Good Life Project - Dating in Midlife…Oh My! | Bela Gandhi

Episode Date: June 4, 2026

Here is something most of us have never been told: falling in love was never supposed to be easy, and the fact that it hasn't been isn't a character flaw. It's a design problem. Your biology may be working against you. Your cultural programming works against you. But, more than anything, the list you've been carrying around of what you want in a partner is almost certainly pointing you in the wrong direction.Bela Gandhi is a dating coach and the founder of Smart Dating Academy, where she has helped thousands of people find lasting relationships. She was a longtime dating expert on Good Morning America and the Steve Harvey Show and built her methodology after realizing that love, like anything else worth doing, benefits from a system.What you'll explore in this conversation:Why 74% of third marriages end in divorce, and what that tells us about how most people approach finding a partnerThe "elevator people" exercise that reveals what you actually need in a relationship, and why it almost never matches your dream listHow biology, attachment patterns, and cultural messaging conspire to make us fall for the wrong people, again and againWhat highly accomplished, independent women often get wrong in the dating world, and what to do about it insteadWhy attraction can grow rather than just appear, and how pacing changes everythingIf you've been wondering whether love is still possible for you at this stage of life, Bela's answer is clear. She's seen too many people find it at 50, 60, and beyond to believe otherwise.You can find Bela at: Website | Instagram | Episode TranscriptNext week, we're sitting down with seven-time New York Times bestselling author Bruce Feiler to talk about something most of us have felt but never quite had words for: the particular loneliness that arrives in the middle of a full life, when the relationships that used to hold you steady are all being renegotiated at once, and the rituals that helped people move through moments like these for thousands of years have largely disappeared. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss any upcoming episodes!Check out our offerings & partners: Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the WheelVisit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The game is kind of rigged against us, right? Human biology is rigged for reproduction. It's not set up to find long-term committed love. Turns out when looking for love, most people filter their potential partners through a list of wants that's all wrong for them. Bella Gandhi, founder of Smart Dating Academy and a longtime dating expert on Good Morning America, has spent 17 years showing people why that list is usually pointing them in the absolute wrong direction. how to really find love, especially later in life. In this conversation, we get into what she calls elevator people, those who lift you up, and how to find them, why your biology works against you

when you're dating in midlife, and how attraction can actually grow rather than just appear. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. And the place I want to start with Bella is right at the beginning with the big dating fears. We'll jump right in there after this short break. So you've worked with literally thousands of people navigating, dating at all ages and also through the 40s, 50s, through the season of midlife. And I would imagine that many of them come to you having tried so many different times, so many different ways, and failed or not even knowing where to begin. In this season in particular, what's the biggest challenge or complaint that you often have? brought to you from people who are earnestly out there trying to find love in midlife? There are so many challenges. I mean, people are, you know, some of them have lost a spouse

or a partner that they, you know, was beloved to them. Some have been through the fiery tunnel of divorce. Some have never been married and are wondering, okay, does love exist for me? So I see people from all three pipelines, and I think they're all worried about, you know, some people will say, I don't want to be a nurse, I don't want to be a purse, oh my gosh, I've been divorced multiple times. Is somebody going to think I'm broken? So what I would say is if you're a single in midlife, the census data show that there's 35 million singles over 50. And if you back that up to 40, it's even more. And the total number of singles. is 118 million adults in this country. So it's a giant swath of the population. Everybody feels the thing. There's fear. There's heartbreak.

There's, you know, am I pretty enough? Do I look good? Am I sagging? Whatever it is, what I want to tell every single person that's listening today is that I have full certainty. Love exists for every person that wants it. I say there is a lid to every person.

pot at every age. So I want you to take, people call me a psychotic optimist because I say this. I'm like, love it. They're like for everyone. I'm like for everyone that wants it that's willing to follow a system that might be different than what we've done before, but love is for everybody that wants it. And I've seen stories that would blow you away. Yeah. What are the fears that you see that are unique to the middle season of life when you're step into dating. Regardless of how you're ending, you've ended up. Do you see sort of like common patterns where there are just these deep-seated gremlins that keep coming up repeatedly when people are trying to step into the space of finding somebody? Yeah, I think there's two things. In this time in midlife, right,

people think, oh my gosh, I don't have enough time. And that fear and that deeply ingrained belief kind of surfaces in so many different ways in the dating world. So that's one. And then the other one, right, I tell everyone, the game is kind of rigged against us, right? Human biology is rigged for reproduction. It's not set up to find long-term committed love. family attachment patterns can make a big difference in that as well. And then cultural messaging, the things that our culture says, there's a three-date rule. Butterflies are good, right? All of these

things lead us to making decisions that aren't good for us. So these three things, biology, attachment, and cultural kind of phrases and metaphors can all lead us to dating people that have red flags over and over again. It's like lather, rinse, repeat, and that's what I see. I want to dive into those three a little bit more. But you started out talking about time. And I want to dig into that a little bit more because underneath that, I'm going to make the assumption that people feel like to actually do this

takes a very substantial amount of time. True or not? You know, I wish people thought that more. Some people think, okay, finding love, if I go on a dating app, it should be like Amazon Prime. And I'm going to take off a bunch of boxes, and then my partner's going to be drone shipped to me within 24 hours. The thing with time is they believe that they don't have a lot of time left and that they've wasted a lot of time. And I think so many people ultimately, like the fear in the gut is, I don't want to be alone. I don't want to die alone.

And I don't have that much time to find somebody. Yeah. So it's an urgency type of thing where you're sort of saying, I don't know how much runway is ahead of me. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, that makes a lot of sense. When you think about that also, you know, the, I would imagine folks who are especially coming back into the world of dating or whatever is the mechanism. that they, you know, like, say yes to as a way to try and find love later in life, that the,

the technologies have changed profoundly. You know, I'm with my wife, 34 years now, we're married, like, 29 years. And so, you know, like, we went on a blind date, introduced by one of her childhood friends. It was a radically different world when we first met. And now, if you've been out of that world for a long time. time. You haven't even thought about it. And then for a variety of reasons, you find yourself back in this space. I would imagine just the technical aspects of this have got to be a little bit terrifying. Yeah. People kind of feel like, oh my gosh, I don't want to put myself out there on an app, right? Because I, too, have been married 29 years. That's funny. Go 1997. And there's a lot of

fear about getting on the apps. But what I tell people is, okay, again, it's our thoughts lead to our feelings. Our feelings lead to our actions, right? So let's recede that thought of, thank goodness, the dating apps exist. And thank goodness, there are resources like me that can teach you how to date using the app so that you're not going to end up with the Tinder swindler or getting catfish, right? I think people have so many fears about. about what being on the apps mean. But what I would tell you is if you're a listener debating, like, oh my gosh, could I get on the app?

Should I get on the apps? Yes, the answers are resounding yes. Do it with guardrails around you. But think about it's, it was hard enough to meet people in your 20s and 30s today, right? And now, thank goodness for the dating apps. We don't use words if you think about it. Like old maid, old spinsters, right? terrible terms, but you don't hear about those things anymore, partly because we're a better,

I think we've all evolved and we don't say things like that anymore. But really, what's happened is there's so many options now with the dating apps. You can be 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 years old on the apps. I was in a fitting room the other day and the young lady was bringing clothes in and out. And she says, oh, what do you do for work? I said, oh, you know, I founded this company called Smart Dating Academy and we do we date coach people and she says oh my gosh that's so amazing my 83 year old aunt met her new boyfriend on j date i was like i love this that's amazing um i love the invitation to sort of like say um yes you may be concerned um and it's a yes and thing like there are probably precautions you can take there are things that you could think about the way that you're

going to step into them or not um but if you but these technologies are available to who opened doors that never would have been open before if you understand how to engage with them in a way that feels good. Yeah. And if you look at it that way, right? I have people that have met people within a mile of where they live. I've had people meet within three or four hours. I've had people meet on different coasts and they make it work, right?

So I think today with technology, the beauty is the world can be your. oyster truly. And I know we'll get into this a little bit further into our conversation. Approaching, whether it's technology or any other thing, with a methodology and a system and approach is incredibly helpful. Before we get there, though, I don't want to leave behind those three sort of imperative slash fears that you talked about. Because, and so one was biological, one was cultural.

What was a third again? Attachment patterns. Attachment patterns. And relationship patterns. Okay, if these things can be elements that create resistance to us stepping into a dating mode to actively searching for love, how do we unwind those? Or how do we learn how to walk with them in a more constructive way? You know, I think understanding the impact that they will have on you, right? our brains, okay, if we talk about biology for a second, our brains are wired for romantic love, right?

We see someone, we're attracted to them. Suddenly we've got squeezes of dopamine going through our system, which motivates us to go find this person, right? And then we find one that we like. And then what physical contact, we start sleeping with each other, right? Now we've got oxytocin floating as well. For some people, This could be date one, date three, date six, whatever it is. So now we've got lots of rumination, obsession, attachment going on at this point. When if you add up the cumulative hours that you've actually met somebody, let's say you've been on three dates with somebody and it's hot and heavy, like if you've spent two hours with this person, right, that's six hours over three dates.

It's not even Monday at work. And now we've got these hormones that are not only making a, want to be with this person obsessively, we feel emotionally attached to them. What also happens concurrently is our prefrontal cortex starts to get quieter. Serotonin starts to reduce. So what happens? Our brain that's normally more vigilant and looking out for red flags sort of goes on offline, right when we meet it most. So there's this cocktail of hormones that are going on that want us to procreate. Now, what our brains, right, if you think about it, at the year 1900, the average age to mortality was about 30, right? So it was like, okay, I see you, you see me, great, let's do this

thing, have some kids, a couple of them will probably die, and we will too by 30. Your farm's a little bigger than mine, let's do this. But now we want so much more out of partnership. We're living into our 70s, 80s, 80s, and 90s, but our brains don't know how to find that long-lasting, enduring love. And that's what I say. There is, love isn't luck. There's a system to find it. You just have to know that your biology is working against you in this arena. That's interesting. So you take that into account. So it sounds like part of this is just understanding what the underlying drivers really are. And I would imagine that applies. all sorts of things like culture.

Like, if you look at what is my family culture, what are the assumptions, what are the things that I've observed about how to move into finding relationships, into finding love, what have I been directly or explicitly told by parents, by cousins, by uncles, by whatever community or congregation or gathering that you're a part of, that probably so much of that, it affects the way that we think about the process of finding love, but on an invisible level. until we actively service it. Does that land? Yeah, oh, 100%. And it's the things that they told us. And now, with regards to our parents or our caregivers, it's what they've role modeled for us, right? And if you have one parent that, you know,

was, you know, narcissistic or avoidant or just not great, and we can repeat those patterns or we can repel those patterns. But why do we repeat those? Because the brain is a pattern recognition machine, right? And now, if your nervous system has grown acclimated to kind of being anxious all the time, because you never know if one or both of your parents are going to show up, cookie dinner, get really angry for no reason. You live in this state of anxiety, which we call activation, right? So this constant state of being hopped up starts to feel comfortable to us. And so what happens when we get into the dating world without knowing this and understanding this? When we meet somebody that might have red flags around them, that might feel good to us because that's what we're acclimated to.

It might feel like this person is exciting or it might feel comfortable because it feels like home. So really paying attention to what's happening inside of us is just a, It's a super important thing. But here's my curiosity around that. Somebody could be joining us for this conversation and thinking, okay, so I need to really understand my biology right now. I need to understand my attachment patterns or what I've been exposed to. I need to understand the cultural imprints that had been on me.

And dot, dot, dot, dot, I can't go out and find love or do the thing or even try until I actually do all this work. I don't think that's what you're saying, right? No, I'm saying if you haven't been able to find the right partner, you're not broken. Nobody's ever taught you how to do this, right? And when people say, okay, my picker's broken, or I haven't been able to do this, I've been divorced three times, I've been never married, and I'm 61 years old. The fact of the matter is it's not your fault. These are the factors that are weighing into why we make the choices that we have.

So it's not like we need to do all this work. I think that there is some work that you want to do to have sort of a meta-awareness of yourself. Like, okay, I think I might constantly be dating people that have a lot of red flags and have activated me. And I'm really, I've been chasing butterflies and anxiety, and that hasn't been working for me. But no, it's just to understand what are the factors

that sometimes lead us to do the things that we do, do in romantic relationships. Yeah, I mean, that makes a lot of sense to me, which brings up another curiosity, right? So if we have these different things that are sort of invisibly influencing the way that we seek partnership and also step into and actively, like, engage in the process and the experience, sounds so technical when I say that. It's like, let me, let's just talk about that for a second, though, right? Because this has got to be one of the things. things that I would imagine gets brought to you too. People are like, I just want to fall in love. Like, I want the feeling. I want that thing. And does it have to be this sort of like technical,

mechanical, step by step intellectual process for me to actually find the thing that I so dearly want? Or like, where's the dream part of this? Where's the softness to it? There is so much softness when you're with the right person. But it's like anything in your life, right? People will say, I mean, the Harvard grant study shows, are you familiar with the study? Yeah. And so the grant study shows that it's the quality of our relationships that matter, right? And if you, again, if you think about it, we're never taught how to do this. And remind me of what your question was, because I was going somewhere and I want to make sure I answer the question you asked me. Yeah, it was, I feel like it's really easy to sort of like go down this slippery slope of saying we can break this down to a highly

mechanical process. But like there's a voice inside so many people that say like isn't this supposed to be just more more intuitive, more emotional, more soft, more alive with electricity? Or is it a yes and thing? It's a yes and. That's exactly right. I mean, if you look at divorced rates in this country, it's 40 to 50 percent of first marriages end in divorce, 67 percent of second marriages, 74% of third marriages. So while love is an amazing thing that we all want, having a plan and a system to do it, and this is part of the cultural messaging, right? We should just fall in love. If we think about it, where else in the world is falling a good thing, right? And so there's a lot of messaging, like it should just be easy. I should just know.

And the fact of the matter is so many of us don't know. That's how I started this company. I didn't know. I was in college and I started to date. And to your point, my parents are immigrants from India. They met on a Sunday. They were engaged on Thursday. They were married 72 hours later.

So when I started dating in high school and college, you know, my dad would tell me, you know, the rule number one of success is marry the right person. This one decision will determine 90% of your head. happiness or 90% of your misery. And I thought, okay, well, after a series of dating people that I thought, like, this feels like what it says it should be in the movies. I have butterflies and there's grandiose gestures and it's fun and it's romantic and then suddenly the person ghosts me. Or I get broken up with four months in with no, like yesterday you were the coolest girlfriend in the world and today you're annoying. It's like, wait, what's happening? And so I went, I was in business school.

And I asked my parents, they're like, we don't know, you just know. And I was like, well, I don't just know. Clearly, I'm not doing something right. And so I started studying relationships. I started looking at attachment theory and psychology and neuroscience. So I put together my own little method and what I call I'm going to find an elevator person for me. And so I started dating someone that I had been friends with for six years at that time. And we started dating right after college. Three years later, we got married. And then I started teaching all of my friends how to do this. Like, what do you actually want to look for?

Like, just be smart about what's good and what's not good so you can start to pick good partners. I started standing up in wedding after wedding after weddings. I'm so glad Bella was my wise owl, you know, telling me how to date and pick partners. So finally in 2009, after having had a career in M&A and running a manufacturing business with my family, and then we sold it, I started Smart Dating Academy in 2009 because I thought it was supposed to be. You just know. Some of us get lucky and we know, but for those of us who are like, I'm not sure I know how to do this. This is where having a plan and a system and an endgame will really help you to find someone where you don't end up in those statistics. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.

There's a stat that I've heard. Tell me if this is actually true. That 100% of the coupling, the partners that you have helped sort of facilitate through your approach, your methodology, are still together? So of the couples that have decided to get married, none have divorced, and why is that, right? When you have a method to pick a person that ultimately will become your best friend that you're attracted to and you want to sleep with

and you have guardrails around you, this is what we do, right? It's not just we're teaching a framework, But what we do is we teach people in a bespoke way. So it's custom to them. We know a lot about their backgrounds, a lot about their own attachment patterns, what they've done, relationship by relationship, what works, what didn't work, what was their responsibility, what was their partner. So we have this whole amalgamation of data points. And so we help teach them who is a partner that's going to make them happy. We call them high GPQs, high and good partner qualities.

and then we teach them all of the red flags that they might see through the process, how to pace their dating life. But what's important after that is we continue coaching them, usually for a year at least through the process, so that they get acclimated. So they're not afraid. So they feel safe. They feel like they're making good choices.

They're doing the online dating and they don't feel so afraid of it. Right? Anything we do from a place of fear. typically doesn't lead to good results. Yeah, true, too. Walk me through then, sort of on a high, I realize there's a massive amount of really in-depth, high level of personalization,

tailoring customization. But I'm really curious now, walk me through on sort of like a meta-level, a high level of the core elements, the core steps, however you would sort of define it, of this methodology. I think one of the most profound things that we do with people

kind of harks back to what I did when I was sitting in the library in college trying to figure out, okay, how do I do this? And so we have people, I'll tell you the whole exercise. So let's say I'm working with a woman who's looking for a man. I'll say, describe to me in all of his glory,

just tell me who your dream guy is. And I actually have one of these, I know. Like this literally, describe to me who your dream guy is. And so, funny side statistic, take a guess as to the number one thing that women have said to me over the last 16 years about their dream guy, the number one characteristic.

Well, I mean, I think the trope would be a sense of humor. Tall. No kidding. Ideally, over six feet. Well, I would be so busted. My husband's five, six on a big hair day. Okay, so I'm with you. You know, and I tell them, so we go through this whole exercise of who's their dream guy, right?

And sense of humor, funny, falls into that. But then I ask them, so we get their whole list ready, boom, okay, we know exactly who the dream guy is. Then we ask them a second question. I say, tell me about the people in your life that make you really happy. We call them elevator people because they elevate you. They make you happy, but like an elevator, they make you feel grounded and safe. Who are your elevator people? And they're like, I don't know.

I'm like, who are the people that make you happy? They can be alive. They can have passed. It doesn't have. There's no have to have. Nobody's ever going to see this list. And so we have people run through every person that they consider an elevator person. And what they start to see through this is that there is a distinct theme.

in their elevator people. Because I'm probing for the characteristics that make them happy. It's not, oh, my friend Jonathan, because he's cool and he's tall and he's got a great podcast and he's wickedly smart. No, what does he give to you that makes you happy in this relationship? And so we look for the theme in their elevator people. And then we show that to them. What are your elevator people? What are the themes. And that is what I tell them, we've been doing this for 17 years at Smart Dating Academy. What I can tell you is what you need to be happy in a relationship, you already know. You have your elevator people. What we're going to do in the romantic world is preference people that have the same characteristics as your elevator people. We're going to date them slowly. We're going to see if

the attraction builds. And, concurrently, we're going to make sure that there are no red flags. So how do you know, or what do you mean by the phrase that the attraction builds? So especially for women, right? We talk about attraction, usually meaning physical chemistry, right? We feel all googly and butterfly-y. But for women especially, there are different kinds of chemistry. There's emotional chemistry.

There's intellectual chemistry. Sometimes there's spiritual chemistry where you might not think somebody's attractive in the beginning. But suddenly, one day, he says something, he does something. And you're like, oh my gosh, I think he's kind of cute. And the physical chemistry can grow. Men typically, you know, I worked with a lot of male clients as well, right? It's like, okay, I find you physically attractive or I put you in the friend zone. But for women, that can be more different.

But for men, even doing this elevator people exercise is super interesting because it's not just about who you feel a physical attraction to. It's what we're gaming for. Like I said, our brains are wired for physical attraction and to go all in. But when we look for elevator people and elevator people characteristics with physical attraction, what we're doing is making sure that people end up with somebody where the chance of enduring lasting love is high. because they know the qualities that already make them happy through analyzing their elevator people.

So when you look at the dream list that somebody has, these are all the features. And then you look at the elevator list. Do you often see high levels of crossover or very low levels of crossover? That's such a great question. Super low. And people laugh at themselves. They're like, oh, my gosh, I'm so. I'm like, you know what?

We're kind of wired to say, well, I want him to be this tall and make this much money and be this ethnicity and this religion and do the this and this this and that. And we should have common interest. And I want him to ski and play golf and play pickleball and love to garden and all of the things. And we revert to all of these things, right? And that's usually what ends up on our dream list. And what I tell our clients, which is so beautiful, when we start to focus on elevator people, qualities. Number one, new people start to come into focus. Attractions start to shift. And love will come to you

in an unexpected package often because what you focus on grows. It's like I've given you a new set of lenses of things to focus on. So suddenly, if I'm saying, I want you to look for elevator people during the dating process. And those qualities take a long time to develop. They don't come right out. It's amazing what can happen. Yeah. So if I, if I'm hearing it correctly, part of what you're saying is that when we start with the deeper aspects, the qualities that we know have over time really been nourishing to us in other people. And if we search for that in a potential partner, that sometimes the physical attraction can come second. It kind of follows that. But that's not the popular lore. The popular the lore is it starts with a, I see you across the room, something inside me, like,

biologically, like, lights up. And then from there, you know, so we start out in a physical thing, and then from there we grow to appreciate each other on these different levels. And what you're offering up, if I understand this correctly, is that actually it is possible to reverse that. Yeah, you can choose who you're attracted to, to some extent, right? And so when you're preferencing these characteristics, and I tell everybody, when we're looking for elevator people, you know, it's like the Holy Trinity of smart dating. I want this person to be an elevator person. I want you to be very attracted to this person, but that attraction can grow over time.

So we're going to pace this and see if it does. If it's there in the beginning, great. And with online dating, right, the beauty is you've seen photos of this person. You sort of know what they look like, right? And of course, if you meet somebody in the real world, right? you make eye contact, you meet at an event, you know, kind of like how you met your wife. And so you know what that person looks like. But for me, for example, I started dating somebody that I thought was like, okay, that's fine. He's cute, but it wasn't cute to me at that point.

But when I actually sat down, I'm like, okay, who are my elevator people? Like, who are the people that make me really happy? He was the number one person on my level. elevator list. The first person I wanted to talk to in the morning and the last person I wanted to talk to in the evening and hang out with. And I was like, huh, okay. And so then I started to look at him with slightly different lenses. I'm like, okay, he is cute and I think he's cute to me. Right? And he's always like, I always thought you were attractive, right? So it's just, it's funny how these things can flip. I'm not saying it's going to happen all the time, but having this methodology, I'll tell you.

I'll say, people will say sometimes, I'm not sure I'm feeling the attraction. I'm like, that's fine. Let's give it a second date. Let's give it a third date. If by the fourth, fifth, sixth date, it's not growing. And you feel like if this person tries to touch me, I think I might like want to run out of the room, we're done. We gave it a try. So you described what the top qualities were on the dream list.

do you see similar patterns on, I mean, across now thousands of people on the elevator list. Is there like a top one, two, and three, which just recur all the time? Yeah, it's a great question. People that love me for me. Hmm. Where I can just be myself. People that are always there for me. They see what's good in me and they tell me.

They believe I can do anything. They're my cheerleaders. And so what I tell my clients is, and here's the fun, you know, little plot to a shift, is, yes, we're looking for elevator people. And now I want you to be the person you want to attract. So starting to become an elevator person in the dating world and everywhere in your life. Through doing this, I've seen people get promoted at work. They have better friendships with their friends, better relationships with their families because they're being better in the world.

So that's people who love me for me and people who be there for me. When you say to people start doing that yourself, are you talking about directed towards other people or directed towards yourself? Oh, great. Both. Number one, being compassionate to yourself, right? we're so hard on ourselves, right? When we make a mistake, the way we talk to ourselves is like we would never talk to somebody like that. So it's being compassionate and graceful and loving to yourself and saying, that's okay. You know what? Tomorrow is going to be better. And then

being an elevator person to the people, let's just say in the dating world, if I said, I'm going to be an elevator person on the date, I'm going to be interested in you and look for the things that elevate you, that you're proud of, that you're passionate about, and have you start to talk about that and really make you feel like I see you because I'm listening to understand you. Where does vulnerability fall on that list? You know, I think in dating vulnerability, I think it's Brne Brown that says vulnerability without boundaries is just oversharing.

So I think in the dating world, I tell my clients, people need to earn your story. They don't get it up front just for asking. You don't need to go into date one, date two, date three. Well, here are all my scars. Here are all my wounds. Here are my crash and burn relationships. Do you still want me? We all, you know, it's like, I'm like, date.

this is my favorite metaphor. Date like you've been on a three-week safari in Africa, right? And you've got some old sweaty, gross clothes that you're like, okay, I'm going to pack those at the bottom. Because if customs open my bags, I want it to like look normal and kind of nice to wear the less worn, cleaner stuff at the top, that's how we all are as human beings. And it's okay to date that way. and to put out the easy, breezier things about us in the beginning. And everybody's different when it comes to what they're willing and what they feel like they're ready to share. But people need to earn your story that you don't have to tell them something just because they ask the question if you're not ready. So then how does somebody earn your story?

Through trust, through multiple dates, through consistency, reliability, right? How does anybody earn trust, right? By showing up again and again, doing what you said you were going to do, feeling safe in their presence. My curiosity is really around the role of vulnerability in finding lasting love. And because it's uncomfortable for so many people to, quote, go there. Or as you described, sometimes people just go there out of the gate and you know, you sort of get firehosed with sometimes performative vulnerability.

Yeah. You know, so I think we all have, we're tuned into this sense that this is something that really matters in the context of deep, lasting relationships, loving relationships. But it's a real dance, too. And there's so much often cultural baggage around how and when you do or don't offer vulnerability. But if nobody does, like, and I'm curious where you've, like, Like in my experience, if nobody ever opens that door, there is no relationship, no matter how many are the stars aligned. 100%. And so it can be, and through my process, now remember, it's kind of a laboratory.

It's not a laboratory, but we're coaching clients one-on-one, right? So after every day, their coaches getting their feedback and listening to, okay, what did he say or what did she say? Okay, what comes back? let's think about asking these questions. And it's okay if somebody, for example, you know, I'll have clients that'll say, well, you know, she started talking about her divorce, but, you know, I quickly changed the subject because I didn't want to put her in an uncomfortable situation. And I'll say that's really kind of you. But if she put it out there, it's okay to learn more and to be interested and to ask more questions about it. And so I'm with you.

It's kind of like sips of vulnerability, date by date, right? We don't want the vomit, like, you know, show up and throw up, as I call it. But we've got to have this progressive, are you getting to know somebody? Are you getting to know where they've been? How, you know, for anybody, you need two points on a map. You've got to know where you are today and where you want to go. How did this person arrive at where they are today? What is their backstory?

And so with our clients, the way we pace things, and we have nerdy graphs and things that this is what happens when you take a former finance person and turn her into a dating coach. We have trajectories of what healthy relationships should look like. So we're typically on average saying, let's go 15 dates over three months at a gentle upward trajectory where we're really helping them through this discovery process with this person. And to your point, if somebody isn't willing to talk about things at a certain point, like, no, they just show, I don't want to talk about my divorce. I don't want to talk about this. It's a bit of a red flag after a certain set of dates. I can't tell you it's date three or date four or date seven. It's uniquely human, right? Between these two people. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. So let's say somebody has.

has been either out of the dating world for a substantial amount of time or, you know, for whatever reason it may be, they're stepping back into it. They're really nervous and really uncomfortable and they haven't done this thing in a very long time. Are there one, two, three, four sort of fairly universal questions that you might guide somebody to, like, if And the fear's like, I'm going to go. I'm going to sit down. I'm going to freeze. I'm not going to know what to say.

I'm not going to know what to ask. Are there a couple of just go-toes for somebody who's just stepping into this where they've got like a couple of things to ask and to say on the tip of their tongue to alleviate that fear? You mean like how to talk? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just like in a very nuts and bolts level. Yeah.

I think the most. important thing is to kind of bring your elevator person's self and be genuinely interested in the other person, right? And when you're listening to the other person, you'll get a lot of good conversation between the two of you. Now, with regards to how to talk about yourself, yeah, kind of practice with a friend, call a dating coach, right? Kind of like you would for a job interview. Like just if you're feeling anxious, it's okay to feel anxious. right? When you haven't done this. Number one, don't shame yourself. Dating to some extent, it's a skill, right? And you're just going to dust off the cobwebs and the rust. But think about the

questions that people ask on first dates. It's like cocktail party conversation. Like, oh, what do you do for work? What did you do before that? What are your hobbies? What are you, what are you passionate about? Where are you from? Where is your family? Do you have kids? all of those basic questions, if you've kind of thought through your basic sound bites of, am I talking about myself purposefully, truthfully, and in a compelling way, then I think you're fine. And if you need to work on that, it's okay to work on it. If you were reentering the job market after 20 years of being at home and raising your kids, you'd have some trepidation about job interviews, right? And how do I talk about this? It's a lot. It's a lot of

It's okay to feel nervous. It's okay to feel anxious, right? Getting prepared is completely normal and something I totally advise people to do. Is it okay to share that you're nervous or anxious? Sure, why not? You know, sometimes when I see speakers on stage and when they say, man, I am really nervous right now, right? You sense the whole audience softened because they want that person to be successful. right? And if you are nervous on the date, you can just say, I haven't done this in 20 years,

and you're my first date. But let me tell you one thing that might help. Yeah. Before, let's say you've met somebody on a dating app, before you just message back and forth and then agree to meet this person out for a coffee or a lunch or dinner or a glass of wine, do a quick FaceTime or a video date. It's, 15 to 20 minutes, easy peasy, it builds connection and you feel so much more comfortable before showing up on a date with a total stranger. And also, I mean, if the person, you know, has some red flags, I kind of jokingly say to people sometimes, like, Crazy Can't Hide for more than 15 minutes. Hope the person's truly bananas. You'll see that on the video call and maybe save

yourself the two worst hours of your life. But doing a quick video change. is a great way to make yourself comfortable and just start to pedal the bike again. Yeah. I want to ask you about something else. You have talked about this idea that highly independent, highly accomplished self-sufficiency in midlife women often, that have worked hard, built incredible careers, incredible lives, that that can show up in ways that are challenging in a dating context. And not in any way, shape, or form to denigrate the amazingness of being that woman. But in those contexts, take me into what you see as both, you know, the strong side of this

and also where this shows up as struggle or challenge. Yeah, I think when you think about it, it gets pretty intuitive, right? When you have strong, smart, successful women that have been super, you know, they've had these alpha, high voltage, amazing careers, they have done this because they've had a plan and they've worked really hard. They've turned situations around that were unturnaroundable, right? They have fixed companies. They have fixed real estate. They fix people. Maybe they're surgeons, right?

And they know if I work really hard at this, it's going to pay dividends. Those same skills in the dating world. If the person that you're dating or in a relationship with isn't good for you, those same skills can work against us. We work so hard to put sunlight in. a black hole. We work hard to stay in something that might be abusive that isn't serving us, that's toxic, but we stay because that's all we know how to do is work harder because then they're going to like me. If I do this, it's performative. They're going to want to be with me. And this is where those same skills in careers don't always serve us in dating.

Tell me more. Take me deeper into this. How? Like, what's the dynamic that you see unfold when you bring this to a dating context? Well, if somebody doesn't love me enough, right, I'm going to do more. I'm going to, maybe I'm going to pick up all of your hobbies. I'm going to transmorph myself into being someone that you want to be with 24-7 because me as I am, clearly you're keeping me at arm's length. I'm going to learn how to cook all your favorite foods, do all the things you want to. do pretzel myself into becoming someone that I think you are going to love if I do these things. It's hard for me to say that makes sense because I'm not that person. But why people, why that? Yeah, but it makes a lot of sense that that that would be sort of this morphing that could easily happen. Yeah, I guess I'm curious also. It's like that's one side of it. do you ever see experiences where somebody,

and be male, female, fluid gender, whoever it may be, somebody is wildly accomplished in their lives, right? They're looking for a person. They show up, they've checked so many boxes, and they're confident and competent and strong and alive, and they show up in almost every way as complete, as being who they are, being comfortable with who they are, having everything that they need.

Is there a scenario in which that can be perceived as off-putting? Well, I don't think those characteristics in and of themselves are off-putting. What can become off-putting, and this is the irony, it's, I can be strong, smart, successful, competent, all of the things that you mention. But if I truly believe in my subconscious, my consciousness, my conscious mind, that love doesn't exist for me. Right?

What am I going to feel? Or if I believe there's no good people out there, there's no one for me. That thought's going to lead to a feeling. A feeling is a vibration, right? And now, if I'm feeling that way, right? I'm showing up great, but what's the vibe that I'm giving you? Might be a little standoffish. might be a little nervous, might be a little performative, and not real because what's actually

driving me is the fear of, I'm not going to find love, or maybe you're broken, or maybe if you see the real me, I'm broken and you're not going to like me. So the off-putting vibe isn't you're complete. It's the fear. Yeah, that makes sense. It's the fear that comes off as a vibe. Right. Yeah, it's not like a spoken thing. It's not a resume thing.

It's not a list thing. No. It's a feeling. It's like when we feel something, right? I've seen studies that show like when we're in this feeling mode, we can transmit that vibe, that vibration, five feet from us. People can sense what we're truly feeling. And if we're scared or shut down or we don't really want it or we're avoiding, people sense that.

People, if you think about it, we want complete people. We want, this is why I use the analogy, the lid to your pot. The pot is complete as it is. The pot can do the job. The pot can make an egg. It can make a stew. It can make meat. The lid is an accoutrement.

It just makes it a little bit nicer. We want complete. Earlier in our conversation, you qualified why somebody might be in the world of trying to find love in the middle years of life. And one of the things that you mentioned was if you're coming back after loss or divorce. Yeah. Right. Which is, you know, based on the statistics, a massive number of people. So so many people are navigating this moment.

Whether it's a divorce or just leaving a very long-term relationship or maybe you lost somebody. Or a long-term relationship just, it came to a natural end. It's a different experience than sort of just dating. There's a grief in that. There's an identity question. Who am I now? What does somebody in that moment most need to hear or believe about themselves? I think that knowing that love is a total possibility. I tell everybody it's a certainty, right? Number one. And knowing that in midlife, we're all more complicated. I'd say we're more complex like a great glass of wine, right? We've been around the block. We've had relationships. Some good, some not good. Maybe we've had loss. We've had one divorces. I've had one divorces. I've had. I've had. I've had.

a client that had been married four times, right? Things happen to people. And we all come in with these wounds, right? And some of the wounds are just being human and believing, I'm damaged, I'm not good enough. If somebody sees me, they're going to think, oh, right? And knowing that that's kind of a common affliction of all human beings. And it's okay to not know.

it's okay to not feel like you did when you were 25 years old. The people that you're dating aren't 25 years old either, most likely. I guess they could be, not typically the clients that we're working with. Yeah. So it's really, if I understand, it's a reframe that basically says, yes, I acknowledge that I feel this way. Yeah. There's a sense of suffering that I need to figure out my way through. There's a sense of rediscovery of who I am that I need to find my way through.

But I'm not alone in this. There are so many other people in this same moment and maybe a lot of other people who I might meet. And this is not something that needs to stop me from exploring finding love. And remember, our thoughts lead to our feelings, feelings lead to actions, action lead to results, right? And so if you take, even if you're feeling the negative thought, right, if you sit down and think about it, okay, maybe I'm too broken or whatever thing you're thinking to yourself, you can tell yourself a different story, right? And I'm not talking about woo-woo, something that like, I'm the most datable, most beautiful person on earth, but something that sits

well with you and resonates. You know what? Many people my age have found love. And I, I'm willing to give this a try. So instead, and when you start to think about the thing, which is dating, in a more positive light, which you have control over, you will start to suddenly feel more relieved. You'll feel more peaceful. And then how are you going to act? You might say, huh, I saw someone interesting at the grocery store today. And I asked for their number.

Amazing. Yeah, it's the internal shift. Yeah, 100%. It feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation in this container of good life project. If I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? Love. Invest in your relationships. That is the good life.

Thank you. Thank you. So let's talk about some of the big ahas and actionable takeaways from this conversation. One of the things I keep sitting with from the combo is it's how simple her core reframe actually is just once you hear it. We spend so much energy focused on finding the, quote, right person. And so little time asking whether we have correctly understood what right even means for us. The elevator people exercise is the thing that I'd want you to carry out of this conversation in a central way. not the dream list, the elevator list, the people who already make you genuinely happy and the

patterns and why they do. Because Bella's point is that what you need in a partner you already know, you just haven't looked at the data that you already have. The second idea worth holding on too, attraction can grow over time. For women especially, she shares, emotional chemistry and intellectual chemistry often arrive before physical attraction does. The biological pull that we've been taught to wait for, the butterflies, is actually one of the least reliable signals that we have. Your nervous system lighting up can mean chemistry. It can also mean you're chasing something familiar that hasn't actually served you in the past. And the third, particularly if you're coming back into dating after a long time away, you don't have to have it all

figured out. The fear that you're too broken or too complicated or too late is, as Bella put it, a common fear of all human beings. It's not a fact about you. It's something that can and will change over time through lived experience. So notice this week which list you're actually using. And hey, before you leave, next week we're sitting down with seven-time New York Times best-selling author Bruce Filer to talk about something most of us have felt but never quite had words for. The particular loneliness that arrives in the middle of a full life when the relationships that used to hold you steady, are all being renegotiated often all at once. And the rituals that help you and pretty much everybody move through those moments like we have for thousands of years

have largely disappeared or stopped being effective. So be sure to follow a Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss that or any upcoming episodes. And do me a favor also, seven second favor share this episode with just one person who might need to hear it This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers, Lindsay Fox, and me, Jonathan Fields, editing help by Troy Young, Chris Carter crafted our theme music. And of course, if you haven't already, go ahead and follow us wherever you get your podcasts, so you never miss a conversation. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.