Relationships Talk

These are key.

While everyone has good intentions, there is a lot of bad dating advice that could be keeping you single. I’ve been on both sides.

I was single into my 40’s and went through the plethora of relationship techniques and workshops to fix myself. Then, I became a love and relationship coach, working with singles.

What I realized by being on both sides is that many of the techniques that I was given when I was single were actually keeping me in my old story. With everyone trying to heal me, how I could I feel whole?

Here are the top 3 dating advice that love coaches have wrong and the real secret to finding great love.

1. Wrong: The right behavior attracts and keeps the right person.

Wrong! The idea that someone loses interest because of how you acted — texting too much, acting too available or slept with him too soon — is way off the mark.

First, it is disempowering to have to change your behavior to get someone else’s approval. This advice puts women in a submissive position trying to get the guy. Think about it: if you are a “good girl”, you get rewarded with another date and if you don’t act right, then you are a “bad girl” and you lose him.

Second, men don’t leave because of something you did, they leave because you unconsciously picked men who leave or not committed. You need to get the root of why you are drawn to the wrong people because that will change your love destiny.

New Dating Rule: You are the prize. You don’t need to convince someone to love you by playing dating games. When you know your true, soulful self, the universe knows who to match you up with. You will then automatically express yourself in a powerful way to draw in someone who loves and accepts you exactly as you are.

2. Wrong: You need to heal yourself and your wounds to find love.

Nope! This destructive idea that you need to heal wounds to find love is so harmful and limiting. When an authority figure (such as a coach) tells you that you are wounded, they are implying that you are not whole and that something is wrong with you.

Once you get the “broken” label, it is almost impossible to escape that identity. No matter how much work you do on yourself, you will continue to feel not good enough.

Personally, I spent decades using various healing modalities but, instead of getting better, I was actually going deeper into despair. I was led by teachers who made the group regress to the past, cry a lot, pound pillows, and made me believe my childhood screwed me up when I actually had a pretty good childhood.

I was hypnotized into believing something terrible happened and that’s why I was single.

I could not feel empowered on a date after a weekend of crying with my inner-child. Every time I experienced heartache, I was filled with dread thinking I am still broken and I have to go back to one of those classes and heal something else. This cycle was exhausting and not getting me anywhere.

The practice of healing wounds is so pervasive in personal development that no one seems to question it. Of course, there are some people who do need therapy and they should seek a licensed professional. However, the majority of single people just need coaching and real coaching is not supposed to be about healing or therapy.

New Dating Rule: There is nothing wrong with you. Find a way to be empowered on your journey to self-discovery based on your potential, not past problems. Challenge anyone who suggests you are single and wounded, let’s change the conversation!

RELATED: 10 (Important!) Pieces Of Dating Advice For Women Who Are Committed To Finding True Love

3. Wrong: You need to get clear of negative emotions.

Not at all! First of all, there are no negative emotions. Some emotions, if not dealt with, can lead to problems. Emotions are just energy and energy cannot be destroyed or cleared. The use of so-called healing techniques only suppresses rejected emotions in the unconscious.

Yes, these techniques may make you feel better superficially because of the placebo effect, but the repressed emotions limit your self-expression. You are not free if you are a slave to avoiding negativity. You don’t feel like yourself and you hold back or pretend to be positive and spiritual while inside there is a raging angry person who is afraid to be mean.

In dating, you won’t be able to make a close intimate connection if you are afraid of your own emotions.

According to research by psychologist Shannon Sauer-Zavala of Boston University, mindfulness training works by not minimizing negative feelings but training patients to accept them.

My husband, psychologist Dr. Robert Maldonado, teaches our clients a technique similar to mindfulness called “meta-consciousness” where the clients witness their feelings without judgment. The client doesn’t judge herself for feeling a certain way and is more accepting and self-loving when she enters romantic relationships.

New Dating Rule: Embrace all emotions. Emotions are like children. You cannot let them drive and you cannot shove them in the truck. You have to deal with them. By having access to the wide range of emotional energy available, you can cultivate the joy and bliss that draws in true love.

The personal development industry needs to be better at serving the millions of singles seeking answers to finding love. You need to feel empowered, not broken.

There are plenty of married people who settle for mediocre relationships and who don’t have life all figured out. Being single is not a pathology.

Psychologist, Bella DePaulo, Ph.D. coined the term “Singlism: the stigmatizing of adults who are single. It includes negative stereotyping of singles and discrimination against singles.” If you are frustrating with your dating life, you don’t need someone telling you things that make you feel worse about yourself. You deserve to be empowered.

As a successful, smart woman, you should not contort yourself into a pretzel to win a man, you should meet men who will match your personal power. Ultimately, you match up unconsciously with people based on your personal psychology.

The important thing to remember is that your psychology is not fixed, and your patterns were created because of a healthy mind, not a wounded mind.

You are resilient, powerful and amazing. Your true self has never been harmed, hurt, and damaged in any way. Find a way to connect with the true you and that is where you will easily meet your true love.

RELATED: 3 Golden Rules For Finding Love Without Compromising Who You Are

Debi Berndt-Maldonado is the author of Let Love In and the co-founder of Creative Love(r) with her partner, Dr. Rob Maldonado, psychologist and relationship and Jungian specialist.

This article was originally published at debianddrrob.com. Reprinted with permission from the author.

Oliver, a 32-year-old software engineer, has spent roughly $200 on Relationship Hero, with coaching sessions that have lasted between three and 46 minutes. (He requested his last name be withheld, because he worried women might have an “uncharitable” opinion of a man who was paying a coach to analyze their conversations and texts. “They might think, ‘What a loser,’” he said.)

Last fall, Oliver contacted Relationship Hero after an especially bad Tinder date. He told his coach that the woman had seemed normal in her texts, but in person she turned out to be obsessed with status. He asked how to avoid meeting women like this in the future, and if he did end up on another bad date, how to leave early without seeming rude.

“Oh boy. lol,” the coach wrote. “so would you say you are often drawn to women by their looks first? Because you will have to dive a bit deeper … you know what Im sarying?”

At the end of the chat, the coach suggested that Oliver write down his expectations before his next date and then compare them with his postdate notes. “Good advice but also thanks for listening,” Oliver wrote. The coach signed off with a smiley face.

Oliver doesn’t consider his coach’s typos or colloquialisms unprofessional. “It’s just a conversation,” he said. “Not a formal document.” He found the coach clear and helpful. “You just want someone to hear you,” he said. “It’s like a two-minute therapy session.”

Not a Therapy Substitute

Relationship Hero, which has 20 coaches and has raised $620,000 in funding, emphasizes it provides “tactical relationship advice,” not therapy. “We won’t tell you to search your emotions, but give you advice that we think is most proven to get results in the situation,” Mr. Shapira said. Though some coaches are psychologists, the company’s co-founder Lior Gotesman, who is also a lead coach, says he often rejects candidates with graduate degrees, “because they’re not as much in tune with their intuition.”

But neither intuition nor expertise can solve every problem. Hunt Ethridge, another lead coach, says clients frequently want help winning back their exes. “Should that not work out, we’ll help set you up for the next thing,” he said. “We can’t do magic.”