Ever get excited about a great first date, only to spiral into trying to predict the future? In this episode of the Love U Podcast, I reveal why trying to figure out if he’s “The One” too soon can sabotage your connection. Learn how to stay present, pace the relationship, and still spot red flags early enough to walk away from the wrong guys. I’ll show you how to hold two truths at once: don’t rush to label him your soulmate, but don’t ignore signs that he’s not right either. If you’ve ever struggled to balance hope with healthy skepticism, this episode will bring you clarity and peace of mind. Tune in now.

Are your dating standards helping you or quietly sabotaging your love life? In this Love U Podcast, I unpack the hidden rulebook many women carry about how men should behave and why it’s getting in the way of real connection. You’ll hear six common behaviors women often misinterpret as red flags, how to rethink the idea of “wrong” versus “different,” and why letting go of rigid expectations can open the door to lasting love. If you’ve ever written someone off for something small or struggled to balance chemistry with compatibility, this episode will help you shift your mindset and make smarter choices in dating.

What if aging made you more desirable, not less? In this episode of the Love U Podcast, I sit down with Chip Conley—author, entrepreneur, and founder of the Modern Elder Academy—to talk about love, identity, and reinvention in the second half of life. We explore the difference between aging and “saging,” how men experience loneliness and intimacy, and why dating in midlife offers a deeper kind of connection. Chip shares his own lessons on grief, self-worth, and emotional fluency—and how women can stop internalizing cultural myths about becoming invisible. If you’ve ever wondered whether your best years in love are behind you, this conversation will shift your mindset and open your heart.

About Today’s Guest:
Chip Conley is on a midlife mission. After disrupting the hospitality industry twice, first as the founder of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, the second-largest operator of boutique hotels in the U.S., and then as Airbnb’s Head of Global Hospitality and Strategy, leading a worldwide revolution in travel, Conley co-founded MEA (Modern Elder Academy) in January 2018 in Baja California, Mexico. Inspired by his experience of intergenerational mentoring as a ‘modern elder’ at Airbnb, where his guidance was instrumental to the company’s extraordinary transformation from fast-growing start-up to the world’s most valuable hospitality brand, MEA is the world’s first ‘midlife wisdom school’ and has a 2,600-acre regenerative horse ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico which opened in May 2024. Dedicated to reframing the concept of aging, MEA supports students to navigate midlife with a renewed sense of purpose and possibility. A New York Times bestselling author, Conley’s 7th book “Learning to Love Midlife: 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better with Age” is about rebranding midlife to help people understand the upside of this often-misunderstood life stage and he was asked to give a 2023 TED talk on the “midlife chrysalis.”

Where You Can Find Chip:

LinkedIN: www.linkedin.com/in/chipconleysf/
Instagram: @chipconley
Facebook: @chipconley
Youtube: @TheMidlifeChrysalisPodcast

Website: meawisdom.com
chipconley.com

What if your biggest fear in dating isn’t rejection—it’s investing time, money, and hope into change…only to feel like nothing works? In this episode of the Love U Podcast, I share a powerful conversation with a client who overcame that exact fear and discovered why success in love is never about luck. We’ll explore how to break free from dating inertia, replace limiting beliefs, and build the confidence to attract the right man. You’ll learn why results come from deliberate action, not passive hope—and why fear of failure is the very thing keeping you stuck. Listen in and find out how to take control of your love life starting today.

What You’ll Hear:

• Why fear of failure — not men — is the #1 reason women hesitate to invest in dating coaching.
• The truth about my 100% success rate (and what “success” really means in Love U).
• How coaching differs from therapy, self-help books, and passive dating advice.
• The three biggest transformations I can virtually guarantee in six months of working together.
• Why “doing nothing” guarantees the same disappointing results you’ve been getting.
• How building dating confidence affects every other part of your life.
• Why dating is a skill — and how to master it with structure, accountability, and practice.
• The “Biggest Loser” metaphor for personal growth and why small wins still count as success.
• My own history of repeated failure — and why it made me better at love (and at coaching).
• A pep talk for taking action now so you can create the love you deserve.

Full Episode Transcript:
Exciting episode today. Sincerely excited because it’s different. It’s not just dating advice today.

This is much larger. So, I’m really going to encourage you to stick around. And this is based on a conversation I had with a current client who’s working through her fear of failure.

So, the truth that I understand about most people who are listening to the Love U podcast right now is that they would invest their hard-earned money for dating coaching. They’re not worried that I’m an unethical operator. Their biggest fear that, again, I’m discovering late in life, their biggest fear is that they’re going to hire me as a coach and nothing is going to change.

So, if you’ve ever listened to this podcast and thought, maybe I should hire him, but I’m really worried that it’s not going to work, I want you to listen to this podcast and I want you to hear why I have a 100% success rate. Stick around. My name is Evan Marc Katz.

This is the Love U podcast. I thank you for listening. If you haven’t already, subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, leave us a positive review, go and tell a friend about us.
We’re making a small difference in our corner of the internet here. Just a reminder that next installment of the Extraordinary Love Series is this Wednesday. I’m doing a Zoom call followed by a live Q&A.

The topic is what high-quality men want in a long-term partner. If you haven’t already, go to extraordinaryloveseries.com, register for free, and I’ll see you in class. It should be a lot of fun.

So, a few months ago, I did an episode of this podcast on fear, why it’s a real thing, but fear is always the problem and never the solution. So, we just have to kind of talk about fear because it undergirds every conversation about dating, relationships, sex, and men. It’s generally not men that my clients are afraid of.

It’s failure. It’s putting themselves in another situation, making themselves emotionally vulnerable, and ending up right back where they started, right? Feeling bad about themselves, feeling bad about their prospects, feeling bad about men. So, we can understand the thought process here.

What if I give everything to this process and I still end up alone? What if I do the work and nothing changes? So, any person who’s listening to this podcast has thought of that, but it’s not entirely different than the why would I go on this diet or why would I hire this personal trainer? Why would I go to a shrink, right, when I’ve been depressed on and off for my whole life? It’s the assumption that nothing ever changes, and that’s not true. We know that’s not true. You’re a different person than you were five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago.

You’ve changed and evolved. Maybe this one issue hasn’t sorted itself out, but things change all the time and we have the capacity to change all the time. So, let’s acknowledge that fear of some process not working, any process not working, is valid and understand that no one in my shoes ever gives a money-back guarantee.

I don’t think they can give a money-back guarantee. No more than your lawyer can guarantee that they win your case or your shrink could stop you from being anxious or a doctor gives their money back if you come to the ER and there’s a complication. In a service-based business, you provide your work.

So, why does anybody hire those people? Why would I hire a general contractor to redo something in my backyard? Well, it’s because that person has a body of work and they’ve proven to do it time and again and they come recommended by someone else and I can’t necessarily do it myself. So, that’s why we hire specialists. We pay big money for specialists.
I don’t want to tell you how much my backyard cost. So, the question isn’t whether someone’s going to do their best or do their job competently, it’s whether you’re going to be happy with the results. That’s the important part.

You got to be happy with the results. So, I’m going to bring this back to you listening right now. Smart, strong, successful woman, decades of dating and relationship disappointments in your past, not confident based on your life experience that anything is going to work.

Most of your relationships are a testament to how relationships and men are ultimately disappointing and make you feel maybe it’s better to be alone than to be in another bad relationship. We’ve talked about that a million times on this podcast. It’s the middle.

Well, being alone and not getting hurt by a guy is better than being devastated by a guy, so I think I’m going to be alone. And what we never do is avail ourselves to the possibility that, oh, I could actually be happy with a guy. Relationships don’t have to end up in disappointment or failure.

That’s a huge concept, the idea that, oh, of course it’s better to be alone than to be in a relationship where I’m verbally abused and neglected. Well, sure, that’s a no-brainer, but that’s mostly like getting rid of a disease. Well, now you’re better off than you were before.

We want to get you to a higher plane. And so, all of this work that we’re doing is about the idea of taking you to a higher plane. And so, everybody who’s listening, and again, I’ve been doing this for 22 years, I mention that a lot because it’s on my mind a lot.

I have a blog that’s got 35 million plus readers. This podcast has reached 3 million people. You know I’m not working with 35 million people or 3 million people, right? I’m working with a tiny, tiny percentage of people, most of whom have never, like most of the listeners have never hired me.

So, they couldn’t possibly know whether this would work for them, right? But structured, immersive dating coaching done right is very much different than whatever you’ve been doing on your own. Therapy, self-help books, Instagram reels. So, if you’re sort of like listening to this over and over week after week and nodding your head and feeling a little triggered and challenged sometimes but knowing that ultimately I’m just trying to speak my truth and try to be compassionate to where you’re at and show you a way out and flip your negative to a positive.

So, we’d start with a rhetorical question if you’re afraid that working together would not work, right? What’s the alternative? The alternative is what you’re doing right now. Maybe doing nothing, not dating at all, sort of hoping that the right guy meets you in real life through your normal interactions. Maybe swipe sometimes, maybe just sort of stay stuck learning about dating and relationships, listening, working on yourself, right? And it’s all very passive, which is fine.

There’s a time in your life to be passive. There’s a time in your to heal. But understand that what we do here is far more than hand me a man, right? This is about self-awareness, right? You understanding you, your belief system, how you show up in the world, what you think of guys, how you show up on dates and within relationships and you communicate.

It’s about replacing limiting beliefs with more powerful and effective ones. It’s about recognizing patterns that we’re all too close to see our own patterns, right? How do we know that? Think about one of your friends, right? One of your single friends. Why is she still single? You know the answer to that question.

You don’t have to be a dating coach to do it. So, we could always see people more clearly than they can see themselves. That’s the value of having a respected third party.
And it’s about learning to trust yourself. The thing I see most with women is not that you don’t like yourself. Most of my women have confidence in either their kindness, their intelligence, their work ethic, their acumen, their friendships, their parenting skills.

I work with women who have confidence in every arena except this one arena, dating relationships and men. So, we need to restore your confidence to this arena so you could be the kind of person who gets a quality man to want to commit his life to you. Confidence is a really attractive quality.

And when you’ve been hollowed out by bad relationships, it’s hard to have confidence. It’s a bit of a negative feedback loop. So, when people come here, you know, I use for YouTube people, you could see, I always use a post-it note.

We talk about a post-it note and the post-it note is the destination. It’s where you’re going. So, when people come to me, they’re generally stuck and we need to get them unstuck and on the road to success.

So, I would ask you if you came to me as your coach, and again, this is the real solicitation. You could listen to this podcast for free in perpetuity. But if you came to me for coaching for six months, one year, by the end of our time together, you didn’t meet your husband, but you stopped choosing emotionally unavailable men, you set healthier boundaries, you were more confident in your ability to date online and communicate your needs.

Was our effort a failure or was it a success? And that thing that I just mentioned to you is something I can virtually guarantee to everybody. That if you and I work together for six months, you will be less anxious, you will be less negative, you’ll be more confident in your ability to attract a quality man, weed out the bad ones, and make the right one want to stick around forever. I just can’t tell you when that man comes along.

So, the what if I fail thing, which again is always lurking underneath this talk about dating relationships and men, is what if I fail? Well, the counter arguments are pretty simple. I’m going to run down them. Again, I know when I’m doing this, I’m using logic rather than emotion.

Emotion is more powerful. Risk aversion is more powerful. I would rather not date at all than to take the chance of opening my heart and be in love.

I’d rather be alone for the rest of my life than to admit I need help and hire a dating coach. That’s far more emotion than logic because nobody wants to be alone for the rest of their life. But then again, nobody wants to hire a dating coach either.

Because what if I fail? You see how these things tie together. So, right now you’re not where you want to be. So, if you’re not where you want to be right now, doing nothing pretty much guarantees that you stay on the same path.

That’s inertia. That’s everybody, definition of insanity. Clarity is power, whether you recognize that or not.

Once we work together, you know what kind of man works for you, what kind of man is a waste of time. You take the principles that you’re learning from the Love U podcast in Love U and you apply them in your real life. So, it’s not just book learning.

No more than reading about washboard abs is the same as having washboard abs. You’re actually applying it and you have someone who’s holding you accountable to it. Then the idea that when you learn all of this, when you know as much as I know about dating and relationships, sincerely.

You could practice law for 20 years and there’s still a growth curve. If you’re taking my course and you’re working with me, I could teach you literally everything I know in six months. Then you will know as much as I do, which is cool.

My expertise goes really deep on one narrow, narrow subject. So, that’s the exciting part is you will have the confidence and the clarity to be your own dating coach by the time we’re done working together. That is a gift.

That is the gift that keeps on giving. That is teaching a woman to fish rather than catching a fish for her. Also, by doing dating coaching, you gain experience.

A lot of people, again, are kind of like armchair experts. They’ll read and they’ll go to therapy and they’ll heal, but they don’t actually get boots on the ground experience.

here’s a lot of dating coaches who don’t insist on dating.

They do some sort of therapy. They’ll talk about who hurt you in the past and your attachment style. It’s all past stuff, which is relevant.

We’ll spend about the first month of coaching on your past and on your confidence. Then we’re going to start dating because if you go on a date a week between now and the time we’re done working together, you’re going to find a guy that you like if you do the things that I ask you to do. It will happen.

It’s not if it’ll happen. It’s when it’ll happen. A lot of people like dating, the idea of finding love in theory, but don’t want to put it into practice.

When people come to me, there’s accountability. You have to put it into practice. If I’m the personal trainer, you kind of have to come to the gym.

You can’t just read the book at home. Then you also stop outsourcing the most important thing in your life to luck. That’s what most people want, like winning the lottery, like a safe with money coming down.

That’s miraculous. It’s wonderful if that happens. I don’t like that model to build wealth.

I want to be more on top of my own income and savings in 401k and 529 and all the things that I do to make sure my family is secure. It’s much more systemized and strategic and a slow burn. That is exactly what dating and relationships are.

It’s building up that muscle instead of sort of hoping to get lucky. That very, very passive way that most people try to approach love is essentially luck. I’m just going to live my life and I’m going to go to pick a ball and I’m going to go to salsa and if I meet him, fine.

If I don’t meet him, fine. How many dates did you go on with that strategy last year? One? Two? You’ve gone on two dates. You work with me, I’ll get you on a date a week.

Which is going to produce results faster? Seems pretty obvious. What if you keep on doing what you’re doing for the next five years, for the next 10 years? What if you’re like the woman I mentioned in the last podcast who joined my mailing list and listened to me for 10 years, went from 50 to 60? It is harder to meet men when you’re 60 than when you’re 50. It’s harder to meet men when you’re 50 than when you’re 40.

We know this. There’s literally no better time than the present, presuming you’re in a decent place in your life and you’re healthy and you’re financially secure, of course. But there’s no better time than the present to have the highest market value, I hate to even use those terms, to the kind of men that you want.

So you don’t want to miss out on love. It’s out there. There is some guy out in the universe who has no idea you exist and he can’t find you because you’re not dating.

You’re a product that’s not advertising yourself actively and you’re wondering why nobody’s buying your product. So my job is to help you market your product in the most effective way so that your target market wants to buy it and does. That’s a very, very achievable goal and we get to do it here all the time.

Go to my website, go to Love U love stories, read for yourself. There’s a hundred wedding photos on there. I have 500 more where that came from, where people won’t let me use their photos because no one wants to admit they had a dating coach.

So believe you me, this is not an if, this will make a difference. It’s a when. So there’s no failure in seeking love with intention and we know this about everything else.

You don’t want to be the what if person. What if I tried out for the school play? What if I wrote that novel? What if I asked for the race? You never want to be the what if person. You want to raise your bar high because if you raise your bar high, the worst thing if you raise your bar up here is that you achieve here.

But you grow, you evolve, you become the kind of person that attracts the kind of man that you’ve always wanted. But it doesn’t happen by thinking it, it only happens by doing. So I always use a bunch of broken metaphors in my work.

You’ve heard it here before. So I’ll use the biggest loser metaphor. Now I know better than to ever compare my clients to the biggest loser.

So again, it’s the TV show The Biggest Loser where people go on and they’re 300 pounds and they have a personal trainer for like 10 weeks. So imagine they went to a personal trainer for like 10 weeks and in those 10 weeks you lose 100 pounds. So my question for you is are you a success or are you a failure? I think you’re a success.

Like obviously you lost 100 pounds in 10 weeks. Maybe you’re not bikini ready yet. Maybe you’re not going to win the Miss America contest the way it’s designed.

But if you’ve gone from 300 pounds to lost 100 pounds in 10 weeks, you’ve proven that you can take action, you can do hard things, that you can diet and exercise and see a tangible result if you stick with the process. So maybe I’m foolish or naive or wired a little bit differently. But I am far more comfortable, and this is me, Evan, trying, failing, learning, growing than the alternative, doing nothing, wondering what could be and regretting that nothing ever changes.

And failure is like that’s my default setting in life. I got fired from every job I ever had in my 20s. I wrote a dozen screenplays that didn’t sell and didn’t make me a dollar.
I went out with 300 women over 10 years of trying to get to where I am now. So I really, really know failure. I’m comfortable with it.

But what happened? I turned all of those failures, and it’s not to be self-aggrandizing, I turned all of those failures into a success, a career in writing, different than the writing I started with, but a career in writing, a career where I don’t have a boss and I can’t get fired. I get to make a difference on my own terms, and I get to talk about all the mistakes that I made in the process of dating 300 people to be evolved enough to choose my wife to have a happy marriage. So I’m like the luckiest guy in the world.

But it wasn’t luck. It wasn’t a thing that happened to me. It was a thing that I did.

And it was driven because I was more afraid of being alone for the rest of my life than I was afraid of failing at dating and relationships. That’s why I kept on going out with one or two people a week for 10 years. The goal of having a partner who loved me unconditionally was the most important thing by far.

So I know this whole thing comes off as a plug for my services. I get that. And I know that’s not necessarily like a good look, but it’s not about you hiring me.

This is about the pep talk. This is about the call to action. This is about being optimistic and love.

This is about smiling at strangers. This is about dating online with regularity. It’s about opening your heart instead of closing it.

It’s about trying different people on for size and seeing who fits and what surprises you. It’s about doing anything different than you’ve been doing or that you’re doing right now so you can meet a great partner and have a really great life. So if something I said inspires you to do something without me, great.

Go do it. And if you want a step-by-step template and someone holding your hand through the process because it is sometimes daunting and scary and we all have blind spots and fears, I’d be honored to hold your hand through that process. Go to evanmarckatz.com/now, book a time to talk with me and I will show you the way.

Just don’t be afraid of what happens when you reach out to me. I’m the safest guy in the world. I am not going to let you down.

You are not going to fail. You’re going to experience things. You’re going to grow.

You’re going to get more confident, more self-aware, more experienced, more discerning, more boundaries. You’re going to transform yourself as a human being and it’s going to filter down to every single aspect of your life, relationships with your parents, with your kids, with the people at work and especially your romantic relationships. My name is Evan Marc Katz.

This is the Love U Podcast. I thank you for listening to me today. I know it’s a lot easier to sell a podcast that’s five texts that you could send that are going to make him crave you.

I just don’t like to do those. I just don’t like that. I think they’re dumb.

Sorry all the people who do five texts that’ll make him crave you. I’ve probably done something like that but I really don’t like doing stuff like that. I like doing stuff like this because it’s more real.

It’s more authentic. It goes deeper and it cuts to the root of why so many more people watch and listen to my stuff than actually hire me and I’m doing fine. Don’t worry about me but for your sake do something.

Don’t listen and do nothing because I really want you to have the love that you deserve. That’s all I got for today. Don’t forget to subscribe.

Don’t forget to leave us positive reviews, whatever one does at the end of a podcast. Most importantly, believe that love is worth it. It is.

I’m surrounded by love every day. My wife, my kids, my clients, the people who are having success in these programs. I could do my next podcast.

I could do three success stories with clients that I’m working with right now. I’m not going to do that because I have another one scripted but just know you have the opportunity to take control of your life. I want you to take that opportunity for you.

That’s all I got. I didn’t mention the Extraordinary Love series. I did at the top but extraordinaryloveseries.com. If you join, I’ll see you on Wednesday and be able to answer your questions about how you could attract a high-value man.

That should be a fun conversation as well. Have a great day. Bye-bye.

Can you be warm, confident, and flirty—without feeling fake? In this episode of the Love U Podcast, I coach Shahrzad, a smart, multilingual woman in Stockholm who’s great at meeting people but struggles to spark romantic connection in real life. We explore how to build social momentum, express interest naturally, and radiate the kind of energy that draws high-quality men in. If you’ve ever felt stuck between being friendly and being flirty, this one’s for you.

What You’ll Hear:

• I coach Shahrzad, a smart, multilingual 29-year-old in Sweden, who’s doing everything “right” but still struggles to turn real-life interactions into romantic ones.

• We talk about what it actually means to be approachable—and how to express interest without chasing, performing, or feeling fake.

• You’ll hear why confidence isn’t about lines or tricks, but about how you see yourself—and how that changes the way men respond to you.

• I explain the two main types of flirtation—playful banter and warm curiosity—and why one might come more naturally to you.

• We unpack how being the “mayor” of your social scene (aka creating social momentum) makes you instantly more magnetic.

• You’ll learn how expressing opinions builds sexual tension and makes small talk more exciting.

• I share how to shift your energy so that every man you meet feels you’re already desired—and how that unspoken confidence creates instant attraction.

• I coach Shahrzad on specific, doable ways to bring more feminine energy, flirtation, and social leadership into her daily life—especially in male-dominated professional settings.

• And finally, I explain why you don’t have to change who you are to be a better flirt—you just have to practice showing up differently.

Full Episode Transcript

Hey, this is Evan Mark Katz, Dating and Relationship Coach for Smart, Strong, Successful Women, your personal trainer for love. Welcome back to the LoveU Podcast. Gosh, I don’t even know how many episodes we’ve done.

It’s probably close to 400. I should probably go back and look and celebrate the 400th episode. I don’t know which number this one is.

I’ve got this massive spreadsheet and I’m really useless with spreadsheets. So let’s just say I’ve been doing this since 2016. We’ve reached 3 million people and it’s still going strong.

Somehow, someway we continue to reinvent and be able to help more and more people and I’m very, very grateful for your support. So in the show, that’s support. If you haven’t subscribed on Apple or Spotify, please do so.

If you haven’t left us a kind word in the comments or a positive review, that would mean the world to me as well. People do pay attention to those things. I certainly do.

Finally, just a reminder, the Extraordinary Love Series is going strong. Go to extraordinaryloveseries.com . Put in your name and email address and phone number. We will send you reminders.

It is a free lecture series for smart, strong, successful women who want to understand men and attract high-value partners. It is something that I’m really, really excited about and it’s gaining momentum. Hundreds of people are already in there and I look forward to seeing you there as well.

Today’s conversation is… I want to pronounce your name properly. It’s Shahrzad? Yes. Proper emphasis on the second syllable? Yes, it is.

Okay, I just want to do this right. Her name is Shahrzad. She’s a Love You podcast listener.

We’ve done a few coaching sessions with other folks from around the world today. She’s coming from Sweden, if I’m correct. Yes, I’m from Sweden.

I’m really excited to listen to her. The nice thing about coaching, in my opinion, is that wherever you go, wherever you live, however old you are, whatever ethnicity you are, the issues we face are all the same. There’s something really grounding and unifying when we listen to other people who are trying to get to the other side of their confusion and frustration.

I’m excited for today’s conversation. Shahrzad welcome to the Love You podcast. Would you be kind enough to share a little bit about yourself? Yes, absolutely.

It’s lovely to be here. Thank you. My name is Shahrzad.

I was born and raised in Sweden. I’m Swedish-Iranian. I’m 29.

I’ve studied law and I work in finance now. It’s been really exciting moving to a new city, Stockholm. It’s a bigger city and meeting people.

There are some ups and downs, so I’m excited to have a conversation with you about one of those things. All right. Well, that’s remarkable.

How many languages do you speak? I speak four. Hopefully four and a half, five soon. You’re doing it in English now.

Farsi, if you’re from Iran. Yes, exactly. Swedish and? Yeah, and then Spanish.

Pero tengo que practicar mi lengua. That is amazing. You know, I’m a dumb American.

We never have to leave America. We have no need to speak other languages. But that’s really impressive.

If we were on a date, I would ask you a lot more about this. But we are here to discuss very specifically your love life. So why don’t you lay it on us? Yes, absolutely.

So one of the things I’ve noticed for myself is that I want to meet people more in real life. And in, you know, in all cities, but in particular in Sweden and Stockholm, I find that a lot of people are on the apps and people are having their, you know, heads in the phone. So, but I really want to put myself out there more and be more approachable.

So, for instance, and that is my question. So how can I be more approachable in real life and show curiosity about someone more romantically and move that interaction forward in a flirty natural way? Because I’ve after listening to this podcast, I’ve gone to and I have a goal of going to three events in person a week. But I find that, you know, just because I’m meeting more people doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m also moving that interaction forward.

So that is my question. How can I sort of show more of a romantic interest or curiosity about someone in person? That’s a really complex and loaded question. I appreciate you asking it because it’s not something that I have an easy answer for.

It’s not right. I mean, there’s a there’s a whole section. And Love U is a 26 week course.

And I’ve got one week on meeting men in real life and I’ve got one week on flirting. And so these are definitely things that that I talk about, but it’s usually much broader. So let’s kind of go back and forth on this.

One of the things that I that I’m picking up, which is not wrong, is that you partially want to control things that are a little bit out of your control. And I would just. Maybe you didn’t mean to say that, but that’s what I was picking up.

You know, people here are on their devices, people here and that’s everywhere. And it’s a societal wide problem and nothing you can do. If a guy is walking past you on the street looking at his phone, you’re not going to bump into him.

That’s not dating coaching is like, hey, just so let’s not worry too much about the bigger problems that you can’t control. Let’s worry about the sort of tiny things that you can. Absolutely.

Yes. So. Would you consider yourself an introvert or an extrovert? I think I am an extrovert.

I get energy being out there. OK, good. That that makes everything we’re about to do a lot easier, more comfortable.

So being a flirt is something that is like a lot of things. I think people will have just sort of an innate personality. We all have innate personalities.

I look at my children and they have their innate personalities. And there’s only so much as a parent. I could shape those kids.

They are who they are. If you are a flirt, no one ever had to teach you how to flirt. It’s just who you are.

Do you know anybody who’s a good flirt? Yes, I know some some girlfriends I have. Yes. OK, so I would ask you sincerely.

What if you have that observation about them? What is it that you think makes them a good flirt? What is it that they do? I think what I’ve noticed is that they push back sometimes on what what a guy says. So, for instance, if they say, you know, so what are you ordering? And they say, oh, blueberry cake. They’re like, oh, this would never work.

For instance. OK, so the term is negging. So putting a putting a guy down makes him a good flirt? Yeah.

Or just challenging someone saying, hey, so what’s going on with you? Yeah, no, doing nothing. Oh, so you just sit around doing nothing or just something that they’re pushing back. And that doesn’t have to be something negative.

Or they may be pause and look at someone and say, like, I like your shirt looks good on you. But I can be more observant of what they do. I haven’t really thought about that.

To me, that’s just a great place to start the conversation, because you’re you know, you’re asking for for a broader worldview about what can I do? What’s within my power? You have access to other people who you know that you would consider good flirts. And then there’s going to be some gap between how they conduct themselves and how you conduct yourself. So to put a finer point on what you said.

It’s not so much the putting them down part or the you look good in that shirt part. They’re all forms of the same thing that I coach and love you. It’s having opinions.

That’s all it is. It’s having an expressing opinions. So when you’re flirting with someone on a dating app, you don’t want to talk about dating apps.

Well, asking generic questions. So what do you do for fun? Oh, my God, that sounds really great. That’s not flirting.

Why? Because you’re not expressing your opinion or observation. So people with opinions or observations have a take on the world. Often that take could be funny.

It takes confidence to have an opinion to take a stand. So people are responding to confidence and humor and it comes out in the form of having an opinion. But not everybody is that opinionated.

A lot of people. My wife is a perfect example. She’s she’s generally neutral.

She’s Switzerland. She likes everybody. She likes everything.

Yeah. Right. And those people are really great, but they’re not as they don’t have sharp edges.

So they’re not as flirtatious. But there’s another form of flirtation that I want to open you up to. I understand the one you’re talking about.

It’s commonly used among men and women. But to me, it’s more of a and you asked it in your email question to me. It’s more of a warmth, openness, curiosity.

It’s a way of being in the world. Again, this happens to be by my my desk. I can’t say enough about it.

But How to Know a Person by David Brooks. It’s not a flirting book. But I feel like someone who’s a flirt, it doesn’t necessarily even have to have sexual content to be flirting.

Like I flirt with dogs, old men. Like it’s just a way of being. And it tends to be warm and curious and enthusiastic.

It’s Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People, old book on sales. Would you say you are that person? You come across on this call that way. But maybe it’s not as maybe it’s because we already have trust between us.

Is the question if I am warm in person with people? Are you warm, bubbly and curious in person? I think when I, for instance, I was at a run club this week, I go twice a week. And so I can find myself a bit more not reserved. I do talk to people, but maybe it’s not as it doesn’t come off as flirty or as, you know, curious about someone.

It’s more like, hi, more generic, I would guess, because I don’t know exactly what to say. For instance, I were to touch someone’s arm and I say, hey, it’s good to see you again. I’m excited about this run today.

Hey, what are you watching this week or something like that, something. So that’s what I do. But I could definitely improve.

Yeah. Again, I’m not criticizing you. If anything, I’m just trying to figure out what it is that you do.

I had a friend in college who was a great flirt and I thought I was good. And then I saw this guy. I was like, oh, that’s what it is.

He was the mayor. He was the guy that when you went to where he was living, in that case, it was a fraternity house in the United States. But he was the guy who was like, oh, my God, Evan, you have to meet Sherry.

Sherry’s so cool. Have you listened to this mix? Have you had our punch? Check out our ping pong table. He was just the guy that everybody wanted to be around because he was just a happy super connector.

So I thought I was a good flirt because I was confident and articulate. And I’d find a woman I liked and I’d make a beeline for her and like, you know. All over her.

Really intense. And he was more like, likes everybody, likes everything. And people are attracted to that.

And it is it’s it’s a it’s a it’s mostly a positive energy. And I think there’s a lot of people who want to be good flirts, but they lead with sincerity. Right.

Which is not playful or silly. And maybe it might be warm people, but the nature of their conversation might get a little heavy. And so suddenly it doesn’t feel flirtatious.

It doesn’t have sort of the energy of two people falling in love, even though that person could be a good person, interesting, interesting conversationalist. Suddenly those conversations turn into therapy sessions. Yes.

So do you, from what I gather, do you think that I could be more open than in general when I go, for instance, to these run clubs because I go there and I really like running, that I could just be more open and bubbly for everyone, not necessarily someone I see, just. I’ll throw out an idea and it’s off. It’s not exactly what we’re talking about.

I’m open. The thing that would would I that I think would catalyze your run club would be for you to say. And again, I don’t know the answer to this.

Maybe this already takes place, but it’s putting yourself at the center and creating social capital. It’s hey, after run club, do you guys want to go grab drinks and do karaoke? Right. It’s I’m going to be the person who creates and catalyzes fun interactions.

Yeah. Like, is that something that you think is doable because that person is well liked by men and women? Why? Because you’re creating something that didn’t exist. That running might be fun, but drinking karaoke is even more fun.

Yeah, absolutely. No, I can do that. I can do that.

I mean, there’s some of those ones that I go to already. We stay afterwards and drink some drink beer and then we have hot dogs and so on burgers. But maybe outside of it, like for anyone who wants to join outside of it.

Hey, guys, let’s anyone who wants to join. Let’s go do hangouts. I think the person who does that has a leg up because you’re kind of making yourself mayor in that case.

And we all have a friend who’s the sort of the social planner. Yeah, absolutely. Like there’s always there’s always some girl who’s the social planner and she’s she’s it’s not surprising.

She’s often the flirt, too. Yeah, absolutely. No, I’m thinking of one.

Yeah, for sure. There’s another element to flirting, which I think is I don’t want to ignore. And that is the sexual aspect of it.

One is the warm, friendly, bubbly aspect of it. One of it is the sexual aspect of it. And I don’t certainly don’t want to make you uncomfortable.

I was just itching myself. Yeah, well, sometimes when people start to touch their hair. Anyways, anyway, there’s not one way to be.

There’s you know, there’s different cultures have different strengths. But certainly I wouldn’t think that Persian culture would be the height of of sexuality. And it’s possible that if you weren’t given a glimpse of that growing up, it might not it might not be something that comes naturally.

Right. So I don’t want to make any, you know, unnecessary assumptions. But one of the things that I’ve observed is that there’s an undercurrent of sexuality and flirtatious interactions.

And the way I would talk about it is you like me. You’re attractive to me. I know you like me and you’re attractive to me.

So that’s the thing that’s in the air. Right. And it’s the assumption that the answer is yes.

And that every guy likes you, is attracted to you, wants to date you, wants to sleep with you. And if you start the interaction there, it’s a very, very different action instead of going to, you know, what do you do for work? What do you do for fun? What are you watching on TV? Right. Yeah.

He knows it. You know it. And we’re not even talking about it.

It’s just what’s in the air. And if you’ve ever met a guy who is sexually confident. Yes.

You probably have and you’re attracted to him. Yeah. Just picture, there’s a picture in your head who that is.

Yeah, absolutely. My guess is that he has that. His presumption is that you want him.

And he doesn’t have to beg and he doesn’t have to ask. It’s sort of assumed. And that confidence, that sexual confidence is attractive and makes something that’s not even inherently flirtatious feel flirtatious.

Yeah. Right. But it’s with the undercurrent and that’s why it’s sort of subtle.

It’s with the undercurrent of you want me, I know you want me. And this is just a little dance that we’re doing. OK.

Does that make sense? And again, it’s really hard to describe it. That’s the best way I can describe it. Does that make sense? Yes.

So that I go into an interaction assuming that’s in the air. That’s in the air and that every single guy there wants to take you home. And all you have to decide is who you want to be the guy.

Yeah. And no one has to say anything about this. But if you bring that element into it, everything gets a little bit of an extra electrical charge.

Right. Which is why there’s a different vibe when you’re at a club. Yes.

Right. Then when you’re sitting at Starbucks with a business colleague. Yeah.

Talking about the quarterly reports. Yep. There’s just a different.

There’s two people, but one of them has a charge to it. Why is there the charge? Because it’s expected at a club. Someone is going to try to make a move, buy you a drink, get your number, take you home.

So it’s built into it, but it’s something we could kind of build in everywhere. Yeah. In a different context.

Yes. Can I ask a layer to that? As long as it’s related to what we’re talking about? Yes. Yeah.

This is related. So because I told you I work in finance and so on. So that entails that I meet a lot of guys in those other settings where that charge isn’t there or the assumption isn’t there.

Is there a way where I can sort of invite myself and them in this sort of space? Not in that context, but for instance, if I were like, hey, we had a nice conversation. Hey, love to hang out sometime. And then we meet at a different place.

And then I can have that assumption moving into it. Well, this is where it gets a little tricky and I want to tread lightly. Yes.

Very sincerely. I want to approach this with a measure of humility. I’m a 52 year old married guy in the United States.

Right. And historically, masculine energy has been about he does. She receives.

Yes. Those roles have been changing over time. Definitely been changing in Western Europe.

The roles are may or may not even be there anymore. You’ll find men are a little bit more passive. So my advice is generally not to do the work for the man to put yourself in the role of, hey, do you want to hang out sometime? I’ve got a great place for us.

I’ll pick you up at nine. I’ll grab the check. I’ll lean in to make the first kiss.

Suddenly, when a woman takes on all of that role, then the guy doesn’t have a role. So I want to be very delicate to not say that this is the only way to be. But my belief is that women are going to be more empowered if you allow the guy to do the heavy lift.

Your job is to create the social conditions for him to make the move. So you create the after party. Yes.

He’s standing there. Right. You can go over to the bar, grab a drink, but you’re not approaching him.

You’re just grabbing a drink. He can see you over there. You can turn and smile.

That invites him to approach you for the drink. But he still has to do the thing. Right.

So what I want you to do, in my opinion, is do all the heavy lifting where you create the party. You approach him. You ask him out.

Suddenly you’re doing the masculine thing. And he’s a passive participant in this. It’s like you’re hitting on him.

And I want him to hit on you. Yes. Of course.

That’s what I want, too. I just want to make sure that they know that I am approachable. So what makes you approachable? Smile? Hold eye contact? That’s how a guy knows it’s safe.

So if you’re in a place and everybody’s on their phone, you can literally go up to three guys. It takes courage. And smile.

And here’s the great part. You’re not hitting on any of them. Hey, guys, how’s it going tonight? Finding any cute ladies here? I did a lap.

I didn’t think there was that much talent here. Here’s the good part. You’re not actually hitting on anybody when you do something like that.

And it takes confidence to be able to do that. I always found approaching groups of women to be easier than approaching individual women. Because no group of women could shoot you down.

An individual one could. So it’s the confidence to create social conditions. It’s the confidence to see a person.

And put yourself in his line of sight and smile at him. Which opens up the door for him to approach you. Knowing that his approach will be well received.

It’s being warm in curiosity and bubbly during the conversation. And having opinions and expressing those opinions. That might be a little bit edgier.

And it’s knowing, above all, that whatever guy you’re talking to is absolutely enamored with you. And if he had an opportunity, he’d want to be with you. And all you have to decide is whether he is good enough for you.

And that energy is, now you are the center of it all. It doesn’t have to be true. You just have to feel like it’s true.

And if you’ve ever seen a confident guy that you find desirable, he has that. It never occurs to him that someone’s not going to like him. Yeah, you’re right.

Well, thank you. Yes. So it’s hard to break this down into something that’s semi-scientific.

It’s a really challenging conversation, actually. But I hope it at least got you thinking and your wheels spinning a little bit. Absolutely.

I think two things that I can practice, at least so I get in the reps, I guess, is to, like you said, if I see two or three guys standing in a corner, hi guys, how’s it going? See any cute ladies tonight? And then smile and then I move on my way. So I sort of leave it open. But also this thing with social capital.

To invite, hey guys, this was great fun. Who wants to join me? Not does anyone. Who wants to join me to do this? I’m going to this.

Who’s with me? Yeah, who’s with me? So you become a leader. And so all of these are small subtle ways of signaling confidence. Confidence is the thing that makes people attractive.

People tend not to respond to insecure. And that’s the hard part. We’re all insecure.

So if you can sort of step into this confidence, people generally want to follow. Oh, she’s came up with something cool to do. Sure.

And then what happens? You become the person that people rally behind to do cool shit. And then women see you differently. And men see you differently.

And you see you differently. And you’re the same exact person you were before. So that’s the cool part is you really don’t have to change.

That’s why I started with, are you an introvert or an extrovert? If you’re an extrovert, this is just a series of action steps. But you don’t have to go way outside your comfort zone or change your personality to do these things. Absolutely.

No, I think this is very doable because I like doing things. I like meeting people. Just going to an event isn’t that difficult for me.

Because I enjoy it. I get energy. But I think the more challenging or sort of where I can learn or grow is these things that we’ve been talking about.

I told this to someone the other day. It might have been on a coaching call. I forget.

I talk a lot. I just thought this was really clever. I remember this from years and years ago.

There was this great story of a woman at a bar, a big crowded hotel bar. I was there with a guy friend of mine. I’m in the early 30s.

This is 20 years ago. I see her across the room. She just does this.

She just puts up her finger and says, come to me. And I went… Wow. I was like, is that how easy it is? That’s really all you have to do? The answer, of course, is yes.

That’s how easy it is to get a guy to come over you. You just go like that. Could you imagine anything more powerful? It’s funny, but who doesn’t come over? Yeah.

If we see each other and I sort of smile… You’re looking at him and he’s like, come here. It’s like little things like that go a really, really long way. It’s simple and I need to practice.

That’s the thing. And that’s the good part. This kind of practice… You’ve done some really hard things in your life.

Learning these languages and being an immigrant. These are really challenging things where you’ve taken a huge leap. None of these things are a huge leap.

I should be able to manage. The funny part is you’ll be scared. Of course I am scared.

I’m a bit nervous, but I think I need to practice. If I go to these events, which I’m already going to be doing, and I see someone and I’m looking at them, they’re looking at me and I go… But it takes confidence just to do that. Hey, come over here.

And then he’ll come over here and he still has to charm you. You’re just the queen. He’s just the court jester.

So you never really have to worry. It’s their job to demonstrate to you. You are not hitting on them.

You are not asking him out. You are encouraging him to approach you. And what do you know? He wants you.

That’s all we know. How do we know he wants you? He came across the room when you said that. That’s how you know.

So there’s actually proof of concept. Thank you, Evan. It’s nine o’clock, so I will sleep on this.

But yeah, this was really helpful. Thank you. Awesome.

Well, it’s my pleasure. Thank you for taking your time out of your schedule. And please continue to listen to the podcast.

I’m here if you ever need me. Absolutely. My name is Evan Marquez.

This is the Love You Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you to our guest, Shahrzad.

She was wonderful. Really curious. I think she’s going to be very successful at what we talked about today.

I think there’s going to be measurable results in a short period of time. And I look forward to receiving that email. If you’re a regular listener, please share on Spotify. Share your comments on Spotify, Apple, Facebook, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts. In addition, join the revolution. It is called the Extraordinary Love Series, monthly lecture series, live Q&A, helping smart, strong, successful women attract high-value, commitment-oriented men.

Yes, they exist. I promise you just have to be able to get rid of the 90 percent of them who are not.  Go to extraordinaryloveseries.com and register. My name is Evan Marquez and if you go to evanmarckatz.com/now you can book a time with me to explore coaching the thing that we did with Shahrzad today. I could do this with you every other week. You could be part of a group of women who are going through the same process and get. 50 hours of time with me. That’s what happens when you join love you 50 hours of time, holding your hand through this process. And so those who want that level of personal attention, who want to get the best results fastest, go to evanmarckatz.com/now.

Thank you so much. I love you. I appreciate you. And I’ll see you. On the next podcast, bye. 

Have you ever felt like your past has permanently shaped your love life? In this deeply personal episode, I share the emotional journey of my client Lorelei—a smart, successful woman whose early experiences with an abusive father and controlling husband convinced her she was unlovable. We explore how trauma can create limiting beliefs that sabotage your dating life and how genuine emotional safety—yes, even from a male coach—can start to heal that. If you’ve struggled to trust men or believe that love is still possible for you, this episode will give you hope, insight, and a path forward. Tune in to rediscover what’s possible in love, no matter your age or past.

What You’ll Hear:

• I share an emotional coaching session with my client, Lorelei, a smart, beautiful woman in her 60s who’s finally confronting the childhood wounds that shaped her entire love life.

• You’ll hear the devastating belief her inner child whispered—“If no man has loved me in 60 years, nobody ever will”—and how we’re slowly rewriting that story together.

• I talk about how so many women unknowingly base their entire view of men on just two relationships: their father and their ex-husband.

• I unpack how your early experiences with men can quietly dictate who you choose, how you feel about yourself, and what you believe you deserve.

• You’ll hear how Lorelei began to trust again—not just in the process, but in me as a man—despite having every reason not to.

• I reflect on the unexpected role I’ve come to play for some of my clients: the first man who makes them feel safe, heard, and understood.

• I explain why seeing love modeled in real life matters—and what happens when you’ve only ever seen dysfunction.

• I talk about the emotional breakthrough that helped Lorelei go from fear and paralysis to finally getting online and believing love might actually be possible for her.

• I share why I believe the second half of Lorelei’s life is going to be better than the first—and how that can be true for you, too.

• And finally, I invite you to open your heart to a new chapter, one where you stop living by old pain and start creating the love story you’ve always deserved.

Full Episode Transcript

We’re going deep today. I’m not going to say that I’m going to cry, but I’m not saying I’m not going to cry either.

This episode is for every woman who’s had challenging relationships with her dad and subsequently with every other man that’s ever come into your life. There is hope for you. So please stick around for this entire episode.

My name is Evan Marc Katz. This is the Love U Podcast. Thank you for listening.

I really appreciate you. The Love U Podcast is a place where you can learn everything there is to know about dating and relationships, sex, and men from a man’s point of view. I have been doing this podcast since 2016, been a dating coach since 2003 before there were such things as dating coaches.

And so hopefully I have something to share with you that might be insightful. And I really appreciate you subscribing on Spotify, on Apple, all the positive reviews and five-star things. If you haven’t given us a review, it’s been like a month since I’ve gotten a comment.

So maybe you could be the person who makes my day and offers me a nice comment about what you get out of listening to the show. I’m also excited before we get started in the meat of today’s podcast to tell you about the next installment of the Extraordinary Love series. I do that the third Wednesday of every month.

It’s a Zoom call with a specific topic and a live Q&A every single month for free. We’ve had over 500 women registered. I think this month might be over 600 women registered in total.

And it’s something that you definitely want to be a part of this month’s topic, what high-quality men want in a long-term partner. And so go to extraordinaryloveseries.com, put in your name, email address, and phone number, and I will see you on the next Extraordinary Love series. So 22 years into this, that’s how long I’ve been doing this, I keep learning.

It’s a fun part of the job. It would be terrible if I was just running on autopilot and never, you know, I just, I talk at people rather than with people. But the nicest part about this is when you deal with human beings and you listen, you have always something reflected back to you that you haven’t seen before.

So I have a relationship that I think is pretty special with a client of mine named Lorelei. We’ll call her Lorelei for this sake. She’s beautiful, she’s bright, she is, I think she’s around 60 years old, and she has overcome so much in her life.

On the outside, you look at the life she had, she was living the dream, she was married to a very successful man for 25, 30 years. She got to be the stay-at-home mom that she wanted to be, to devote all her energy to her family. That’s what you would see from the outside.

From the inside, she felt small and disregarded and unintelligent and unimportant and controlled. She was trapped in somewhat of a prison for her entire adult life. And it all started, again, without breaching her trust, this is not an unusual story, it started way back in her childhood.

Physical, emotional abuse from her father set a template about how men are and why you should be with them. She was unprotected by her mother, and it taught her that the world was an unsafe place, that you had to go along with things that you didn’t like, and that her opinion and voice didn’t really matter. If I talk about being the CEO of your love life, this lovely Lorelei has never felt like the CEO of her life.

And she carried that belief into her marriage and chose a man who vaguely resembled her father, another controlling guy who was detached from her and her emotions, and he gave her enough of a good life that she couldn’t see how to escape. It never really had the courage to leave. And so, as I said, this is a painful story, but it’s not an uncommon story from where I sit.

So a few weeks ago, I’m coaching Lorelei, we do these one-on-one Zooms, she’s a private client of mine, and I was picking up on her ambient anxiety about dating, and to some degree about coaching with me. Just because you’re on Zoom doesn’t mean you can’t get a vibe from someone. So I was getting some sense of fear about dating and men, and maybe her belief in what we were doing together.

And she said something to me that was so profound, I was like, I’m writing this down, I’m going to talk about this in a podcast. So she said she had a conversation with her inner child, and this is work she’s done on her own, it’s nothing to do with me. The little girl voice inside of her, because that’s our formative years.

I mean, I wouldn’t put an inner child next to me and say, hey, meet little Evan. But I do think that there’s definitely an inner child voice that everybody has. This one for her is the person who’s the victim of so much abuse.

These are her earliest memories. So her inner child, while she and I are working together, said, and this is her quote, if no man has loved me in 60 years, not my father, or my ex-husband, or any other man, nobody will. This is proof that I am unlovable, unworthy.

So I was, that’s devastating to hear. And so what I was picking up was her fighting her resistance to this process of just being loved. And again, I don’t want to throw the word love around too loosely.

I wouldn’t want my clients to fall in love with me. I don’t fall in love with my clients. What I do is show them love.

I show them what it feels like to be loved, to have someone who is in your corner, who’s not judging you, who’s not abandoning you, whose goal is your happiness. That’s the not-so-secret secret of my business. And so she’s so wary of men, and I happen to be a man.

And so I’m overcoming 60 years of her inner child saying, no, he’s just another man. You’re not safe, whether it’s with me or with any other guy on the planet. And so when I gently point it out, and this is logic in the face of very deep emotion, but it’s sort of unassailable logic.

Her sample size of men is two. It’s her father and it’s her husband. And these are the guys who did the major damage in her life.

So there’s billions, millions, depends on how big or small you want your community to be, but there’s an infinite number of men out there. And the number of men who are her vision of how men are is two. So she was born into the family with one, right? That’s her father.

That sets the template for the husband she chooses. It’s like she’s got blinders on, right? So she interacts and devotes her life to two men who are constitutionally incapable of being the self-aware, sensitive, selfless guy who can make for a good husband, right? She didn’t barely choose either of them. It was almost like it was given to her.

So why would she draw the worst possible conclusion about herself? That because there are two bad men that she spent most of her life with, that somehow that’s about her. That’s absolutely the last conclusion I would want her to draw. And the conversation continued because she heard me and she’s like, you know, logically that makes sense that it is only two men.

I get that, but those are the only men in my life. And she explained further, and we talked about just different paths growing up. She explained further that she has no friends who are in really happy marriages and therefore she has no relationship role models to either inspire her to a good relationship or show her what it even looks like or feels like to have a relationship.

It’s someone who’s blind, who’s trying to paint a landscape or something like that. It’s not her fault, but it’s really hard to know what you’re going for if you’re not around it all the time. And so this led me to think that she basically knows two types of people at her juncture in life.

People who come from dysfunctional families and have dysfunctional marriages and stay in dysfunctional marriages for 20, 30, 40 years, right? Like, oh, I guess this is what love is to people who give each other the silent treatment and berate each other and cheat on each other. And I mean, I guess that’s a version of reality. That’s what she was used to in her family.

Or people who are friends of hers who are in sort of normal marriage that sort of deteriorated. It’s not abusive. It’s just two people who don’t really love each other.

And this is my point. She’s got friends like this, right? Marriages that exist sort of in name, but the kids are out of the house. They don’t make love.

They don’t do loving actions for each other. They minimize the amount of time they spend together. It’s just more marriage in name.

And again, I know that those sort of things exist. I’m not denying their existence. They’re extremely common.

But this is her only entryway into marriage are those two stories, the neglectful marriage and the abusive marriage. And so it helps to know people who are walking the walk, right? And this is anything. If you want to learn to be a successful businessman, it probably helps to work at a company with other successful businessmen and so on and so forth.

My wife opted out of her career and she took a bunch of mommy and me classes with other people who’d done this before and could teach her how to do this better so it wasn’t so scary. I mean, we are all constantly learning from people who have done it before and theoretically done it better. And then my client, Lorelei, said something that really kind of floored me.

And the reason I’m recounting this whole conversation is that it was profound and there were kind of things dropping that I hadn’t considered before. She said, I, me, Evan, was serving the role that her father and brother and husband should have served, right? And I hadn’t quite contemplated that before. And this big revelation, like I knew it was my job to show people love, but she told me I didn’t understand the power that I had.

I never thought of this as a power position, right? That I was being tasked with being the man that she should want to date, not literally, figuratively, right? Leading, right? Like all the stuff I talk about here, leading with character, kindness, consistency, communication, making each of my clients feel safe, heard, and understood. The stuff that I say you should get from your partner is stuff that I got to exhibit in every interaction. Every word that I say has to lend credence to the idea that I’m obviously not the only man on earth who knows how to be kind to a woman.

So this conversation did two things simultaneously. It made me more compassionate. It’s not like I was not compassionate after two decades of doing this, but it made me almost softer, more tender to my smart, successful clients, right? These really impressive women kind of need a hug as much as they need anything.

And it was a breakthrough for Lorelei in that she came to terms with the idea that she could trust and that there are other men besides some dating coach she found on the internet who are kind to women and want to be in service as part of a larger integrated partnership. The thing she’s looking for actually exists, right? And she’s starting to believe that this is true when her whole life has indicated otherwise. So Lorelei’s getting online.

It took her a while. It had taken her three months kind of dragging her feet, a little afraid. But I predict she’s going to find a good man a lot sooner than she thinks because she’s so amazing and because her dating sample size is so minimal.

It’s like she doesn’t even know what’s out there yet. So I’m excited for her. I’m optimistic for her.

And I think that we can close the book on the first 60 years of her life and open up a new chapter, brand new, unwritten, right? And plot out something that’s a lot more beautiful for the next 30 years. So if you want to be part of this, please, I encourage you, go to evanmarckatz.com/now, book a time to talk with me. I’m just going to ask you questions about yourself, why you’re reaching out, what’s not working in your love life, what you want to see happen in your love life, what obstacles are getting in the way of your success.

And we’ll plot out a course of action to get you unstuck from where you are in a more positive place and taking action to help you achieve your ultimate goal of creating a lasting, loving relationship, the kind that you deserve. I really hope to see you there, evanmarckatz.com/now. Before we go, I want to thank you for listening to me.

I know this isn’t a conventional podcast, I don’t know. I’m sure most podcasts are three people bullshitting about what they saw in The Bachelor, going on for three hours about politics or something. These are little sort of 20 minutes of me thinking out loud.

But hopefully somewhere along the line, you pick up something that you could take into your real life and makes you feel better about your chances of doing something really important in a pretty chaotic world. Having your go-to person is kind of everything. I’ll be talking about that a lot more in the next coming weeks.

I’m also excited, before we close, to remind you Extraordinary Love Series, extraordinaryloveseries.com, doing a Zoom call for high achieving women looking for high value men. And this month’s coming topic is what high quality men want in a long-term partner. You don’t want to miss it.

So go to Extraordinary Love Series to register. Thank you for listening. I appreciate you.

I love you. I look forward to reading your comments and reviews on YouTube and Spotify, et cetera. And I look forward to seeing you again next week.

That’s it. That’s all I got. Talk to you soon.

Bye-bye.