#3 How To Swipe Right, Stay Safe And Have Fun Along The Way

Mark reveals the results of the first 30 days of the Tinder project and emphasizes the importance of setting boundaries and handling conflict with finesse to attract quality men. He also discusses the balance between trusting intuition and logic when it comes to online dating. The goal is to humanize the online space and meet people in person to truly gauge compatibility.

Keywords
Tinder project, online dating, boundaries, conflict, intuition, insecurity, trust, character, effort, investment, emotional availability

Takeaways
Set strict time limits for online dating to avoid overwhelm.
Train men how to treat you by setting boundaries and handling conflict with finesse.
Trust your intuition, but also consider the biases and limitations of online dating.
Focus on meeting people in person to truly gauge compatibility.
Look for effort, investment, and emotional availability in potential partners.

Chapters
00:00
The First 30 Days of the Tinder Project
04:46
Setting Boundaries and Handling Conflict
11:30
Trusting Intuition vs. Logic
17:47
Humanizing the Online Space
24:20
Meeting People in Person for True Compatibility

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 4:46 Setting Boundaries and Handling Conflict
• 11:30 Trusting Intuition vs. Logic
• 17:47 Humanizing the Online Space
• 25:18 Meeting People For True Compatibility

Transcript

[Speaker 1]
G'day and welcome to the Tinder Project, the podcast where a straight Aussie man attempts to survive 365 days dating online as an American woman. I'm your host Mark Rosenfeld, Australia's dating coach for women. I'm here with my sidekick, self-love coach Teal Elizabeth, and together we have one mission to make meeting good men fun and easy for you.

Let's give it a go. Can I survive 365 straight days dating online as a woman? What were the results of the first 30 days of the Tinder Project and how can we be open to new matches while staying safe and trusting ourselves online?

Welcome to the Tinder Project. I am here with the amazing Teal Elizabeth. Teal, great to have you here as always.

[Speaker 2]
Hi Mark, good to see you today.

[Speaker 1]
How are you this fine evening, Teal?

[Speaker 2]
Oh, I'm doing good. Loving the summer weather we've been having. It's been so fun.

[Speaker 1]
It's great to have you here, Teal. Loving your podcast voice as always. So Teal, we have a couple of interesting topics going on today.

The Tinder Project is underway.

[Speaker 2]
Yes, I really want to hear what's been going on. You've been keeping me in the dark and I really, I know our listeners are going to be very curious. You've been egging them on, teasing them on for a while now.

So how have you been getting yourself into now?

[Speaker 1]
What have I been getting myself into? Well, I want to talk a little bit about the warmup month to begin with. It's interesting because now that the official project has started, for a couple of reasons that I may explain today or in a couple of episodes time, I actually started on match.com, but the warmup was all done on Tinder. So just before my beautiful little girl was born, I said, all right, roughly her due date is around 30 days away. So I'm going to jump on and do 30 days now as a bit of a warmup. And I tracked everything that I did.

I went online as my wife. I use Tinder. Now why Tinder?

Because Tinder is the OG of dating apps, I guess technically matches all of it. Tinder is the one we all know. Tinder also has a bit of a rep as a very difficult one to master.

It's sometimes known as a hookup app. But what I like about Tinder is everyone, not everyone, but the base user base on there is massive, which means that all sorts of people are on there. So I thought, okay, there's going to be no filtering experience that's quite as challenging as Tinder.

So I'll take Tinder on for my first experiment with this. And it was really interesting. So here's the numbers for the 30 days.

I have some numbers to report to you today, Teal.

[Speaker 2]
Are you okay with numbers? It's not really my vibe, but I love that you do the numbers. So you do the numbers.

I'll do the numbers.

[Speaker 1]
This is why we balance each other out right here, Teal. Okay. So in the month, in the 30 days, I viewed 122 men in 30 days.

So breaking that down, 122 divided by 30, we viewed about four men each day.

[Speaker 2]
When you say view, can you clarify what a view is?

[Speaker 1]
Looked at the profile. Okay.

[Speaker 2]
We didn't interact with anyone, you're just looking.

[Speaker 1]
Just the viewing. So you can see immediately, I'm not burning myself out here. I'm literally looking at four each day.

Now, some of those days I probably looked at eight and some of those days I looked at zero, but the average across the span was four. So we looked at four profiles each day. Of those four, which was 122 for the month, we liked 40 profiles as in four zero.

So there was 40 guys that we clicked on and we basically said, yep, I'll match with you. Now we were working from the likes queue. Because the likes queue are people who have already pre-vetted you, that's Tinder gold.

We already knew these people had liked us back. So we were choosing from people who had already showed a dollop of interest, which is nice to have. So everyone we liked, we matched with.

We didn't have anybody that didn't match us back because we were basically looking at people who already liked us. Of those 40 men that we matched with, 33 had conversations with us. So we had 33 conversations for the month.

Some of them we started, some of them the guy started. So there was only seven men where we matched with and the conversation didn't start. And this is the cool part.

Of those 33 men that we chatted to, we received 11 phone calls. So I forgot to mention at the start, I had a strict time limit of 20 minutes a day for this. So I really encourage my clients, you, the listeners, stick to a time limit.

Set yourself a time limit because online is an impossible task. It's like an email list that adds a hundred emails for every 10 you answer. So the only way you can work with it and overwhelm is one of the biggest things that makes all of us hate online.

One of the best ways to deal with overwhelm is to set yourself incredibly strict time gaps with it. Now you have to balance that because if you only go on once a week, realistically, if you're only talking to me once a week and you're a girl and I'm a guy, I'm going to think you're not interested because you don't seem very active. So there's a balance.

But basically I said, look, 20 minutes a day is what I'm going to restrict myself to and see what I can do in that time. So we had 11 phone calls for the month using only 20 minutes a day. And do you know what, Teal?

I was impressed. We had some pretty quality guys. And I have this vouched by my clients because my clients often watch me doing the project.

So it wasn't just kind of me doing it on my own, but we had some pretty decent guys giving us phone calls. Now, in this case, my wife is 35. So there's different age groups.

And currently I'm working with a 57-year-old profile, one of my clients. So the age group in the Tinder project will vary. But you know what?

I was pretty impressed. Some of these guys had life set up for themselves. In fact, a lot of them did.

Remember we had already picked the top 40 out of 122. So they'd already been somewhat vetted. But there was a couple of guys that were really solid.

Most of these guys actually called when they said they were going to call. They put in the effort. They didn't take long to get off the app.

They didn't want to text marathon or to stuff around too much on text. And there was even a couple, I spoke last week on the podcast, where we've got the text that says, Hey, I've kind of had this personal emergency, not really emotionally available anymore the next day. And there was even a couple who followed up a couple of times and said, Hey, I know you're kind of off the market now, but just wanted to check in if everything is okay.

[Speaker 2]
Oh my gosh.

[Speaker 1]
Isn't that sweet?

[Speaker 2]
There's so many good men out there.

[Speaker 1]
Isn't that sweet?

[Speaker 2]
Thank you for helping highlight this. There are so many sweet men out there.

[Speaker 1]
Happened like three times from the guys. And I thought, damn, that's awesome. So of course I responded.

I gave them a bit. Thank you. Hey, thank you so much.

You know, I wish there were more men in the world like you. I'm just not in the place to date right now, but whichever girl gets you is going to be so lucky. And thanks again for reaching out.

So, you know, I gave him a nice send off, but it just really highlighted to me that look, Tinder is a shit show. I'm not going to pretend it's not. I say that to my clients all the time.

I call online dating. I call it West Pandora because it's like the wild, wild West. You get a bit of everything everywhere, but amongst that mess, there are some real diamonds.

And if you know what you're doing in there, if you stick to a small, but consistent process, and if you really approach it with the right attitude, Teal, I think as you spoke about last week, there's just so many cool people that are there. It can really be a great experience.

[Speaker 2]
I'm so glad that you are sharing this and helping bring inspiration back to the online apps from something that can feel so frustrating and overwhelming and annoying. This sounds fun. I mean, I wish in some, don't tell my husband, but I could do this again.

[Speaker 1]
We'll bleep that out of the final recording. We'll get Teal, you know what we could do Teal, we'll get you going on as a man later in the project.

[Speaker 2]
We'll see about that.

[Speaker 1]
We'll see if I could talk him into that. It is true though, because it's, and I empathize with everyone, because we've all gone there and we've experienced shitty internet strangers. It's not fun.

It doesn't make you feel good. It is unfortunately a reality of the environment. When you're on Tinder, now I didn't get any explicitly sexual pics, I have to say.

[Speaker 2]
I was, that was going to be my next question. How many of those interactions were dick pics? Just let's be honest.

None. None. None.

[Speaker 1]
None.

[Speaker 2]
Wow.

[Speaker 1]
I think part of that is the makeup of the profile and how you manage the profile. I think there are certain images that you can portray if you're going too sexual or actually even more so if you look too nice girl, guys can have this unconscious feeling that they can push the boundaries with you and get away with it.

[Speaker 2]
Interesting. Interesting. This is really good.

Ladies are going to listen up on this.

[Speaker 1]
I have one client and she asked me this. She was in a marriage previously. Lots of her boundaries were walked on.

I know the term narcissist gets thrown around a lot, but I think it was true in this case. In fact, I get quite a few clients like this. This particular client said, Mark, I had this guy in my life, got all my boundaries walked on for most of my marriage and I still seem to attract that.

I've still got these guys that act stalkerish or try to get me to sleep with them very quickly or just think they can get away with these comments. She said, what is it in my vibe? Why do I seem to get more of those guys?

I said to her, we'll call her Kim. I said to her, look, Kim, first of all, this has been your history and history has momentum. When a client first comes to me, they've still got all the old momentum of their old life, even their old relationships, their old family relationships, all of that, all their old friendships.

All of their old patterns have momentum. You're never going to change them instantly. It was interesting because this client, she had been a nice girl for so long and pretty weak with her boundaries for so long that she had literally the muscles on her face had shaped so that you could sense if you were really looking that she struggled with boundaries.

And it's little things that guys pick up that if this has been your history, unfortunately, some guys go, oh, I can get away with it with this one. It's your vibe, it's your face. It might not even be anything you've said to them.

Another client I caught the other day, we were practicing boundary setting and I could freaking tell she was only on audio. I couldn't see her face, but she was saying it with a smile. I could hear it in her voice.

And I knew that guys are not going to take her seriously, her boundaries seriously if she says them always with a smile. There is a time and a place to deliver boundaries playfully. I think that's a great skill to have.

But if you can't occasionally deliver them without a smile, then guys go, hey, what's the worst that can happen? I'll send her a dick pic and she'll maybe smile at me some more.

[Speaker 2]
That was a great invitation. So I don't think the profile attracted that.

[Speaker 1]
And I did get a couple of innuendos, but they were soft and they were tenuous. You could tell that the guy was just trying his luck to see if we could get away with it. And as soon as we went, haha, nice try, where's the date invite?

He immediately pulled back on that.

[Speaker 2]
So can I just double down on what you just said here? Because I think this is a really important part of the finesse. Your numbers are fabulous.

And I love you showing that this is totally possible. And there is so much finesse in those early interactions. And this is something that I love supporting women with, too, is deepening into that place of such unapologetic confidence in themselves that they're not going into the dating apps looking for men to validate those insecurities within themselves.

They're coming into it with this sassy, I don't give a shit kind of attitude and I'm warm and loving and all the things. And that sweet spot is what's so magnetic to men. And what you said was, haha, nice try, where's the dating invite?

That is that nice combo of confident and playful and warm and inviting.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. And I think especially when you're meeting people over text, if you go straight to hard boundaries, you'll be effective, but not attractive. As in you'll get respect and guys will leave you alone, but you will throw the baby out with the bath water.

And I like the word finesse because that's really what it is. It's like you want to use enough sort of weight to get the job done. But anytime you're setting a boundary, if you vastly overdo it, then the other person's not going to feel safe with you, essentially.

So if a guy says something like, oh, can I just tell you on the day of the date when I'm going to meet you? And you're really a woman who needs to know the day before. If you go and say, no, that's not my standards.

My standards are that you tell me the day before, you're out because you overcooked that. And really that's coming from a place of you deep down being scared that the guy is not going to meet your standards. So you're kind of being super protective and beating him to the punch.

Your walls go right up and he's going to go, oh, what did I stand on there? I'm going to tiptoe away from that one into the background here.

[Speaker 2]
This is so important that we're talking about. So I know it's a little side tangent, but I think it's so incredibly important because I noticed this a lot with women that come to me as two is this boundaries work is so hard sometimes to understand how to do it in a way that is soft and firm at the same time, but it is so much a part of the attractive process. And I think what you're really highlighting here is men are picking up on those little interactions and the little things that you're saying.

And so how do you stand in those boundaries and still make them feel safe, which is something I know we're going to talk about today.

[Speaker 1]
Because it's confidence. It's like confident people get their boundaries done, but they get them done in a relaxed way. Truly confident people.

Like think of a mob boss. Okay. I know that's kind of an extreme example, but he's just like super chill.

He's hanging out there and he's like, oh, you pissed me off. I'll just kill you. And you're like, oh shit.

But he's not like, he's not yelling in your face or telling you what to do. It's very relaxed. And so public speaking, if someone can do it and be relaxed, they look the most confident.

The rock, when a building's blowing up and he's just walking away, being all relaxed in some Hollywood movie. It's like getting things done while being relaxed is the ultimate sign of confidence. So boundaries and conflict are the biggest thing that's going to make your relationships great or terrible for your entire relationship.

And it starts as Teal says from the very first text. And if you can train a guy how to treat you using effective boundaries and conflict with the finesse of I'll use whatever force is necessary, but I can do it relaxed in a relaxed demeanor, you're going to not only be perceived as very confident and attractive and as someone who gets treated well, but you're going to have the guy investing more because now he's being trained how to treat you. And that little habit, as silly as it might sound, it could be like when he organizes the first date or something or whether or not he calls you or keeps texting.

These little conflicts become the building blocks for how you do the rest of the relationship.

[Speaker 2]
Yes. Powerful, powerful, Mark. I love, love, love everything you're saying.

Yes. And you know, so many women say, well, I just don't know if I can trust men. I don't know if I can trust the guys out there.

And what I say back to that is, is it trusting men or is it trusting yourself?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, it's good. Good, good.

[Speaker 2]
Usually 99% of the time is I don't actually trust myself. I don't trust that. If I say a boundary that if they push it, I'm not going to give in or that I'm not going to get anxious or worried or, or stress, or I'm going to mess this up.

Right. A really confident woman knows she's not going to mess it up because she's being honoring herself and she's respecting herself and she's going to say what she needs to say. And if they don't like it too bad, that's okay.

And I think that that's a really important piece of this.

[Speaker 1]
And I think what you're touching on there is you can be relaxed with your words. If you trust your actions.

[Speaker 2]
Yes.

[Speaker 1]
But if you don't trust your actions, you feel you have to do everything with your words and then your words get really full on. And the person senses that lack of confidence because deep down the words are full on because you don't actually trust the actions that are backing them.

[Speaker 2]
Yes. Yes. And that goes into the deeper energy and you don't even have to be, like you said, talking to them on the phone.

It could come through in a simple text, but they are feeling that energy underneath that. They can feel the insecurity coming through those words. Even if on the surface, you're like, that sounds great.

They know that's not great. I just touched something bad and I don't want to go into that. That just seems like high maintenance drama.

I don't want to deal with it.

[Speaker 1]
And I'd like to have a longer conversation with you about emotional safety at some point and being triggered by your partner and how to handle that. Because when you're triggered and how you respond to that trigger is going to be a big part of all of our relationships and whether or not they can be healthy in the long run. And so even at some point, every guy is going to step out of line.

I sure as hell have stepped out of line with Sam at times and she's had to give me feedback on that. Every guy you meet will at some point step out of line. So how you do conflict in those moments, can you get the job done while keeping your heart open?

That's really the big thing there. And if you can do that, guys, you can have great relationships for the rest of your life. And it's a lot like training a dog.

It's like, if you get it really right in the first six months, you have occasional upkeep, but most of the adult life, you have a well-behaving dog.

[Speaker 2]
I love that this analogy of men is just keeps coming back.

[Speaker 1]
I know, we just have dog metaphors every episode, don't we? But in all seriousness, if you don't train a dog the first six months, what do you have the whole rest of the life? You have a misbehaving adult.

It is really the same with men. It's like you train them how to treat you. So I have clients write out so many boundaries to you before they've even gone on a date, like pre-first date boundaries and then first date boundaries.

I have them write out heaps of them. It's not to make them high maintenance, impossible women. It's really to do two things.

Number one, it's to actually have them see, oh, there's actually guys who are doing like all these things well already. So ironically, having more boundaries makes you more appreciative because you start to see all the things people are doing well. Oh, you're already doing that.

You're 10 boundaries. The guy's doing nine things well. So you have nine things to appreciate.

Then you also have one thing to give him feedback on. So you have one little conflict to practice with him and it's still a nine to one ratio. So the guy's feeling overall appreciated, but you still have that one opportunity to build a relationship in the conflict.

And as silly as it might sound, like when a guy calls you or how far in advance he plans the date or what's okay to text and what's not, those little things. And when you train a guy what's okay and not okay with relaxed confidence, that becomes his perception of you and how he operates with you as your teammate for the rest of the relationship.

[Speaker 2]
Yes. I think what that also does, what I'm just picking up on that is that it just helps women understand what their boundaries even are so that they're not in the moment being like, oh, what do we do? What do we do?

Or the whole pushing it down and pretending it's fine when it's not fine. And then that just muddies the energy of it too. So just having the awareness of what actually feels okay to me versus what do I think I should be okay with versus what really actually doesn't feel good to me.

Right.

[Speaker 1]
And you're not always going to get your perfect what's ideal, but there's a green light and a yellow light and a red light. Sometimes it'll be in the yellow light and you may have to warn the guy. Sometimes it'll be a green light and you can appreciate the guy.

Sometimes it'll slip into the red light and that's when the feedback and the conflict happens. And these little things in dating are just so important and so powerful to you.

[Speaker 2]
I love it. Oh my God. I feel like I just covered so much, but there's still so much beauty to come.

Good thing we have an entire podcast to talk about this, right? This is so great. So this then goes into my next question, which is just how much do we actually trust our head, which is the boundaries that we've clearly written out, right?

These are our logical things versus our heart. And I think, you know, really finding that finesse too, right? Because part of it is trusting the gut, trusting the heart, trusting the intuition.

And then another part of it is logically, what makes sense? Does this person check the boxes? Where do you feel like you find that balance with women that you're coaching?

[Speaker 1]
So there's a lot to unpack there. And I think one of the first things I'd train women on is just noting the difference between intuition and insecurity, because they can feel very similar and they're both unconscious.

[Speaker 2]
Okay. Tell me all about this. This is going to be great.

[Speaker 1]
Well, I typically find insecurity is very charged. It wants you to take an action quickly. It usually comes with a story, something you're cycling around in your head, and it's typically feels much more like a fight or flight response.

So because it's loud, because it's charged, because it's action orientated, and because when you're swimming around in online dating, I do find insecurity can override intuition a lot. And you've got to be aware of kind of which is which in the process, especially when you haven't met people yet. I'm a pretty good people reader, and I wouldn't even pretend to know much about the women's profiles I would see, let's say I'm online as a man, before I've actually spoken to them.

So as someone who's not as connected to my intuition as a woman might be, or say an average woman might be, I really need to get a phone check to go, okay, I want to talk to this person. I think there's absolutely value in intuition, of course, but it's going to be more calm, centered. It's usually there when the insecurities aren't around, and it's usually kind of the centered advice you give to your best friend or someone else in the situation.

So sometimes it's a little harder to find, and you've got to stop and listen to it. My general advice is, look, before we've met people, there are so many biases. I could list tens of them, fundamental attribution error, consensus bias, confirmation bias, extrinsic incentive bias, attentional bias, group attribution error.

There's so many that occur before we've talked to a stranger that, in my opinion, especially if you're wanting to meet people, then the goal, first and initially, should be meeting people, which is get human beings on the phone. You don't go to a party and try to pre-vet everyone that you're going to talk to before you've even said a word to them. Get to the fucking party, talk to a bunch of people, and then if someone's weird or creepy, you can walk away in like 30 seconds.

So I'm a little hesitant with pre-meeting. Of course, there's certain people who just give you weird vibes over text, and obviously you have to make sure your vibe is good, otherwise you're part of the problem contributing to that. There's a few text conversations that are clearly a bit weird, but I really encourage women in terms of when I talk about boundaries, I'm more talking about how the guy treats you as opposed to paper traits.

So I'm not talking about boundaries relating to religion or kids or politics or any of that. When I say boundaries, I'm specifically talking about his treatment of you. Is he texting enough, too much, too little?

Is he planning the date, planning a phone call, or staying in text lane? That's what I'm referring to there. So that's really what I'm listening for.

And if he's doing those things well, as long as there's no glaring and blatantly obvious incompatibilities, like he clearly wants kids and you clearly don't, then talk to him on the freaking phone. That's how I go about it. So look at how he's treating you.

If he seems to be a person who has reasonable character, just talk to him like you talk to him at a party. As I say, if there's a glaring incompatibility, don't. But in that case, he shouldn't be making your top few matches for the day anyway.

He would have not made your top three people for the day. So I sort of say talk to people unless there's blatant rudeness or disrespect or something really obvious in the chat. Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk to people.

After that, now you've got the information, your brain can engage, and you can figure out, could I spend an hour talking to this person in real life? If you can, meet up with them. Once you're going on 10, 20, 30 dates, if you're finding that, hang on a minute, I'm meeting up with a lot of people who are not a click for me, then start getting more restrictive.

Most clients who come to me typically are too restrictive at the beginning, and they're not talking to anyone or very few people. So I would much rather see them, let's get out there. Let's be social.

Let's meet humans. And then if we've got too many humans, we can dial it back. That's my approach.

Curious to hear yours.

[Speaker 2]
I 100% agree. And I was literally just talking about this with some of my ladies today who both were coming to me being like, Teal, I'm out there and I'm just not attracted to anyone I'm seeing out here. I'm just not seeing anyone that remotely gets me excited.

So what do I do? And I hear that and I get it. And I understand that's disappointing.

And we do have to lower our expectations a little bit. Because like you said, I think everything you said was so spot on. We can't know who somebody is when we haven't even had a voice connection with them.

When we're just seeing a profile of a reflection of what this person might be, it's still in potential land. And so giving yourself that time to just get out there and meet people is the first step.

[Speaker 1]
I guarantee if I went on Hitch or Bumble, whatever it is now, and looked at 10 women's profiles and thought, okay, who do I immediately like, who could I, if I was single, see myself with? There'd be one or two that stand out. They probably have a beautiful photo or maybe they're a little bit sexy or whatever it is.

I guarantee if I met those 10 women in a room with almost certain conviction that the one or two I'd noticed would not be the two I'd get along best with in that lineup. And I've seen that again and again. It's like the woman I think is exactly my type, is either not emotionally available or she has no relationship skills, or she's kind of just out for sex, or maybe is feeling quite insecure when you meet her.

And the woman who was attractive, but I wouldn't have necessarily thought that, oh yeah, that's my person. Or maybe she was like a little more like regular looking and there's nothing wrong with that. That's great.

But I go and talk to her and she gets radiantly more attractive once I learn about her personality, once I learn about her confidence. I've had that experience so many times that it's just like, you can't know until you talk to people and try to figure it out before you do. I think it's dehumanizing.

[Speaker 2]
And that's the bummer of the online space is that it really, like you said, it has polarized men and women and it's pulled men and women apart. It's making people look very objectified versus if you had a whole slew of these men in a party, you would be so excited to be like, oh my God, look at all the men here. Just talk to all of them.

Yeah, exactly. Even if they weren't the most amazing 10 out of 10 on the planet, you're going to be excited because there's a lot of open, eligible men that are all looking at you, all wanting to give you attention, wanting to connect with you. You're not going to just diss them on the spot.

Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
And the guy with the weird eyebrow that online you would go, oh no, he has a weird eyebrow. I wouldn't look at him. At the party, you'd just be like, all right, whatever.

I'll talk to the guy with the weird eyebrow. And then you find out he's like really cool and you forget he even has a weird eyebrow within like 10 minutes of talking to him. So it's trying to bring the offline mindset into the online space and the way we humanize people in that space, which I think is so bloody important, Teal, if we're going to have success and bring men and women back together.

[Speaker 2]
And I think with that, you know, then women go, well, okay, I don't want to be settling, right? I don't want to just talk to every man. That's going to take forever.

And when do I actually bring in my values with this, right? When do I just give all these men chances and try to trust my instincts versus, you know, actually having values and standards. And what I say is keep the values and standards for a second, third date.

Like the first date really, and that the first interaction, the first impressions is just, can I enjoy being in this person's presence? Can we have a genuine, authentic back and forth exchange like we're doing right now, right? The values, the standards, the where do you want to be in your life?

Do you want kids? All that stuff can come later.

[Speaker 1]
And especially if you haven't had men recently who have been good character men, like haven't been doing what they said they would do. And their words match their actions and their action match their words. You know, they haven't been consistent with you.

Or if the men recently have been disrespectful, like get a few good character men and just start to experience that. They're not going to be your husband's most likely, but it's not just about the paper traits. It's so easy to rule everyone out on that.

The major boundaries you want to look at are around effort, investment, and emotional availability. Of course, the paper stuff still matters. You can't have everything.

[Speaker 2]
Can we slow that down so that women can write that down? What are the first three things? What are the top three things?

Ladies, listen to this.

[Speaker 1]
What did I say then? I said effort, investment, and availability.

[Speaker 2]
Beautiful.

[Speaker 1]
Beautiful.

[Speaker 2]
Are they putting in the effort? Are they investing in you? Yep.

And are they actually available emotionally and physically, right?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. Character. Overall, it's a measure of character.

And once you start getting more and more surrounded by good character men, you start to have better opinions of men, better experiences of men. You start to realize, oh, there's actually really good men around a lot that are treating me well. And there's good guys out there.

You enjoy meeting people again. You're not thinking about the outcome. And of course, when you're taking action, when you're out there, then it happens when you least expect it.

Yes. Yes.

[Speaker 2]
Beautiful, Mark. Beautiful.

[Speaker 1]
Teal, you're the best. Thanks for joining me today.

[Speaker 2]
I'm just so excited to see this journey for you as a woman and just all the beautiful hearts that you're probably going to break being such a sweet man. It's fine.

[Speaker 1]
Maybe I'll have a client referral system or something or I'll open a matchmaking practice. Can I grab you for a matchmaking service? I have someone who would be a good man.

Teal, it's been brilliant today. We could talk a lot more about that stuff, but we'll save it for a future week. Thanks for joining me.

If you're listening, it's been a pleasure having you here on the Tinder Project. Teal, thank you. Thank you, Mark.

You're awesome. Guys, thanks for joining us. Give us a review.

If you appreciate the podcast, we love the reviews on whatever platform you are listening to us on. See you.