Single For A While And Tired Of Trying? Read This Before You Give Up On Love
Dating writer Amy Waterman believes most women do not need more dating advice. What they need is an honest look at the “inner game” they bring to their love life. Here is what she means, and why it matters.
Amy Waterman has been writing about dating and relationships for more than ten years. Not long ago, a woman in her forties introduced herself to Amy and said she had been single for the past decade and was ready to give up on men.
“It’s too much work. I can’t sit around waiting for a man to drop onto my front doorstep. I’ve got to get on with my life. And if that means that I don’t end up meeting someone, so be it.”
“My heart dropped when she said that,” Amy writes. She knows it is hard to meet men, and harder still to find one worth your time. But she does not think that means you have to give up on love.
If you have ever said something like that yourself, even quietly, at the end of a long week, this is for you.
You already know a lot about men
Amy’s first point surprises a lot of women. Most of us, she says, do not need more dating advice at all.
“We’ve been married or in a serious relationship before. We’re not novices. We know more about men than a lot of people! But what we DON’T know is why love isn’t happening as easily for us this time around.”
She calls it life experience, and she sees it as an advantage. You cannot buy it. You only get it by living, loving, getting hurt, getting back up again and loving some more.
Think about it. You may have been told that to win a man’s interest you have to mirror his body language, understand his psychological triggers and read his subtle cues. Yet you met men in the past without any of that. Some women even married and raised children without ever hearing the phrase “psychological trigger”.
So why does it feel like such hard work now?
The Superwoman problem
Part of the answer, Amy believes, is the pressure we already carry. We try to be the perfect mother, the perfect daughter, the perfect friend and the perfect employee. We keep up with the news, keep our weight down, keep healthy and try to find a little time for ourselves in the middle of it all.
Then we look at our love life, and on top of everything else it simply feels like too much. Do we really have to give up a cosy evening at home for a cold bar, a nervous conversation and dinner with someone we are not even attracted to?
When dating starts to feel like one more job, giving up starts to sound sensible. Amy thinks that is exactly where many women get stuck.
The answer she did not expect to find
Amy spent years reading dating research, trying to work out what modern women really need to know about love. She lost count of the “magical secrets” promising to flip a man’s commitment switch, or to let a woman seduce any man she laid eyes on. Those tricks always struck her as rather silly. She did not want power over men. She wanted to be happy, and to share her life with one man she could trust, who loved her as she loved him.
The answer, when it came, was not in a dating manual at all. It was in a classic self-help book published in the 1980s, and it changed the way she saw everything.
“Most dating advice wrongly assumes that you need to DO something or CHANGE something about yourself to be more attractive to men. Actually, you don’t need to convince men of ANYTHING. Putting too much energy and attention into attracting men can actually achieve the opposite.”
This is what Amy means by your inner game: the mindset you bring to your love life. Your thoughts, feelings and beliefs can either support you or sabotage you. In her words, it is not your looks and it is not what happened to you in the past. It is how you feel about yourself, who you are, and what you believe you deserve.
The fears nobody says out loud
Amy is honest about this part. Most of us can list plenty of reasons we are still single: our weight, our age, a previous marriage, the children, the idea that all the good men our age are already taken. Amy is not convinced by any of them. She suspects that something else is going on underneath, and very often it is fear:
- Worry about putting yourself out there.
- Worry about getting hurt.
- Worry about what will happen when a man sees the “real you”.
- Worry about what you would have to give up if you met someone.
“There’s nothing ‘wrong’ with those fears,” she writes. “Everyone has them.” The trouble only starts when we let them decide how we live. As Amy puts it: love doesn’t come knocking. You have to invite it in.
Want to see how Amy helps you work on your inner game?
She put it all into one e-book, built on what she calls the Four Pillars.
Who is Amy Waterman?
Amy is the author or co-author of ten books with the dating advice sites 000Relationships.com and MeetYourSweet.com, and she has written many articles about men, attraction, dating, sexual chemistry and marriage.
She jokes that she started out wanting to be Carrie Bradshaw and slowly turned into Murphy Brown: “A bit sharper tongue. A bit more committed to facts.”
Mimi Tanner, who has known Amy for many years, describes her like this:
“Amy is highly knowledgeable yet very down to earth. She is deeply compassionate, which always shines through her writing.”
Mimi Tanner
Her book: Mind Makeover
Amy gathered a decade of observing, thinking and writing about dating into one 129-page e-book, Mind Makeover: How Inner Game Gets the Guy. It is not about what you should do or say or look like to get a man. It is about how to be. The book is built on what Amy calls the Four Pillars, four foundational principles for staying strong and loving from the inside out. Inside, she covers how to:
- Regain your sense of personal power around men, even the ones who leave you weak at the knees.
- Weed out the flakes, jerks and playboys in favour of a quality man who loves you for who you are.
- Make a good first impression and correct any “wrong” messages you may have been sending.
- Quiet the critical voice and feel good about yourself, even if you do not like your looks or the way your life is going right now.
- Know when to trust your feelings and when to be wary of a man who seems like “The One”.
- Tackle the emotional baggage left by years of heartbreak, so old wounds do not spoil a new relationship.
- Handle rejection and break-ups with a simple change of perspective that helps you move on.
What readers have said
These are women who wrote to Amy after using her advice:
“It’s been 17 years since the last time I’ve dated. I am 45 years old and recently divorced and have re-entered the new electronic age of dating. I seemed to scare the guys off after the first date and wasn’t sure why. Your tips have not only reminded me of the power of my own confidence, but have given me invaluable help on how to create interest in a man, and to keep it!”
Kim Collier · USA
“I’ve not only used your advice to meet and attract the love of my life, I’ve gained confidence in myself that I never had before. I’m no longer as shy around men as I used to be and I really feel valuable as a person.”
Sarah Donaldson · Portland, Oregon, USA
Everyone is different, and results vary from person to person.
Five bonus books come with it
Mind Makeover comes with five extra mini-books from Amy:
The order page also offers an optional free first edition of the Amazing Self monthly series. It is your choice: if you take it and stay on, it is $37 a month after the first month, and you can cancel at any time.
Eight weeks to decide
Mind Makeover is covered by Amy’s 8‑week, 100% money-back guarantee. In her words: “If you’ve given my program your best shot and it’s not what you wanted or expected, then you can contact me within 8 weeks of your purchase, and I’ll give you a FULL refund.”
That gives you plenty of time to read it, try the ideas in your own life and make up your own mind.
The bottom line
If you have been single for a while, it is easy to decide the problem is out there: the men, the apps, your age, your history. Amy’s view is gentler and, in a way, more hopeful. The part that matters most is the part you can work on yourself, the way you think and feel about men, about love and about what you deserve.
You do not have to become someone else to be loved. If that idea speaks to you, Mind Makeover is a warm, honest place to start, and with eight weeks to decide, you have very little to lose by reading it.