Amber Grubenmann

I was recently inspired by an interview with Alex Hormozie on The School of Greatness podcast.

The idea he discussed was about how we have more clarity thinking about how to not do something than how to do it. 

It’s easier to think about the steps to destroy a relationship than it is to list everything you know about creating a wonderful, lasting, extraordinary, passionate relationship.

Then you can think backwards and do the opposite of those things to create a beautiful relationship.

These are some of the ideas I came up with.

Fifteen ways to not create a relationship:  

1. Stay home, don’t meet new people.
2. Get comfortable with your circle of friends. Don’t add people to your circle, don’t seek out new people. Just be comfortable with the people you met in college or at work and don’t expand beyond that.
3. Don’t be a great partner financially, emotionally,...

Have you ever been completely devastated by a connection that didn’t work out after just a few dates?

Do you worry that you get attached to people too quickly?

First, I want to say it’s normal to really, really like somebody.

It’s normal to want things to work out with a specific person.

It’s normal to wonder, do they like me back? Do they want to see me again?

It’s normal to feel like you actually put something on the line once you’ve met somebody you like.

When we date, we put our chips in – from date one.

We are taking an emotional risk and it’s normal to really want to win big.

Now that we have that established, let’s talk about when becoming attached quickly is disruptive.

Sometimes the risk we take feels a lot bigger.

It’s not that you just bet a few chips, you bet all your chips.

You might be intensely...

I hear from a lot of women that the men they’re connecting with are not skilled at having in-depth, insightful, and emotionally open conversations.

A lot of guys give one-word responses to their questions.

When they go on a date, these men love talking about themselves, but they don’t ask any questions. Even if they do ask a question, it’s surface level.

One of my clients was coming across people who were not emotionally engaged, and when she told her friends about it they said, “Guys are just like that.”

She was letting that behavior slide because she figured that’s just how men are.

But that is not our standard for connection and communication.

At the beginning of my From Dating to Exclusive program, I send my clients a little book from a Buddhist teacher. One of my favorite quotes from the book is, “Understanding is love’s other name.”

When somebody is not invested in understanding us, there is no potential to...

What if your future self already created the result that you want and you’re just figuring out how she did it?

Holding this belief brings a whole different energy to our pursuit of goals.

Imagine yourself in the relationship that you want to create.

Imagine the kind of person you’re with and the quality of the connection the two of you have.

Imagine what it feels like.

What if that is an actual point in the future that you are heading towards?

When we don’t approach our goals with the belief that we will create what we want, we start feeling frustrated with the process.

We take action toward our goal by going on dates and trying to pursue a relationship, but if we believe it might never happen for us, we start feeling tired and burnt out really quickly 

Instead, we want approach it with the belief that it’s just a matter of time.

Future me already evolved, learned, and created it.

All I have to do is figure out the next step.

But we don’t want to...

Today I want to share some of the sources of pressure that can lead us to end up in the wrong relationship, and some ideas for how to deal with them.

Family, friends, and community.

It’s really common for my clients to feel pressure to get married by a certain age.

You might hear little comments subtly implying that something is wrong with you because you are not in a relationship.

It can show up in statements from your friends or family, such as “You’re being too picky.”

Most people don’t even realize they are doing it.

If you sense that a specific person is asking you about dating to hear how you’re doing it wrong, remember it’s definitely within your rights to set a boundary.

If they ask whether you’ve been on any dates recently, you can say "no" or “Actually, I’d rather not talk about that.” You have permission to not open up to people who don’t hold space for you.

Biology and the desire to have kids....

“The void” is what I call the feeling you have when you are dating and things don’t work out. It’s the pause between the last thing that ended and the next thing before it starts.

You come off the high of being excited about somebody and you have this in-between moment. It can have a feeling of darkness, emptiness, and discouragement.

On top of that, we start to make interpretations about what that “void” feeling means.

We start thinking something has gone wrong and we’re not doing it right. We start to have more negative thoughts about ourselves and about dating. We start to doubt ourselves.

What I want to communicate to you is not how to make that feeling go away or how to never experience it again.

Rather, I want to clarify that the void is a natural part of the process and you’ll probably feel it several times before you meet somebody that you really hit it off with.

The dating journey is like a hike where there are a lot of...

There are different categories of conversations that we can explore as we are connecting with people, and most people tend to have specific comfort zones in these different categories.

- The first category is talking about anything surface level, like what's here and now, and facts about things going on around you. Those kinds of conversations are probably not specifically about you or the other person.

- The second category is intellectual interests or topics in general. This is when you can dive into, for example, politics, movies, art, or travel. You can have interesting conversations about various topics, but at this level it's still not quite about you. It's more about sharing your knowledge about the topic.  

- The next category is playfulness, fun, and flirtiness. Here you’re able to joke around, be silly, and create some tension. This gets into a more vulnerable place because it takes some emotional risk when we don't know if people are going to get that joke or...

You want to have deeper connections with men so you practice asking deeper questions and sharing more about your inner thoughts, feelings, and challenges. 

A woman who I recently spoke to shared that a guy ended their connection 2 months in because he felt she was unloading a lot of personal baggage on him and it felt overwhelming. She had some family challenges come up recently that she frequently brought up when they would meet up. 

So she asked me: “Am I oversharing personal problems while dating? How vulnerable can I be?” 

Here are some guiding principles to follow: 

1.) Different people have different capacities and desires for depth. 

Some people may be fundamentally incompatible with you because they don’t have the desire or need for as much depth and intimacy as you do. This isn’t wrong, it’s just different. Some people are not able to hold space for big emotions, shocking thoughts, or a full range of human experience....

A lot of my clients complain about the flakiness of people on online dating apps.

There are some things you can do that will change your experience of online dating and also influence the behavior of other people you meet online.

First, swipe based on cute.

When we are online dating, we start to swipe and then get really picky. We start asking ourselves questions like “Am I compatible with this person?”

We start to look at all of the details before we’ve ever even exchanged a message with this person.

Is this person cute? If you met this person at a bar and they were so funny that you were snorting liquid out of your nose, would you think they were cute?

You can still have your deal breakers. I recommend you set them up in the app so you don’t even see people who don’t match you on important topics such as whether you want kids or not, distance, or religion.

When it comes to those other questions like am I attracted to them, would they fit in with...

I’ve noticed that sometimes when people go through difficult experiences in dating, such as being ghosted, they carry a lot of fear going into the next connection.

One of the questions that I ask my clients is, “What is the one-sentence story that you took away from that experience?”

That one-sentence story is your mind’s lesson that it is now taking forward in dating. After a painful experience, the one-sentence story will most often be negative and not serving you.

It could be a statement like “I’m really difficult to love,” or “I’m too needy.”

One of my clients was having a hard time getting her needs met in her relationship, and she believed that maybe her needs were too much.

I shared this metaphor with her:

When we partner up with somebody we each get a bucket, and in that bucket are the needs of the other person.

Everybody’s needs are a little bit different, but they are usually things like checking in every...