I Learned a Powerful Lesson About Love After 2 Divorces Before 40

It seemed like a scam. I was about to shell out a large sum of money for someone who wasn’t going to scour the market and find me a healthy relationship, but rather highlight my epic mistakes in the quest for love. But after 20 years of heartbreak and two divorces before the age of 40, the fear of repeating my destructive pattern trumped logic. I still felt like I was missing key information on how to do these encounters well.

My coworker introduced me to a woman named Bela who offered dating coaching. During our first session, she asked me if I had any doubts about my exes. I answered honestly that as I stood hand in hand with each of them reciting vows, I had never been more sure of anything in my life. They were the path to what I wanted: marriage and maternity. Yet with both of them, I soon after had shocking revelations that inevitably imploded every relationship.

My first husband, whom I married at 29, was gentle, gentle and simple. Unfortunately, six weeks after our dream wedding, I realized I didn’t know him at all. We were both living incompatible fantasies.

I shared with Bela that I then welcomed an era of extremes in my early 30s as I tried to figure myself out. I was either sipping late-night cocktails with colleagues, visiting my friends in the maternity wards, meeting my unofficial newborn nephews and nieces. Friends were jealous of my gallivants in Istanbul and my escapades in Sao Paulo; I wanted to be saddled with binkies and a baby monitor.

When my second ex-husband dangled his three young children who adored me, I couldn’t help but instantly create the life that seemed to be slipping further and further away. We did it less than two years before I learned its secrets – all alarming clichés. I should have seen the warning signs. It was another man I didn’t know at all.

Although I wanted to play the victim, I quickly realized that I was not blameless. These men may have been hiding secrets, but I was also using them to live out an artificial idea of ​​a fairy tale ending. Explaining my humiliating story to dating coach helped me focus on an inescapable reality that I needed to break my unhealthy pattern.

Bela didn’t promise that I would quickly find healthy love, only that I would develop endless self-awareness and never have difficulty dating again. This sounded like exactly what I needed, so I scraped together the investment and signed up for a year of coaching.

I had to follow his strict rules without deviating: dating multiple people simultaneously without being intimate or engaging with a single person for at least three months. The meetings were spaced once a week to prevent me from falling in love again too quickly. Friends made fun of me, telling me not to wait more than three dates to sleep with someone, let alone three months, but I persevered.

Bela helped me create a new profile on dating apps by highlighting things I’d like to talk about, making it accessible for potential matches to message me. I wrote that I loved cocktail bars and hardcover books, and I shared specific stories that might pique someone’s interest and spark a question, like the time I was kicked out of a Turkish nightclub. In my photos, I wore six different outfits, creating the ideal set of new photos that weren’t cropped on a girls’ night out, but instead featured me in three full-body poses and three photos at the head. She asked me to create a new email address so that, as Bela told me, the algorithms would recognize me as an interesting new customer and send my profile to more people.

Before I started on dating apps, his company did a full day with me. They made me write a contract which I read aloud and then signed. This helped me clarify my intention and fully commit to the coaching program, promising to break my tendency to fall too fast and too hard and, more importantly, to start taking the warning signs serious.

Once my dating profile went live, I was shocked at how different the whole experience was. For years, I would engage with apps and then delete them. Tinder notifications were used to interrupt work calls or errands along the Chicago lakefront. Like a bad relationship itself, apps controlled my life.

Bela taught me to time dating apps: no notifications, only 15 minutes of dedicated time morning and evening. I found myself actually enjoying the process. I was also attracting some really great people to hang out with in numbers I didn’t think were possible. Before becoming a coach, I was lucky to find one appointment per month, but with my new attitude, I attracted sought-after prospects every week.

I wondered: Could this just be due to the renewed energy I was putting into the world? Should I credit only my state of mind? My precious, vulnerable time in the dating world was finally producing results.

Less than two months into coaching, I met Jason on Match.com. As in previous relationships, I wanted to quickly join him and delete the apps. I called Bela in tears. I wanted to stop dating other people.

In her motherly voice, she reminded me: “We are looking for consistency. » She made me open my calendar. “You’ve known him for less than two weeks, Andrea, that’s not enough time to merit your commitment.” Bela’s time limit for how long a person can hide their true identity is three months. I thought about my exes, remembering the first dates that quickly turned into daily texts, sex, relationships, marriage.