Do you often talk about what an
amazing life you have?
Do you make it clear that you don't
need a man to be happy?
Are you wary of letting down your
guard because you're afraid of
getting hurt?
If so, this podcast
is for you.
Stick around.
I'm Evan Marc Katz, Dating Coach for
Smart, Strong, Successful Women, and
your personal trainer for love.
Welcome to the Love U podcast.
Stay to the end of this video to
learn why it takes confidence to
be vulnerable and how the only way
to get the love you want is to
be vulnerable.
When we're done, I'll let you know
how you could apply to Love U to
create a passionate relationship
that makes you feel safe, heard, and
understood.
So it's gonna be a long one.
Strap yourself in. I'm kind of
excited about it.
I'm a Dating Coach for smart,
strong, successful women and I have
been for 17 years.
I don't like to lump everybody
together, but there's definitely a
certain type of woman who comes to
me.
You'll see it when I launch my new
website.
It's the woman who has everything
but the guy.
And if you're the woman who has
everything but, the guy that
phrase may mean something to you.
You are bright.
You're accomplished.
You look at your life with
pride and joy, at the things
that you've created, the career
that you have.
Your friends, your family,
your possessions, your hobbies, your
travel. You filled up your life
because you're single
and you're independent.
And you have the means and you're
driven. And that's something to be
applauded. No one's suggesting you
sit around waiting for a man.
The problem is
that
when that becomes your whole source
of identity,
one can become defensive about
not having it all.
You spend so much time pursuing
your work because it's more
remunerating that you
don't end up getting love.
And then the story becomes,
I'm happy.
I don't need a man to be fulfilled.
And that's the face that you put on
to the world. And it's a brave face
that you put onto the world because
you're preparing for the possibility
that you might never get a guy.
So you better be OK with being alone
and it becomes a bit of a stance.
The problem is when that stance
shows up in real life
and men
don't necessarily respond to the
woman who doesn't
need a man and thinks her life is
perfect without one.
There's an inherent contradiction in
that's worth exploring.
So I'm going to explore it the best
way I know-how, which is to tell you
personal stories.
And I'll tell you stories about
clients, too. But I really want to
get into the personal aspect of it,
because I understand this
vulnerability confidence piece
really, really well.
And so I want to bring you back
to 15 years ago before
I met my wife.
I took a class called the Landmark
Forum through Landmark Education
and I want to send you down that
rabbit hole.
But basically, it's a
large scale group therapy, really
intense. Three days
right from 8:00 in the morning to
midnight in a room with
a bunch of really smart people in
the front of the room. We're kind of
walking you through a group therapy
process, getting you to look at
yourself. Take responsibility for
your failures, etc.
And a lot of it's really
challenging.
And I remember being in this course
and
not being that receptive.
I felt like a lot of it didn't apply
to me. I felt like I was different
than some of the other people there
who had bigger problems.
My big problem was that I felt
lonely and disconnected from my
friends and family in my early
thirties.
So I'm in this class
and the
professor, a teacher,
tells me to stand up, chooses
me.
And again, there's one hundred fifty
people sitting down. Calls on me.
And he said, what's your deal?
You look like you're above it all is
what he says to me.
You look like you're above it all.
And I said, I
don't mean to sound
in a way that I don't want to sound,
but a lot of this stuff, people
who have really broken relationships
with their family where they don't
know or they were sexually abused
or kicked out of a house through
serious drug problems
or, you know, really disastrous
relationships with the most
important people in their life,
I feel like most of that doesn't
apply to me.
And again,
I'll never forget it,
he said. And he goes, that's that's
your problem.
And I'm kind of like cocking
my head.
And he goes, You carry
yourself like a guy who's too good
for everything.
You carry yourself as if
I'm smarter than you.
My ideas are better than yours,
and I don't need this.
You act like the guy who has it all
together. Now, the reason you're
here is because you don't have it
all together.
You might not have the same problems
as everybody here, but there's
something that's lacking in your
life. That's what caused you to
reach out.
So how can anybody contribute
to your life if
you are perfect, where you put
on the illusion that
you're perfect to
the world? That's what you want
everybody to see.
I have it all together.
What does anybody now have to
contribute to you?
I'm pretty sure I started bawling.
Right, because it was so
spot on. So close to home.
Right.
I felt disconnected from my friends
and family because I was putting
on some confident
facade. Even though I am confident
in many ways.
I was putting on a facade without
any vulnerability that
any humanity and I was wondering why
people weren't
responding to me.
That was really painful to feel shut
out because I was having trouble
making emotional connections with
people.
And I'm an emotional, self-aware
guy.
So they hit on something that
I've never forgotten.
That's why I'm sharing it with you
today.
And so that
was an interesting evolution because
I've always been the sensitive
guy. My mom was always telling me
back when I was a writer, you
should be a writer. You should be a
psychologist.
You should be a shrink.
You should talk to people.
That's your gift.
I remember a story and I've
alluded to it in previous podcasts,
but maybe 20
years ago I had a girlfriend.
And on the first date,
I remember crying to her.
And this is how vulnerable I was.
I remember telling the story about
how my father died.
It was like, you know, less than a
year later.
And I remember telling the story
about how my father died.
I was 26 or 27 years old.
And the
story bringing me to tears.
And instead of sending her running
in the opposite direction,
she thought it was beautiful
that
I could talk about my father in such
a loving way and that so many guys
don't.
All right.
I didn't turn on the waterworks to
impress her, but I also
didn't care that the waterworks
were gonna scare her away.
I was just being myself.
And who I was was a guy who was
really from his father's death.
That did not stop me from
hooking up later that night or
making this one
my girlfriend.
That's what I'm talking about is the
confidence to be vulnerable.
I'm not recommending crying on
dates. We need to understand that
confident and vulnerable are not
mutually exclusive.
And a lot of times we make it seem
like it is.
If I let down my guard, if
I show someone my humanity,
if I show
any perception
of weakness, then
I'm feeling I'm going to be
desperate.
I'm being taped. I'm going to be
taken advantage of.
He's gonna run fleeing from my
emotions.
And these are things that women
believe and it's the overcorrection.
Are there guys who flee from women's
emotions?
Sure.
Are those the guys that you want?
No.
Period. Exclamation point.
Think of best conversations.
Think of a conversation I'm having
with you right now.
You on the Internet.
You on the podcast.
I am being.
These are buzzwords. So they almost
lack meaning.
Authentic, vulnerable,
and it takes confidence to put
oneself out there and do
this.
Insecurity is what drives people
to be invulnerable.
If you're insecure, you're afraid of
letting down your guard.
If you're insecure, you're afraid of
speaking your truth.
If you're insecure, you're afraid
that everybody's going to judge you
or everybody's going to leave you.
If you're confident,
you put it out there and you know
that people really respond to
confidence, authenticity,
vulnerability.
I've got a client.
I remember the story this year back.
She was 60
and she was telling
me her story and she was telling me
about a source of her dating anxiety
is telling someone
on a first date
that she
had
a child out of wedlock 40 years ago.
She had an
accident when she was 20.
Kept the child.
Forty years later.
Her son is 40 years old.
He's a man and she is still
carrying this like it's a badge of
shame, like some 60-year-old guy
is going to care about something she
did 40 years ago and judge
her for it.
That's fascinating to me that
people carry that shame
and have trouble reconciling that.
Years and years later, I have
my own, you know, embarrassing
stories. I try to tell them publicly
as a service to you.
My most prominent problem is
that I've got a history of anxiety.
Not so much depression, but
definitely anxiety.
It came on in my late 20s.
I was dropped out of college and
then, it surfaced again
while I was a screenwriter and
had trouble getting it together in
my twenties until I kind of figured
out my career. And once I had some
stability, I landed.
But I was really anxious that I
didn't know what I was going to do
for a living and how I was going to
make money and how I was going to
live up to my potential.
And so there was a big source of
anxiety for a
portion of my life that was
debilitating.
You know, shrinks, antidepressants,
that kind of stuff, contrary to
what, you know, what
some people might do in that
situation. I never really hid
from that. I didn't put it in my
dating profile.
I didn't tell people on the phone,
hey, I just dialed down my Zoloft
prescription to a half a milligram.
Everything was great.
It wasn't bad.
But when you're having a
conversation with someone that
has any depth or meaning in who's
going there, I don't see any point
in hiding from your
stuff.
All right. We have to walk it back
later. I did a lovely coaching call
this week.
I love these calls.
We go really deep.
We spend two hours on the phone
every week and sometimes these
themes emerge.
These unintentional themes.
And I had like four or five
women as some version of the same
question.
When a guy says
why are you still single?
What do you say when
a guy is asking
you about sex?
How do you react when a guy
asks the
almost predictable questions about
your ex? You know what happened in
your relationship or how are you
enjoying Match.com?
And my clients get this sort of deer
in the headlights moment.
I don't know how to answer that.
There's absolutely no way to answer
that.
And it's the truth.
People love the truth.
Someone said
if my wife said to me when we're
dating, Hey Evan, you're
a 34-year-old dating and
relationship coach, you've never had
a relationship for more than eight
months.
How do you explain that?
I don't like that question.
It's a little bit too directed on
the spot, but it's a very reasonable
point of curiosity.
I better have a good answer
to that.
That's not driven by insecurity or
vulnerability.
So the best way to answer that is to
speak your truth.
Well, honestly, I was not
in any position to get married
in my 20s.
I didn't have a career
to speak up.
I was a struggling screenwriter
doing odd jobs.
I was depressed and anxious.
It was a really rough decade.
And since I
dropped out of film school and wrote
a couple of books and started to do
this, dating and coaching things.
Things have been really good.
And since then, I've had much
better relationships and getting a
lot closer to what I'm looking for.
And I've always wanted to fall in
love and get married and start a
family and feel like I've never been
in a better place than I am right
now.
You see that?
That's it, that's the answer.
I didn't lie.
I didn't have the bullshit like that
was the answer. It told the truth.
I took ownership.
I'd even go down some deep
spiral shame
talking about all the mistakes I
made in my 20s when life and love
and with my father dying and
my terrible screenwriting
career and emotionally abusive
relationships where I
got my ass kicked.
I didn't have to do all that.
So, again, I want to bring this back
to the original subject.
It takes confidence
to be vulnerable.
It takes confidence to speak
your truth and know that your truth
is going to be warmly accepted
because of your relationship to the
story. You can tell it at a remove.
You can tell it at a distance
without
it turning in or blowing up or being
held against you in some way.
So I really want you to try this
idea on for size.
The idea that your
insecurity around being
single, around wanting
a man, being
scared, being hurt, being
vulnerable, having made mistakes
could actually be a strength.
Men would love to hear the truth.
They would love to hear you take
ownership. Yeah.
I spent most of my 30s working
hard and didn't spend too much
time thinking about love.
I probably walled myself off from it
because I got hurt in my last
relationship.
And then I looked
up and realized I wanted
this whole thing. I wanted to find
a relationship.
And now I'm ready.
So much better than I don't know, I
just haven't met the right guy.
Which is kind of a non-answer?
So think at this
moment about yourself, how you
project to others the masks
you wear, the stories you tell
to yourself.
I'm fine.
I'm good, man.
The stories that you tell to your
friends and men that you meet,
the facade that you put up, and ask
yourself, how
can a man contribute
to you?
How can he feel connected to
you?
What is the universal humanity
that you show on your dates?
If you're so busy telling everybody
how perfect life is, how
perfect you are, how busy and
happy you are, how you barely have
room to do anything else.
How you've never made any mistakes?
Have you never had any regrets?
What can someone grasp on to as
humans?
So the answer to this question is
what makes you you and what makes a
man fall in love with you is
not your impressive job or your
education or your cool hobbies.
It's your hopes and your dreams
and your desires.
And, yes, even your failures.
I'm Evan Marc Katz.
Thank you for tuning into the Love U
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Talk to you soon.