I did not attract romantic attention, or I attracted unwanted attention. When I started getting asked on dates, I experienced what I felt like failure over and over. I never felt truly seen, heard, or wanted in partnership. I did not receive the commitment I so desperately wanted, or I rejected dates who offered it quickly.

Unsurprisingly, dating brought me many flavors of pain and heartbreak. 
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Each time I thought I had broken the cycle and found real romance, I was proven wrong again; inevitably, I would be left, down and discouraged, if not flat out depressed.

Finally, a man said the golden words: he wanted to marry me.
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We were just friends, but he was one of my best friends at the time and I was deeply, madly in love with him. I believed 100% in the commitment he promised... until 3 months later, when he began to systematically break my spirit and heart.

Not knowing whether I could live without him, but knowing I couldn't spend my life with someone so willing to crush me verbally, I slowly and painfully detached myself from him and the future I had envisioned with him.

Once again, I felt reminded that I was not meant for love.

I spent several years recovering from the attachment, picking up the pieces of my heart, and reconciling myself to a romance-free life. One without relationship, nuclear family, or children - the future I had wanted and lost.

At just the right moment, I was asked out by a man who was interested in me intellectually, though not especially sexually. Still, we had a connection, and I accepted this as the best I could do. We didn't sleep together, but he opened me up to a philosophical query around love.

I discovered that the keys to great dating weren’t a secret, I just hadn’t learned them. I began to apply my studies to my dating life - and my dating results changed immediately. 

It felt like a 180 degree overnight transformation from what I had known before. I went from hopeless and disempowered in love to skilled and confident at creating connection and intimacy.

And, I found the relationship I was looking for - the Big Love that made me giddy and grounded me at the same time, the one that opened me up to deeper intimacy with my partner and connected me more profoundly to myself.

The more I talked to others about my journey, the more stories I heard about modern dating disenchantment. So many women felt that love had run them ragged or, like me, that it wasn't meant for them.

Why aren’t all women taught that we have this power to connect with our sensual, desirable, relational part of ourselves? I wondered.