Julie: Bonjour and welcome.
We are in Paris again for our third live coaching event at Ourtime.
My name is Julie Peasgood and I am delighted to be your host tonight.
I'm an actress TV presenter and journalist and the author of an award-winning book about S** and relationships.
Kate: Hello, I'm Kate Taylor.
I'm Ourtime's dating coach and I work with singles just like you to help them find love in the fastest and most fun way possible.
And tonight we'll be giving you our very best tips on how to find your happy ever after online.
Julie: Now in this session, we are going to talk about the two essential skills that you'll need to master dating online.
We'll talk about how to save money when you find love or while you find love.
And we'll also share some real life success stories from people who've found their partner online.
Kate, you actually found your husband with online dating, didn't you?
Kate: I did, I'm married to my lovely second husband now, but I've actually been married before, and I met both of them through doing online dating.
But I did it very differently both times.
So in the third chapter of tonight's talk, we're going to be talking about what I learned the hard way and what I know to do now to find love the right way when you're looking online.
And as Julie said, tonight's coaching is the third live coaching event that we've done.
You can watch replays of the previous sessions anytime.
We've covered, I think, almost everything that you can possibly find to think about when it comes to dating.
So, as we're talking tonight, if you're finding that we're not covering the subjects that you're interested in, please just afterwards go and have a look at the other videos and you'll probably find that we talked about it there.
Julie: Now first of all, we're going to discuss the two most important skills that are needed to find your happy ever after online, they are confidence.
We're going to banish any dating impostor syndrome, if you're suffering from that.
And then, we're going to talk about welcoming rejection, it doesn't have to hurt.
Kate: So do you feel confident in dating?
I guess, if you've come here tonight to listen to us, then maybe your confidence isn't quite at its peak at the moment.
But I would like you to remember that as soon as you start going out on dating and interacting with people, you'll find it's a lot easier now than it was, maybe in your 20s.
Do you remember how awful it was dating in your 20s?
How nervous used to get?
Julie: You know to be honest, Kate, I met my husband when I was 18, so it's more about how nervous I used to be when I was in my teens and dating.
It was nerve wracking. You know, what do I wear? And we can then click, is my breath okay?
I found, though, that sometimes the thought of doing something is actually scarier than when you're doing it.
It's much easier when you actually get started.
And that applies to a lot of things in life, not just dating.
Kate: So we just asked you if you feel more confident dating now than you did in your 20s.
And I really hope your answer was yes.
But if it wasn't, then you might be suffering from something that we call "dating impostor syndrome."
Impostor syndrome, quite simply, is the feeling that you're not good enough and that you're somehow going to any minute you're going to be found out.
The term was coined in the 1970s by two psychologists, and I think we've all thought about it in terms of work that we're all going to get found out.
But you can get it when you're going on dates as well, or even when you're just thinking about going on a date.
Julie: And to find out, if you're suffering with dating impostor syndrome, Kate has devised a quiz where there are three questions, again, all with simple yes or no answers.
Kate: Might I just say that when I was dating, I would have been three for three on that I would have been three.
And so if you just answered that quiz, and you have two or more yes two or three yes, I would suggest that you have dating impostor syndrome.
But all is not lost because we've got some information here about little, tiny steps you can take to help you overcome it.
Kate: So first of all, I want you to focus on the fact.
Get a piece of paper, just take some time to yourself and start thinking about all the relationship successes that you've had in your life.
This doesn't have to be romantic relationships.
It can be the wonderful relationship that you have with your children or your work colleagues, or just the time that on the journey to work this morning you made someone smile.
Every interaction you have with someone else that tells you, "I'm alright, I'm good with people."
Start writing those things down and whenever you get a wobble, which will happen, it will.
Whenever you get a wobble, I want you to keep looking at the list until it starts sinking in.
Then, I want you to celebrate your successes.
Every little step along this journey of dating and overcoming your dating impostor syndrome, I want you to reward action, not outcomes.
Because otherwise, if you're not sitting there with a massive engagement or wedding ring on, you're going to think that you failed and you haven't.
So start rewarding yourself for action and it's going to be little baby steps.
So, when you first create your profile, I want you to reward yourself for that.
The fact that you're here tonight watching us talk to you, that is a really positive step that you've taken toward success in dating.
So, I want you to reward yourself for that.
And talking about that voice in your head, do not listen to the voice in your head that tells you're not good enough or that the person on your date is about to realize that you do not deserve to be out on the date.
Don't listen to that voice in your head.
If you have a really pervasive voice in your head that's constantly telling you, you're not good enough. Here's a little technique that you can use to start shutting it up, and it just focuses on using three C's.
So right the first C, I want you to catch the thought. Realize that you've just told yourself that you're unlovable and will die alone and be eaten by your cat. Realize, notice that awful voice is coming to your head.
The first step is just realizing.
How often we say negative things to ourselves?
Secondly, I want you to challenge that thought, so just say, you suddenly thought "I'm in my 60s.I'm too old to be looking for love now, I'm too old, it's ridiculous."
Challenge that thought by thinking something like Ourtime has set up an entire dating website for people over 50.
So, surely people over 50 are going on dates and that's wonderful.
Because otherwise, why would they have set up the whole site for it?
So challenge that thought with that every time.
And then change the thought, so you're not too old to find love.
Maybe fate has brought you all through your life just so you can have the mix of experiences and anecdotes and all the things that make you who you are today, just so you can finally find the perfect person for you now.
So, change the thought into something much more positive.
Julie: Three C's: catch the negative thought, challenge the negative thought and change the negative thought. That is brilliant.
None of us are ever too old to find love, and that goes for if you're 19 or 90.
So now I think that's brilliant.
Julie: But now we're moving on to how to learn to love rejection.
It seems a strange concept, doesn't it?
But how can we all learn to embrace love, or embrace rejection?
Nobody likes being rejected, do they?
Kate: I don't want you to think that online dating is going to be a non-stop carousel of pain and rejection.
What I'm trying to do with this advice is just to stop you dwelling on the idea of rejection.
So, that in the end you don't take any action at all.
Anytime we do something new, we face being rejected.
We just do when you date online, sometimes you're going to send a message that doesn't get a reply.
But if you think about that too much, it will stop you sending messages, and then you definitely won't get a reply.
You won't meet a partner if you let the fear of rejection take over.
So, how can you learn to embrace the rejection?
One, see every rejection as a step closer to your happy ending is not rejection, it's redirection.
Sometimes it's good, if the wrong person for you doesn't reply to your message, think about a destiny has swooped in and has stopped you wasting time in the wrong relationship.
Because if there's one thing that is guaranteed to stop you meeting the love of your life it's spending your life with someone who's not the love of your life, spending time with the wrong person.
Have you? Looking back with your wisdom now, do you think you've ever been in a relationship that you shouldn't have been in?
Julie: Absolutely.
Really, I wasted four years with the guy, kept praying every day, hoping it would change, hoping I'd change, hoping he'd change.
Deep down I knew it wasn't right, but with just four years.
I mean, that's a long time.
I left him, went back.
He eventually left me, although I was devastated at the time.
It was the best thing we didn't make each other laugh.
We weren't meant to be together.
Kate: So, and I bet the thing that really gets to you now looking back on it, it's all those years that you wasted, four years.
We could have been with someone else?
So if you get rejected now, see it as a blessing.
See that you're not going to waste that time, and you're free to find someone better suited to you.
You're not going to meet the right person straight away, even if you use all our tips and advice, you're not necessarily going to meet the right person straight away.
And in fact, in chapter three we are going to talk about my own experience dating online and how I had to kiss so many frogs, I was basically David Attenborough.
The next thing I want you to do is set up as many dates as you can, so you're here because you want to meet the one, but the easiest way to meet the one is to meet the million.
So, I want you to go out on as many dates as you can.
If you focus too much on one person, and again, I learned this the hard way.
So remember chapter three, I'll be telling you my torturous personal story.
If you only have one date, it's natural for you to focus all your time and energy on them, and that puts away too much pressure on that relationship.
You won't be able to be sort of easy, and cool and confident because your life will revolve around: "have they replied to my message?", "How will I see it at the weekend?".
My identity is focused on this. If you get like that, understand that's really natural.
We all get like that if we're only seeing one person in the very early stages of a relationship.
Later on, obviously I don't want you to strip you, but in the beginning I want you to play the field.
It forces you like the fact that I'm telling you that I'd really love you to play the field obviously means you can't be too fussy, and one thing that happens when we do online dating because there seem to be so many people available to us to date is naturally we start to try and screen people out.
So, we do become crazily fussy and you'll probably notice this yourself, as you're going through the website and looking at photos.
You'll suddenly become the fussiest person in the world.
You were like, "oh, they've got a cat. No, I had a cat when I was seven and it scratched me." or we can start looking at the background of that picture's going on: "I can't see this. Push the hoover around. Next."
You can't do that, but if you also think about it, the happiest relationships that you've probably been in your life were with people initially you thought, like you know, maybe they've got a cat, but you're funny, and we'll just see how it goes.
So don't go crazily fussy.
I want you to go out with many people in the beginning, and if you now, there you going, Kate and Julie, "I can't find one date let alone this field they want me to play", we have covered that in another one of our videos.
So if you look through the series of our videos, look for the one that's called "messaging and meeting up."
Where we give you all our tips on how to meet and go out on as many dates as possible with as many people as you can.
And the next thing I want you to do is to enjoy the journey.
Now I hate that word journey, enjoy the journey.
But it's so applicable when it comes to dating because I don't want you to think of yourself just two possible states, there's one way you're single and alone and there's one way you're happily with the person of your dreams.
Because you have to enjoy the process, you just have to enjoy every step.
So enjoy being a dater, enjoy going to coffee shops and meeting new people.
Everyone who dates, everyone who puts themselves out there will meet some people that aren't right for them, they're just not.
Julie: Or somebody who says, they're a certain age, and you find they're 10 years older, or they're three inches shorter or something.
But just enjoy the process, really.
Kate: Or people might need to wear loads of fake tan on their first date, so they look what kind of bronze and gold, and we're in fact, when you get married to me, you realize I'm white as a sheet like all the time.
Julie: You were also saying to me, Kate, on the train here you were saying, define what success in dating looks like.
That's a really interesting point, being happy.
Kate: Yeah, don't define success in dating and love as being married or moving in together or something big that it might not happen.
So bring it down to little success, you can celebrate all the time.
So make success for you this year look like having a lovely date in a Christmas market.
Walking hand in hand and having some mulled wine, something like that, something small.
So you can think, yeah, I've achieved that I'm starting to feel really good because the confidence will build up.
Kate: One of the things I want you to do after our session tonight is to go and check one of our earlier coaching things because we did a whole thing about writing your profile and the photos.
But you're right, dating is visual, it's eyes across a crowded room or a crowded website.
So, the photos are really important, but don't think they have to be perfect.
It's just that what we know is there are three types of photos that you do want to have on your profile to attract as many of the right people to you as possible.
So, the first one is a lovely headshot.
For women, it's a nice, colorful headshot of you smiling into the camera.
Men, if you can go a bit moody, or you can go a bit black and white, and you can start looking broodily often to the distance.
Women, headshot please you smiling into the camera.
Then we want a full-length picture of you.
So, we can see the kind of the body shape that's going to be turning up on a date.
You don't have to be perfect, but we just need to know what you look like.
Then thirdly, an icebreaker photo of you engaged in an interesting activity.
Julie has a photo that would be ideal.
Julie :friend of mine had a photograph taken, she only had it from the waist up.
She had her hands across the chest, sort of like embracing herself.
But to people, it looked like she was it was very closed.
It was quite standoffish, and she changed it for a photograph with her hands by her side, full length.
Kate: You don't need to put too much detail in your profile.
Again, later on chapter three, we're going to be talking about some real life experiences people had on writing their profile, some are written very long, some are written very short, and they both attract different types of people.
In general, I would say, when you're creating a profile, there are lots of sections where you can choose different options like, if you have children, if what you're looking for in a relationship.
Use those as much as you can to the basic bits of detail about yourself, the facts about you.
But then, when you write your profile, try and paint a picture of what you're like as a partner.
Often people write a profile that's really interesting, but make this for a really interesting single person.
When we're reading it from the outside, we can say, "well you sound amazing, but I can't imagine going out with you."
So use your profile to paint a picture of what you'd be like as a partner, and show, don't tell.
So instead of saying that you have a great sense of humor, for example, write a funny profile.
Or instead of saying, I'm really caring and kind, kind of demonstrate that by talking about your charity work or the time that you spend with your family.
Don't be afraid to rewrite your profile, it's not set in stone.
So, keep going back to it adding and changing it until you find the one that brings you the most responses.
Julie: You can amend it again and again, can't you?
Fantastic, thank you, Kate.
Kate: So experience breeds confidence.
So, the more dates you go on, obviously, the more confident you will feel.
So my tips for overcoming, to build your confidence would be:
Julie: It's not rejection, it's redirection.