Amber Grubenmann

This topic was inspired by a conversation I had with a client, but it will probably sound very familiar to you.

My client had connected with a guy and he said to her, “Hey I’m going to be in town. Would you like to meet up?”

She agreed to meet up, but then he said, “Actually I can’t, but we should hang out sometime.”

Then he kept texting her and asked to hang out and she said ok, but then he didn’t respond.

We’ve all been through this.

People tell me their version of this story and ask me what is up with this person?

I want to share with you a new way to think about planning.

In my coaching program, I teach my clients the two basic prerequisites for creating a connection with someone: easy planning and easy communication.

You shouldn’t be going crazy trying to decipher text messages or grapple with this person to get plans on the books.

If either one of the two basics is really difficult, it’s not a connection worth...

Romantic perfectionism is a common way of thinking that can get in the way of creating the kind of connection that we want.

Here are some ways that romantic perfectionism can show up, and some ways to shift your thinking one percent to be a little less romantically perfectionistic:

1. Romantic perfectionism can be wanting your partner to have a specific physical appearance and not having a lot of flexibility about that.

Sometimes we can think that having a partner who very physically attractive validates our own attractiveness or worthiness.

Instead of focusing on physical features such as height, hair color, or body type, focus on how your body feels around that person.

Once you turn inwards, you might be surprised by how you feel and who you’re drawn to.

You don’t have to date people you’re not attracted to, but try to shift your focus from looking at the person like a picture in a magazine to tuning into the authenticity of how you feel around...

This week on the podcast I talked about how emotional responsibility in a relationship creates an emotionally wealthy relationship.

In the same way that financial responsibility leads to financial wealth, emotional responsibility leads to emotional wealth both in friendships and in romantic relationships.

If you make $300,000 per year, but you spend $500,000 because you care about buying a house, a car, and clothes you can’t afford, then you would not be considered financially responsible.

Although there's a lot of potential for financial wealth in this situation, the potential is not actualized.

Similarly, emotional wealth is built when you have more positive interactions than negative ones. Your positive interactions build and compound, which makes you more resilient to the negative interactions.

If a person gives a lot to their connection, but they also take a lot by saying twice as many mean things to their partner as nice things … that's an emotionally...

I was listening to the song “Love You Anyway” by Luke Combs and it got me thinking about the topic of anxiety and regret.

One of the lyrics in the song is, “Even if I knew the day we met you'd be the reason this heart breaks, I'd love you anyway.”

I realized that so much of the anxiety that we feel about the future of our dating connections is really just a form of future-regret.

We think it's wrong that we got hurt in the past, and the anxiety is about trying to ensure that it never happens again in the future.

Another option that is available to us is to look back at something that didn't work out and not regret it, but still choose to go about things differently in the future.

I remember after a super painful breakup, I had two simultaneous thoughts.

I thought I should have left sooner because this person turned out to not be a great partner. I had a lot of regret about how much time I gave to the relationship to see if it could improve, all...

All too often when people get into a new relationship, they begin losing themselves.

They start letting go of other people or activities that previously helped meet their needs.

For example, in a relationship, your partner satisfies your need for connection so you stop investing in friendships or meeting new people.

We lose ourselves by valuing the comfort of the relationship over our own growth, and we no longer pursue certain goals that we had before.

Many problems can arise from losing ourselves in a relationship:

We start to feel bad after we cut off so many sources of things that had been making us feel good.

We often start to lose attraction in the relationship because all of the things that were contributing to our life before are what made us attractive to our partner in the first place.

If you’re no longer pursuing new hobbies, passions, or growth, the relationship will begin stagnating as well.

So why do people lose themselves in relationships, and what can we...

Have you ever dated somebody you really like, and then that person starts to feel very special and you start to feel very lucky, and all of a sudden scarcity mindset sets in?

The feeling can go from positive to negative really quickly.

At first you’re excited that you met somebody so awesome, and then you feel anxious about whether you could meet somebody that awesome again.

One trick that is very helpful and effective for relieving some of that feeling of scarcity is shifting our thinking from luck to deliberate creation.

Luck is amazing, but it can create anxiety because it feels completely out of your control.

Whenever you’re dating and you feel like an opportunity was just dropped on your lap, you might enjoy that opportunity at first but then feel really scarce and anxious about it.

Whenever you notice you’re in that mindset, journal 20 ways that you created this result.

How did I create this connection?

It wasn’t luck. It didn’t just happen.

There...

A friend of mine shared that she used to be afraid of being “the crazy girl who wants commitment” when she was dating.

The fear came from her college days when her guy friends who would talk about the women they were dating as if they were too much, too needy, or clingy because they wanted a committed relationship.

My friend said that her fear made her not ask for what she needed in relationships for years. She tried to go with the flow the entire time even though it wasn’t what she wanted.

This topic comes up on a weekly basis with my clients as they get closer to having the exclusivity conversation.

Some sort of invisible block will come up and they start second guessing their desire to be exclusive with somebody.

They start over-thinking how the other person will react.

Maybe in the past you expressed that you wanted to be more committed with someone and they had a negative reaction, and you internalized that as something you did wrong.

In order to feel...

My clients often tell me they are really overwhelmed with the number of matches they are trying to keep up with when they’re online dating.

They get exhausted by the messaging, they’re being ghosted or unmatched, and it's not leading to dates.

These challenges come up because of the way online dating is designed, but I truly think it doesn’t have to be so difficult.

We can avoid these challenges by having good online dating hygiene.

The first part of online dating hygiene is only having messages with 3-5 people going at a time.

As soon as your inbox has five messages, you want to pause your profile to make sure no more matches are coming in.

Whenever any of those people aren't responsive, you delete that chat, and you have more space to un-pause your profile and match with someone else.

It's surprisingly difficult because online dating is set up to trigger that part of our brain that loves being validated.

But the cluttered inbox creates overwhelm that then leads...

When I was dating, I had my own fears, insecurities, challenges, and disappointments to work through. 

I started using a journaling process that I learned from my business coach. 

One of the exercises I gave myself was thinking about my vision of what I wanted to create. I wanted a playful, sexy, fun, and deep relationship. 

Then I would imagine how I would feel if I actually had that. 

One of the emotions that came up often when I was doing this exercise was “safe.” 

The thing is, I didn't want to wait until I was in a relationship to feel safe. 

So I started thinking about what thoughts could create that safety, security, and comfort
without actually having the relationship yet. 

Here are some of the mindset shifts that created that feeling of security and safety, while I was single: 

“My goals are up to me.” 

If there is something I really want to experience in life, it is never up to any one person other than...

When I was talking with a client about the role of sex in her dating dynamics, she said she had been told that if a woman doesn’t have sex with a man by the third date, he’s just going to assume there’s no chemistry and lose interest.

She said she had adopted that belief after hearing it from multiple sources.

It is a mindset that many women have, feeling like no guy is going to commit to us if we don’t first have sex with them so they know there is sexual compatibility.

Sometimes we worry that if we don’t have sex early enough the guy won’t stick around to really get to know us.

That line of thinking leads you to making a disempowered, pressured, and rushed decision about having sex because you’re trying to keep the other person pleased and keep them around.

I want to share some principles to help you make empowered decisions about sex.

First, when it comes to sex you want the decision to feel good not only in the moment but also the next...