A Personal Note From Orion

If you’re like me, you’ve probably had to kiss one too many frogs in your life. I am grateful that I have found my soulmate, but it was not before I experienced some challenging, and sometimes painful, relationships. 

When I did meet my future husband, it was at a time that I allowed myself to be vulnerable with the universe, to believe that he was out there waiting for me, and to trust my intuition on knowing he was the one. Your intuition is a powerful source of guidance in your life that can help you weed out all the frogs. 

I find myself having to encourage my love coaching clients often, reminding them not to give up just because they have gone on a couple of bad dates. Don’t give up, and don’t settle, because I promise there is a small voice inside of you – your intuition – who is going to guide you to the right man, you just have to trust and listen! My guest today, Dr. LeslieBeth Wish, strongly believes in the power of intuition and her belief is backed by scientific research. Tune in today to learn how you can tap into this powerful source within you.

 

About Today’s Show

Hello and welcome to Stellar Life Podcast. This is Orion. If you are like me, you probably had to kiss many frogs before finding true love. If you are still in that place of kissing too many frogs, or you are still looking for the one, this episode is for you. Dr. LeslieBeth is a nationally honored psychotherapist and author of Smart Relationships and Training Your Love Intuition. In her TEDx talk, she discussed some of the top love mistakes, the power of accurate intuition, and what gets in the way of choosing an intimate partner wisely. And now without further ado, on to the show.

Hey, LB and welcome to Stellar Life podcast. How are you doing today?

I’m doing great. Thank you so much for having me. I have really been looking forward to having this conversation with you. 

Me too. Today, we are going to talk about love, finding love, relationships, intuition, and all that good stuff. But before we start, can you share a little bit about yourself and how did this passion to help people with their relationships started?

I think it started when I was born. I wasn’t aware of it yet but about the time I was four years old, I knew that I was very good at reading people. I think it’s just one of those gifts that I had, so I got very interested in helping other people. It doesn’t mean that I haven’t made mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes in reading people because we can all be fooled. 

Overall, that’s one of the skills and areas of study I really wanted to concentrate on, so tonight or whatever time it is that your listeners are hearing this, the most important thing for me to tell them to get their confidence is that everything I say tonight is based on solid research findings.

Amazing. You found your gift in reading people, but did you have any struggles of your own with finding relationships or were you always riding the wave and everything was super cool.

Goodness, no. For the longest time, I was really very good at it, but then I got a little derailed because my mother became very ill and she died very young. Any major events like that can derail you for a while.

When people approach finding relationships especially when you are young, you maybe are not thinking about serious relationships or getting married, but I feel like for women, especially as they get through their 30s–40s, it just becomes more difficult. It looks like it’s getting harder. Do you know why is that?

There are so many reasons that I absolutely agree with you. Unfortunately, it’s that biological clock that gets activated in terms of being worried. Yes, there are women who have babies much later in life. My husband has a cousin who had her first child in her early 50s. 

No way, amazing.

But you can’t count on that because even if you are in your 20s or 30s you could still have trouble conceiving. There are all kinds of things that get in the way that you aren’t aware of until you start trying. As women get older and as you begin to sense that you’ve got to make decisions and change some of your behaviors, it does get harder.

There’s a lot of writing on women’s decisions in making love choices and what you want to do about those love choices. Do you want to move together? Do you want to get married? Do you want to have children with or without commitment? There are so many choices but that biological clock and that biological ceiling get lower and lower. 

I think this is also in the way of preventing some ladies from dating the right guy. They lower their standards because they are like, “Oh, the clock is ticking. I’ll take it.” It doesn’t matter whether it’s a good match or not, so they are lowering their standards. But I also feel that as they approach the relationship, there’s this type of undercurrent energetic pressure they put on the guy of like, “Okay. You’re the one. We’re going to have babies. Nice to meet you, my name is…”

Absolutely. What you just said is very important and I’m glad you said it. Women often begin to do the following things, including what you just said. They begin to lower their standards. They begin to say, “Well, this man is not so important.” Sometimes, they don’t really know what’s important to them which we’ll get to in our talk.

Of course, what they are doing, the older they get and the more pressure they can get, not only from getting older but also from other outside forces such as pressure from your family. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I went to family events and someone said to me, “Oh, when are you going to have children?” Or my pregnant cousin is patting their belly and said, ” Are you going to be next?” 

People get so insensitive like they say things without thinking about what the other person is feeling. 

Yes, and it’s very hurtful and very upsetting. Then, of course, you begin to lower your standards. There’s the risk of that and you don’t really know which standards to give up. Sometimes, the wrong ones are given up. It’s a lot of pressure and very difficult.

It looks like when you are young, you have more options so it’s almost like you don’t need to lower your standards whatsoever. But as you get older, it is a little more difficult because a lot of people are already married or they are divorced and that naive youthfulness is passed and people come to relationships with baggage, and it’s getting harder.

In what way do they need to, not lower their standards, but maybe more open to different relationships? And in what ways should they just be like, “This is a line in the stand; I’m not crossing it.”

When you are in your 20s, if you are a man or a woman, you’re not mature yet. Your brain isn’t mature enough yet. Your brain doesn’t reach full maturity to about age 26. That’s just basically the standard; you might be 27. So imagine having to make important life decisions before your own body isn’t ready for it. So you are already working against the tide. 

Then, as you get older, particularly for women, and for men, too, some men have to think about whether they want to have children when they’re in their late 40s or early 50s. Do they have to think about what’s my longevity? What’s going to happen? What about my family history? Is there a lot of history of illness? There are so many outside forces that happen.

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So, where to begin? The first thing I would say is the two tools that you need to have in order to increase dramatically that you are making a wise decision. No guarantee because life can get in the way such as I just mentioned when my mother became ill and died, that put me on a different spot for a while. 

Let’s assume that there are no outside forces like that. The two things that I would strongly recommend that I learned from my own research findings. When a researcher is surprised by some of their findings, then you know you are on the right trail because you know that you haven’t created the finding what you are looking for.

These are the two things that really popped up. One is really hard to do, the other you can teach yourself to do. We’ll start with the hard one. The main tool that you have to have in choosing wisely is getting brave enough emotionally to face yourself and find out who you are, who you aren’t, what your family influences have been, and what are the issues that you need to face. That is extremely difficult, but if you don’t do that work, you dramatically decrease your chances of choosing wisely. That’s number one.

I totally agree with you about number one. From what I see with clients and friends, it is the hardest thing. Most people don’t want to face themselves. They don’t want to dig in. They don’t want to see. They go into the tactics of, “If I’ll date tomorrow, if I’ll go out tomorrow, if I’ll meet more people, it’s going to happen.” No, if you are not changing yourself internally. And you can’t change for someone. You change for yourself because there is something that is in the way, there is something that is blocking you from finding love and you want to take a deep look inside and shift it. You can do it with the help of a professional, by going to a workshop, or by going deep into meditation, but it’s usually right. Usually, it’s easier and more manageable when you have somebody else to support you in the process because it’s hard to go and decide on your own.

Well said. It is very difficult. It is sort of like being in a journey with no road signs, with no clue, and no ways to know what path to take. I’m not just saying this because I’m a psychotherapist. I think it’s important that if you really want to up your bravery and your success in choosing wisely in love, that you do seek therapy and tough out the pain and the fear. You might want to say to your therapist, “Please don’t let me quit. Please don’t. Don’t let me back out of the tough work.” Because if you don’t do it, life gets harder. Pain now, play later.

I know it from my own experience because I’ve been through a very painful relationship that got me very depressed. Then I got super guarded and couldn’t even date anyone for more than 2-3 months. I had to do the work, I had to face myself, I had to change, and it was difficult. I had a lot of external help, but it was difficult. I just feel like if you are not doing this, it’s lowering your chances of finding true love in the best way.

Yes. What you just described how difficult it was for you. I think a lot of people can understand that because they probably had their heartbroken and have fears, anxiety, bad dreams, and avoiding things. You need to do the work, get someone to serve as your guide, and get someone who is licensed. I think that’s so important. 

You could go on the internet, you can go to different organizations like psychologists, social workers, counselors, anyone who is licensed and you could read about them. You can learn about what their expertise is and then you have to try them out. You might not like the person who you first saw and that’s okay. Just don’t use it as an excuse to stop doing it.

And also love coaches like me. I don’t have a degree in love, but I have vast education around it and I helped a lot of people open up and heal as well. I do actually think that you need to find the person that you resonate with and you connect within a year level because it’s going to make the journey much easier.

That said, if you find someone you didn’t resonate with, don’t quit. Go to another person, or another person, or even the fifth person until you find someone that you feel aligned with. But yeah, the mind is tricky. We can totally say it like, “Oh, this never works for me. This method never works for me,” because two people can say the same thing, one resonates with you and one will not depending on how they say it because sometimes, somebody can say something in the way that will resonate in you and then will create a shift. 

I absolutely agree. I forgot to mention that what I usually do is I recommend that you often do a pairing of someone who might be able to, like a licensed therapist take you into greater depth and pair up with a life and dating coach, who can give you more of the hard focus on just the dating aspect so you can pair it with what you are also learning from your therapist. 

I also do a lot of inner work, healing work, and guided. I don’t call it hypnosis but it’s like a guided meditation that is basically a hypnosis process. I use a lot of newer linguistic programming and all that to break the patterns. I think what I do is focus in on the inner work on who do you need to become to attract that person and less so tactics of wear this or put this on your profile, which is important. But I think it’s the 80/20 rule where 20% are tactics, but 80% is the inner work. 

Yes, the hard and difficult stuff. And that’s usually, often when people quit. They give up. It’s too scary. That’s the first thing is that you got to do the hard work because you are not going to get there and it is difficult. I like to help my clients and anyone who comes to my workshops or read my books. I want them to know that they are dealing with someone who has done the hard work and it is hard. 

But once you go through that door, once you are like Alice in Wonderland, you’ve gone through all those different trap doors, tunnels, and everything and you come out. The second thing then is easier and that’s learning to train your love intuition judgment.

I like that.

That can be learned, but it doesn’t work if you don’t do the first part.

Before we get on to the love intuition which is fascinating to me. I want to know a little bit more about your research. When did you start and how did you create it?

My research started back when I was doing my doctoral dissertation. If any of your listeners have done this or heard about it, when you have to write a doctoral thesis on any topic, you have to come up with something that is important but hasn’t been addressed or addressed well enough. That was hard. I was learning from my clients that intuition played an important role but that was not what my dissertation was first on. I was very interested in why some women have career difficulties and other women don’t. What gets in the way?

I did research with about 2500 women on their career development. I developed surveys, I did workshops, lectures, talks. What happens when you are doing research is that you learn things or find out about things that aren’t related to your main topic. Mine was women in career development, but you put it aside for later. My first book was based on my doctoral dissertation and it was on the impact. This is what changed from my research. I didn’t choose it, it chose me. The impact of childhood sexual abuse on women’s career development. 

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One of the things I learned from my control group of women who had career issues but were not abused, I found out that they had relationship problems. So I did more research on what their relationship problems were and that was my next book. From that book, that book was called Smart Relationships. They can go to my website lovevictory.com and they’ll see that.

My second book was Smart Relationships. From that research grew another finding that smacked me in the face and I said to myself, “How did I miss this?” I don’t know how many researchers or authors would admit that, but I missed something really big and that’s what my work is now. The role of intuition. My two current books that are out now, what I learned and how to help other people on training their love intuition.

What’s your definition of intuition?

Intuition is an instant judgment call and assessment that you can trust that what you are feeling and what you are experiencing about assessing a situation or a person is accurate. It’s instant. You know instantly, but you’ll have to cultivate that. One of the things you have to start with is getting your stuff out of the way. All the stuff you need to face.

I always agree that healing is the first step and then from there, everything else comes out. What are some ways you recommend for anyone to connect to her or his intuition?

You have to start with doing your emotional psychological homework. Clear the deck. Clean out your closet. Get it going. You can’t choose easily what to wear if your closet is jammed with stuff that is out of style, doesn’t fit good, and you never liked in the first place. Start there. You’ve got to do your homework.

Secondly, you really do need to believe that intuition is real and there is lots of science behind that. There are some very good researches. I could just mention one book called The Eureka Factor. It’s written by John Kuonios and Mark Beeman. They discovered that it takes less than a second for incoming information to hit your brain for you to make an assessment. But if you haven’t cleared your past clutter from your family, if you don’t believe in intuition, you will run the risk of dismissing it and saying to yourself, “That was just a silly feeling, that’s woo-woo stuff.”

You’ve got to begin by believing that intuition is actually something that happens in your brain and that’s what these two researchers did. They found that the seat of intuition is on the right side of your brain. They saw it light up during MRI pictures of the brain. It’s on the right side just above and slightly behind your right ear. This is real. Start with that first.

I also think the journey to intuition just sitting calmly in quiet and meditation, and listening to answers that show up. You can start by listening to very small answers about things that are not too difficult and you’re not too attached to. Just a little question like, is this good for me or not, and start listening to that little voice of intuition. The voice of intuition is usually not super loud, it’s quiet, it’s soft, and you need to really listen to hear it.

I feel like in my own journey right now, I’m very much in tune with my intuition. But in the past, I would ignore that in a relationship, I would totally ignore red flags. I would say I was so blindly in love that I was not even watching for the red flags; just ignoring them. It’s really important that two seconds of what I feel that the hit is good. It’s also important to train your intuition on a daily basis, 20 times a day, asking yourself little questions, listening to answers, and getting validation. Then just meditation going inside and listen to your body.

Yes, the intuition lives in the right brain, but our brain is also in our gut. Our brain and our gut are very connected. Listen to your gut feeling. What does this person, this answer, feels like in your body. I think doing a lot of bodywork, dance, movement, opening the body is also a great way to connect to your intuition because we have issues in our tissues. We store a lot of emotions in our tissues and when we are open, it’s easier to get the answers. Another way to connect to the right brain of the intuition is to go out in nature and connect to Mother Earth. There is the practice of grounding because when your feet are on the grass, on the sand, you can really feel and connect to all the living beings on the planet earth.

We get really disconnected with our shoes, and the concrete, and all that. Just being in nature, she will whisper in your ear and you can get the answers this way. Go and do stuff that opens you up like going to the beach, swimming, anything that makes you feel calm and relaxed, and from that place of relaxation, there will be an opening into what I call the universal Google. That extreme and collective consciousness and you can get the answers from there as well.

You need to be consistent with that and be really in tune with your body and your intuition, and keep developing it every day. It doesn’t happen right away. No habit that you formed over the years can change in a day. As long as you’re consistent, and you get the help, and you read books about intuition, you go on YouTube, you see videos about intuitions, you don’t have to start by spending a lot of money because everything you need is inside you now. You just have to listen.

Everything you said is so powerful. Yes, the answer is in you. But sometimes, you don’t know if you recognize the answer or if you’re able to use it. I really like what you said, just go out and test it. It’s one thing to have what you think is accurate intuition. You don’t know it until you test it.

That’s why I always recommend when it comes to love that you go on lots of different dates. Date lots of different people and go on lots of dates with someone, but make your dates resemble real life so you have real opportunities. Don’t go to fancy parties. Someone once asked me, “What’s the best first date?” and I said, “When you just meet for coffee, or go for a walk, or why don’t you run errands together?”

That’s such a great idea.

Seriously, make your dates resemble real life. How anxious, or fed up, or disgusted, or impatient just the person gets. Do they know how to make everyday life fun? Let’s face it, so much of life consists of getting up, making the coffee or tea, making breakfast, washing the dishes, running an errand, calling someone. Life consists of all kinds of boring ordinary things.

Then you look at Instagram and everybody’s so glamorous.

Forget that stuff. You could touch up your photo just about anywhere. If you want to see the real me under touched up, please go to my website lovevictory.com and you’ll see on the page that opens up, you’ll see my TED Talk, that’s how I really look like. That TED Talk is really about how can you trust your intuition because sometimes your intuition can be strong but wrong.

That’s what I like so much of what you’re saying. It doesn’t matter how the information gets to you. Whether it’s a walk, or meditation, or thinking carefully about what food should I eat, or what am I feeling in my gut because you’re so right. The head, the brain, and the gut are in constant communication with each other, but that doesn’t mean that the message you’re getting is necessarily accurate. Once again, you get in the way of you.

How do you know if the message is accurate?

We have to test it when it comes to reading a person. That’s why I recommend to go out again on another date with that person. Make some assessment. Test what your first assessments are. Two things you can do, one is when you’re on a date, I want you to think to yourself or just meeting someone, or whatever the encounter is where you’re with someone who you think you might want to go out with. I want you to feel to yourself, “What am I feeling? Am I excited? Am I too excited?” That’s a red flag right there. “Why am I overly excited? Do I want someone to take me away from my life? Am I getting older? Did I just get out of a bad relationship? Am I the only person in my age group and my family who isn’t married?” All those things, find out what those little buttons that are going off in your head. The sign there is you’re too excited.

Secondly, go into the restroom. Go there and say to yourself, “What am I feeling? How excited am I? Am I dismissing this person?” Sometimes you can dismiss someone who is actually really good for you because other things are getting in the way, such as, “This person isn’t super good looking, or this person is making me feel that I am not feeling good about myself,” and where is that coming from? Start from the top of your head and work on down. “What am I thinking?” Move to your body. “What am I feeling? Am I feeling negative? Am I feeling dread? Am I feeling scared? What’s going on with me?” Do that check and take those 10 minutes to go into the restroom.

The other thing you can do if you want to have some tools to read a person better, one of the tips that worked very well for my clients and in my research was pretend the person across from you or with you or whatever you’re doing with someone, is a dog, because dogs come in so many different breeds. Is this person making me feel that they’re a hyperactive chihuahua? They just like to please me, they can’t calm down. Do they feel like one of those very affectionate dogs, little lap dogs that just want to cling to you and you can’t get them away from you unless you stand up and slide them off your lap.

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Find some ways to test whether you’re feeling accurately and how you are feeling. The only way you can test your accuracy is in your mind, go home, write down some of your observations, and go out on a second date to test them. Don’t dismiss someone immediately because you might be dismissing someone who is good for you, but because you’re so afraid to date someone who is so different from the usual patterns you get into.

I like what you said about, “Am I too excited?” because when you are too excited, you are coming from a place of, “Oh my God, this person is amazing. Please love me, please want me.” And then you forget the most important thing, which is your intention and intuition. You want to come with a strong intention of, “Okay, this might or might not be, and I am going to be super focused and aware, and remember my intention of noticing what I think and feel,” everything that you said.

It’s very good to arrive to that date with that strong intention and calmly ground yourself before you even start the date, or before you get too excited. If you get too excited, go to the bathroom, wash your face, come back.

Absolutely. There is a very world-famous neuroscientist, her name is Tali Sharot and she says that when you begin to get too excited about a date—excitement—what that does is create anticipation and pretty soon, you begin to confirm what you want to happen. “This is a good date for me. This is a good person,” because you want it so badly. It’s called confirmation bias. You begin to see good things and rule out the big clues that are screaming at you.

For example, I went out on a date one time and the first thing that the date said to me was, “You’re much shorter than I thought you would be,” it was a blind date. I thought to myself, “What a jerk. That’s his lead, really?” That sent a little flashing button lighting up in my brain that this guy, he’s got some super insecurities. Watch out for those things. Start being aware of what’s going in you. Again, test the date assumptions you’ve made and go out with that person again, but you’re so right to zero in on that excitement because it will confirm what you want to happen.

The other thing that you can do is pay attention to what your brain is telling you in terms of how happy you are, how grateful you are to be with this person. Are you in a stage in your life where you want it so desperately for things to work? What is getting in your way? Very important to know what you are bringing to the date because if you are desperate, if you’ve got factors going on in you that are making you, “I’m going to seal this deal,” you’re going to seal a deal that’s not very good for you and they will create those blind spots that you miss and dismiss things that you shouldn’t.

I can imagine a few of our listeners taking this information to the extreme where they’ll go on a date and they will become this cold FBI investigator, put their persona aside and just try to make sure this person is the right one rather than really having that in the back of their minds and listening to their intuition, but still have a lot of their personality out, and have a lot of fun on the date.

You have to always be on two tracks at the same time. Be present in the moment, but have the words and the main theme of the music be present, but just like all music, there’s a beat to it, and you want to be in touch with that.

There is, again, a psychologist. I think he’s a psychologist at Yale. His name is John Bargh and he has a lab where he’s studying how decisions are made. Just like you and I are talking, sometimes your feelings towards someone could be strong, but they can also be wrong because your emotions and where you are in your life gets in the way.

That’s one of the things that John Bargh learned about people and their decision making in his lab. You have to be careful about that and that’s why I’m recommending that people do these little tricks, these little steps to be able to step back and assess what’s going on.

Again, imagine your date is a dog, imagine your date is what actor or role that an actor played does this person reminds you of. Do they feel like a fool? Do they feel overly self-confident? There’s tons of movies and novels that you might be able to think of.

You’re on a date and maybe you can’t think of the dog, maybe you don’t know enough about them. That’s okay. I have nothing if you love dogs. Think about, “What movie actor does this person remind me of? Or what movie? What am I tuning into?” Find some way that connects way in your brain through association, what’s working and what you’re learning. Again, just like you underscored, go to the restroom, think about, “What am I feeling? Where am I in my life that I need to overlook things?”

I’ll give them another tip for the restroom because washing your face is not always nice especially if you’d just spent an hour putting make-up on. What you can do is take a few deep breaths. You look in the mirror and you really calm yourself down. If there is nobody there, great, if not just go and find a more private place and just do some hip circles to relax and connect to your body, connect to your kundalini energy, that serpent energy from the base of your spine. Connect to your femininity, just feel your body, breath, move slowly, do some hip circles, feel yourself, feel good about yourself and then go back. You’ll go back with this extra magic, extra essence and that person probably will be able to feel it, but you will also be more anchored in your body and in your power.

Power doesn’t have to be like, “Okay, we’re going to date. We’re going to do this.” Power doesn’t have to come from a very masculine aspect, which creates a lack of polarity in a relationship, but you can engage that soft, strong, irresistible, intoxicating feminine power when you go back. When you’re feeling so good about yourself, then you’re open and you won’t miss those sarcastic comments. You will be able to be kind and assertive in your answers. You’ll be able to receive what’s good and push away what’s bad and be more clear about this situation, how you feel and that person that is sitting across from you.

Perfectly said. Yes. The idea of taking charge of yourself doesn’t mean you have to say, “We’re doing this on the date. We’re doing that on the date.” I really like that. Again, going to the restroom and think to yourself, “How excited am I about this?” or the other end of the spectrum, “How much am I not liking this person?” and make sure that that’s an accurate assessment.

Here are some things you can do on a date to increase the chances that your intuition will be accurate. One is to make your date resemble real life, please. Go grocery shopping together. Go just have coffee together. Go for a walk in the park. Go sled riding, whatever climate you live in. Make them resemble real life. That’s mostly where you’re going to be spending your relationship time in real life. Not everyone has helicopters that they fly from one place to another. Most of us live in an everyday world. Pay attention to making your date resemble that.

While you’re on your date, pay attention to how well do they take turns? Let’s say you’re at an art exhibit or some kind of art fair or whatever, does the person walk away from you and lose you? I’ve had dates where I’ve been to county fairs and all of a sudden, they’re gone. Where’d you go? I hardly remember what your shirt looked like so I can’t look for you.

That’s funny.

It’s terrible. I’ve had that happen. Do you do things altogether? Do you have like, “Hey, I’m just going to go see this booth for a minute,” like you would hang out with your buddies, your besties. You say, “Hey, I’m going to be right over here.” Does it flow? Does it feel natural? Are you able to have differences of opinion when you pick up a bowl and you say, “I love this. Do you like it?” Feel free to say, “No, I don’t like it.” Be you, that’s the most important part because the more you do that, the more you get a real reaction from the person.

Pay attention to how they use their knives, forks and spoons. Eating behavior is a real big tell. Do they gobble their food up like it’s the last thing on earth and they’re the aggressive hunter and they can’t get it down fast enough? Do they spill things? Do they talk with your mouth open? Pay attention. How do they treat the wait staff? That’s a big tell. I’ve been on dates where the guy actually touched the female wait staff, kind of like flirted with her.

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How rude.

Oh my goodness, I thought, “This is really bad.” Made deep eye contact with her, he called her honey. These are the things you want to pay attention to. Or the opposite. I’ve been on dates—I talk about this in my TEDx talk—where the date has to act like he owns the place. Walked and waved to everyone, he knows everybody’s first names. Watch for these extremes. Pay attention to the instant environment that you’re in. Very important.

I once went on a date with a billionaire, sounds magical, isn’t it? No, it wasn’t. It was the most boring date I’ve been on. I didn’t ask him, he ordered a bottle of wine, so I took a sip, he was like, “How is this wine? I was like, “I don’t like it, thank you.” He said, “But this is a $400 bottle.” I was like, “Okay, I still don’t like it.”

That’s right. That’s a very good example. Be you. Don’t pretend to like something. Don’t do that. You want to be able to say, “Thank you so much for showing me and educating me but I don’t care for it.” Don’t put on an act where you’ve got to please someone. That’s one of the traps that women get into. I don’t care how liberated or modern you think you are, it’s very easy to get into that trap. That’s why you need to be you.

I mentioned about making your date be everyday life and the second thing is to speak up and be you. Another thing you can do is ask your date, “Walk me through a typical week in your life. Just pretend that we’re going to spend virtual time with each other, a week in your life. I’ll walk you through a week in my life. I want you to know,” I’m just making this up now, “I don’t go to bed until [2:00] in the morning. I get up at [5:30], I gobble my breakfast, I watch the news, I get to work, I’m pretty stressed, and then I’m on. Then, I come home at night, I talk to my girlfriends, then I go to the gym, and then I tumble into bed and I can’t fall asleep,” etc.

Give typical week, include your weekends. What do you do in your spare time? Do I sleep in? Do I do all my laundry? Do I get out of the house and do something that I’ve always wanted to do all week, whatever that is? Walk me through a week in your life. That would be important.

That would be great. Let’s say you keep on dating. How do you know if someone is serious? Also another question, actually that was the first question, is how soon do you get in bed with that person?

Great questions, so important. I want to address that in two seconds, but I want to add one more thing to the list of make your date resemble everyday life, ask your date to walk you through a week of his life. The third thing is, make sure that you show some of your quirks. Don’t put on a show, this is your life. You don’t want someone to think you’re not who you are. That’s never going to be a wise step, so show your quirks.

Remember that movie, When Harry Met Sally and that famous scene? She was showing her quirks. That was fantastic, ordering the sandwich and I can’t remember all the things, add this, take that away. That’s a great example of how to be you. If your date says, “I’ve got a surprise. I want to take you to my favorite restaurant,” don’t be afraid to say, “That sounds wonderful. That is so nice of you, but I’ve got lots of food allergies and I would hate for you to make arrangements to go to would date where I can’t eat anything.” Speak up. This is not a performance. This is you in real-time.

Now, let’s move to the sex question. I am absolutely against dates where you’re having sex with someone before you feel known and you feel known about them.

Your brain and your gut are in constant communication with each other. Your instincts may speak volumes, but only trust your intuition when it's backed by research. Click To Tweet

How long does it take to feel known? Is there a number? Are there criteria? Is there like, “Don’t have sex before commitment,” which are some experts are saying? Is there a right or wrong way to know that you are known?

That’s so complex a question. You’re so right because common sense is please don’t have sex on the first two dates. That makes sense. How known can you be in two dates? How known can you be on three or four dates? Don’t push your luck by going back to each other’s place. You know that you’re tempting fate. Today, the bars in hotels are open almost all night long, you can go sit in the bar and talk. You can find a nice booth, if you really want to spend some extra time.

Or you can get a one night stand, but knowing that this is a one night stand.

For what reason, though? Really, for what reason? If you’re looking for a relationship, I don’t recommend having sex so soon. What you need to do is make a list in your diary—I love keeping diaries or a log—of the things that you’re afraid to have someone know about you. Make sure that by the time you decide that you and your date, I would call it more than a date, potential partner, have shared your scare list and that you feel that you respect this person and this person respects you, if you’ve been able to do that, then you’re going to feel much more comfortable about having sex. I might add, sex will be a whole lot more enjoyable, because that first-time sex before knowing someone, it usually is. Walk with anxiety and you wonder after it’s over, “Why did I do this? Was this really as enjoyable as I want it to be?” Make a list of the things that you’re afraid to reveal.

When I talk about a one night stand, I’m not talking about the person you want to date, I’m talking about, “It’s been months and months and I want something.” I don’t know for me it’s like, “Okay, I’m going to go get it,” and I know that I’m not going to even remember his name or his phone number and goodbye. It’s going to be safe and that’s it, but it’s right, it might not be safe.

Safe emotionally.

Also physically, you got to be careful.

Definitely, you have to be careful. But it might not be so safe emotionally. You might find that you have just fooled yourself. You thought that you were going off to bed with whatever this person is and because you need the physical contact or whatever your reason and you find that, “Uh-oh. I’m feeling something like I want there to be a tomorrow.”

That’s so painful.

Yes, “I don’t know why I am feeling I want there to be the next time. Am I more desperate and lonely than I thought? What’s going on in me? Are all my sisters and brothers married with kids and I’m the only one not? Are all my girlfriends and all my other friends are married or engaged or living together and I’m not? What is happening in me?” Once again, you’ve got to do that hard work of knowing who you are and where you are in life.

LB, this was so good. Everything that you said, all those amazing tips are incredible. I definitely think people should learn more about you, listen to your TEDx, go and read your books because it’s going to help them tremendously. How can people contact you or work with you?

Thank you for asking that. I know I’ve mentioned it several times, but I really appreciate your wrapping it up with this. Please go to my website lovevictory.com. You can read about me. You can read about who I am, what I do, what’s important to me. Please sign up, you’ll get four free books, at least do that much.

Four free books. Four pieces of information that can change your life.

Take a look at the thumbnail, open up the books. You’ll see the covers on the right side of my website. It’ll take you to Amazon. You’ll get to read what the books’ about and take a look at the opening pages. Again, the most important thing from my perspective is that I want you to trust what I’m telling you. It comes from research. It isn’t from the top of my head. It isn’t just from my own life or my family. It isn’t just from clients because not that many people seek therapy as it seems.

My research is not based just on my clients, but on lots of different workshops, surveys, lectures I’d given and classes I’ve taught. I used to teach in graduate school at Webster University and a lot of my students would be part of my research. Do your own personal homework.

Before we finish, I want to ask you to give our listeners your three quick top tips to living a stellar life.

Get brave. Tough out the fear and anxiety. Get brave so you can know who you are and seek all the things that are so hard for you to face and master them. That’s number one. Number two, be you. Show your quirks. Don’t put on an act. Don’t get overly excited about the next date coming, that’s a warning sign that you’ve invested too much emotionally. Think of when Harry met Sally, keep that in your mind as a model. And thirdly, control your need to connect before you know someone and they know you. Don’t put yourself in a situation where sex seems inevitable. You don’t have to do that.

Wonderful, thank you so much, LB, I appreciate you.

I appreciate you. I was looking forward to this.

Thank you and thank you, listeners. Remember, get brave so you can know who you are. Be you. Connect only when you know it’s the right time and when you are ready, and live a stellar life. This is Orion. Until next time.

Your Checklist of Actions to Take

{✓} Never lower your standards because the “clock is ticking.” It’s better to be by yourself than be in the wrong relationship.
{✓} Don’t give in to the pressures of society. Everyone is different and lives their own life. 
{✓} Seek a professional coach’s guidance if you feel like you need expert advice to help you overcome any major obstacles in your life.
{✓} Only trust your intuition when it’s backed by research. Learn more about your personality and ensure you find the right person.
{✓} Date lots of different people so you know what you want and what you don’t want in a partner. Evaluate the people thoroughly before committing to a serious relationship with them.
{✓} Test your relationship to find whether there are any red flags. Observe how he treats the wait staff at a restaurant, or how he treats you when you’re with his friends, etc. 
{✓} Make your dates resemble real life. Instead of partying at nightclubs or traveling, try going out for coffee or running errands with your dates instead.
{✓} Don’t put on a show. Keep it as real as possible. A healthy and genuine relationship is where you can comfortably show your quirks with each other.
{✓} Keep your cool and don’t get too over-excited when dating. Take it slow and always trust your intuition to tell you if the time is right to take things to the next level. 
{✓} Watch Lesliebeth Wish’s TEDx video, You Can’t Always Trust Your Gut About Dating & Mating.

Links and Resources

About Dr. LeslieBeth Wish

Dr. LeslieBeth (LB) Wish is a nationally honored psychotherapist and author of “Smart Relationships” and “Training Your Love Intuition.” In her TEDx talk, she discusses some of the top loveT mistakes, the power of accurate intuition, and what gets in the way of choosing an intimate partner wisely.

 

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