#72: Dating After 50, with Deb Dutcher

Love Is Us: Exploring Relationships and How We Connect

Dating at age 60 is not like dating at 25! Today I talk with Dating Coach Deb Dutcher about how to start the dating process, what dating apps to try, how to find the right partner for you, and how to make it fun. While she focuses on the boomer generation, what she has to say applies to anyone who is over 45, maybe has been divorced or widowed, and for anyone who has been out of the dating pool for a while.

Deb Dutcher is a former VP of high-tech and a Certified Health Coach, with a best-selling book to her name. Twice divorced and 70+, She found online dating works if you take it on with a system. She calls her system the Finding Mr. Adorable Journey and built a course called the Boomer Gal's Guide to Winning at Online Dating. Now she has helped hundreds use her system to become online dating rockstars! She was named one of the Top Ten Senior Dating Experts of 2024 by DatingAdvice.com. She has made it her mission to help other lonely, single Boomer Gals find their Mr. Adorable. She runs a free Meetup where she hosts weekly calls, and offers her private coaching and online courses to help folks date online safely, have fun and meet their Mr. Adorable.

Learn more about Deb:

Website: https://findingmradorable.com/

TikTok: @debrccoach

Learn more about Karin:

Website: https://drcalde.com

Instagram (relationships): https://www.instagram.com/theloveandconnectioncoach/

Instagram (psilocybin facilitation):

https://www.instagram.com/wildwoodfacilitation/

TRANSCRIPT

Intro:

Karin: This is Love Is Us, Exploring Relationships and How We Connect. I'm your host, Karin Calde. I'll talk with people about how we can strengthen our relationships, explore who we are in those relationships, and experience a greater sense of love and connection with those around us, including ourselves. I have a PhD in clinical Psychology, practiced as a psychologist resident, and after diving into my own healing work, I went back to school and became a coach, helping individuals and couples with their relationships and personal growth. If you want to experience more love in your life and contribute to healing the disconnect so prevalent in our world today, you're in the right place. Welcome to Love Is Us.

Episode:

Karin: Hello, everybody, and welcome. Today we are again talking about dating. And every time I record a dating episode, I just get really excited and start thinking about doing dating coaching. And I've done a little bit of it, but it is so much fun. And I have this whole course that I've been creating in my head for this last few months or so, so I don't know, maybe that's to come. But today I'm going to be talking with a dating coach, and she calls herself a boomer dating coach. But what she talks about really does apply to anyone who's maybe recently divorced or widowed or they've broken up with a long term partner and they're entering the dating world for the first time in a while. But it's also applicable to anyone who's maybe a little bit older and they've been dating, but dating isn't working for them and they need a little bit more support. And Deb has dating courses and a book, and she's been doing this for a while. And she does have a course that's coming up, I believe, September 3 or fourth or something. So if you go to our website and if that sounds interesting to you, you can check it out. So anyway, I hope you enjoy this conversation. There's lots of helpful information for daters in this one. So again, thanks for being here. And here we go.

Karin: Welcome, Deb.

[02:22] Deb: Thank you, Karin.

[02:24] Karin: It's nice to see you again.

[02:25] Deb: Great to be here.

[02:26] Karin: So tell us where you are in the world.

[02:31] Deb: I'm here in Rancho Cordova, California, which is currently a very calm and not boiling 90 plus day, 95 to be exact. And I'm near rivers and lakes, and I just have a blast.

[02:45] Karin: Oh, that's wonderful. That sounds very Oregon like. We're having similar weather. And yeah, we've got lots of rivers around here, too, so. Sounds very nice.

[02:56] Deb: It is very nice. Mister adorable lives here very good reason to be there.

[03:01] Karin: Is that what drew you there?

[03:02] Deb: Oh, no, I didn't know him. I moved here three years ago, and I met him 19 months ago.

[03:08] Karin: Ah, okay. So what drew you there?

[03:11] Deb: Getting out of the bay area, being able to buy a house by myself as a divorced woman late in life, and wanting something really different.

[03:21] Karin: Tell us what you do for work.

[03:24] Deb: Currently. For work, I do two things. I'm still a corporate wellness consultant, and I make little forays into corporate culture and give them feedback on how to stay healthy while they're doing all the crazy stuff I used to do in high tech. But I also took on online dating coaching for boomer gals or anyone over 50, because it can be so daunting, and I wanted to give them hope and show them the best ways.

[03:48] Karin: Wonderful. So how did you start doing that work?

[03:54] Deb: I was up here alone after my divorce at 68, going, what the heck is going on in this world? And I decided, oh, these TikToks look really fun. I think I'll just make a TikTok and tell everybody how I'm feeling, and maybe 50 people will care. And so I made a TikTok, and it was called dating online. At 69, at a time of COVID and I had 110,000 views, and I garnered a bunch of followers really fast. And then it was just constant feedback. I would just pop up a video about my dating experiences and what it was like on the dating sites and what the guys were like when I met them in person. And people were loving it, and it just got bigger and bigger and bigger. And I ended up getting people. People asking me to coach them and teach them what I was doing. And why could I get five dates a week when they couldn't get one a month?

[04:49] Karin: So people could really relate or wanted to be able to relate to what you were going through?

[04:54] Deb: Yes.

[04:56] Karin: Yeah. Wonderful. And I was thinking about this interview, and I was specifically thinking about people who are over 45 or 50 who might be or might have been in a long term committed relationship for 2030 or more years. And at some point, they decide they want to find a new relationship. But, yeah, it can be really daunting for them. So where does a woman start?

[05:27] Deb: Well, the first thing I want people to think about is, don't do what I did at 51 after my first divorce, after 30 years of marriage and not knowing how to date since I was 19. And I thought, oh, there's this thing called online dating. Let me try that. And I paid a matchmaker a fortune, and he didn't find me anybody, or that company didn't find me anybody. So I thought, well, let me just see what it's like out there on these little dating app. But they camouflaged it. It wasn't a dating app. It came in as our us scientific Einstein. Take this quiz and find out. And I took this, what was supposedly a personality quiz and ended up giving me my iq and then a list of guys that matched my iq range in my area. And I went, what? So that was my first experience with online dating.

[06:17] Karin: And I gotta interrupt, though. So did you end up dating any of those guys?

[06:22] Deb: Oh, yes. I ended up with a rebound guy, which is someone I ended up becoming intimate with. After 30 years with one man, I ended up with a rebound guy. He was a teacher, he was divorced, he lived close by. We got along, hung out for six months, and then I realized he wasn't meeting my needs. But I also had been dating multiple other people before I chose him. And so I dated about first dates for about 42. And then I went, if you went on a second date, I got you down to about 17. The top 17. If you made it to a third date, I was down to the top ten. If you made it to a fourth date, I was down to the top five. And I teach this in the course because you don't know what you want. So the first thing about having to come out after a long relationship, a one person, monogamous relationship, is you don't know who you are anymore. You don't know what you want. I pretended I was 19 and I just went out with anybody that asked me. We don't do that anymore. Young ladies, please do not do that because it will get you into trouble. I'm lucky I didn't end up on the side of the road somewhere. I made so many mistakes the first time out. So it's really important to sit back and think about what your relationship was, how much was good, maybe stuff you would have changed what you want now in your life, who you are now, what you want to be and who you want to be that with, because it's very, very different. You come out of a long, committed relationship.

[07:59] Karin: Yeah. Yeah, it is really different. And it can feel so foreign when you haven't done it for so long. But also because the dating world is much different than it was when we were 19, of course.

[08:14] Deb: Oh, my God.

[08:16] Karin: And then that's all we know, many of us know, is the last time we were dating, it was when we were teenagers. And so it can really feel like we're that age again, and yet we are not.

[08:30] Deb: It kind of slaps you in the face because you think you can just pull it off. And then not only is it exhausting, but it is demoralizing at times. It's gut wrenching and it's. You almost give up. You're like, why am I doing this? Why am I putting myself through this? When I decided to get divorced again at 68 after marrying a guy that I met online dating, so 14 years later, I'm like, oh, this was a bad move. I need to go away from this. And I started to date again. And it was coming out of the COVID lockdown and people really didn't know who was who. And there had been all the issues with politics. It was another different scene.

[09:16] Karin: Yeah, yeah. So a couple of things that you said, one washing something like the number 42. So how did that happen again?

[09:31] Deb: I was pretending I was 19, so I just would. If some guy clicked on me, I went, sure, who are you? Let's do it. Blah, blah, blah. I didn't know how to screen, I didn't know how to sort, I didn't know how to qualify. And so I would get on dates where, oh, my God, I might tell you some of them later in this conversation, but I can't believe I allowed myself in those situations or that I still sat in the room across from the guy based on what he was saying to me. I can't contemplate doing that. So the next go round, I said, okay, we're not 19 anymore. Let's pretend we're 39. Just before we adopted our children and everything fell apart in the first marriage, we're 39, we're strong, we're fun, we're sexy, we're exciting, we're professional, we're business, we're a professional woman. We know what we're doing in life. We don't need to settle. We can pick out the right guys for us. We don't need to lower the bar. Which I had done to be married a second time because I really, really wanted to be married and I really wasn't discriminating enough. And so the next time around, I put together my little system. The finding mister adorable journey. I did exactly what I wanted other people to do, that I was coaching. And it worked because I didn't have to date 42 people. I only dated, I think, nine. Now, first there was a mister adorable who won the prize for a year, and before him, I dated 42. But the second go round where I said goodbye to him and said, okay, one more time. You're turning 71. You got to get this right. Do not, on any situation, back down from your standards because you're going to end up pushing him away. So I held my guns, but I was able to attract the right type of people in three weeks of joining the sites.

[11:26] Karin: And you did this through online dating?

[11:29] Deb: Through the online dating apps?

[11:31] Karin: Yep. And are there online dating apps that you can recommend for those of us who are no longer 25?

[11:39] Deb: Yes. So it's been interesting because I run a weekly meetup on Mondays, and I have girls from all over the country, and girls, we're in our fifties, sixties and seventies. I've even had an 84 year old join the meetup. And I get really clear, as I hear about where they're from. Minnesota, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Texas, New York. What was the other one? Southern California is different than northern California. So there's multiple apps. There's so many dating apps now. Way more choices than I had back in my fifties. Now, in our later years, they exploded because of COVID for one thing. But they've also exploded because people move around so much. We don't have our centers of connection, have friends that can introduce us. And if we run away from a marriage, we've moved away. We don't have any connections. So you start out with a clean slate. And if you're in an area that's highly populated, like I am, northern California, Sacramento. I used zoosk. Zoosk and silver singles. They were good for me here. But many of my clients in the Midwest or in the south do not find them good. They're finding them full of scammers. I teach people how to spot those people and get rid of them. The next backup is going to be eHarmony, which can be more global. Match is pretty good. Our time hinge has come up. New Bumble is run by a woman. There's a lot of them out there. So part of it is analyzing who you are, what you want, and whether the guys you want are on those dating apps, which is why we do not do one year contracts with those people, those dating apps, because we're going to waste our money if the right guys haven't shown up.

[13:42] Karin: Yeah. Yeah. And I think I have a friend who I think she said she met her current partner on our time, and that was created for people who are older, right?

[13:53] Deb: Our time was created for people older. There's also elite singles, and they're owned by silver singles. A lot of them are all owned by match, by the way, match owns a bunch of them. That's why I kind of like these little sidebar guys, Hinge and Bumble, which probably will get bought up anyway, but at least they try to retain a little more autonomy around the process. And mainly it's all about you knowing what you want and then creating a profile that portrays you exactly as you are so that you can attract someone who wants what and who you are.

[14:32] Karin: Right? Right. Yeah. And that's one of the things that I hear over and over again from dating coaches, is that, yeah, you want to show people exactly who you are. And it's not about trying to catch someone or make yourself look as good as possible, because that's not who you are, and you don't want to pretend to be something you're not.

[14:55] Deb: Exactly. There is one caveat to that. Many of us who have been in very long marriages kind of get in a lazy habit. COVID lockdown made it worse, except for Zoom calls. Right. We had to get decent from the neck up or whatever the waist.

[15:10] Karin: Right.

[15:11] Deb: But my advice to people getting ready to date, especially when you building your profile, is have a makeover, get your hair cut, put on the makeup before you get in front of the camera, get some cute clothes, three or four cute tops, and some decent bottoms, because when you go on the dating site, you are in competition. There's a lot of people that are on dating sites right now. Some dating sites, more women than men. Some dating sites, more men than women. You want to at least come with your best face forward. You want to look pretty. You want to be attractive because you want someone attractive. Why put yourself out there in a less than great state and think you're going to attract one of the really hot, good looking people? It won't happen. So, yes, you can be yourself, but be the best version of yourself.

[16:06] Karin: Yes. Yes. Absolutely. I like how you said that. Great. So we're talking about online apps. What about the women that say, no way, I'm not doing one of those dating apps. What do you say to them?

[16:21] Deb: Join a meetup. Get out there. If you're an active person like I am. Join a kayaking group. Join a hiking group. Join a walking group. Join a zoo sponsorship. I joined the Crocker Art museum. There's great guys that go there. If I weren't dating my sweetheart, I'd be hanging out at the Crocker. Also Home Depot, believe it or not, Home Depot and Lowe's. And take a cute dog and take your dog through. And my dog is a mantra.

[16:54] Karin: Right? Great conversation starter, right?

[16:56] Deb: Absolutely.

[16:58] Karin: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So finding groups that are organized around a particular interest that you might have. And so all of a sudden you're spending time with people that share your, your interests. And so that can be a great way.

[17:15] Deb: And even if there's not guys in the group, you're going to make friends with women who have brothers and uncles and fathers, and you just never know. I say to everyone, never say never, and put yourself out there.

[17:29] Karin: Yeah.

[17:30] Deb: And my, my gals that are in my meetup and my course, the fun thing is I've taught them, before you walk out the door, just make sure that if you run into someone cool, you're not going to repel them.

[17:43] Karin: Take a shower. Usually women are pretty good about that.

[17:48] Deb: I wear baseball caps if I'm not wearing a wig because my hair is poopy, especially in this heat, you know, and the right guys don't care. So I even tell people if I'm talking to them on a site and they're like, oh, I like your hairdo. Oh, great, that's a wig. They go, oh, well, do you have hair? Sure. But it takes terrible pictures. So I wear wigs on camera. Oh, okay. Ahead of time. Yeah.

[18:12] Karin: Yeah.

[18:13] Deb: And I tell them, you don't know who you're going to meet because I might be a blonde or a redhead or a pixie cut or long brown hair. I'll send you a picture the day of the date, and that gets them to send me a picture so I can make sure they're who they say they are when I walk in the room.

[18:29] Karin: And I love that because it's, even though you're wearing a wig and that might not be your true hair color, you are very transparent about the fact that you are wearing a wig and you can talk about that. So that's wonderful.

[18:45] Deb: And the right guys don't care, especially right now. So many people have lost spouses to cancer. They've seen what it can do to someone so it doesn't scare them. And they'll ask me, well, how did you lose your hair? I go menopause, stress, my kid going to juvenile hall every other month and not sleeping. Oh, I get it. Yeah, me too. My hair is thinning. And then I go, and I'm a health coach and it's coming back, but it's going to take a while. I'm old.

[19:17] Karin: So one of the things you said earlier, washington, you're going to run into scammers on some of these sites and you have a way of helping people spot them. Is there one tip you can give us about that.

[19:30] Deb: The big tip is, listen to your gut. If he looks too good to be true, he probably is. Every scammer my gals and I have spotted and gotten rid of, they'll call me up. Oh, my God, he's perfect. He looks exactly like what you and I visualized. He's tall, he has salt and pepper hair. He kayaks, he does this, he does that. He has a garden, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I look at the picture, and I go, that sounds like a guy that hit on me in Sacramento. Stefan here's a widower from Finland, moved to x city umpteen months ago. Wants someone to go kayaking with, blah, blah, blah. I go, what name is he using? Oh, that's Oliver. My guy was Felix. I go, I want you to ask him two questions. So I teach them how to drill down. So if someone is claiming I play soccer, great. What position do you play? Where did you play last? Who won that game? Blah, blah, blah. Pretend you're an investigative reporter, because as soon as you start asking the hard questions, they go away. They take themselves off the site, they run for the hills.

[20:51] Karin: I'm curious, why would people do that on these sites?

[20:55] Deb: Oh, they do it because they're looking for nurses with purses and cougars and sugar mamas and all kinds of reasons.

[21:04] Karin: Okay, but not serious relationships.

[21:06] Deb: Oh, no, no. The ones that are scamming never are looking for a serious relationship. They want to get what they can get, and they're looking for someone vulnerable. Many of my clients and students are widows. And what we do is we work really hard to make sure that is not leaving them vulnerable on the sites. You can say, I'm widowed. I've been widowed seven years. I'm an independent, hard driving, professional woman who does blah, blah, blah, blah, blah so that the scammers go, oh, I don't want to hit on her. But the good guys, like my guy, who wanted a professional, independent woman go, yeah, that's what I want. I don't want a weak old lady. I want someone strong who kayaks and runs and doesn't need my money.

[21:50] Karin: Yes, right.

[21:52] Deb: Scammers want your money. They're going to ask you to send them airfare. You know, do not even talk to someone that isn't within 50 miles unless you plan to pay for airfare.

[22:02] Karin: Yes. Yeah, that makes sense. So what about standards? You said that you were really determined not to lower your standards. Tell us about that and what women tend to do.

[22:13] Deb: Okay, so when we're first available after a long relationship. If we're getting divorced, we're relatively demoralized unless we initiated it. So the first time I was very demoralized. I didn't even have a list. The only thing I had was, they can't be like my former husband. They have to want to get their hands dirty, be able to build something, and I don't ever want to see them smoking a pipe. That was my husband. Right. A beautiful, wonderful, sweet, accommodating professor person. I wanted the opposite. I wanted what I didn't get in my twenties because I got married at 21. I wanted sex, love, rock and roll, and I wanted a guy on a motorcycle, and I wanted a guy who could work on my ranch with me. I wanted what I wanted, and that's what I got. I forgot to ask for emotional maturity, I forgot to ask for open communication. I forgot to ask for tender loving, you know, PDA. I forgot to ask for everything else that was important to me. I simply excluded things.

[23:20] Karin: Yeah, because you were coming from. I don't want that.

[23:24] Deb: I don't want to go through that again. I was betrayed by that. I want someone exciting.

[23:28] Karin: Yeah.

[23:28] Deb: You were not the person who has all the energy in the relationship.

[23:32] Karin: Right. So we're kind of looking back at what you had and you wanting the opposite, but not really thinking that through. So what could help women think that through more clearly?

[23:44] Deb: There's a lot of introspective exercises you can do. Part of it is just for me, it was writing. I wrote a book, and the book was sexy, lean and strong after 50, how I went from fat, depressed and divorced to the best shape of my life, and how you can too. And by writing the book, I realized the kind of betrayal my first husband had done during the divorce cycle. And I went, oh. So I knew that was something I wanted to make sure I didn't go through, and I wanted to make sure of many other things. So you don't have to write a book, but the important thing is to sit down and just make a list. What were all the things I loved about my first husband? What were things I wish didnt happen, whether it was two part or whatever, and really take the time, because a lot of my clients, what they did is they instantly jumped on a dating site because they just wanted to be with someone. They didnt want to be alone. They didnt have that conversation with themselves first. Who am I? What do I want? What do I not want?

[24:58] Karin: Yeah, yeah. And what about women who might have standards that are too high? Do you see that I don't think.

[25:06] Deb: There are standards too high, unless they're so high that they are trying to invent the perfect person. If you say to me, I want them to be ideologically aligned to good, that's not too high. That's what cost me my first mister adorable. We were not politically aligned. We were not ideologically aligned around women's rights or anything. And I overlooked it because he treated me like a queen. But that isn't good enough when you have to look at the long haul. So you have to make a list of everything you want and then you have to prioritize it. Because my list was 48 characteristics.

[25:42] Karin: Yeah.

[25:43] Deb: Because I had gone through so many relationships by then, I was like, okay, you got to get real. This is. And I made this huge list and I went, I can't even keep track of this. What are my top 20? Out of the top 20? What are my ten? No go, go, no go. If I can't get this, I'm not dating the person.

[26:04] Karin: Yeah, yeah.

[26:05] Deb: You got to go through it. You got to take the time. And once you know what you really, really want, then you sit down and visualize, what's that life going to look like? Because you start bringing the energy in.

[26:21] Karin: I also hear, and maybe this was more true years ago when I was younger, but I do hear about women saying, I want him to be over six foot two. I want him to have dark hair and big brown eyes, and he's got to have an advanced degree and have been in therapy for ten years. And I just think, and so too.

[26:47] Deb: Many, too many absolutes. You have to open your horizons. You have to say, I just need him taller than me. I need him not to squish me if we become intimate. So I can't date someone like 250 pounds or over because I'm tiny, for a woman, slender. And I didn't care about hair because how could I care about hair if I wear wigs? I don't care what color eyes. I just want kind eyes. What I tell my gals to do, go throw the description list away, except for height and maybe weight. But don't bound it by one number. Just give it a range, which is the sites help you do that. But the main thing I want you to do when you open a profile of a guy, I want you to look at them. Here's the question I want you to ask yourself. Could I wake up to that face?

[27:45] Karin: Yeah.

[27:46] Deb: Is there something I could adore about that face? Is there a twinkle in the eye? Is there a sweet smile? Is there a little shy demeanor, or is he all bravado? Here I am at 72. I'm awesome. Ladies, come get me. You know, look for something you could fall in love with, but don't get swept away too soon.

[28:12] Karin: Yes, absolutely. That's easy to do. But I love that you're teaching them to be flexible.

[28:20] Deb: Mister adorable comes in all shapes, sizes, colors, gender for some. Right? And I want people to understand, I'm not looking for mister right at this age. I'm not looking for my last love. I'm not looking for the perfect match. I want a mister adorable that I can adore, that will adore me, and we'll care about each other, and we'll grow into something special.

[28:47] Karin: Yeah. And I love that, too. I think that that's so important that, you know, we're not necessarily going to find someone who is at their pinnacle of their self development, you know, but it might be important to us that they're working on themselves.

[29:04] Deb: Exactly.

[29:05] Karin: Are open to growing.

[29:07] Deb: I think they want to try new things. They have maybe once or twice talked to a therapist, and if I'm dating them and I see that there's still a ton of angst over their wife who passed away or a rebound girl who treated them badly, I may coach them into seeing another therapist. I may look at them and say, I adore you and you need some support in this area. I certainly can't do it because we're dating. I want you to go see someone. Here's some therapists I happen to know who might be able to help you. Because I do have therapists because of my health coaching practice. I've got tons of therapist referrals for all kinds of issues that people have that block them from getting to their optimal health.

[29:56] Karin: And why might you advise women to spend some time alone before they start dating?

[30:02] Deb: Because you can get a lot of trouble if you don't. I wouldn't just spend time alone. I would spend time with people who know me well, people who can give me some feedback, people who see me in multiple lights. I would get to know myself again. Not as a couple, as part of a couple. I would get to know myself for who I've become and what I want to grow into. And I would fall in love with myself. I would want to be in love with myself before I went out there to try and find someone else to love me.

[30:39] Karin: It's great advice for anyone, no matter what your sex or gender or age.

[30:45] Deb: Absolutely. Because if we date from a position of vulnerability, we will get taken advantage of, yes, we will make bad decisions.

[30:56] Karin: Yes. I was just speaking with a woman in a group that I run for empty nesters, and she was talking about dating, but feeling like she doesn't need to date. I said, wonderful. The best position that you can be in is not in a position to need a partner, but to want a partner.

[31:16] Deb: Exactly. Because partners add dimension and partners are there when you stumble and you need someone to help you, and partners can do fun things with you that are hard to do alone. Partners can help you in your yard when your peach trees limbs are breaking because you didn't thin the fruit. So my guy came over with supports and propped up all these branches for me. What a sweetheart, you know? And I. Being alone is great, being independent is awesome, and I'm really happy I did that and I love it. And whether I get married again, never say never, but I don't have to. Yeah, I did. The second time I was really committed to being married again because I had loved my marriage and I needed. I thought I needed to be part of a couple, and that was because I did no work, no introspection work, no. No effort to learn anything about who I'd become and what I wanted.

[32:16] Karin: And what are some of the roadblocks to finding a good partner?

[32:20] Deb: The biggest roadblock is saying there's no good guys out there. Nobody's going to want me. And why should I bother if you can get past those? Because there are good guys out there, because I'm coaching them and I've dated them, and someone will want you because you've got something adorable about you that someone will spot and want in their life. And why not give it a go? If you don't like being alone 100%, you don't have to spend 24/7 with someone. I like the 25% rule, but even if you're married, you're really only intersecting maybe 25% to 40% of the time, unless you're one of those rare couples that works together, lives together, sleeps together, etcetera. And they are there and they have great lives. I'm not one of them. I needed my separateness, my things that I wanted to do. So the block is you, you deciding it's right, you're ready to try it, but you want to learn how to do it right first.

[33:29] Karin: Yeah, I think that's really important because if we believe there's no one out there, then we're going to close ourselves off to the possibilities.

[33:36] Deb: Exactly.

[33:37] Karin: And I understand why people do that because it can be disappointing when things don't go well, or you have a hard time finding someone it can. So how do you keep yourself from wanting to give up?

[33:50] Deb: Yeah, that's a good one. Because after I broke up with the first mister adorable, I was turning, I had turned 70 with him. I was turning 71. It was about four months after I turned 70 and I was turning 71. And I thought, I really, do I want to do this anymore? Is it worth it? Do I really feel like the competition? La, la, la. But I'd already started delivering my course and I went, oh, great. I'm teaching them how to find a mister adorable, and I just let go of one. Okay, I'm going to show them how to keep going, despite the fact that I've just had a little bump in the road. I'm going to show them how to stay resilient. I'm going to show them how to stay optimistic, and I'm going to show them how not to take a bad date. A rejection from somebody on the site, a lack of response. Don't take it to heart, you know, you're still amazing. So I teach affirmations, visualizations, the power of manifesting, how you call it to you, how you rebuild yourself. We go through, release, visualize, recharge, rebuild, visualize, and manifest, because it's a constant growth process. And take dating as something fun. So that one didn't work. Let's go try over here. I literally turned people into what I call the miss adorable butterfly. Because if you're a butterfly, you don't care that that flower just died, you're going to fly somewhere else. It's the same thing with online dating. Just be a miss adorable butterfly. Let the dead flowers go and go find another meadow.

[35:33] Karin: Yeah, yeah. And I love that you talked about manifestation. I've been reading some books about, you know, the science of it and how it's not just magic, it's about really visualizing and knowing what you want. And when you do that, your brain and even your unconscious starts looking for things. Exactly. And you also start working on it.

[36:02] Deb: It opens you to possibilities because you stop thinking about being constrained in your current situation, in your current life, and you visualize where you're going to be and then you manifest it. It happens. I've manifested so many things. I call myself the master manifestor, because literally everything I've wanted I've ended up getting with work and effort.

[36:30] Karin: And that's what I want to say, is that I bet you just didn't sit back and wait for it to happen. I bet you also were working toward it and putting effort into it, like.

[36:40] Deb: You said, identifying the steps, putting together the plan, building a way for the universe to bring it to me. Yeah, a road, a bridge.

[36:53] Karin: So how can someone who might have been on a lot of not so great dates make dating fun?

[37:02] Deb: So look at the humorous. I'm going to tell you a story and you're going to be like, you saw him again. Okay, this is, I broke a bunch of rules, but I'm going to tell you this story. I met a guy online. It was between the two Mister adorables. And I liked his profile so much. He was a runner. He was really smart. He had all kinds of great intellectual stuff in his profile. And I'm a sapiosexual. I have to be intellectually attractive to become physically attractive. So we had this amazing conversation on the phone and he said, well, you need to know something. I was going through some tests at Stanford and they had this slippery floor and I was walking around with my little gown on and the little pull cart with the little drip thing, and I slipped and fell and my broke a hip. And so I'm recuperating. So I can't really go anywhere. I modified my car and I can drive to you, but I can't really go anywhere. And I said, you know what? That's okay. We can sit in my living room and get to know each other. I've got a dog. He'll be watching you. He goes, oh, well, I've got a dog. It's a support dog. Can I bring her? And I went, sure. Oh. They get in my house, I sit him in the comfortable chair and put his feet up on an ottoman and I start having a conversation. Next thing I know, his little dog has bounded on my brand new couch and peed all over it.

[38:32] Karin: Oh, no.

[38:33] Deb: Brand new couch. And I mean literally delivered two days before I pick up his dog, I plop it in his lap, I go grab the couch cushions, I run to the garage, I clean them up, I leave them out there. So now I've got to sit on a little goofy chair while I'm talking to him. Next thing I know, his dog is peeing on the ottoman, which luckily I had slipcovered. And I look at him and I go, are you serious? Can't you control this animal? And he goes, well, you know, I don't, and I'm fine. This dog is going in the backyard with my dog. My dog's not going to bother this dog. So the dog goes in the backyard. Everything's fine. Run around, pees on everything. Little teeny dog. I have a border collie. My dog's like, what the heck is this? But it just doesn't care. But we have this decent conversation, and we retrieve the dog, and we agree we're going to get together and he's going to make me dinner to apologize for that date. Right. I'm not even going to talk about the second date because that was the last date with this man. But I literally let him have a second date after his dog peed on my furniture because he was that smart and he was interesting and he was good looking and he was fun and I didn't want to hold his bad dog behaviors against him.

[39:50] Karin: Yeah.

[39:51] Deb: I make allowances for things because I'm interested in the person.

[39:56] Karin: Yeah. And that makes sense to me. I could see how someone might do that. Yeah.

[40:00] Deb: Yeah. Well, I won't do it ever again. But see, I've done all the stupid stuff. That's how I knew how to write the course. When you have that many dates and you're indiscriminate, you learn a lot of stuff not to do.

[40:14] Karin: A question that I'm sure a lot of my older listeners might really appreciate, and I've asked this before on here, is when do you start having sex with a new partner? When do you know it's okay?

[40:28] Deb: Oh, this is my favorite question. I have a whole chapter on this in the course. I call it questions for your suitor before exclusivity, because it's not about becoming intimate. Girls at this age, we want a vow of exclusivity before we agree to become intimate. It's a whole new game because I've done the one night stand, just a few. I've done the date, you know, sex on the third date. Just a few. And I don't advocate it unless you just feel like it. Further physical release. And then I'm not going to put you down for it because, you know, I've had a few of those, but I specialize in creating a long term, committed, monogamous, exclusive relationship. And the guys appreciate it, especially now, especially anyone who's been married a really long time. They're not really comfortable playing around. Morse, guys can play around a little better than widowers. That's what I have found. So you, as part of your exercise of who you are and what you want, you need to be thinking about what would it take to go to bed with some, what do I want to see? And that's totally different. I have 20 questions before exclusivity. It's in the course. I send it to people that are in the course and then they create their own. They borrow some of mine, but I want them to have their own because it's them, not me. They have specific things they're looking for that I wasn't. One of them is. Is he a good housekeeper? I got rid of a really hot prospect because he. He's kept a house like a 17 year old and lived with 240 year olds, and they were all 317 year olds living in this house. And he was 69, you know, and he was brilliant and gorgeous and fun, but no way could I wake up in that house, ever. So it's not only can I look at that face, but further down the line, can I wake up in this house, not regret being here and can I use the bathroom?

[42:31] Karin: So a lot of it is just.

[42:32] Deb: Really thinking ahead, planning, planning. Don't just jump onto the dating sites. That's what gets everybody in so much trouble. I'm lonely. I need a date. I need someone to go out with. I'm going to go get on a dating site. You pull up a site, you answer the questions, you throw in some pictures, and now your profile's up. And now 35 guys hit on you in the first day because you're new. Meet. Soon as you come up as a new profile, you're going to get inundated and then you're going to be, oh, look how cute. Oh, look, they like me. Oh. Oh, no, you didn't think it through. You don't know what you're looking for. You are going to be like me when I was 51. Don't do it. Get some coaching first. Get on my website. There's some free tips over there. Get some information. Before you do that. Get on a call with me. Those are free, too.

[43:28] Karin: So what role does love play in the work that you do?

[43:33] Deb: Love is so huge because one, I love my clients and my students. I love all the people on my TikTok. They're lonely, they're sad, they're where I was after my first divorce. Demoralized, disillusioned, lost. I'm starting to cry and not knowing what to do and too vulnerable. And I want to love them out of that into loving themselves, knowing how amazing they are. And then teach them how to find someone who can appreciate that and grow with them and grow love. Like me and my mister adorable of 19 months. We are madly in love. We just got back from eleven days, 24/7 traveling together, and he wants to do it again. So we're doing it again in August and we're going to do it again in October. He wants as much of me as he can have.

[44:37] Karin: That's a wonderful test of a relationship, as if you can travel together.

[44:41] Deb: Absolutely. Biggest test. And that's all my questions before exclusivity. I'm not giving myself away to someone. I haven't spent a a weekend without sex. So seriously, we get a hotel room, two queen beds, you on yours, me on mine. We might give each other a massage. It will not end in a happy ending. I need to know a I can get naked in front of you, you can get naked in front of me, and we can stay comfortable. So I play this game totally different than I did at 51, where it was all about, ooh, sexy, let's get undressed and let's look at each other. Ooh, ooh, ooh. No, no, no. We're not children anymore. We need to. We need to manage that. We need to manage our heart. We need to manage our emotions. We need to stay a little more head in the game before we give away our love.

[45:34] Karin: And if there's one thing you want people to walk away with after listening to this episode, what would it be?

[45:40] Deb: You know, it's my tagline. You're never too old and it's not too late to find love.

[45:51] Karin: Wonderful. And how can people learn more about you?

[45:55] Deb: Please go to finding Mister adorable. That's mradorable.com and it's all there. We just redid the website this morning. It was too confusing. So I stripped a bunch of stuff away. And it's really, really simple. It's basically, what are you going through? How can you get in touch with me? What do you want to know?

[46:15] Karin: Wonderful.

[46:16] Deb: Poke. Poke. Poke. Book a call. Book a call. Book a call. Because I love to get on the phone with people and just hear their story and then just give them some advice. They don't even have to hire me or take a class, but sometimes they need to.

[46:33] Karin: Yeah. Yeah. Well, great. Well, deb, thank you. This was a really fun conversation with lots of great information for people, so I really appreciate it.

[46:42] Deb: Oh, Karin, I appreciate you. I am so glad we got to do this. I can't wait to hear how it lands.

[46:50] Karin: All right. Thank you.

Outro:

Karin: Thanks for joining us today on Love is us. If you liked the show and think others would enjoy it, I'd really appreciate it if you left me a review. You can also sign up for my weekly newsletter where you'll get tips about relationships and personal growth. By going to my website, drcalde.com. I make it easy to sign up and easy to cancel at any time. Special thanks to Tim Gorman for my music, Aly Shaw for my artwork, and Ross Burdick for tech and editing assistance. Again, I'm so glad you joined us today because the best way to bring more love into your life and into the world is to be love. The best way to beat love is to love yourself and those around you. Let's learn and be inspired together.