You changed for somebody else – you invested all that effort. Then they stormed out and you’re left with an “empty” version of yourself. You shoved your square peg through a round hole and come out damaged and unrecognizable.

Your return on investment (ROI) sucks!

Now begins the long-ass journey back to… yourself. This stage of the process has you starting at minus zero. Because the investment you made wasn’t actually for you – it was for someone else. And you got left behind with nothing to show for all of your hard work.

When you change for someone else, they’re the one that leaves with all of your changes. It’s like shopping for new clothes that you never get to wear. And when you get dumped you don’t even get your clothes back, you end up in tattered rags.

Change is good, but who keeps the ROI? Stop getting ripped off. Invest in yourself. Invest in your own growth, confidence and success.

“Why do I attract crazy men???? Please someone, tell me why this happens??” A friend of mine recently asked this question on Facebook.

She may have asked this question in jest, out of frustration, or she may even be looking for an honest answer.

#1: Don’t offer somebody your phone number if you don’t want them to call you. Especially if you don’t want to go out on a date and have sex with them. It’s okay to exchange business cards if it’s for business/professional reasons.*

#2: Don’t hand somebody your car-keys if you don’t want them to drive.

#3: Where the fuck are you meeting these freaks? In other words, where are you hanging out that freaks can easily interact with you?

*You do have a business/professional reason for meeting people, right?

True friendship comes when silence between two people is comfortable.
~ Dave Tyson Gentry

Part of dating is to discover compatibility, which includes being comfortable around each other. Silence is one of the best tests for maturity. Shut up and see what happens.

It requires self-confidence to strike up a conversation with somebody you think is attractive. It requires an equal – and strikingly more mature – amount of self-confidence to graciously accept that the attraction isn’t mutual.

It takes a “real” man – a man with self-respect and self-confidence – to admit that he finds a woman attractive and is also willing to be supportive of her choice of husband/boyfriend.

It’s completely normal to want more than “just being friends” with someone we’re attracted to. We want sex, too. But that’s the age-old problem: most people only see the sex, but place no other “value” on the friendship.

Here’s the normal routine at a dance club: boy gets up nerve to ask cute girl to dance. Cute girl turns him down. He sulks back to his guy-friends and describes her as a bitch. I’ve heard it a thousand times from my gal friends. All he saw in the cute girl was sex and nothing more – no value, no worth.

It takes a “real” man to admit…

Traditional dating has always been a form of slimy used car salesperson’s bait-and-switch mixed with a too-good-to-be-true job interview.

Ladies: the guy that eagerly listened to you talk about your existing male friends (among your many friends) and then suddenly, but politely, asks you to never mention your male friends in front of him again…

BIG, FAT RED FLAG!

That type of request is actually a demand. It’s a “do as I say or else” demand. It’s the tearing down of your life and your support structure!

A man that you’re dating who cannot be friends with your male friends is no man at all. Likewise, if your existing/new male friends cannot be friends with your date/boyfriend/husband then they’re not real friends.

Assumption: your male friends are supportive of you and aren’t assholes, douchebags and/or idiots!

Excerpt from: “9 Things You Simply Must Do – to Succeed in Love and Life” by Dr. Henry Cloud

I have seen lives transformed when people begin to adopt the strategy of asking themselves, What can I do to make this better?

Miracles have occurred. I recently attended the wedding of a woman who had complained to me a couple of years ago saying, “I wish I were married, but God just has not chosen that for me at this point in my life.”

She passively blamed her single status entirely on God. It never occurred to her that she might do something to help him.

I challenged this woman to take responsibility and be proactive. God would help her, but she needed to give him a little cooperation.

Here is the exciting fact: she had been stagnant in her dating life for longer than it took to get moving and get married.

Don’t look for someone who will be loyal to “you”; look for someone who will be loyal to “themselves.” You either agree with their loyalties or you don’t. A person’s “character” is far more reliable/measurable than their “loyalty.”

Toastmasters Speech #2 – Dating from Reid Walley on Vimeo.

“Dating – What we “put” up with we “end” up with.” And a big thanks to my friend Alisa Ayn Daly for the fantastic phrase that ended up as my tagline: What we “put” up with we “end” up with. Everybody loved it!

Toastmasters speech #2 (5-7 min). Official time: 6:36. Capital City Toastmasters #142.