The Game of Desire Read online

  Finally, the culture of dating in a famine has left a massive impact on our general feelings about connection. A Harris Poll conducted in 2016 found that more than 70 percent of those who participated identified themselves as lonely.9

  LET’S RECAP. TODAY’S SINGLE WOMAN IS IN A MARKET WHERE WOMEN ARE in oversupply, sex is at the forefront, real connections are statistically improbable, reports of sexual assault are rising, sexually transmitted infections are spiking and people think it’s okay to talk about race as though they’re ordering a pizza.

  If reading all of this makes you feel like closing up shop and heading for a life of shoe-crafting solitude in the depths of a forest, I can’t say I blame you. But I do dare to challenge you because while, yes, many people are currently struggling, there are the few who’ve mastered the art of connection, who are thriving. And if in your mind you need to have one million followers or a face sculpted by the gods to be a part of that few, you need this book more than you could possibly know. I say all this as someone who has been through the merciless fires of dating hell, gotten my shit together and then come out not just alive, but ablaze with purpose and gratitude because I found (and married) the love of my life.

  Some people refer to their life partner as their better half, and in my case, I would boldface, underline and add exclamation marks to that statement. My partner, Jared Brady, is the kind of sweet, empathetic and gentle person I will probably never be. Which is fine, because I’m the smart-ass, analytical and worry-free woman he needs to balance him out. It works in a way that has made every love song literal, every sunset vibrant and every aspect of my life richer. In the most obnoxiously cliché way possible, finding and being in a good relationship is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. But, Jared wasn’t a fluke or a one-off. He was the better of a lot of bests and the result of years of good decisions and calculated moves. In other words, please believe, before I got to the altar, your girl found and fully enjoyed her time at the feast (*Will Smith voice* You know what I’m shaying?!).

  That is why this game is worth playing and why I led this journey with Courtney and five others. Through their experience, I hope to empower single women everywhere to have more fun than they can imagine while using tangible tools and a strategy to fulfill their wildest intimate aspirations.

  Although we will be moving through this process as a group, everyone’s outcome might look different. For sure, a successful long-term monogamous marriage is a beautiful example of love that we all can admire. On the other side of the coin, an incredible, reciprocal one-night stand, where both parties leave feeling better and just as healthy, is also something worth applauding, even if it’s not something we would personally do. The goal here is the confidence, acceptance and mutuality that come from feeling desired; the conditions in which this result occurs are far less important.

  All right—before I sound any more like a drawn-out infomercial, let’s get to why we’re all here! Below are the five phases that will serve as our guide as I attempt to lead six short-end-of-the-stick daters to the land of abundant desire.

  This book is a detailed account of how I tested this five-phase program on six down-on-love daters—and how you, dear reader, can implement these tools for yourself. Our journey is radical, raw, ridiculous, turbulent—and absolutely true. I hope in the upcoming pages you will vicariously learn through these women (whom you will come to know very well) how to overcome any fears, faults, limiting beliefs and insecurities that have been preventing you from discovering your own feast.

  All right, let’s get started. Now would be an ideal time to tuck away your preconceived notions on the do’s of dating, and your good-girls-don’t guidelines. Because the story of how these women became everything they should be is driven by doing almost everything you’ve been told you should not!

  * * *

  Phase One. KNOW who you’ve become by identifying the core traits of your intimate self. This includes being fully aware of your strengths, weaknesses, blind spots and patterns. This knowledge also needs to be supplemented with advanced feedback from others who know you intimately—be they close friends or exes.

  Phase Two. CHANGE the habits and perceptions that are holding you back. This includes changing your appearance, your mind about your limits, faults and even your traumas. Learn the art of seduction, anti-seduction and the habits that may be preventing you from making powerful connections where it matters most. You can become whoever you consistently choose to be. If a component of your reality does not serve your vision of your highest self, it is no longer you.

  Phase Three. LEARN from a series of experts (don’t worry, I’ve done a lot of the work here for you!) to fine-tune your external and internal game. Become a master at approaching, attracting, flirting and influencing. Decide who you want to attract and learn how to find and entice them.

  Phase Four. PRACTICE what you’ve learned thus far in low-risk environments, including at work, among friends and on casual dates. In addition, test out new hypotheses so you can create your own unique toolbox for making connections at will. Flirting, seducing and influencing should not be reserved for “the one.” These are skills that will transform all of your relationships, including the one you have with yourself.

  Phase Five. BE the person you’ve always wanted to be. Enjoy the company of people who better you and bring you joy. Join the feast and empower others, through your exceptional transformation, to do the same. Finally, revisit the other four phases periodically because this work is never done. And once you get into the swing of things where it starts getting really fun, you’ll realize how great that news is!

  * * *

  1

  I Tell It Like It Is

  At 9:45 A.M. I sat down with two computers, a blank dry erase board and a vat of tea, ready to take on the 254 women whom I was scheduled to interview over the next four days. A week prior, I put out a post looking for incredibly frustrated single women who were local to L.A. I expected to get a trickle of responses, but instead I got a flood of applicants who were ready to devote themselves to my program designed to change their luck. Despite the volume, I sent out an invitation to video interview them all because you can’t assess who someone is solely based on their “About Me” section. Even though my application covered everything from their romantic history to their friends’ opinions of their chronic singledom, the only way I would truly know if someone was a fit was if we were face-to-face. Or screen-to screen . . . you get the gist.

  I was on the hunt for a group that was diverse in ethnicity, body type, personality, dating goals, sexual orientation, and roadblocks. In addition, I had a checklist of criteria that they had to hit in order to be selected:

  They must be in the city for at least 80 percent of the program I get that we’re in the digital age but to truly analyze the process and results, I needed to observe the finalists without any filters.

  They must have their shit together In other words, in accordance with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs1, their basic needs had to be met. If their livelihood, health or living situation was in flux, it would be unrealistic to ask them to totally devote themselves to the pursuit of love and belonging.

  They must work well with others In my counseling service, it’s come one, come all! But this program was extremely unique in that I would be crossing every single professional boundary. Participants would be invited into my home, they would meet my husband, hear my personal secrets and if they wanted to grab a cocktail on social field trips, I didn’t plan on stopping them. For this reason, I had a strict policy: if you seemed like a dick, this program wouldn’t be a fit.

  THE PRINCIPLE OF CREATING THREE SET-IN-STONE STANDARDS IS A PROVEN theory in successful mate selection created by Dr. Ty Tashiro in his book The Science of Happily Ever After. Essentially, Tashiro encourages everyone to determine their three “wishes,” aka non-negotiables, before beginning their hunt for a love connection.2 In relation to finding group members, three wishes were sufficient since I
wanted to keep my search broad. But when it comes to dating, I disagree with Tashiro and encourage anyone who works with me to choose five wishes, because your effort should amount to more options than that of the average person. We will build what I call your Frozen Five in future chapters.

  When I connected with the first woman over Skype, I instantly understood just how much of a challenge narrowing down these applicants would be. Her name was Amanda and she seemed all kinds of great.

  “I was able to convince an investor to put half a million into my business, so it’s crazy that I can’t get a man to text me back.”

  She was a coffee-drinking, straight-talking entrepreneur who had recently begun to suspect she was the “kind of woman that men only wanted to have sex with.” She rarely made eye contact and answered all questions with short, quippy remarks. But behind her icy front, I could see glimpses of a warm heart and a hearty sense of humor. I wondered how many of the men who ghosted her got to spend a full evening with that softer side. Amanda struck me as a cactus woman, someone who uses spikes in order to protect what’s precious and vulnerable on the inside. Yes, this method works marvelously in movies, where the plot is set in stone, or small towns, where the options are limited; but in big cities where new prospects are literally a swipe away, most aren’t gonna stick around to see what’s on the other side of someone’s wall of armor. Unless of course they’re determined to get something specific, like sex.

  I was about to put a circle around her name so we could work on removing those spikes together, but she informed me that she planned on traveling for the summer. This put Amanda in violation of the first of my three standards.

  My next call was a massage therapist in her early twenties with a rocking body and an even more rocking personality who described herself as “a sexually liberated millennial that hates that sex is the focus of today’s relationships.”

  That sentence of course caught my interest. The most crucial thing I’d had to realize as a sex-positive advocate who doesn’t want to have sex with everyone, is that people are extremely lazy and unimaginative. Most people will define you however you define yourself, without examining the nuances of what you actually mean. For example, I’m a sexologist who is not blind to the lightbulbs that spark in people’s minds when I share that fun fact. So, if I meet someone new I make a point to emphasize the research-based side of my work. On dates, I used to go the extra mile to ensure all parties were on the same page. Before going out with someone I would communicate verbatim, “I’m looking forward to hanging with you but I’m not going to give you head and we won’t be having sex.”

  I know that sounds cringe-worthy, but I said it and I stuck to it. And you know what? Not one person cancelled plans with me, and despite a few valiant attempts throughout the night to see if I was bluffing, my dates respected my boundaries.

  The key to happiness is managing expectations. I could have absolutely taught my second caller this, but she wouldn’t be learning it in this group because it wasn’t just in the love department that she was in flux: she was flirting with a new career, considering moving back home, at odds with all of her female friends and in between cars. This put her in violation of the second bit of criteria and thus not a match for this project.

  Midday I connected with Venus, a thirty-two-year-old bisexual performance artist who embodied all the angst of a frustrated single—exactly what I’d been looking for. “I don’t get why it is so hard to get someone to like me like that? I like men, I like women, but who likes me?” she asked intensely.

  I paused, unsure if she wanted me to answer, but thankfully, she continued. Venus was willing to try my program because she was fed up that her dates didn’t see the greatness she felt she possessed. She had boasted about her accomplishments and all the inner work she had done: therapy, yoga training, nonviolent-communication work, 12 Step, tantra, couples coaching, healthy-relating courses, bodywork, a coaching/leadership program. But she admitted that after all that, she still felt at a loss when it came to making connections.

  When I asked what seemed to turn people off, she paused for a long time then came up with, “I tell it like it is.”

  My gripe with the people who describe honesty as a fault is that I don’t think they’re being honest with themselves. “Telling it like it is” is often just a spruced-up way of saying, People think I’m blunt, and insensitive. It’s not that most people are untruthful; it’s that we have a working filter that makes it easy for us to coexist with others. Honesty to a happy life is not what a bat is to baseball, it’s what a putter is to golf: use it gently and thoughtfully when the time is right. To support my theory, Venus also revealed that her problems making connections weren’t limited to romantic relationships but also friendships and work partnerships. In short, she was very disagreeable, and despite the fact that we are told that nice people finish last, in healthy relationships, agreeable people finish first.

  An agreeable person is usually friendly, empathetic and tactful. Their first instinct is to do what’s best overall, not just what feels best to them at the time. Agreeableness is one of the most important traits when it comes to maintaining long-term romantic relationships, but that doesn’t mean being disagreeable doesn’t have its perks too. An agreeable person accepts the status quo, but the disagreeable challenge customs and thoughts to align with their visions. Therefore, we can deduce that a lot of progress depends on people who are willing to go against the grain. So yes, there are some pros to having a contrary spirit, but excelling at group work ain’t one of them.

  But I did love her eagerness, so I asked one more vetting question about how she planned to spend her summer.

  “I’ve started a new job that has me tied up quite a bit, but the manager is a spineless narcissist so I’m thinking of either pursuing legal action against him or quitting.”

  Okay, so definitely not the best fit. This is the perfect example of why set standards are crucial when selecting people to align yourself with (vertically or horizontally). Had I not made up my mind on what I needed, I might have allowed my ego to make an I’m up for the challenge judgment call that could have been costly down the line.

  The rest of the morning was your average audition-style montage: a lot of people who weren’t quite the right fit and a few who absolutely were not.

  A twenty-five-year-old woman asked, “Why do I keep meeting guys who have been to jail?”

  When I proposed that she may have a massive partner selection issue that could be linked with repeating pain from her past, she explained that she wasn’t a live-in-the-past kind of person and preferred to only move forward in life. I didn’t know how I could teach someone who didn’t have an interest in understanding themselves, so I put a line through her name and kept going.

  Another woman in her thirties confided, “To be honest I would really like to just have sex and leave it at that. I text this guy I was seeing, I wanna get naked and sit on you while I jack off. And a few hours later he responded, I don’t want to be with a chick who uses the term jack off. So I fired back, Okay would you have preferred I said, flick my bean?”

  Her issue, while kind of funny, wasn’t that difficult to solve. She needed to download any number of hookup apps that are specifically designed for no-strings-attached encounters or simply meet someone at a bar past 2 A.M. But aside from needing the fastest route to the bedroom, she also needed to develop a stronger Spidey sense for when dirty talk was appropriate. I hear complaints all the time from women that men need to work on their dick-pic timing; naturally, there are women who need to learn that art too. Consent is more than just a word, it is a complex language that none of us are above learning. So I sent her some app recommendations and a referral to check out Yes Means Yes by Jessica Valenti and Jaclyn Friedman, then pressed on.

  And then, thankfully, came Maya, a twenty-four-year-old office administrator/aspiring writer with frizzy hair, wire glasses, a gummy smile and a quiet fierceness. When I asked what drew her to apply to my
project she said plainly, “It said it teaches people how to date. I don’t think I’ve ever done that before, but I’d like to learn how.”

  I scanned her application and asked, “It says you date men and women. I’m assuming that means you are bisexual?”

  She paused for a second. I thought she was considering how to answer but she was actually considering how to put me in my place. “I identify as pansexual but I am moving away from that label and just embracing the term queer. You should never assume someone’s label because it’s just as easy to ask.”

  For those who don’t know the difference, a bisexual person is someone who is attracted to cisgender men and women (cisgender meaning they identify with the gender they were assigned at birth). A pansexual person is someone who is attracted to cisgender people, but also people who exist outside of the gender binary—including agender, bigender, gender-fluid, gender non-conforming, intersex, and transgender people.

  “Totally understand and I apologize for that,” I said before getting back to business. “What did you mean when you said you don’t think you’ve ever dated?”

  “I mean that I’ve never had a partner besides one boyfriend in high school, which lasted approximately one month, and I’ve only had two dating experiences, that didn’t go anywhere.” Maya spoke so quietly I had to strain to hear. “I feel that I’m at an age where maybe I’ve missed my chance. I feel a lot of pressure from family and friends, and even though they don’t mean anything by it, a lot of the time it consumes me. So many of my friends are in committed relationships and my anxiety holds me back from even beginning one.”

  In recent years I’ve tried to learn more about anxiety by listening a lot to those who have it. Anxiety as a disorder is unwarranted fear or distress that interferes with daily life. We all have some level of anxiety. It is an everyday emotion that can be a good thing, because it makes us hyperalert in stressful times. But if anxiety persists when there is no real trigger for our fight-or-flight response, it can cause serious issues both mentally and physically. According to Harvard Health, women make up almost two-thirds of an estimated 40 million adults with excessive anxiety.3