Step One To Transform Your Dating Life: Ep 9

If you’re navigating the dating world after 40 and feeling like you’re stuck in a cycle of unavailable guys and repeating patterns, this episode of The Stop Chasing Unavailable Guys Podcast is for you. Truly Eleanor is diving deep into the first pillar of her Let Love In framework: Letting go of the past.

She gets it—letting go can feel daunting, even impossible. But trust Eleanor, it’s the key to breaking free from dating the same guy in a different body and finding the love you truly deserve. In today’s episode, she'll walk you through how holding onto past baggage affects your dating life and share actionable steps to finally move forward.

Transcript

If you're dating after 40 and you're struggling to find Mr.

Right because you keep chasing unavailable guys,

In this episode we'll talk about the framework I've used to go from single hot mess express to married to the love of my life in my 40s and what I've been teaching my clients as a love coach for 15 years.

Stay tuned for the steps to take to turn your dating method into the fastest path to find Mr.

Right.

Let's get started.

Welcome to the Stop Chasing Unavailable Guys podcast,

Where I teach single women over 40 the fastest path to find Mr.

Right,

So you can stop wasting time on emotionally unavailable guys.

I'm your host,

Truly Eleanor,

And I'm here to give you the tools to find the love you desire.

After years of coaching women worldwide and breaking my own patterns to find Mr.

Right in my 40s,

I know love is closer than you think.

Let's get started.

Welcome to this special episode where I dive into pillar number one of my Let Love In technique.

If you want an overview of the big picture of this framework,

You can go back to episode number eight,

Where I do the big picture overview.

In this episode,

We're going to dive into the first pillar,

Which is the let part of the Let Love In technique,

And it's basically letting go of the past.

So let go of the past.

In this three pillar approach,

It teaches you how to go from your head to your heart and start trusting your intuition when it comes to love and life.

And a very important part of that is letting go of the past.

Well,

Easier said than done,

Right?

I totally understand some eye rolling going on like,

Uh,

I want to talk about why this is important,

Why it's important to let go of the past,

And how does it really affect you to carry around the past and past relationship baggage or triggers or whatever you want to call it.

Sometimes we don't really understand the impact that something has on us until we dive into it and make it an intention to let it finally go.

For example,

What would it be like to date when you're fully in your baggage?

Well,

Just think of any date that you've been on,

Where you sit down with someone and within five minutes,

They're talking about their ex for the entire time.

And you're like,

Whoa,

They have a lot of baggage.

Well,

That's what it looks like from the outside.

If you're experiencing it,

Maybe you're not aware of it,

And maybe you're not making it obvious where you're talking about your ex.

But internally,

You might have a lot of triggers.

So you go to a date and then someone,

Some guy says something like,

You know,

Oh,

I have to go take this phone call.

And immediately you're taken back to the times when you were abandoned or ignored or where you had to constantly gain the attention of your ex in every area of your life together.

And then you start to feel really upset and angry and maybe full of rage.

And you're just on this date with someone you don't even know,

But all of a sudden you're just enraged by their behavior or you're feeling very judgmental towards them.

And it's sort of like the reaction you're having internally doesn't quite match what's going on.

Maybe they're just had to take an important call and they don't normally do that,

But you've already formed an opinion and taken yourself back to this relationship with your ex.

That is how it can really affect you.

And you're not really in the present moment and able to discern or say whether you even like this person or not,

Because you're off to the races with your emotional triggers and baggage and things that are making you really upset on the date.

How else does it affect you if you're carrying around the past?

Well,

Basically you just keep repeating the same experiences.

So even though you tell yourself,

Okay,

Next time I'm not going to date these kind of guys,

Or I'm not going to go for someone who's a workaholic,

Or I'm never going to choose someone who is emotionally closed off ever again.

And you go on a date and maybe you go on a couple of dates and you're like,

Oh,

I really like this guy.

And then you realize maybe a couple of months in that they're completely closed off emotionally,

Or they are a workaholic and you just weren't aware of it.

And then you're kind of stuck and entangled in the same relationship over and over again.

I'd have to say that's the most painful thing and the most obvious thing around carrying baggage and not letting go of the past.

That's how it really shows up for you,

As you just keep having the same experiences over and over again.

And it starts to feel really hopeless.

You start thinking,

I'm never going to be able to break this pattern.

How am I going to go out with someone new or actually find someone who is going to show up fully for me,

Or the person you really desire?

And you have the sense of it's not going to happen.

And that's where all of these beliefs come in.

And you can go back to listen to my earlier episodes around limiting beliefs and the things that can get really entrenched in our experiences.

And you start to believe things that are not true about yourself,

About other people,

And you start to form a worldview around what's possible.

So that's really how it can affect you.

And you can see now from the way I've laid it out that it can be very,

Very damaging and troubling to not actually go into some of these things and bravely and courageously and willingly go and face those things from the past.

Alright,

So let's talk about how.

How do you do this?

Because it can seem so daunting and overwhelming.

It's like,

All I have,

All of this baggage,

And maybe you've had only crappy relationships or you feel like they've been very emotionally intense and painful.

So where do you start and how do you do this?

Well,

I like to look at it in a different way with it's really about finding a deep level of awareness.

That's the big picture.

You want to find your truth.

In other words,

What has happened up until this point?

What choices have you been making maybe unconsciously or maybe you're aware of it,

But you can't stop it.

What has been going on?

Another way to look at this is clarity.

So finding your truth is about clarity.

You need to know where you are right now and a little bit about more than a little bit about how you got here.

And as I was saying,

It takes bravery and willingness.

You're here to let go of needing to control the narrative of your life and trying to maybe run from the truth or avoid the truth of what has been going on.

What choices you've made in the past that have created your life up until this point?

And I want to say something right here.

I'm in no way a victim blaming right now.

I know some people have gotten into some very abusive situations or have been stuck in very damaging and hurtful patterns,

And I'm not talking about that.

And I'm not saying that that is your fault.

I'm saying that we need to look at the choices we've made in life up until this point with the eyes of compassion and saying,

Well,

It makes sense and I can understand how this has happened up until this point because of,

You know,

This scenario or this has happened or that's happened to me.

And I didn't have an ability to discern between people and I didn't learn how to be more aware of certain people and all those things.

So it's just taking stock of what has happened.

It's not blaming you.

And that's why the second piece,

The next episode you're going to hear is going to be about acceptance and moving into acceptance as the second pillar.

Now,

Going back to clarity.

Another way to look at it,

So I'm going to give you several angles of how you can look at this and how you can start to unravel and let go of the past.

Another way to look at this is uncovering your blind spots.

So what is getting in your way?

What are your obstacles?

What trips you up?

What triggers you?

And what are you doing to cope?

These are all clues.

You can think of yourself as the private investigator for your own love life,

Your own psyche.

And you're taking your magnifying glass out and you're really looking at stuff and saying,

Wow,

This is what happens when I meet this kind of guy.

Or this is what happens when I go on a dating app and I'm upset or I'm feeling vulnerable or just triggered.

This is what I do.

And these are the kind of guys I go on a date with.

And this is what I say.

And you're mapping it all out.

You're giving yourself a very clear path and map to show what you've been doing.

And these are all clues to look at what are your blind spots.

So maybe you're very aware of a lot of things you do,

But you're not particularly aware of where it's coming from.

When you start to do this investigative healing,

You can see like,

Oh,

I never made that connection that when I go out with a guy and he has to make a phone call or he doesn't seem present and he seems like he's got one foot out the door that I start to really amp up my,

You know,

Trying to get attention and I say crazy things or I almost desperately throw out one thing after another as a hook to try to keep his attention.

So that's just an example of saying,

Oh,

This is really a blind spot and I never realized that this whole pattern is connected to my father or it's connected to the way I was raised and how I had to get attention in to get love.

And so you're not only you're uncovering those connections and blind spots,

You're connecting the dots.

So these are all really beautiful ways,

Different ways to look at how you can start letting go,

Getting to clarity and uncovering your blind spots.

Another way to do this is through boundaries.

This might seem counterintuitive or it's like,

What does this have to do with it?

But this is about having the awareness of where you end and someone else begins.

This is where you look at your self identity or how you see yourself.

This is also looking at how your trust issues and insecurities inform your decisions and choices.

Once you get a handle on that and you start,

You know,

You could start journaling and really diving into this and spending a couple of even 10 minutes every morning on the topic of letting go of the past.

And you can just kind of go down different rabbit holes.

And when you think about boundaries,

Just asking yourself,

Well,

Have I really been too open or have I been giving too much of my energy to other people?

And do I get myself blurred with other people?

And so if you're a very intuitive or sensitive person,

You may get tangled up in people's energy and emotions and start to,

It's like,

That's where you lose yourself.

You lose,

Where is my energy?

And what am I feeling?

And what are they feeling?

And why do I get caught up in these things?

And that's a boundary issue.

And it also keeps you stuck in the past.

It keeps you cycling through the same things because the boundaries are still like full of holes or wide open.

You know,

Where it's like you're giving too much of yourself on these dates or giving a guy too much of a chance or saying,

Well,

I have to really try to work this out because I really want a relationship.

And so this is where we can connect the dots between letting go of the past and your boundaries.

And it's about asking yourself,

What were my boundaries like in my past relationships?

Did I let things slide?

Did I say,

Well,

You know,

He was tired that day or he wasn't available for me because he was going through something at work and making excuses and being very much always available with a ton of excuses for somebody else.

That is a boundary issue.

That's an emotional boundary issue and a mental boundary issue.

So all of these,

Again,

Are leading to clues to show you where you're holding on to the past,

Where you're still recreating these same scenarios in dates,

In going out with someone and kind of meeting the same person over and over again and looking at those pieces.

So to recap,

We want to really find a deep level of awareness.

And that's the how.

That's how you start to let go of the past.

Another way to look at it is you're finding your truth.

You're really discovering what you have lived,

What's your lived experience in relationships up until this point.

And the way you do that is you dive into the three different areas of that,

Getting to the clarity and root of things.

Where are you right now and what has led you to this to this spot in relationships and what has led you to keep experiencing the same things over and over again?

And remember,

We're not using this as a way to beat ourselves up.

There's no judgment here.

You want to uncover your blind spots by asking yourself,

What is tripping you up?

What is triggering me?

What am I doing to cope with that?

And what am I really hiding or running away from?

And start to move towards those blind spots and asking yourself,

What can I uncover and learn and find out about myself?

Where can I find the truth here?

And so that I may let go of the past and move forward and create a different experience.

And then we look at the boundaries.

So what have you been putting up with?

And what is your identity of yourself?

How do you see yourself in the grand scheme of things of in a relationship and dating?

How do you see yourself?

And do you really know where your line in the sand is?

Where is your boundary for yourself?

Where do you end and someone else begins?

That's a very important thing to dive into.

I wanted to end off with some reflective questions and then some other practical ways that you can start letting go of the past.

I love journaling.

So if I haven't said in past episodes,

I've been journaling since I was something like 12 years old and writing stories and just really using the written word as a way to deeply heal and express my true authentic self,

Which I wasn't able to do in my home life.

So it was a beautiful outlet for me to heal and express who I truly am.

And this goes back to any type of healing you do and including letting go of the past.

Journaling is a beautiful tool to do that.

If you don't enjoy writing and you just want to express yourself,

Another beautiful way is to record your own voice.

So even if you don't have a podcast,

You can still record your reflections into an app on your phone and have sort of like aha moments because you're like recording and processing at the same time.

So I actually,

The more I speak,

The more I learn and heal.

And like I do that through writing.

So I'm using that as a form of expression.

So you can speak the truth or you can write the truth.

Either way is beautiful because it will get you into into a space where you're like,

Wow,

I never saw that connection before.

I never realized that.

I never realized that about myself.

I never saw the connection there.

And so journaling is a beautiful way to let go of the past.

One example you can do is in the morning,

Brain dump your fears around knowing yourself.

This is a great way to get to any fears of knowing the truth about yourself.

And again,

This is not some scary realization.

Sometimes we just are not used to knowing ourself on a deep level and it can feel scary.

And so sometimes something like inconsequential could all of a sudden come out and you're writing like,

Wow,

I'm afraid to know myself because then I'm going to be visible or I'm going to be shining more brightly and that seems scary.

So even discovering something like that is really powerful and will help you to move in the direction of where you want to go and letting go of the past identities,

How you see yourself,

Etc.

And then you can ask yourself,

You know,

Why is it important for me to have this awareness to let go of the past?

Some things you can tell yourself is awareness is the ticket to freedom.

From the place of awareness,

You can release the unconscious hold it has on me to carry the pattern on,

Continuing to go on the dating merry-go-round,

For example.

So you can journal around that topic,

Around that theme.

Another question,

Reflective question,

Would be how will it change your life when you let go of the past?

What will you be available for once you let go of this baggage?

And that's very deeply reflective.

And you can do any of these as an exercise or if you're in the car,

You can start just speaking out loud and talking through it verbally.

That's a very important healing tool is just expressing yourself.

If you have time to write these things out,

You can also do that as a daily practice.

I highly recommend it.

And so I've got a couple of other tips and tools that you can use.

I've used EFT tapping for several years,

And it's extremely important tool and effective tool to release emotions because it actually works with your meridians.

And as you do the tapping point,

It will actually release energy that is stuck in the body.

And it's may sound a little far fetched,

But when you actually do it,

It's very,

Very powerful.

I learned a technique from my mentors who taught me a different way of doing it,

Where you don't actually tap on the points.

You just pick one point,

For example,

On the chin,

And you start tapping on the chin and speak your truth,

Tell your story.

And so in this case,

You would tell the story of your past and all the things that have upset you about past relationships.

And this is where you're talking in a negative sense.

So you're not changing to positive affirmations at this point because you're releasing.

So you're only going to talk about the things that are upsetting and painful to you.

And you'll be surprised because the more you talk and you keep tapping,

You'll feel emotions,

You'll feel energy moving.

You may start with the tears,

You may have yawning,

You may feel a sense of releasing emotions or energy.

And that's when you know that you've had a release.

And you can say,

Yeah,

I've released a whole bunch of stuff today.

So that's a really great way to do the EFT tap tapping.

And then making decisions and intentions to let go.

So you don't even have to really know what you're letting go of,

You can say,

I intend to let go of my past relationships and patterns and clear that and move forward with a new experience.

And that simple and very powerful way to move forward and let go of the past.

So I hope this has been helpful.

And I'm very,

Very happy to share this with you,

This beautiful framework I've been using.

And next episode,

We're going to dive into the second piece,

Which is love and letting in the let love in technique.

This is the love part.

So this is about acceptance and self love.

And we're going to talk about all the ins and outs of that part of the framework next time.

In the meantime,

Remember,

Love is closer than you think.