Does anyone really know how to successfully date? How do we know if the valuable, vulnerable time we spend putting our best self out there will lead to a committed relationship? In the wake of 20 years of being involved with the wrong men, I found myself at age 40 with two divorces and a defeatist outlook on dating. After failing for so long, I was tempted to call off the search.
Throughout my career I’d been a successful corporate marketing executive, navigating highly complex global organizations while building new departments and enterprise-wide capabilities. I was a leader and mentor. I spoke on panels and took the stage at industry events. I was taught to tackle an objective with a specific strategy, backed by a budget. Perhaps this logical, solutions-oriented approach steered me to my eventual (enormous) dating investment.
But as I climbed to corporate success, my personal life was a conventional catastrophe. I married my first husband at 29 and completely missed many flagrant red flags. The second time, it was worse.
Deconstructing the life I built with my second husband helped me realize I was the one who got it all wrong. Reckoning with my own inherent anxiety about romantic relationships wasn’t pretty. After each time down the aisle, I regretted it almost instantly. My destructive pattern was to recklessly look the other way and commit quickly so I could get off the dating app merry-go-round. I should have known better than to ever marry either one of my ex-husbands. I didn’t want to risk potentially marrying another person so intrinsically wrong for me, yet I knew I wanted to share my life with someone.
That’s when I met Bela. This beautiful, middle-aged woman, partial to bold silk blouses and bejeweled earrings and known to some as “the fairy godmother of dating,” listened intently to my story. I knew she had coached people who tended to fall too hard, too fast for the wrong person, and I hoped she would help me too.
During our first call…
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