I have a confession.
There was a version of me — not that long ago — who had quietly, privately given up.
I had my kids. I had my career. I had my independence. I had genuinely convinced myself that was enough. And on the surface it was. But underneath? I had decided that the kind of love I actually wanted was probably not for me. Too complicated. Too many disappointments. Too many men who said the right things and then showed me exactly who they were.
So I stopped believing. And when you stop believing, you stop looking. And when you stop looking, you confirm the belief.
It’s a perfect, painful little loop.
I know you know that loop.
I hear it in my DMs every single week. “Amanda, I love what you teach. But I don’t think a man like that actually exists.”
And this week, for the very first time, I brought my husband Sean onto the podcast to answer that question directly. In his own words. From his own experience.
I didn’t coach him. I didn’t script him. I just sat him in front of a microphone and asked him what dating actually looked like before he found me. What he was filtering for. Why he put therapy in his dating profile. Why he almost quit. And what made him swipe yes on a woman with an edge and a full life and three kids who most certainly did not need him.
Here’s the line that stopped me — even though I’ve been married to him for years:
“Hard to find? Yes. Impossible to find? No.”
Eight words. I’ve been trying to say that to my audience for years. He said it in eight words.
Here’s what else he said that I want you to sit with:
He said he took a year after his divorce to work on himself before he got on a dating app. He went to therapy. He rebuilt his confidence — what he called getting his “mojo” back. Not mojo as in becoming some charming player. Mojo as in: walking into a room and feeling like himself again.
He said he deleted the app multiple times out of frustration. He said he was lonely. He said he had moments of wondering if it was worth it.
He also said: “Sometimes your gut is smarter than your brain.”
And then he said something that I think every woman who has ever been told she’s “too much” needs to hear from a man — from a high-value man, in his own voice:
“Don’t give that up. If I was in your life as a friend and I saw you shrink for somebody, I would be very upset.”
He was talking about me. But he was talking about you.
So here is my question for you this week, and I want you to actually sit with it:
What have you given up — or started to give up — because you’ve decided the right person probably doesn’t exist?
Your ambition? Your standards? Your belief that a man could actually be your equal?
Because Sean exists. And he’s not a unicorn. He’s a man who did the work, stayed in the game, and was specific about what he wanted.
The play this week is simple: Make him stop scrolling. Which means you have to be findable. Which means you have to still be out there.
Are you still out there?
If you want to hear the full conversation — and I promise you, you do — the episode is live now. Link below.
And if you’re done doing this alone? I have one thing to offer you.
A free Dating Strategy Call. No pressure. Just a real conversation about where you are and what it would look like to finally get strategic about love.
LEARN MORE AND BOOK YOUR CALL HERE
Love,
Amanda