SPEAKER_00 0:00

So, Gary and I have spent the past few years on this podcast talking about how to attract the right types of guys. But in today's podcast, we're gonna be doing something a little bit different, which is how to stop wasting time on the guys you don't want. I think you're gonna get a lot out of this, and we're gonna be giving you some good stuff. Gary, are you ready for this? Welcome to the Love Strategies Podcast, where we help successful women attract high-value men, date with a strategy, and improve their relationships. Now, whether you're single or dating or in a new relationship, we're here to help you dive into the male mind and provide raw insights found nowhere else, backed by science, psychology, and our own personal experiences. Your hosts today are myself, Adam Ladolce, professional dating coach and founder of Love Strategies, and Dr. Gary Lewandowski, a relationship scientist, professor, and our head relationship coach here at Love Strategies. Please share with a friend and enjoy.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Can I start off by tooting our own horn a little? Is it okay to say that? Is that go for it, man? Shoot away. Is that thing? Is that something people say, or is that just something my grandmom used to say? But so tooting our own horn. We are good at teaching women about lots of different areas of dating, relationships, the whole thing. But you know what we're especially good at? Teaching women how to flirt. Really good at this. Whether it's Coach Robin in a live event, on a mastermind, in the videos that Adam has put together. Like, we are really good. So, Adam, you have a better sense of this. But like, how many women do you think we've helped flirt better over the years? Do you think?

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Oh my God. I mean, over a hundred thousand. I mean, we've we've reached millions online. It's hard to say, but we've had over 40,000 clients. So a lot. We have a lot of experience in this.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

So just literally more than we can count, right? But so there is a problem that clients will bring up to us every once in a while, which is sometimes they get a little too good at flirting. They're like, Dr. Garrett, I can't turn this off. Like, I just like there, I'm like, there's all these guys, and they're just like always interested and they're always wanting to chat me up. And so today we're talking about something that I don't think I've ever seen anyone else, you know, dating coach, relationship stuff talk about, which is like, how do we help you turn these guys away? Right. Like, how do we, you know, help you keep like back off, man? Right. It's because it's like dating, there's a whole bunch of skills that go into dating, and skills are all things you can learn. And so this is not an obvious skill, but it's a necessary one because we want you to almost always be flirting. Like you should always be flirting and looking to connect with people. And so some of those people that you're gonna kind of attract to you are not gonna be people you want to continue with. So you're gonna have some of these techniques we're talking about today kind of in your toolkit, which when you have a tool already at the ready to deal with any situation, that just makes you a more confident dater. And that's really the whole point because what you're trying to do with dating is attract, right? So that's flirting, but also sort. And so in that sorting process, you're gonna realize some of these guys are not the guy for you. So, like now we don't, it's not about rejecting him, it's about revealing him. It's about seeing him for who he is and knowing, like, okay, this isn't a fit. And let's move on and let's make it clear that we're not interested in continuing. And that's all part of sorting too. And that's what we're talking about today.

SPEAKER_00 3:14

Yeah, it's so funny seeing the journey that our clients go through. Typically, when we first start working with a client, they're in the super back off phase, just like all men get out. I'm tired of these types of guys. No, no, no, no, no. Get out of my life. Then they go through this process that we call the seven little love steps and they start getting out there and intentionally meeting men, learning how to flirt, learning how to engage, going to the right place to meet high caliber guys. By the way, shameless plug. If you want to learn the seven little love steps, just go to thelovesteps.com. That's gonna give you the free seven-step training on exactly how to do this stuff. But, anyways, they go through that process and they start to really open up, which is amazing. They feel empowered again. They're like, I can meet anyone anywhere. I feel alive again. I feel like I was when I was in my 20s, even though I'm in my 60s or 70s. It's amazing. But then, Gary, we always have to say, hey, now we have a new problem, which is a champagne problem. It's a wonderful problem to have. It's kind of like when rich people say they pay too much in taxes, like, like they're like, oh my God, my tax bill is so high this year. It's like I get it. And I'm not like, I'm not like I'm not trusting, don't get me start on taxes. Yeah. But it's like, oh my God, I just spent I had to pay five million in taxes this year. It's like, yeah, that means you made probably 10 plus million. Um, but different topic, different podcast. But my point is, there's a point where you have to really learn how to filter these guys out. And so we've developed this process that we call the anti-flirt method. This is how we can learn to turn off our flirting skills and clearly show the red light signals we're not interested. We're not interested in continuing, it's over. And this is a very important protection mechanism. Because if we're just going out there and flirting with every guy everywhere we go, and we don't have that anti-flirt method, then guess what? We're just gonna be opening ourselves up to a lot of the wrong types of guys. So, Gary, do you want to kind of walk us through this process a little bit?

SPEAKER_01 5:18

Yeah, I mean, the whole idea is we want you trying to connect with as many people as possible because we don't often know how great a guy is going to be just based on seeing him across from a room or just you know some superficial qualities. We don't know that much about them. So we don't want to prejudge, we want to be curious. And so we're gonna flirt with as many people as possible. But it's like a car, right? You can't have all gas and no brakes. And so the anti-flirt method, it's the brakes. And so there's really two parts to this. The first is we're gonna help you avoid the emotionally unavailable guys, the guys where that relationship's never gonna go anywhere, right? We're gonna avoid those guys from the start. And then number two, we're gonna learn how to discourage the guys that you're not into. We're not gonna be mean, we're gonna do this kindly, we're gonna do this subtly in many ways. Um, but it's gonna send the clear signal like, yeah, we're we're not into this. And now here's the thing the right guy, your guy, is not gonna be scared off by you being more clear. But, and this is so critical, the wrong men in the world depend on your lack of clarity. That's how you end up in messy relationships, situationships, unclear, ambiguous, confusing, frustrating relationships that nobody wants is from lack of clarity. And so it's gonna be a little bit about boundaries. And remember, boundaries show value, right? It shows value to yourself and it makes everything clear for everybody. And so we're gonna introduce just enough clarity early on so that there's just enough friction so that the wrong men sort themselves out. They they move on themselves, and that's a good thing. And the most important part of all this is we're gonna help you do this in a way that figures it out faster so you're not wasting three, six months of your life or even years.

SPEAKER_00 7:00

Definitely. So I think the first part is identifying the wrong emotionally unavailable guys. Gary, you want to walk us through this first part?

SPEAKER_01 7:07

Yeah, so we're gonna try to avoid certain men that you don't want to flirt with at all, right? So here's the key strategy. And this sounds really fancy. I'm kind of proud of this wording. Put behavioral patterns under pressure. I know, right? Fancy. Yeah. But it's really about creating conditions that force men to reveal their true intentions. So it's not, we don't just want attention. Attention feels nice. We want to know what this guy's true intentions are. And so the fact of the matter is, not all men are worth your time. And so here are some behavioral patterns to pay attention to to see if this guy's even worth flirting with too much or leaning in. And so pay attention to a guy's charm front loading, right? High effort, high engagement early on. He's really high energy. He's trying, he's wooing you, he's complimenting you, he's saying all the right things. And then once you start showing interest, there's this sudden, sharp drop-off. It's like all of a sudden now he's busy, work got busy, and it's almost like the chase was the whole point. Well, that's because it was. That was the whole thing. He's he's a dopamine-centered dater, um, and he's focused on getting the girl. He has no interest in keeping the girl. And so we want to pay attention to those types of men.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Yeah, I mean, they're the types of guys who will work so hard to win you over, and then the moment you're like, you know what? I think I like this guy, he's gone. What? Like, it's like the one of the most confusing parts of the human experience. It's just like getting involved with someone, and the moment that you finally say yes, now they're saying no. And it's just, it's so, so confusing. And what I will say to you is it's not your fault. It's not your fault if that happens. It's just an indicator that this man is playing that type of game with lots and lots of people. Like, that's how he gets his, that's how he entertains himself. I mean, shoot, I will admit in my early 20s when I was a dope, I would do things like that. I mean, probably not like consciously, but if I, you know, if I could go back in time and slap that kid across the face, I probably would and say, like, come on, man, get it together. What are you doing? But it's a game, it's a game that he's just trying to win. Another one that I found is just selective depth, is another thing that guys will do who are just not ready for anything real. Like, he can go deep in conversations with you, but he's just never gonna go deep about himself. I mean, he might ask you great questions, he might even talk about really big ideas and seem really emotionally intelligent, all the amazing things that you've been looking for. But is he gonna be vulnerable with you? No, no, he's not gonna share the parts of himself that are imperfect, he's not gonna share parts of himself that will reveal something to you that he hasn't shared with anyone else. He's not gonna do any of that. He's very selective about going deep with you.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

Yeah, and worse, he's gonna make you fight for every little scrap. He's gonna keep his emotional vulnerability tantalizingly close. So it's like it's always just about there, but not quite, because it keeps you hanging on, right? It creates this illusion of connection without any real exposure on his end. And so he's kind of serious. And if you talk yourself into it, he seems really serious and right on the verge of being this amazing guy. But if you really look at it, he's not giving you much. Another thing that guys do in conversation that that's a similar pattern is giving you emotional timeouts, and so things will be going well, something close comes up, he's like just on the verge of sharing, and then suddenly he's distant, short, or just like then disappears for a couple of days. Then he comes back when it's comfortable again, but then he goes away again if things start getting a little too close. And it's just this constant like back and forth and back and forth. And like Adam said, he may not even know he's doing this or why he's doing this, but it doesn't matter because it's emotionally manipulative to you. And this is not the kind of long-term relationship you want. And so if you don't want a long-term relationship like this, then you don't want to date like this either. Um, and then I think the the last thing that you'll see with those emotionally unavailable men that you do not want to flirt with. Um future fogging. Future fogging is like he's he'll talk about the future and he'll answer questions about the future, which seems promising. But when he does, he's very vague. But he's also optimistic. So there's this like combination of pluses and minuses and like some good stuff in there and some not so good stuff. And so you'll talk about the future and he'll say something like, Yeah, I'm totally open to something serious, just seeing where things go right now. It's just this weird mix, and it's like creates enough just enough space for you to start filling in the blanks, start fibbing to yourself about he is the one. He did say he's interested, he does want this. He's keeping the door open without ever actually walking through it.

SPEAKER_00 12:10

Definitely. Now let's move on to the fun part, Gary, the really fun part, which is discover discouraging these guys that you're really not into. Okay, because we have opened a wide net and we might have guys that you're talking to or you just meet for the first time. And we have to be able to just remove them from your orbit, from your world, so that they don't suck up unnecessary emotional energy. And I will say this is a brag, Gary. And it is a brag that I shouldn't say as a professional dating coach and as a CEO of Love Strategies, but I'm responsible for just as many breakups as I am relationships. Probably more. I don't know if you can you say the same, Gary. Like crusher of dreams sometimes. It is, but like, look, as part of this process, like this is not good marketing, but I don't care. Now we're not here to market, I'm here to change your world for the audience listening in. If you're working this process that we call the seven little love steps, again, you can head on over to thelovesteps.com, go through that whole training, it's free. But when you're going through that process, let's say you meet two or three guys on your journey to finding the one, that means you're gonna be saying no to two or three of those guys through the process, right? Or four of them. You know, if it takes five or six, it might take that many. So it takes more no's in order to get to the ultimate yes. So don't be afraid of doing this. And ultimately, we're gonna go through a few different scenarios, a few different ways to kind of discourage these guys. But at the end of the day, I'm such a fan of just open and honest communication in these situations. If you just start talking to a guy and he's messaging you on an app, you don't see it as a good fit, you can always just say, Hey, look, I don't see this as a good match, but I wish you the best of luck. You can always just close the door and just be honest. I know so many of you are people pleasers. You don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, you're not really sure, but I assure you, by having a lack of clarity, you're actually making the problem worse for yourself and worse for him. So um, I don't know. Gary, you want to jump into the first one here that I think could be helpful for everyone?

SPEAKER_01 14:15

Yeah, I mean, real one general thing, real quick, though, is I think there's an important principle to keep in mind for those of you who are people pleasers, want to be kind, want to avoid conflict. You have to learn to use your no's to protect your yes. Right? Your no's in life protect the times that you are able to say yes. And there is going to be one guy you want to say yes to, but you may not get the chance if you don't have enough no's along the way. Right. And so we have to be able to say no sometimes. And so the easiest way to say no, like you're out flirting, you're at a party, social setting, things that you know, you start flirting with a guy, and you just kind of realize, like, yeah, he's not it. You have to be able to say bye with your body language. So it's basically all the stuff that you would normally do with flirting backwards, right? So you're gonna be closed off, you're gonna cross your arms, you're gonna lean away from him, you're gonna angle yourself sideways. So it's like you're trying to escape the situation. No eye contact, keep looking around the room, keep looking past him, keep being a little distracted. Um, definitely don't touch him. And if for some reason he touches you, you want to have a quick, like like reflexive, like almost like, ooh. Now you don't have to like recoil and be like, oh, grow. Like you don't have to like overdo it, but he like touches your arm, just gotta have to like just a slight like little withdrawal to show, like, ooh, I wasn't expecting that and I wasn't welcoming that, right? Because that he will pick up on those signals.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

The majority of men, not all men, but the majority of men can read a woman's body language when they're not interested. Now, there's still 20% of guys who just don't get the hint. And in that situation, we just walk away, we excuse ourselves to the bathroom, and we just remove ourselves from it. But even the guys that I used to coach who really were not good at reading social cues, they could tell when a woman is not paying attention to what they were saying, not laughing at their jokes, closing their arms, and just not interested. Because every guy has this deep-seated fear of coming off as a creeper. Like guys do not want to be creepy. Some guys still are, and some guys don't get the hint. I'm I'm not saying some guy there are some guys out there who really don't get yeah, they they don't. But the majority of guys, the majority, over 50% of guys will get the hint, and it's an easy first step of just being really cold with your body language and short with your responses. That typically will do the trick. Gary, you want to take us to the next one?

SPEAKER_01 16:42

Yeah, and so being sure with your responses is very easy to do. The other thing you want to make sure you're doing is you want to be neutral and not warm because warmth towards another person is a reward. And most women are conditioned to be warm from the start and for no good reason, other than just like I'm warm with everybody. Now, we want to, if he starts to be the kind of guy that you don't, you're not interested in, dial back the warmth. Make sure he's earning your warmth. And the guy you're not interested in is he's not gonna earn it, right? So just stay neutral, be pleasant. How you'd act towards a complete stranger, cordial, not familiar, right? Kind, but not connecting. Don't give him any compliments, don't ask questions, don't give him any encouragements, kind of quick, you know, polite. And I'm not saying be cold and mean and distant, any of that kind of stuff. Just like like you would talk to somebody you don't know that well or not you don't know them at all. Just kind of keep it, keep it short. The other piece of this is what you're trying to do is create an effort gap. So often when men and women are talking, it's women who carry the conversation. And you're carrying the conversation because you are warm, you are kind, you are polite. So when you're trying to anti-flirt, don't do it. Don't be the one that keeps things moving. Don't do any of the work. Let it be a little awkward. You really want to lean into the awkwardness? Also get used to sitting in the silence. Let the silence work for you. Because guys, they they pick up on body language. They also know about silence. They know silence is bad. So when there's a pause, don't do the thing you normally do, which is fill fill it with a question, a delightful comment, like all the all the things that you've done your whole entire life because you're social and kind. We're not gonna be mean, we're just withdrawing the warmth. So don't rescue the moment, don't fill it in.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

Sit in. I'm getting these horrible flashbacks of me when I was in my 20s trying to figure all this stuff out. And I'd be talking to a woman and it was not going well. I'm just bombing. Oh my God, not interested. And it's just silent. And then the worst part is the look of eye contact, but then the side look like help friends come get that like earlier in my 20s when you were just like, oh no, that's her signal. Like, she's trying to be kind of nice, but also like, please, someone get me out of this horrible side. Like, I wasn't being creepy, I was just like not able to carry the conversation. I'm sure I was being awkward.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

Yeah, or she just wasn't interested, or she had a boyfriend, or she wasn't ready for a relationship. There's a million sport. Thanks for hyping. I'm sure you were amazing, pal. Sure you were sure it was a way to hype me up, man. It sure wasn't you. Now, here's the thing is this going to be awkward? Yep. Yeah, it sure is. But that's the signal you want to send because that is a signal that guys get. They don't always get all the signals, but that is one they they definitely get. And so it part is just really about you can be polite without being personal. So you can answer questions, but keep it short. Don't ask the typical follow-up questions that most women naturally do, because you're all naturally good at conversation. Where's how about you? How are things going with you? Asking questions. Don't do it. Keep all your disclosures very surface level, nothing close to your heart. If it gets weird, if it gets weird with this guy, and he just kind of blows through some of the subtle signals, and he's not really picking up on things, and he seems just like he's intent on really pushing forward. If you need to ask direct questions, put them on the spot. And you say, you know, oh, I'm just wondering, like, what's the goal? What's the goal here? What are you looking for? And then, you know, or how did your last relationship end? Because that, all of those, those three questions you can say and you say, don't I mean you don't have to say it angry, you don't have to say it, you know, in any confrontational kind of way. Just, you know, hey, what's what's the goal here? See what he says. And then if he's vague, if he's uncertain, if he's unclear, don't reward it. Just be like, okay. No follow-ups, don't dig for information, just let it drop. And then, like Adam said, you can always just say, you know, oh, that's that's a really great. It's been great talking to you. I gotta get back to my friends. Done.

SPEAKER_00 21:00

Oh. The flashbacks are just so strong, Gary. They're just so strong. But it's such an important tool in the toolkit because what this does is it gives you permission to be cold. And that seems like a weird thing for us to be saying because we've spent so much time over the years coaching our clients to be very warm and inviting and receiving. But like we've said, it's think of it like an on-off switch. You can't be on all the time. You have to have the off switch at times. And if you don't know how to turn it off, then once again, if it's always on, it's just gonna be like moths to a flame. It's gonna be just like, you're just gonna get bombarded by a lot of the wrong types of guys. So the key thing is just knowing that you always have this in your back pocket to turn men away. You in your feminine energy, you have receiving energy, you also have no energy. Like that's the beautiful part about feminine energy. I think a lot of people confuse this with dating, is like it is the most powerful energy through the process because you decide who gets your affection. You decide who gets your time and energy. You're the decider. You're like the queen sitting in her throne who decides who gets to come near you and who doesn't. Whereas men in the masculine energy, which everyone thinks the masculine energy is the most powerful energy, it's not because we're the ones going out trying to get your approval. We're trying to get your validation. We're trying to win you over. So it's like, I think I've just had such a unique experience working with men versus women. And both think that the other, you know, men definitely think women have all the power and they do. And then women think that men have all the power and they're wrong in the early stages of dating. Like women, the feminine energy is the most empowering energy that you have. You decide every single step of the way who's in your life and who's not. So use your on-off switch quite regularly and learn that skill of being able to turn someone on and turn someone off, turn, turn someone away. So I think that's super important for y'all.

SPEAKER_01 23:13

And the real important takeaway here is by having this skill, you're not missing anything. The right guy's not going to even notice that you have this filter because he's going to be emotionally available. He's going to be there. He's not going to know that you're screening a bunch of guys out for these things. He's not going to ever get the full anti-flirt experience because you're going to be into him. And so this isn't going, see, every once in a while a client will say, Oh, gosh, if you're telling me to turn guys away, I can't even get any guys coming towards me. Like, what am I supposed to do? These things go hand in hand. Gas and brakes, on and off, right? The guys who get filtered out, they're never really going to, they were never your guy. You know what they were going to be? Confusing, frustrating messes. They were going to waste months of your time. And we don't want to do that. We want to be a date as efficiently as possible. And so all of these skills just make it more easy for you to date more confidently. And that's really what we want.

SPEAKER_00 24:08

Definitely. And for those of you who are listening in who are like, I need to learn the skill of protecting myself while dating and ensuring that I don't get involved with the wrong types of guys. That's what we do here at Love Strategies. Our entire staff here is working and cheering you on every single step of the way and protecting you every single step of the way. That's a key part of everything we do. So, as part of Love Strategies and our executive love coaching, we not only give you the strategies that you can use, we give you the support group that can guide you along the way. We also give you our relationship intelligence suite, which is going to guide you with, you know, 24-7 support with any type of situation. We also have accountability coaches who are like, hey, hold on a sec. I'm not so sure about that guy. Let's go through the emotional, uh, emotionally unavailable checklist and make sure he's not fitting this criteria. It's these checkpoints that are so important that protect you from the wrong relationship, not only two months lasting two months, but it could be two years or could be 20 years. And so for those of you who really want to have that protection every single step of the way, then I would invite you to jump on what we call a love strategy session with someone on my team who's going to speak with you directly, really understand what has been your pattern, why have we been choosing the wrong types of guys? Then we're also going to talk about like, what is your big vision for your life? What is your big vision for a relationship? What does your love life ideally look like in the next year or two? And then we're just going to bridge the gap and we're going to see whether or not our executive love coaching program can guide you along the way. So if you want to have that conversation, it's completely free. Head on over to loveaply.com or you click the link in the description. Uh, you're gonna find that our love strategists are some of the most compassionate, caring human beings you've ever met. That's, you know, I could say that because, you know, Gary, we hired them. They're incredible, they've been trained by us, and they're here to guide you every single step of the way. So again, head on over to loveapply.com. Gary, this is fantastic. And uh enjoy the rest of your week, everyone. All right, bye-bye.