Relationships Shouldn't Feel Like Work
If yours does, it's probably not a good relationship.
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Chellie is 32 and has had a boyfriend for almost a year. The first 3 months were electric. But as time went on, her boyfriend became increasingly critical, selfish, and distant. They have great chemistry and have taken a few trips together, but he hasn’t said he loves her and never talks about their future. Chellie wants to know how to recapture the magic from the beginning of their relationship.
Faith is 41 and desperately wants biological children of her own. Her boyfriend of 7 years swears he loves her and also wants a family, but he lives in a different city and doesn’t have a sense of urgency about proposing. Faith is panicking about her fertility and wants to know what she can do to make her boyfriend step up to the plate.
Maddie is a 54-year-old, divorced, single mom who is insecure about relationships in general. Her boyfriend of 5 years is also divorced, admits he’s gunshy about commitment, and while he treats Maddie as his life partner, he’s mistrustful of the institution of marriage. Maddie wants to know how to improve her relationship so that he changes his mind.
You could say that these are sad stories - and you’d be right.
They’re also the most common stories I hear as a dating coach for women.
They beg the question: Why do women who have everything - looks, intelligence, success - accept relationships where they don’t feel secure?
Why do women who have everything - looks, intelligence, success - accept relationships where they don’t feel secure?
Before I answer that, let me ask you a different question:
Think back to the times in your life when you’ve been happiest in love.
Were you distracted at work? Were you scared to speak your mind? Were you constantly torn between staying and breaking up?
Of course not.
Yet that’s what it feels like when your relationship stops making you happy.
You get this awful, sinking feeling.
You try to get him to change. He promises you he will. He does, but only a little. Then he reverts back to who he really is. Things slowly deteriorate.
Yet you stay, even though the thing that’s supposed to make you happy - your relationship - is the very thing that’s draining your spirit.
If you identify with the above, you’ve likely bought into the biggest lie ever perpetrated by parents, couples counselors, and dating gurus:
“Relationships take work!”
Your entire life, you’ve fallen for men and spent years trying to justify why they were a long-term fit, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
You cried and fought, and broke up and made up, and vented to your friends and family, all because you thought that this was NORMAL.
All because “relationships take work.”
Sorry, but they don’t take that much work.
Put another way: If you tried on a pair of shoes and they didn’t fit, would you keep trying them on for TWO YEARS?
No way.
You might admire how gorgeous the shoes looked.
You might think it’s too bad the shoes didn’t fit.
I can guarantee you wouldn’t continually force your feet inside them.
This is what you’ve been doing with men. Here are three main reasons why:
Chemistry
Think of the person you’ve been MOST attracted to. Your Best Sex Ever Guy.
Do you have him in your mind? Great.
Next question: Are you married to that man right now? Is he cooking you dinner, rubbing your feet, and listening to you after your hard day at work?
No, he is not. He’s likely someone else’s best sex ever and is slowly destroying her self-esteem. Or maybe he’s in jail. Hard to say.
But that’s chemistry. It’s intoxicating…and it has no correlation with long-term compatibility.
Chemistry literally refers to “brain chemistry.” Dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine get released when you’re attracted to someone, lighting up the pleasure centers of your brain. This functions like cocaine or meth.
In related news: People under the influence tend to be poor decision-makers and have roller-coaster-like emotions. High highs. Low lows. Chronic anxiety.
Does that describe how you felt in some of your most ill-fated relationships? If so, that’s the opposite of what a healthy partnership should feel like.
So yeah, if you’re like most people, you may have overstayed your welcome with a messed-up partner because the sex was amazing. But here’s the thing:
In a healthy relationship, sex is the icing on the cake.
In an unhealthy relationship, sex IS the cake.
You can’t live on cake alone.
Sunk Costs
I hate to sound like an economist (Note: there is no way I can sound like an economist) but once you make an investment, it's hard to pull out.
If you're standing in a line that’s not moving, the last thing you want to do is leave, only to discover there’s no faster line.
If you moved for a job and discovered you didn’t like your workplace, you wouldn’t necessarily want to turn around and move back home.
If you put $10,000 in Bitcoin and it’s down to $5000, you’ll probably hold on to your blockchain money until it zeroes out.
(These are not great examples. Is there an economist in the house?)
Anyway, sunk costs cause people to remain in broken relationships. Have you ever said one of the below statements justifying why you won’t break up?
"We’ve been sleeping together for four months and he still hasn’t taken down his profile. I’ll give him a little more time to figure things out.”
“We’ve been dating for eight months and although he’s told me he doesn’t want anything serious, we have Christmas coming up, then Valentine’s Day, then we have a friend’s wedding in April, so we can’t break up now.”
“We’ve been living together for a year and while we fight 50% of the time, we’re a great couple the time that we’re not fighting.”
“We’ve been engaged for three years and even though I’m unhappy with the relationship, I’m getting older, the dating pool is awful, and I’d rather stay in this soul-sucking partnership than go onto the dating apps.”
These are all variations on the same story:
You have an epic three months together. You meet his friends and family. You take a few weekend trips. Slowly, his mask slips off.
You start to see the real him and you don’t like what you see: Flashes of anger, dishonesty, selfishness, criticism, laziness, and emotional unavailability.
Still, you stay, hoping he’ll grow, change, “do the work” and become the man you want him to be.
He won’t. This is who he is. At some point, you have to cut your losses.
Last Man on Earth
One of the first lessons in Love U is not to treat any man like he's the last man on earth. It sounds silly but I don't know how else to phrase it.
My clients rationalize staying by citing the dearth of “quality men” available: "This connection I had is so rare. I only find guys like this once every few years. I’ve seen what’s out there. It sucks and I don’t want to settle."
If you’re saying this while in an unhappy relationship, you ARE settling.
Maybe not on height, intelligence, or status, but you’re settling by staying with a guy who doesn’t allow you to let down your guard and relax.
At the root of “last man on earth” syndrome is a fear that if you break up with him, you're screwed.
You’re too old. You’re too damaged. You’re not loveable. You’re not worthy.
These aren’t my words. These are the words floating around in your head when you choose to stay in a relationship where your needs aren’t met.
You’re too old. You’re too damaged. You’re not loveable. You’re not worthy.
These aren’t my words. These are the words floating around in your head when you choose to stay in a relationship where your needs aren’t met.
Even though you know you should dump him, you anchor onto every good thing about him as if the list overrides his lack of kindness or communication:
“He’s so smart. He’s so funny! He has a great job! He makes a lot of money! He gets along with my family! He said I’m beautiful! He told me loves me! He’s a devoted father! He took me to Hawaii with his kids and we barely fought!”
Yes, those are the reasons you chose him.
They are not the reasons you should stay.
You should stay because he’s your best friend. You should stay because his love is unconditional. You should stay because he has your back. You should stay because he sees the best in you. You should stay because you trust him to do the right thing.
You should stay because, even if nothing changes, you’ll be happy with him for the rest of your life.
While, theoretically, all of us can change, you can’t have a relationship dependent on your partner changing for you.
That’s what Chellie, Faith, and Maddie were trying to do.
All of them turned to me because they were unhappy with the status quo.
All of them turned to me because they wanted their partners to become nicer, more thoughtful, and more commitment-oriented.
None of them ended up with those partners.
In fact, in 20 years of dating coaching, none of my clients married the man she was dating when she hired me.
In 20 years of dating coaching, none of my clients married the man she was dating when she hired me.
You can call that a knock on my coaching. I disagree.
The way I see it is this: people in good relationships don’t call me.
They’re too busy enjoying their life.
I only get the call when someone is terribly unhappy with her partner.
I hear from her after she’s read self-help books, done therapy, listened to podcasts, dragged him to couples counseling and nothing has worked.
This is why I feel so strongly that good relationships shouldn’t feel like work.
You can’t fix a man who doesn’t want to be fixed. You can’t have a relationship dependent on your partner changing for you.
I’ve been married for 15 years. My wife and I have disagreed about many things: whether she should go to bed before 2 a.m. (she says no), whether it makes sense to take a full day to pack for an overnight trip (she says yes), and whether I’m impatient or impossibly impatient (we agree to disagree).
Despite these recurring arguments, we get along 95% of the time.
That’s the way it should be.
So if you’re bristling at this piece because your parents fought like cats and dogs to stay together, I’m not second-guessing their decision.
I am only asking if you’d like to have a better relationship than your parents.
I believe you do and I believe you can.
It just requires a little reframing of the idea that “relationships take work.” When that’s been your template since childhood, you think it’s normal to have a marriage with name-calling, stonewalling, slammed doors, silent treatments, snooping, and constantly breaking up and making up.
It’s not.
All relationships take some effort, but when that effort starts to feel like actual work, your relationship is not serving its purpose.
When I look at my happy marriage and the happy marriages of my Love U clients, those relationships all have one overriding quality:
They’re EASY.
If that sounds hard to believe, that’s because you’ve never chosen an easy relationship before.
I invite you to consider that you can. Life is long. You’re worth it.
Welcome to Lovesplaining.
Love,
Evan
Link That Made Me Think
Faith Hill’s article on matchmaking having “a moment” was validating. It explained why people turn to professionals (ahem) for assistance with love, in an era where the instant gratification of dating apps has proven to be anything but gratifying.
Not only can online dating be lonely—it can be extremely time-consuming. Combing through the apps can feel like a part-time job. In 2016, Hinge reported that only one in 500 swipes on the app had resulted in phone numbers being exchanged. When the company surveyed 300 of its users that same year, it discovered that 81 percent of them had never found a long-term relationship on any swipe-based dating app. In 2018, when the dating company Badoo surveyed 5,000 18-to-30-year-olds in the U.K., it found that users spent an average of 10 hours a week on dating apps.
All of that work gives daters more agency over their love life than they had in earlier eras. They don’t have to wait for a serendipitous encounter, or even leave the house. At any time, they can swipe, send messages, and ask people to meet up. But that sense of control, which for many people is a blessing, can also be a burden—especially if you’re talking with several suitors at once, a common situation on apps. Patel calls it “DIY dating”: All of the analysis and overthinking involved—“What’s not working? What’s right? … Am I waiting too long in between messages? Is the dude on the other end real?—you have to do it all yourself.”
This is where dating coaches enter the conversation. We teach dating and relationships as a skill and help our clients learn best practices that will be broadly acceptable to both men and women. It’s why dating coaching is so effective; we don’t catch the fish for you. We teach you to fish so you can eat for the rest of your life.
People who turn to matchmakers generally don’t want to learn the art of fishing - they want the fish freshly caught, prepared to their liking, and served on a plate.
For people floundering in the dating world, the idea that experienced chemistry professionals could pick up on qualities hidden deep within you—and use them to lead you to someone you might have missed—could be very enticing. But for matchmakers to do that, they’d probably need to read beyond what their clients tell them. Humans don’t tend to be very good at deducing what we want for ourselves, Eli Finkel, a Northwestern University psychologist who studies romantic attraction, told me. In some studies, researchers have asked participants what they look for in a partner—and found that their answers don’t predict the type of people whom they really go for. And people tend to be drawn to the same qualities anyway; if you’re searching for someone who’s, say, attractive, nice, and funny, you’re not exactly unique.
I’m friends with many of the top matchmakers in the country. They are good people who’ve taken on a challenging job: finding your soulmate after a one-hour consultation although you haven’t been able to do for your whole life.
For this reason, matchmakers have to be part psychologist, part cheerleader, part salesperson, part loving mother who tells you you’re great, and part stern father who tells a harsher truth.
Dating coaches have to be this way, too, with one caveat: We are not tasked with introducing you to your soulmate for $2000/date. Our job is to help you attract and choose quality men by yourself on dating sites - since, honestly, that’s where matchmakers discover many of their men as well.
I often use the metaphor that the journey to finding love is similar to any uphill climb - say, making more money or losing more weight.
I can acknowledge why it’s more appealing to buy a lottery ticket than to build your resume or have gastro-bypass surgery instead of eating healthier.
The question is whether the shortcut gets you want in the long run - whether you end up in the same place if you don’t have to learn from your mistakes.
Does it matter how you lose weight: by surgery or discipline?
Does it matter how you get rich: by lottery or hard work?
Maybe not.
Yet I can’t help but think it does.
What I Got Wrong
Inspired by Andrew Sullivan, I’m going to encourage dissents to my writing that will be published here. I can appreciate a well-reasoned point of view and would like to foster respectful discourse instead of the ad hominem attacks that occur when one writes online. Good arguments pushing back against anything I say will be published.
Let’s start with a comment from my current Love U client, Cindy.
I’m new to Love U and only in my second week of material. Yet I'm wondering if truly letting a man pursue, waiting on him to make all the moves and then just mirroring is going to work for me. I believe men want to lead and to woo us and I so want that! And I also feel men have their doubts, too, and could use a wee nip of encouragement along the way. Just a simple text of "I had a good time" from a woman would seem more reassuring than needy to him - and would be more attractive than being seen as an alpha female who calls all the shots.
I want to concede the validity of Cindy’s question and clarify: if you’re starting to see a masculine energy guy - a confident, go-getter - you don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to text him to make plans, you don’t have to remind him you’re alive. All you have to do is respond quickly and enthusiastically when he initiates contact. Easy. However, to Cindy’s point, if you’re seeing a less confident, less secure, less experienced man, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with taking on a more proactive role and meeting him in the middle. Your approach to dating should depend largely on your natural personality and the kind of dynamic you want to see in relationships. A lot of women like being courted…and yet still do all the work…and that’s the dynamic we’re trying to break.
If anything I wrote in this newsletter seems ill-considered or just rubbed you wrong, click here to share a dissent or post one in the comments below.
On the Love U Podcast
Does He Have to Be Interesting for You to Be Interested?
I don't have hobbies, so I read a lot. Nothing turns me on more than great conversation and sparkling wit. I spent a decade trying to find an Ivy League grad who also had a gift for banter - only to discover that few people possess those respective skill sets.
The few that did...usually dumped me.
It got me to think: maybe my obsession with finding the smartest, most interesting woman in the world was getting in the way of my long-term happiness.
The evolution of my thinking on this topic changed my life. Maybe it'll change yours as well.
My Not-So-Viral Social Media Post of the Week
Contrary to popular opinion, love doesn’t conquer all. Timing has everything to do with whether your relationship succeeds. While you don’t dump your loving partner of eight years because he lost his job, you probably don’t want to take a chance on men who are unemployed, struggling with addiction, going through a divorce or a separation, or are just on the rebound. Stick with guys who are ready for commitment NOW.
You Can Also See Me On…
I appeared on the popular Seeing Other People podcast with Ilana Dunn.
She’s in her late 20’s, really likable and empathetic, and has built not only a great podcast but a great relationship as well. We chat about where women are going wrong when it comes to taking breaks from dating, going on dates, and getting into relationships. We learn which dealbreakers matter, ways to figure out if a relationship is right and how to know if it’s time to leave. At the end I answer listener questions about getting over someone, whether or not you’re wasting your time, and more. Check out our interview below.
This Week’s Love U Love Story
Emily was a top executive at the Mandarin Oriental in London. Amazingly successful, well-traveled, and good-humored, but never married in her late 50’s. Then she enrolled in Love U for private coaching. Here’s her story:
Evan
You did it AGAIN! Tom and I got married on a wonderful, joyful, brilliant day in London on July 15. So it tags along with your big birthday!
Tom is everything I had ever dreamed of and then some. I cannot believe truly how magical the journey was with you that led me to such sheer happiness and joy. I have relocated to Boca Raton, FL for a big job and Tom is working on his green card so he has to go back and forth but since he is retired, it all works for both sides.
I am sending you such gratitude and thanks and I talk about you all the time to my single friends who can’t seem to make the leap (or get out of their own way….)
You led me to the best thing to ever happen to me - a beautiful soul inside and out - my husband.
Wishing you continued success!
Love,
Emily
You HAVE to Check Out…
TV - Bad Sisters - I fell for Sharon Horgan when she was on Catastrophe so when I heard on Smartless that she had another black comedy set in Ireland, it was an easy sell to my Irish wife. I don’t think there are many men as bad as The Prick in this show, but his awfulness made it very easy to sympathize with all the people who wanted him dead.
Movies - Biosphere - Yes, it only made $60,000 at the box office, but this was a unique small-budget sci-fi film with two great actors - Mark Duplass and Sterling K. Brown - that was equal parts funny, sensitive, and weird.
Books - Us Against You - Fredrik Bachman - my wife read the first book in this series - Beartown - in her book club, recommended it to me, and I was really impressed. It’s the kind of book that makes me want to write novels, with a deep understanding of what makes people human.
Substack - Freddie DeBoer - Prologue to an Anti-Therapeutic, Anti-Affirmation Movement. So smart. So challenging. Such a broad range of topics. This one hits home with me as a dating coach because it’s hard to help anybody if you can’t offer constructive feedback designed to help them.
The Honey Shot
Every week I’m going to post a photo that makes me smile.
Please share a photo that makes YOU smile - extra points if you’re part of a couple that used the principles of Love U to get happy. My goal is to have fewer photos of me and more photos of you.
Do you have a dating question? A disagreement with me? A screenshot of a guy’s text message? A dating app profile you want to write to but don’t know how? A honey shot? Click here and I’ll share it with my readers in a future newsletter.
Thanks for being part of my Love Universe!
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