Because you will see the, what I call the code amber and red, you know, basically the red flags.
00:51:13
Speaker
You will, if you're paying attention to what is going on and you don't gaslight the head out of yourself, you will notice that.
00:51:21
Speaker
signs of incompatibility.
00:51:23
Speaker
And if you don't deny and rationalize and minimize and excuse, you will see what's going on.
00:51:29
Speaker
The stuff that you ignore in the early stages of dating, so particularly in those first few days, weeks, and months, is the stuff that always comes back to bite.
00:51:38
Speaker
But it's particularly in those first few days and weeks.
00:51:41
Speaker
And when people actually go back and think about those first encounters, for instance, over text, you know, on a dating app, those first like date or two, often
00:51:50
Speaker
little hints, it's there in the very first date.
00:51:54
Speaker
Date two seems to be a particular.
00:51:56
Speaker
So I say to people, you can only assess for incompatibility.
00:52:00
Speaker
And what people do is I get so many messages, oh, and it will be like over two or three over a period where it starts off with, I've met this amazing person on Hinge, Tinder, Bumble, whatever.
00:52:14
Speaker
And we just have so much in common.
00:52:17
Speaker
We share all the same values and immediately I go, eh,
00:52:20
Speaker
because you cannot possibly know that you share the same values with somebody based on meeting them on some Apple one conversation.
00:52:28
Speaker
And then they go on the first date.
00:52:30
Speaker
Oh my gosh.
00:52:31
Speaker
Like they said this.
00:52:32
Speaker
And I just know that we share all the same values.
00:52:35
Speaker
So nice.
00:52:35
Speaker
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:52:37
Speaker
And I, and I'm going to myself.
00:52:38
Speaker
Okay.
00:52:39
Speaker
Let's see.
00:52:40
Speaker
And then I hear from them a few days a week later, oh my gosh, I can't believe I thought that this was, they said, blah, blah, blah, realized they were a pervert, they were this, they were that.
Judging Character Beyond Superficiality
00:52:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:51
Speaker
You cannot ascertain somebody's actual values in terms of like compatibility from a photo, from an app, from somebody saying, I go to church or I like this.
00:53:02
Speaker
Anybody can say anything.
00:53:03
Speaker
This is the internet.
00:53:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:04
Speaker
Oh, don't get me started.
00:53:06
Speaker
Don't get me started on church guys.
00:53:08
Speaker
Can't tell nothing about a man because he went to church.
00:53:11
Speaker
This is if I had a pound for every single person, every single woman who had said to me, well, he said he goes to church or that he's Christian or that he's spiritual or that he's a Buddhist, or he said he likes animals and children.
00:53:28
Speaker
They are a doctor.
00:53:29
Speaker
They work in a police force, the army.
00:53:32
Speaker
You can't extend automatic trust on those things.
00:53:34
Speaker
Those things don't tell you about whether you're compatible in a relationship and whether they can meet your emotional needs.
00:53:40
Speaker
And most of the horror stories that I hear are from people who say, oh, I'm going out with the guy who everybody loves him at church.
00:53:49
Speaker
He's in the police force.
00:53:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:51
Speaker
It doesn't tell you anything about their character either.
00:53:53
Speaker
These are all, in fact, narcissistic people and manipulative people often hide behind titles and superficial
00:54:02
Speaker
markers to hide their worst intentions.
00:54:05
Speaker
So that's a hard lesson to learn.
00:54:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:07
Speaker
I also think as well that, you know, I'm writing a book at the moment called The Joy of Saying No.
00:54:13
Speaker
And as I've been sort of gathering my thoughts about why are we so obsessed with people pleasing and being good and avoiding boundaries, part of it has actually come from being socialized and conditioned into illusions of goodness.
00:54:28
Speaker
And
00:54:28
Speaker
And historically, status has often been about, oh, look, they go to church.
00:54:34
Speaker
They've got a car on a driveway.
00:54:36
Speaker
That person has this kind of job.
00:54:38
Speaker
That person does this or that.
00:54:40
Speaker
And we're now experiencing the legacy of that where there's so many women got married to a guy purely because they're finding, oh, he comes from a good family.
00:54:50
Speaker
He goes to church.
00:54:52
Speaker
He helps out the little old lady down the street.
00:54:54
Speaker
Yeah, and he's got a whole lot of dead bodies down in his basement as well while he's at it.
00:54:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:59
Speaker
I don't mean to laugh at that.
00:55:00
Speaker
I don't know why I laughed, but yeah.
00:55:02
Speaker
But it's true because it's the absurdity, right?
00:55:04
Speaker
Right.
00:55:04
Speaker
It's like, it's the idea that a guy, I mean, in fact, they've written entire TV shows about this where there's a guy that has like the perfect life on the outside and then secretly.
00:55:12
Speaker
Totally.
00:55:13
Speaker
Like a lot of those crime shows is literally they're interviewing the wife or the girlfriend and she has no clue that there's been a whole lot of dead bodies like downstairs in the basement.
00:55:22
Speaker
Isn't that wild?
00:55:23
Speaker
It is.
00:55:24
Speaker
I was...
00:55:24
Speaker
I always joke that if there's ever a serial killer in my city, I hope I live right next door because the neighbors, for some reason, are always clueless.
00:55:32
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:55:33
Speaker
Right?
00:55:33
Speaker
They're always like, he seemed like such a nice guy.
00:55:35
Speaker
The best one is, look at this.
00:55:39
Speaker
It's called the, I think it's, even if you just watch the trailer of it, I think it's called the Ted Bundy
00:55:45
Speaker
files or the Ted Bundy tapes on Netflix.
00:55:47
Speaker
And one of the women who I guess the newscaster must have been interviewing at the time, you know, back in the seventies or whatever, says something like, he's good looking, he's smart, he's something of other, are you sure you've got the right guy?
00:56:02
Speaker
So it's like we think predators, people who are not good for relationships only look a certain way.
00:56:09
Speaker
And then when, and this is why, and this is where the media have really done a bad job as well.
00:56:14
Speaker
The reporting about like assault, about murdering of like women and children as often leads with the guy.
00:56:21
Speaker
And then as people going, but he seemed like such a nice guy.
00:56:25
Speaker
He seemed like a real family man.
00:56:27
Speaker
He's got his flipping wife and family.
00:56:28
Speaker
What are you talking about?
00:56:30
Speaker
That precludes you from being a family man if you literally commit familicide.
00:56:37
Speaker
You think.
00:56:38
Speaker
I cannot remember what city it was in.
00:56:42
Speaker
And I think it was in the UK where a guy murdered his entire family and then the police chief came out and said, we don't understand what drove him to do this or what marital problems they were having, making it seem as if there's just something in a marriage that would justify a man killing his wife and children.
00:56:59
Speaker
Yeah, it's absurd.
00:57:01
Speaker
And this, the thing is, right, can't it just be that this person actually, you had no idea what it was, and a man can actually want to kill his wife and kids because he wants to have ultimate control over them and is lashing out with all of his anger.
00:57:15
Speaker
And the thing is, as well, people often think, like I say to people, people can be more than one thing.
00:57:20
Speaker
Yes, yes.
00:57:21
Speaker
I mean, like, yeah, you can be like highly like the best entertainer in the world, super talented, like musically, artistically.
00:57:30
Speaker
And you could also be a predator.
00:57:34
Speaker
I say this all the time, like people like to think in really false dichotomies.
00:57:38
Speaker
And it's really damaging, like,
00:57:40
Speaker
Two grand statements, like you've just pointed out, Natalie, can be true at the same time.
00:57:46
Speaker
I often say this, there doesn't have to be a choice between two options when it comes to people.
00:57:54
Speaker
Both statements can be true.
00:57:55
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:57:56
Speaker
And it's like, you can have had great sex with somebody and they can also not be the right person for you or they can be shady.
00:58:08
Speaker
And like, like our...
00:58:11
Speaker
sexual organs are not good judges of character is what I always say.
00:58:15
Speaker
No, they're not.
00:58:17
Speaker
But we think they are.
00:58:18
Speaker
Very disappointing.
00:58:22
Speaker
God made a serious design
Mixed Messages About Independence and Roles
00:58:24
Speaker
flaw.
00:58:24
Speaker
I just, I want to file a complaint, to be honest.
00:58:29
Speaker
I have conversations with people where they're talking to me about all the reasons why they think that this person should want them or why their relationship should be.
00:58:36
Speaker
And I'm going, so let me just get this right.
00:58:40
Speaker
Like you expected your vagina to pick out this person.
00:58:43
Speaker
And on that basis, she will betray you every time.
00:58:48
Speaker
We're just far, far too simplistic about dating and relationships because that's, that's, that's what the previous generations did.
00:58:58
Speaker
They cared about security.
00:59:00
Speaker
So I grew up hearing you need a man for security at
00:59:03
Speaker
At the same time, I also heard that women can have it all.
00:59:06
Speaker
And so, I grew up at a time when we were encouraged, for instance, to go to university and to get the job and to have it all.
00:59:13
Speaker
And also at the same time, we're told you need a man for security and here's 50 ways to please your man.
00:59:18
Speaker
And this is the position of the fortnight and make sure that your man is happy.
00:59:22
Speaker
What about whether I'm happy?
00:59:23
Speaker
Exactly.
00:59:24
Speaker
I don't know why women's media just, I mean, I don't know, maybe it clearly sells, but I think part of it is just creating these insecurities so people keep buying products from them because it's a very lucrative business model.
00:59:37
Speaker
Well, I mean...
00:59:38
Speaker
So that's the very basis of advertising where when men are marketed to and sold to, it's you're amazing.
00:59:48
Speaker
Buy this and you will be even more amazing.
00:59:52
Speaker
When women are marketed to, you know, and advertised to, it's you're not enough.
00:59:58
Speaker
But if you buy this, maybe you could be.
01:00:01
Speaker
One day.
01:00:01
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:02
Speaker
So I'm just going to ask you now, in your travels in the dating and relationship world, what would you say the top three biggest mistakes that women make when dating are?
01:00:15
Speaker
Well, at the heart of pretty much all dating issues, which then obviously if it moves on into a relationship become relationship issues, is speed.
Common Dating Mistakes
01:00:26
Speaker
So intensity of some form, moving too fast emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually, just moving too fast, full stop.
01:00:36
Speaker
And people play that out in various different disguises or various guises, but that is absolutely
01:00:43
Speaker
at the heart of it.
01:00:45
Speaker
Another one is this auditioning mentality.
01:00:50
Speaker
So I liken it to that famous scene from Coming to America where, um, uh,
01:00:59
Speaker
What's this?
01:00:59
Speaker
Is it Princess Aseem?
01:01:00
Speaker
Is it Prince Akeem when he made that?
01:01:01
Speaker
Akeem, that's it, yeah.
01:01:02
Speaker
And the woman who's been picked for him since, like, I don't know, since she was tiny.
01:01:08
Speaker
Oh, yeah, he makes her, like, bark like a dog.
01:01:11
Speaker
Yeah, bark like a dog.
01:01:12
Speaker
Hop on one leg and bark like a dog and all this.
01:01:14
Speaker
Yeah, bark like a dog.
01:01:15
Speaker
That's what a lot of us are doing, right?
01:01:16
Speaker
And so it becomes like, let me, you're going to choose me.
01:01:21
Speaker
You have to pick me.
01:01:23
Speaker
And I now have to just try to display myself as best as possible on these dates so that you see me as future girlfriend or spouse material.
01:01:33
Speaker
And so we do have a term for that, Natalie.
01:01:35
Speaker
It's literally called pick me.
01:01:37
Speaker
Yeah.
01:01:39
Speaker
And this isn't an X factor or, I don't know, American Idol or whatever else, but this is how we carry on.
01:01:45
Speaker
And so it's like, I need to slot into your life and you need to pick me.
01:01:49
Speaker
And there's a very, very different mentality that we have when this is the way that we're approaching things because we don't care about ourselves in that situation.
01:01:57
Speaker
We care about portraying ourselves in a way that we think that the person will be like, oh, that's so attractive.
01:02:03
Speaker
Let me pick them.
01:02:04
Speaker
And this is how we lose ourselves because they don't really get to know us.
01:02:09
Speaker
I think the, you know, there are a number of things, but I think that it would go back as well.
01:02:16
Speaker
My third thing would be the using, and it wouldn't just be the sex, using sex and just our lack of boundaries in general to generate the O for a relationship.
01:02:29
Speaker
It's like, you know what, how many ways can I let you screw me?
01:02:33
Speaker
And then you'll be like, oh my gosh, I've been screwing her for just so long.
01:02:38
Speaker
And I've realized it's time for me to cough up a relationship and change.
01:02:43
Speaker
No, ain't gonna happen.
01:02:45
Speaker
Never happens.
01:02:47
Speaker
I mean, it happens, but those relationships are very sad.
01:02:50
Speaker
But you know, it pains me when I hear from people who go,
01:02:54
Speaker
Well, I have a friend and like he used to do all these terrible things to her now and they managed to like get engaged in marriage.
01:03:00
Speaker
Mate, is this what you're aspiring to?
01:03:05
Speaker
That's always the question because, but, and that's, that's the, um, frustrating part about the, um, push towards marriage when, or at least when marriage being some kind of achievement for women, more so looking at it as a connection between two people who find value in each other instead of it just being.
01:03:25
Speaker
A status symbol.
01:03:27
Speaker
Yeah.
01:03:27
Speaker
A status symbol.
01:03:28
Speaker
And that's a goal.
01:03:29
Speaker
Right.
01:03:30
Speaker
And, um, yeah,
01:03:32
Speaker
I don't know.
01:03:32
Speaker
It's something that I think we really got to work to adjust in our culture because again, there's just, hasn't, there hasn't been much of a, a narrative being pushed the other way.
01:03:40
Speaker
And that's part of why we keep falling into these things.
01:03:43
Speaker
The interesting thing is, is that we do these things and then when things don't work out or when they move on to somebody else, we feel really rejected, but I'm like,
01:03:54
Speaker
You, it's not, you never showed them the real you.
01:03:59
Speaker
So the version of you that got rejected is just some fake ass version of you that got rejected, but you're mad because it's like, but you don't even want the fake version of me.
01:04:07
Speaker
So what would you have done with the real me?
01:04:09
Speaker
But it's like, actually, if what we genuinely looking for is a mutual relationship, one that has love, care, trust, and respect, and of course the attraction, then we have to reveal our real selves.
01:04:21
Speaker
And in the process of doing that, sometimes we're going to meet people who are like, yeah, you know what?
01:04:25
Speaker
I'll pass.
01:04:26
Speaker
I'm going to go and be ethically non-monogamous, right?
01:04:29
Speaker
We're going to get some people who are going to be like, do you know what?
01:04:32
Speaker
I like spending time with you, but I just don't see this going anywhere.
01:04:35
Speaker
But at some point, if that's what we want, we are going to meet somebody who is on the same page as us, but we can't find that person if we're going to pretend to be somebody else.
Maintaining Personal Boundaries
01:04:45
Speaker
Yeah.
01:04:45
Speaker
Level up.
01:04:48
Speaker
You gotta be, and it's so true because once you're in that mind space, and it's really hard to describe this to people who haven't gotten there, and you understand where your boundaries are, your life actually does get a lot easier in some respects because honestly, part of the pain is just not understanding where all the little nicks and ticks are coming in because you don't have a good understanding of how to put your boundaries in place and who you are, right?
01:05:11
Speaker
And what kinds of things you need for your own care and feeding, right?
01:05:15
Speaker
Yeah, I think if you're not saying yes authentically, you know, and when I say saying, that could be verbally, through your actions, through your inaction, through, you know, what you don't say, then you are saying yes, like resentfully, avoidantly, you know, fearfully.
01:05:36
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:37
Speaker
And that is always, always, always going to lead to more problems than if you just turn around and said no in the first place.
01:05:46
Speaker
And I found that my dating experiences and then just my general experiences of relationships are not just like in my relationship with my now husband, but just like friendships, work, family, everybody, everything changed when I started to figure out where I needed to say no.
01:06:04
Speaker
And we, I think, particularly as women, we have got this idea that the key to our success is yes, yes, yes, yes.
01:06:15
Speaker
And then we wonder why we're miserable, why we have ended up saying yes to what can be some pretty painful stuff.
01:06:23
Speaker
But the thing is, is that we actually need to figure out what it is that we say no to, because it is only then that we can say yes authentically and really have a true sense of our boundaries.
01:06:33
Speaker
If we're always shutting down our feelings and pretending something isn't what it is, you know, acting naive and carrying on, letting guys take the piss and step all over us, then of course we can't know our boundaries.
01:06:43
Speaker
But when we're willing to,
01:06:46
Speaker
To say no in those places where it would be oh so tempting to lie, to pretend, to avoid or whatever it is.
01:06:55
Speaker
That's when we have the boundaries.
01:06:56
Speaker
That's when we have the real intimacy going on in our
Disclosing Public Dating Persona
01:06:59
Speaker
lives.
01:06:59
Speaker
So this is kind of an off-topic question and we were discussing this.
01:07:04
Speaker
So you've worked in the sex and dating space for a very long time.
01:07:07
Speaker
When did you tell guys that you were doing this?
01:07:10
Speaker
Because I...
01:07:13
Speaker
So we were, we, we have a spectrum on our host team with some of us are like, nah, I don't ever tell them or like, don't tell them like well into the, to the relationship that you do this.
01:07:22
Speaker
Or like, do you tell them right up front?
01:07:24
Speaker
So, I mean, it's gone back a lot.
01:07:27
Speaker
I mean, the last time I was dating was like 2005, early 2006 before I met my now husband.
01:07:31
Speaker
I told him,
01:07:37
Speaker
I think it was a second date, but I said to him that we needed, like, if we're going to be obviously seeing each other, I'm going to get to know each other.
01:07:46
Speaker
I don't need you going and trying to read my blog behind my back as a way to try to get to know me.
01:07:51
Speaker
Right.
01:07:51
Speaker
And you know what?
01:07:52
Speaker
He didn't.
01:07:53
Speaker
He didn't.
01:07:55
Speaker
Oh, like, because I said, otherwise, I don't have no blog of yours to go off and read and be like, oh, let me go and do my FBI investigation on you through the blog.
01:08:05
Speaker
So I said, the thing is, is that I need you to get to know me as me, rather than you go off and read a blog, form an impression of me and decide who I am.
01:08:13
Speaker
So he didn't.
01:08:14
Speaker
And there were some...
01:08:17
Speaker
I mentioned it to, yeah, definitely had mentioned it to like the, the guy that I was seeing who had a girlfriend.
01:08:23
Speaker
He definitely knew I had that blog.
01:08:25
Speaker
He didn't like when I was slagging him off on there either.
01:08:31
Speaker
And, um, I think I mentioned it to another couple of guys and of course, like, of course they typically went and sort of looked it up or whatever, but I sort of gave myself creative license to say whatever I, for me, when I, throughout my work,
01:08:47
Speaker
Even though I have sometimes got into trouble with like one of my exes found out obviously that I had this block because a woman that I knew through him told him about it because I think I'd been featured in the newspaper and basically my anonymity was gone.
01:09:02
Speaker
And she then also basically we stopped talking because she found out that I was slagging the wine from a party that she'd had.
01:09:10
Speaker
So she kind of used that as an opportunity to go back and basically be like, oh my God, she's been writing on there about like when you two were engaged or whatever else.
01:09:16
Speaker
I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever.
01:09:18
Speaker
But I think that obviously I came up at a very, very different time.
01:09:23
Speaker
There wasn't like, there was no such thing as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, all of these things.
01:09:28
Speaker
And it's very, very easy for people to play Columbo, you know, these days and, you know, do a whole load of searching up.
01:09:33
Speaker
So there's a level of
01:09:35
Speaker
trust.
01:09:36
Speaker
Like, you know, like when I said to my now husband, you know, I need you not to be, you know, going and having a spy around, you know, about, about me and get to know me for me.
01:09:45
Speaker
Not everybody can do that though.
01:09:46
Speaker
Um, and so I think that I don't know that you necessarily need to turn around and tell them straight off the bat.
01:09:52
Speaker
I think it's really about when you genuinely feel comfortable disclosing that and where you feel like there's no shame, like where you're saying it without shame.
01:10:01
Speaker
Um, yeah,
01:10:02
Speaker
That makes sense.
01:10:02
Speaker
Because I think if you say it with shame or like, I need you to validate the fact that I'm doing this, it really changes the energy of that conversation.
01:10:11
Speaker
And you end up almost like apologizing for yourself or be like, oh, yeah, it's like this thing that I have to do.
01:10:16
Speaker
Like, no, why would you have to be embarrassed about it?
01:10:19
Speaker
No, I totally agree.
01:10:20
Speaker
So there was some discussion we had in our Discord about the different approaches we had because Elle was like, oh, I tell guys right away.
01:10:27
Speaker
I'm a female dating strategist.
01:10:28
Speaker
And she said this on one of our podcasts and other people like, don't tell guys.
01:10:32
Speaker
And Lilith was like, I don't tell people my playbook, like, et cetera, et cetera.
01:10:35
Speaker
I've not told my partner either.
01:10:37
Speaker
Yeah.
01:10:38
Speaker
She's not told her partner.
01:10:39
Speaker
So we were like, I don't know when to bring it up that you're doing sex and dating because it's like, do you want them to have the impression of you before they see your work?
01:10:47
Speaker
But I see, I absolutely understand what you're saying, Natalie, like do it in a place where you feel like I'm proud of the work I do and it doesn't change.
01:10:56
Speaker
Like make you feel like you're apologizing for anything like that.
01:10:58
Speaker
And not that we feel like we're apologizing.
01:11:00
Speaker
It's just more or less like, yeah, like you said, people.
01:11:04
Speaker
Form conclusions and stuff.
01:11:05
Speaker
Draw conclusions, right.
01:11:06
Speaker
Or if they listen, they, you know, if they listen to your work, they know more about you than you know about them.
01:11:12
Speaker
Exactly.
01:11:12
Speaker
And this was exactly what I pointed out to him on the second date.
01:11:15
Speaker
I said, you go off and if you go off and read this, then you're at an advantage.
01:11:19
Speaker
And this isn't about like a game playing, but I don't have the luxury of going off and reading your blog or whichever else.
01:11:28
Speaker
And so it's really comes down to like, how do you want to get to know me?
01:11:31
Speaker
Now, of course, you know, people who are, you know, in the public eye and when they date somebody, of course, they're
01:11:38
Speaker
that person probably has formed, if they know of them, has formed some certain perceptions.
01:11:43
Speaker
So they, you know, they sort of juggle with that, you know, all the time.
01:11:47
Speaker
But I think that this is your work.
01:11:50
Speaker
And of course, you want to feel as if you can talk about your work, but you may find, as I've heard plenty of stories of, that some guys can't handle the fact that you have like that, that sight that you do this type of work.
01:12:04
Speaker
Yeah.
01:12:04
Speaker
Yeah.
01:12:07
Speaker
But then again, I also kind of feel like I was sort of on the fence about whether or not I would say something, but because it's like, you know, with FDS, with like baggage reclaim, if they're a good person, they wouldn't be offended by it because they know it doesn't apply to them.
01:12:22
Speaker
You know, the guys who are good people in my life, they're not offended at all by any of the stuff that we say because they know A, it's true and B, they're not
Commitment to Authentic Relationships
01:12:31
Speaker
one of them.
01:12:31
Speaker
And, you know, we were saying in like one of our episodes...
01:12:36
Speaker
The reason why a lot of men react badly to FDS is because it isn't that we're wrong.
01:12:40
Speaker
Because they recognize themselves.
01:12:42
Speaker
Because they recognize themselves.
01:12:43
Speaker
We got them all the way pegged.
01:12:47
Speaker
They recognize themselves.
01:12:48
Speaker
Yeah.
01:12:49
Speaker
And they feel the need to get all defensive and stuff.
01:12:51
Speaker
And it's like, mate, if you're not up to no good, then you have nothing to worry about.
01:12:53
Speaker
Yeah.
01:12:54
Speaker
So, but yeah.
01:12:57
Speaker
Any final words of wisdom from you, Natalie, that you would like to impart to our listeners about relationships or anything?
01:13:04
Speaker
So what would your pearl of wisdom be?
01:13:07
Speaker
I say this a lot, particularly this would really apply, I really think to anybody who's listening here because, you know, they clearly are wanting to move beyond dating and progress to, you know, a mutually fulfilling relationship.
01:13:22
Speaker
And I say, if you're serious about being in a serious relationship, accept no substitutes.
01:13:29
Speaker
And what I mean by this is I hear from women who are like, I'm so done with dating.
01:13:37
Speaker
I just want to go on my last first date.
01:13:40
Speaker
I, I just, I'm tired of being with emotionally unavailable men.
01:13:43
Speaker
I'm tired of being with ass clans.
01:13:44
Speaker
I'm just like, done, done, done.
01:13:45
Speaker
And I go, great.
01:13:47
Speaker
Then like, they're like, I'm ready for a serious relationship.
01:13:50
Speaker
Next time I hear from them.
01:13:53
Speaker
Yeah, you know, yeah, I've been like in this casual thing.
01:13:57
Speaker
I'm seeing my shady ex again or whatever else.
01:14:00
Speaker
Now the thing is, is good old professor life, as I like to call it, does like to put what you say to the test.
01:14:09
Speaker
So if you say that you're looking for a serious relationship,
01:14:13
Speaker
And then, I don't know, your ex, who's always been dicking you around for goodness knows how long, comes along and is like, hey, maybe we should get back together again for the umpteenth time.
01:14:23
Speaker
This is where the rubber hits the road and you get to decide whether what you said is true, whether you really, really actually want to be in a serious relationship and whether you're ready to let go of the relationship that's clearly not right.
01:14:38
Speaker
It might come along in the form of somebody saying, oh, yeah, yeah, let's date.
01:14:41
Speaker
I'm totally looking for a relationship.
01:14:43
Speaker
And then they turn around and go, yeah, actually, I just realized I'm not over my ex.
01:14:48
Speaker
And in that moment, you have to decide, is what I'm doing, is this an alignment?
01:14:55
Speaker
with what I say I want?
01:14:56
Speaker
Is this in alignment with my intentions?
01:14:59
Speaker
And these little pop quizzes will pop up.
01:15:01
Speaker
The exes will pop up.
01:15:03
Speaker
The person who totally doesn't want the same thing will pop up.
01:15:07
Speaker
And this is where we get to, I don't want to make it into pass or fail, but where we really get to sign up to who we say that we want to be.
01:15:16
Speaker
And so we have to notice where we're contradicting ourselves, because if we really do want to be in a serious relationship, why are we screwing around with some casual thing?
01:15:27
Speaker
Why are we messing around with somebody who's throwing crumbs?
01:15:30
Speaker
Why, why are we like gnawing our nails at somebody treating us like dirt?
01:15:34
Speaker
Like when actually, if what we say is true and we really want that relationship, as hard as it might be in the moment, we have to say goodbye to this relationship because it's literally sat in our relationship parking space.
01:15:46
Speaker
And as long as that's there, we don't have room for a proper loving
Promoting Courses and Upcoming Book
01:15:50
Speaker
relationship.
01:15:50
Speaker
Facts.
01:15:51
Speaker
Well said.
01:15:52
Speaker
Yeah.
01:15:54
Speaker
And lastly, Natalie, is there anything you want to, do you have anything coming up that you would like our listeners to know about?
01:16:00
Speaker
Well, I run an online course all the time called Break the Cycle.
01:16:04
Speaker
And it's actually called Break the Cycle of Emotional Unavailability.
01:16:08
Speaker
And it takes you through a seven-step process, which is really about figuring out what's really been going on behind the scenes that is causing you to be involved with unavailable people and
01:16:18
Speaker
so that you can get out of that cycle and move on to something healthier, you know, more available.
01:16:24
Speaker
And so, yeah, that course is on my website.
01:16:26
Speaker
It's at baggage reclaim.co.uk forward slash break the cycle.
01:16:31
Speaker
Yeah, I think that that is probably the most relevant course that I have, you know, for your listeners.
01:16:38
Speaker
And of course, then I've got my book, The Joy of Saying No, that's coming out in just under a year's time, but that's miles
Conclusion and Listener Invitation
01:16:43
Speaker
away.
01:16:43
Speaker
So yeah, the course.
01:16:44
Speaker
Yeah.
01:16:45
Speaker
Thank you so, so much, Natalie, for talking with us and imparting your pearls of wisdom.
01:16:52
Speaker
Thank you so much.
01:16:54
Speaker
Oh, it's been an absolute.
01:16:56
Speaker
You two are really, really wise.
01:16:58
Speaker
Like you guys know your stuff.
01:17:00
Speaker
It's been a pleasure like chatting with you guys.
01:17:02
Speaker
We learned from the best.
01:17:03
Speaker
We stand on the shoulders of giants like yourself.
01:17:06
Speaker
Yeah.
01:17:06
Speaker
And it's almost like I've come full circle because I can remember about like, I think it was around this time last year, I was reading Mr. Unavailable and the fallback girl whilst I was like in the throes of getting ghosted.
01:17:19
Speaker
Like, you know, when they start breadcrumbing, dropping off and I was like reading that in between tears.
01:17:23
Speaker
So it's nice.
01:17:24
Speaker
to finally speak to you and come full circle with that.
01:17:28
Speaker
Oh, it's been a pleasure talking to you.
01:17:29
Speaker
You guys are G's, man.
01:17:30
Speaker
You know, I love it.
01:17:32
Speaker
So yeah, it's been an absolute pleasure talking.
01:17:34
Speaker
And you know, I'm looking forward to hearing the episode.
01:17:36
Speaker
Absolutely.
01:17:37
Speaker
Thank you so much.
01:17:38
Speaker
Thank you so much.
01:17:39
Speaker
And that's our show.
01:17:41
Speaker
Please check out our website at thefemaledatingstrategy.com where we have a forum you can discuss this week's episode as well as follow us on Twitter at fem.strat.
01:17:50
Speaker
And please support our Patreon, patreon.com forward slash thefemaledatingstrategy.
01:17:54
Speaker
We have bonus episodes every week as well as merchandise.
01:17:59
Speaker
And you can also chat one-on-one with us via the Discord.
01:18:03
Speaker
And for all you ass clowns out there, come reclaim your baggage.
01:18:06
Speaker
Die mad.
01:18:07
Speaker
See you next week.
01:18:09
Speaker
Bye.