SHE Asked Podcast

Dating After Divorce: What No One Tells You About Starting Over | SHE Asked + Donna Barnes

• Anna McBride

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Anna McBride sits down with relationship and breakup coach Donna Barnes — host of the Broken to Brave podcast — for an honest and hopeful conversation about starting over in love.

Together they explore what it means to rebuild your sense of self, open your heart again, and redefine love at any age. Donna shares insights from two decades of coaching, including why emotional readiness matters more than dating apps, the difference between confidence and self-esteem, and how to know if someone truly makes you feel loved.

Anna also opens up about her own story of healing after a 36-year marriage — sharing what she’s learned about self-worth, dating later in life, and giving yourself permission to begin again.

💫 What You’ll Learn:

• How to heal your identity after divorce or loss
• Common red flags and how to avoid repeating old patterns
• Why self-love is the foundation for every healthy relationship
• What to look for when dating in midlife
• How to move from “broken” to brave

🎧 Listen to Donna’s podcast: Broken to Brave
🌐 Learn more about Donna
💛 Connect with Anna

#SheAskedPodcast #DivorceRecovery #MidlifeLove #DatingAfterDivorce #EmotionalHealing

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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome back to She Asks Tools for Practical Hope. I'm your host, Anna McBride, and I am so excited that you're all here. We're being joined today by Donna Barnes, who is a relationship and breakup coach and host of the podcast Broken to Brave. Gotta be a story behind that title. You have over two decades of experience helping clients navigate heartbreak. You specialize in healing after loss, dating after divorce, and building healthy relationships through self-love and awareness. So I'm so glad that you're here, Donna. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you. It's my pleasure. And I understand that your approach is that you blend compassionate coaching with practical, no nonsense tools for emotional recovery, helping people release the pain of the past and open to new love at any age, which makes me feel comforted because I am getting older. Yeah, unfortunately, there's nothing we can all do about that. Yeah, so thank you. So I want to begin with a story, as I often do or always try to do on this podcast. I want to share what my personal story is around dating post-divorce. To give you context, I was married for a long time, for 36 years. Got married very young. We raised three children together, and the marriage ended about seven years ago. The divorce didn't happen until three years ago. So for the last seven years until recently, I was dating. And the circumstances that led to the finalization of the divorce, the separation that led to divorce, surrounded infidelity. And it wasn't me. However, I was participating in all of it. It's not a blame game here. It's more like I was married to somebody that I knew was struggling to be committed in the marriage, and I struggled to get out of it. So when it did end, and he did leave for one of these people who he had an affair with, I myself thought, okay, now I've got to do something for me. And one of the somethings was we were living, we had a farm outside of Philadelphia, and we had maintained an apartment in New York City. So I mostly moved permanently in New York at that time and started doing what a lot of women do, I know, and it certainly was my situation, was I was on every dating app that I could get myself into, yet unprepared. And one of the things that I decided to do because I had been married for so long and really didn't know what I wanted, I decided to hire an escort. So I dated an escort for a while in order to score from a controlled circumstance, right, what next might look like. The challenge with hiring an escort is no one told me not to fall in love with him, which I did, of course. And then that protracted that relationship and it became complicated. Yet it did end. And then I went from that relationship to another dating relationship, non-contractual, and yet it similarly wasn't prepared for that, nor was I prepared for my feelings related to it, how I was showing up in it. And to give you further context, when my marriage fell apart, I knew that I needed help. So I was working with a therapist and I was working in a 12-step recovery program to help me understand what was behind not only the choice of who I was married to, but to stay even though I wasn't happy and the circumstances were what they were. So I was working the program, I was working with a therapist, and I still kept pursuing dating, even though I was being advised maybe you should stop and get to know yourself and novel. However, I'm really getting to know myself, Donald, in a way that's awesome I never did before, and understand what some of the trauma and things that I experienced in my childhood, how that contributed to not only the dysfunction within my marriage, the dysfunction within myself, and identify what I need to work on to heal to be ready. Good for you. Yeah. Because I do want it. I want that part of my life to be explored. I just know, like, I need help from people like you, Donna, to help me understand how to fully transition from being coupled to the coupling ending to being an individual, right? And owning this part of my life. I just wanted to share that context so that we can talk about how some ideas from you and the work that you're doing to help women like me, who I know I'm not unique. A lot of women come out of long-term relationships, whether by divorce or through losing a partner somehow. Yeah. And they need help with that. So thank goodness to have people like you around the help of us.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_00:

I can't wait to hear from you as to what brought you to this work.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and that's what I was gonna say. My own journey is what brought me to this work, really, was just trying to figure it out for myself because I was a serial monogamous throughout my 20s. I just always went from one relationship to the next. And if I'm honest, I wasn't always faithful in a relationship because I didn't want to be alone. And if I got to a point where I realized I didn't really want this relationship anymore, I'd start shopping for the next one while I still had the comfort of a partner, which is completely unfair, really, to everybody. My brother actually has a degree in psychology, never really used it, but he's three years older than me. And he used to say to me, You need to be by yourself for a while. And I used to say, Why? I don't want to be by myself. And I had a fabulous therapist because when I turned 30, I had my heart ripped out for the first time by a guy that had chased me for eight years. Wow. And I finally took a different look at him. And it was so easy to fall in love with somebody that was going, Donna Barnes, I've loved you for eight years. But my therapist kept saying to me too, could we just push the pause button? Could we just not date for a while? And I'd say, Okay, all right. Living in New York, you go out to a party, you meet somebody, I'd come back in and I'd say, I'm not a great guy. And she'd go, okay. And partly in sharing that is really just to validate your story because I think with little bit differences, we all have the same story in looking to be loved, probably choosing the wrong partners that aren't truly capable, which I think is a big word of really loving us the way we need to be loved. And we don't really know how we need to be loved until we get really comfortable being by ourselves. Because that's the only way we really truly know. Because everybody that comes into our lives brings something with them. They have their beliefs in life and their activities and their hobbies and things that they like to do, and you mesh with them. And then the first step in being by yourself is really identifying as a single person and not as part of a couple. And I think the biggest little thing in that, in when you start dating, it's really hard not to talk about we did this and we did that and we did, because everything you did, you were part of a couple. And by simply changing that pronoun to I and eliminating who you did that with, because that's not the relevant part of the story, it's your experience of that story can make a big shift in, first of all, then not really bringing your ex to the date, because if you're talking about them all the time, they're there too, really.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Thank you for saying that. Because I think that was certainly some of the mistakes that I made once I got into dating, was that I definitely mixed up my pronouns or brought him unwittingly along on the dates. I also was thinking, I got married very young, barely 21 years old. And then, as I said, I was married for a long time, 36 years. And so we essentially grew up together. And so he was the only person that I was committed monogamous with. And I didn't know who I was away from him. I knew who I was in my family of origin, and then I knew myself in my marriage. And until I actually stopped dating was when I knew myself by myself. And I have raised, as I said, three children, two of which are women, and they're twins. They're 36 years old, and they're single. And I did tell them, wait till you know who you are, wait till you have your career, wait, because I knew that was something that I didn't do, and I wanted them to know themselves. And they have done that for the most part. They've done that, they're both single still.

SPEAKER_01:

See, I think that's a really good thing. And to the point of because whenever anybody comes to me post-divorce, especially, my first question is usually how old were you when you got married? Because we now know that the reasoning and decision-making part of your brain doesn't finish developing until you're almost 26 to make a decision about who you could spend the rest of your life with and what you even want to do with your life career-wise, for that matter, prior to turning 25 at least, is a little bit like throwing a dart at a dartboard, right? Because you're not who you're going to be yet. And I remember when I turned 30, I was freaking out a little bit, partly because I was in the entertainment industry then, which age is not your friend in the entertainment industry. But I was freaking out that I was going to be 30. However, I realized once I wasn't a 20-something anymore, people took me a whole lot more seriously. And if I could go back to any age, 35 was my best year ever, which coincidentally, women come into their sexual peak at 35 years old to really feel empowered. And I was forced to be alone because I'd had my heart ripped out and no one else was, I didn't want anybody else. I wanted him, right? Who flitted in and out of my life, which was a huge mistake, also. And I should have just shut that door to him because it really got me addicted to him. So yeah. But my point is, I had made a video years ago, because I've had my YouTube channel since I think 2012, somewhere thereabout, that said, why you shouldn't get married until you're at least 30. And I've gotten so much pushback from people saying, I got married in my 20s, I'm in my 60s, I'm still married. But yes, that is the exception, I think. But how happy are you at that point? Because your point, you were both growing up together. So if you're not growing in the same direction, you're growing apart. That is really more norm.

SPEAKER_00:

It's interesting that you say the age, because I was a mother of three young children under the age of five. So I was 35 when I came to this awareness like this is not going to work out. However, I don't have my career yet. I'm a young mom, and all these reasons that kept me staying.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And gratefully, because it all allowed me to grow up some more. I want to come back to the idea that when you get married young and then eventually divorce, I think there must be a delayed sense of your youth that you want to.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, a hundred percent.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And without really knowing anything about your now ex-husband, I'm sure that's what he was doing. Because if he was about your age and he'd never really dated a lot, people come out of long marriages and date like crazy because they never had the opportunity to do that. But I think it's good. I call it practice. The more dates you go on, it's just like anything else, the better you get at it. So the more you can go up. But you also, because I was a matchmaker for a few years and I had a gentleman that came to me whose wife had left him for another man. And I sent him out on a date with a lovely girl, and she called me, she was all upset. She said, He told me I was his first date in 30 years. I don't want a guy like that. So I had to go back to him and say, Yeah, maybe not share that much. Like I think I always say an open book is not sexy, more or less. Just some stuff you just need to keep to yourself for a while. But I think it's good to get out and really try on different people. I always say it is like shopping. If you went to the store, you'd try on a bunch of things before you decided which you wanted to take home. So it's essentially the same thing with dating.

SPEAKER_00:

I now understand what you mean. I thought it was just a matter of let me find a man who I'm attracted to, he's attracted to me, and then we go from there because that was the recipe that worked the first time around.

SPEAKER_01:

The first time.

SPEAKER_00:

However, we were at different stages of life.

SPEAKER_01:

And to that point, that gets harder as you get older because not only then do you really the true basis of it is who are you attracted to? However, you've had much more life experience and children frequently or careers, and there's a whole lot more complication to merging your life with somebody at a later age in life. So unfortunately, sometimes you meet somebody that you're really attracted to, but you just like the right person at the wrong time, I like to say, because you can be really attracted to each other, but nothing else about your life fits. So that adds a whole nother level of compatibility.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, girl, we have a lot to talk about or to break down. But first, I want to hear a little bit about your podcast because I'm intrigued by the name Broken to Brave. Tell me what that's about.

SPEAKER_01:

That really just started when I was writing my biography on my website because my own personal journey, like you, I've gone to some 12-step meetings. Of course, my therapist suggested that I try a whole bunch of them, right? And had a fabulous therapist, which I think was a big piece of that. And if it's not broke, don't fix it. So if you're coasting along, and there were certain things that had happened in my life that really needed to be addressed, that I had just decided if I don't talk about that, then it won't come up and it won't bother me, and I'm all good. But that couldn't be farther from the truth. The more you try to stuff something down, the more it blocks your way. So, in the real true sense of broken to brave, is the broken, younger version of myself that when I can hear my father now going, You can't tell you anything, which I think was definitely true. But he also used to say, I have been on this face of this earth a lot longer than you. I really became a dating coach because I ended up in a reality show before they were calling it reality shows. And because I'd been working on myself and working with my therapist and reading everything, like knowledge is the only thing that ever makes me feel better when I'm learning about something. I need to understand it. I need to unpack it. And I just feel proactive that I can sit and I actually like a physical book. I want to sit with a highlighter and put my face in the book and just suck up everything that I can highlighter person too.

SPEAKER_00:

I understand.

SPEAKER_01:

And to that point, it's helpful. I don't throw anything out. I have all my books. It's fun sometimes to go back and read a book that was really powerful to me when I first started this journey and see the things that I highlighted that were really important to me at that point in my life, that at this point in my life I can look at and feel really validated. That's not an issue anymore, that I've worked on that.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

And you really can get on the other side of it, but it's a journey. You really do need to unpack it and address it and look at it and confront it and be vulnerable enough to say how you feel about it, so that you can heal it and get on the other side of it, which I think is my mother died suddenly when I was 18 years old, and we'd had a very conflicted, we were oil and water, we fought a lot. My father used to say, What started that? And I'd go, I don't know. Like we just started to fight. So, really, for the next decade or so, I was incapable of talking about my mother without breaking into tears, which was highly inappropriate in a lot of situations, right? That's just one example of the broken to brave. And I actually even just said to the man I'm dating the other day, I said, I have such a different compassion for my mother at this point in my life, partly because I'm now a year older than she ever was. But I also just understand her in a different way, right? So that's part of the whole broken to brave. You don't know that you feel broken, you just know that things aren't really going the way you want to. But when you get on the other side of it, it's validating to feel that you fixed it. And you have to be brave enough to want to fix it. Because there's an awful lot of people that just think, This is me.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Take it or leave it, this is me.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Be willing to look at the parts of yourself that aren't working or that might be contributing. I have a lot of viewers that are women and of a certain age and coming in and out of relationships, some through, as I mentioned, divorce, and others through perhaps losing a partner in one way or another. And I'm just wondering, I know that some of them wonder, is it too late for me to really connect with someone? So let's talk about that. What advice you usually give to people who are starting over?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I I don't know that it's like starting over, it's really starting anew, which I think is just your perception is your reality. And I think a little tweak in the way you think about that, and life is long, right? They always say, Oh, life is short. No, life is long, and you really do have many different parts of your life and different parts of your journey, which all make you who you are. And one of my favorite clients was a 72-year-old beautiful woman who came to me for coaching and she said to me, I was married to the love of my life, but he died. And she said, I grieved and I've grieved and I've been alone. And she was beautiful, right? She's really beautiful woman. She said, I I don't want to be alone anymore, but I just don't know how to meet somebody. And this was in New York City, she was on the Upper East Side. And I said to her, Do you have a nice restaurant by you that has a bar, has a nice bar? And she said, Yeah. And I said, Go sit at the bar and have dinner at the bar. Because especially in New York, men do that. Right? Everybody lives in some smaller apartment where most men don't cook, right? So they go and they sit at the bar because it if nothing else, you can at least talk to the bartender. But if you sit at a table by yourself, no one's gonna come talk to you. They think you want to be by yourself, but at the bar, right? And she the first time she did that, she called me, she was all excited, she met a guy. So I think it it's not a matter of your age, it's a matter of your mindset. I love that. And you are what you think you are. If you think that you're gonna sit alone for the rest of your life, then you're gonna sit alone for the rest of your life. But if you think that you have a lot of living left to do, and it would be really wonderful to spend that time with another partner, someone else that's new, and you don't even need to get married again. I just had this conversation with a client who's attained a certain amount of wealth, who doesn't want to hitch their cart, if you will, to someone else ever again. But you don't have to, especially later in life. The really beautiful thing is you're not looking for someone to start a family with. You're not at the beginning of building a life together. You just want someone to spend your time with, you want somebody to take trips with or to go to dinner with at the very least. It's actually a lower bar, and it's just a little bit of who do you enjoy spending time with?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, which I love that thought because I think that's what I feel about like time is so precious, and I want to make sure that who I'm spending my time with is someone that I feel comfortable with, that I feel connected to. Coming from the the prolonged or long marriage that I was in, despite its dysfunction, I had quite a level of comfort with that person. And now that I'm on my own for a while, I've got quite a bit of comfort being on my own. So it is a bit of shifting gears a little bit. And I know that begins with a mindset, like just being open-minded to getting to connect with other people and places for that.

SPEAKER_01:

But additionally, now that you're comfortable being by yourself, you'll be much more choosy about who you'll spend your time with rather than because I know for me, I would much rather be by myself than be with somebody they don't really want to be with, which gives me the luxury of making much better choices about who I want to spend my time with. Because I don't need to spend my time with somebody.

SPEAKER_00:

That's a really good point because I being of a certain age and of having had a career, there's so much a different perspective on what I'm looking for in someone to connect with. I don't need to learn necessarily how to be, I want to just be with someone who's okay with who I am now, because I am finally.

SPEAKER_01:

And that see, that's a good place to be through too. I think when we're younger, we'll be chameleons and we'll adapt to whoever the new person is in our life and decide that this is and while I think it's good to be flexible, not to be so rigid that you just never can be compatible with somebody, but you bring who you are to the table and you're comfortable in that and confident in that, which is actually really attractive. There was a mega best-selling book called Why Men Love Bitches years ago. I have it on my shelf, but bitch is just a woman who loves herself, who's really confident in who she is, who's not a pushover really to anybody. So that's highly attractive. And I do think that I've always been attracted to pretty powerful men, but I have to allow myself to be my softer self. I pick a guy because he can lead. I need to let him lead. I think it was Dr. Pat Allen that said, let the man be the man.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes.

SPEAKER_01:

I have to catch myself sometimes because the trap of being by yourself is that you can take care of yourself. You want to take care of yourself. But then now all of a sudden, if your man wants to do nice things for you, you got to just say thank you.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I'm learning to be more comfortable with being attended to versus always having to take care of myself, which was a mindset that I gravitated to through the divorce process, the uncoupling that I had to really get comfortable with, not looking for someone to fill a spot or take care of me, and create a very big life for myself, which I did. Therefore, the main descriptor or feedback that I was getting from men I was dating is that wow, you are really intimidating. You've got a really big life, and I don't know how that's gonna work for me. Okay, that's hard to understand.

SPEAKER_01:

I I have two conflicting thoughts about that. One says, that's not the right guy for you.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

But I will tell you, especially in New York, there's a lot of very successful, power for empowered women that do intimidate men. And I've heard that too. And not usually from the guy directly. There was a guy that I had dated for a while that I was crazy about and it was short-lived, but I stayed friend with a friend of his who said to me, You intimidated the hell out of him. I was like, why? I think it takes a very confident man to want a very strong, confident woman. They call them power couples, right? When two people are both, but within the relationship, I think one person takes the lead on this one thing without even really talking about it. You just naturally one person does one thing and another person doesn't. You both do the thing that you're best at and allow the other person to lead on that. And it's yeah, it is different. And I think a little bit you do have to let go of the very strong, powerful woman, because if you're attracted to that kind of man, unless you're not, because there's masculine and feminine energy that has nothing to do with gender. So what we're talking about is that we're masculine energy women, but I'm also attracted to a very masculine energy man. So I need to default to my feminine side. And if I'm honest, at this point in my life, the guy that I'm now dating could not be more masculine. And I'm just so crazy about him that I just naturally let him be that because I'm so attracted to that. So I think that's when you find somebody that you really connect with, I think it naturally takes its uh course. And that's it's supposed to be easy. I have so many clients that come for me for coaching because they're so attracted to somebody, but they're jumping through a million hoops and trying to make it work and they fight all the time, and it's just not a good relationship. But then they'll meet somebody else and they'll say, It's so easy. This is so easy, it's just so easy. And that is the mark of a really good partner.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. I'm gonna hold on to that truth and trust it because I feel like I'm I'm still waiting for that moment. And yet I believe it's true. I've such a bright light, you know, that I get told that a lot. And so I I definitely don't want to dim because I did that for sake of my marriage, and I'm comfortable where I'm at. And some of the information you sent in your notes about women redefining their identity as a single person or really being who they truly are. So it's me to better understand like how do you not let go of who you are for sake of this new stage of your life?

SPEAKER_01:

You don't really let go. It's a boundaries issue. And you really need to know what are your deal breakers? What are the boundaries that are non-negotiable? Those you do not compromise on. But other things are preferences that yeah, I would really like this, but I don't need that. To be honest, I'm a runner. I would love a guy that runs with me. But the guy that I'm now crazy about said to me, Yeah, I hate running. I'm really not a runner. I could care less. I'll go run myself. He does his Pilates. That's a preference, that's not a boundary. Yeah, I think that's the best, and really knowing that for yourself, what is most important? I think it's a good idea with pen on paper because your brain processes information better when you physically write on paper rather than and geez, on my thing on my phone, I talk to it, I hit the little microphone to talk. I don't even type. Dictate. But to really identify for yourself what are your requirements? What are your real deal breakers? What is it that you can and cannot with a hard no put up with, or with a hard yes, I need this. Okay. Those you don't waver from. Okay. But other things you can be flexible about.

SPEAKER_00:

So yeah, I think clarity is the one thing that I'm passionate about. Like being clear about as you're describing, like what are my yeses and what are my no's, and as well as what are my preferences and being understanding that's something I can be more flexible on and not. I think part of where I have gotten confused before is I used to think, oh, we had to really match. And now I'm learning through this conversation, it's really about complementing and really the ease of that.

SPEAKER_01:

And because I think on a core level, commodality is necessary. You really need to be the same kind of people with your ethics and your values and goals. But the superficial stuff, I think opposites attract a little bit, right? Sometimes somebody who's really a big talker and likes to talk a lot, it's nice to connect with somebody who maybe really likes to listen because then you're not jumping. Because I I dated a guy recently who was also a talker, and people in my life said, Wow, I we knew that wasn't gonna last. On a superficial level, I think opposites attract, but on a core level, like attracts like.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. I like that idea because it does make me think I know that I'm big on communication. I do tech. I tend to like to talk a lot. And yet I also like a conversation. So I'm getting better and through my maturity about listening and listening with an intent to get to know. Because I think that's something that I had to learn how to do is how to have a conversation with someone that I'm getting to know versus someone that I'm attracted to. Because it used to be like the attraction would outweigh the need to get to know. And I think like it's something that I'm learning that I have to be willing to do both. I could feel the attraction, however, I have to still put in the time to get to know someone and make sure that it's a good fit.

SPEAKER_01:

And most relationships only last three to six months because of what you said about attraction. Yeah, you meet somebody, you're hot for them, you really don't care about talking to them, you just want to jump in bed with them. So it overtakes you, and and really your thinking brain goes out the window because you're just so chemically attracted to somebody. But the listening part, because I'm a talker, I like to talk, and I think people get out on a first date, especially, and talk a lot sometimes because they're nervous and that just fills the energy. And if they really like the person, they want them to get to know everything about them. But then you're just steamrolling over your date, and your date feels like you have no interest in getting to know them. But I know for myself, because I'm guilty of that, that's a tell for me of how much I really like somebody because I'm a Gemini, right? We're communicators. My best relationships have been with fellow Geminis, and my current guy is also a Gemini. So it's like they grab my attention, and then I want to shut up and listen to them, right? Because you're not learning anything if you're talking.

SPEAKER_02:

Right.

SPEAKER_01:

So I've had to tell myself in certain relationships, shut up, you want to hear this, right? But when I'm really connected with somebody, I naturally do because I'm just so intrigued by them. I want to know what he has to say. Right. Yeah. I think that's the tell of a really good partnership as well, when the conversation just naturally flows where the guy that I said was too much. I felt like he constantly interrupted me. And then I felt like I constantly had to interrupt him to just get to say anything. It was exhausting, like not a good pairing.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. So you just speak to red flags. Tell me what are some common red flags that women tend to overlook or ones that you might point out are important for us to pay attention to.

SPEAKER_01:

I think a really important one is a blamer. If you're talking to somebody and everything that they're telling you is somebody else's fault, blamers are ultimately going to start blaming you for stuff that doesn't go well in their life. Which I think that one simple little thing is a big tell of who someone might be. I personally don't like somebody who has that argumentative kind of that likes to debate. To me, it feels like they're always trying to pick an argument. That doesn't work for me. Yeah. And I always say people reveal themselves if you're paying attention and don't make excuses for them. Because when you're crazy about somebody and you notice something that you didn't really like, you'll tend to let it go because you're just really crazy about them and you ignore it. But that's how you usually can break your own heart by ignoring. Because I'll tell you too, as a breakup coach, everybody can put their finger on something that they saw before the breakup that foreshadowed the breakup. Because people reveal it.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, what's the two different products?

SPEAKER_01:

I always say people, I do both because people either come to me because they say they've just gotten out of a divorce or a long-term relationship and it's different now. So they don't know what to do. Or they've been single for a really long time and they say, I know I must be doing something wrong. I just don't know what it is. So that's the dating aspect. But breakups is usually a lot of people don't feel like they need any help until the person that they love leaves them. And then they're lost. And really, men they're like little boys when they get their heart broken. I've spent hours and hours daily with certain clients, men, because they just don't know what to do about it. Women, we can multitask, our brains multitask, right? And left-handed men and women can think and feel at the same time. So we can be in the moment and thinking and feeling, and it all works at the same time. Right-handed men think or feel. They can't think and feel at the same time, which most men are, most people are right-handed. Whenever I meet a guy who's left-handed, I'm always like, oh, really? Because it's just and they tend to be more creative, left-handed people. But my point is just that right-handed men think or feel, which is why they also say things that they don't mean. Clients say to me all the time, he promised me this and that. Why did he say that to me if he wasn't going to do that? Because he was in his feeling brain when he said that. And then he went away and he thought about it and thought, I don't want to do that. So I think that's a big part of why men are faulted for saying things that they don't mean. They did mean it, but now they're in a different part of their brain.

SPEAKER_00:

Like to really help them translate what someone says and versus what they really meant by that. And to factor in their handedness as a part of this is an interesting technique. I wouldn't have thought of that.

SPEAKER_01:

And you also get to know someone's character, right? I always say, like, if they trust but verify, you can give somebody the benefit of the doubt when you first meet them, but you can't really trust them until they've shown you who they are. Like when I say people reveal themselves, they do. You get a sense of who somebody is. Because some people, their word is their bond, and no matter what they said they'd do it, they're going to do it no matter what. Yeah. Which is a little bit how I am. So I realize about myself that I'm a little overly upset if you said you were going to do something and then you didn't do it. Because that's my own personal button.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I hear you. I always tell clients, you can trust what people do over what they say they'll do. It takes time to get to know someone. And if most of us aren't paying attention to what people are doing versus only holding on to what they say or their promise, this is where we can run into trouble. Another thing that is the idea of not giving up and finding love at any age in the work that you're doing, tell me what is some advice that you give to women that you know are in their fifth or sixth decade and finding themselves out dating, like something that might be a little different than someone, let's say, in their 40s.

SPEAKER_01:

The playing field is smaller, I think, as you get older. But I think really bringing your best self to the table is definitely important, especially for women, because I'll tell you, as a matchmaker, if a man is in his 60s and has taken good care of himself and is successful and is chucking a lot of the boxes, he can get a girl that's 20 years younger than him. And he usually wants a girl that's 20 years younger than him. So that's frustrating. And I've had some really fabulous, beautiful older women as matchmaking clients that it's a little bit more challenging because of that. However, having said that, there's an awful lot of men out there who have done that and are done with that. Because there is an expiration date on that, too, I would say. Because years ago, I was friends with a woman who was 20 years younger than her husband. And she said, I married him when I was 25 and he was 45, and it was all really good. But at this juncture in her life, she's 60, he's 80, and she's still young and vibrant, and he's a frail old man. So I think there's that, having said that. However, I think, and you're a beautiful woman, right? And I think the better you take care of yourself, and people are taking care of themselves into their 50s, 60s, 70s nowadays. Really, I met a man on my elevator the other day who said he was 72. And I said, Wow, you don't look that at all, right? People are taking better care of themselves because it goes back to the initial attraction thing that I think, but you can meet somebody literally anywhere you are. First of all, there are some online sites that are dedicated specifically to people of older ages, like silver singles and things like that. But it's especially if you're in a cosmopolitan area like New York, anywhere, the grocery store, the bookstore. All right.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Let's talk a little bit about self-love and the idea of coming from a healing place. You said bringing your best version of yourself to dating. Talk a little bit about some of the healing recommendations that you give to women who are re-entering a dating world.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. First and foremost is how you feel about yourself, right? Because self-confidence is your belief in your ability to do things. A lot of very confident people have very low self-esteem. Because self-esteem is how you feel about yourself. And I think we're also negative with our self-talk. And you are what you think you are. So if you're looking in the mirror and you're saying all sorts of really nasty things to yourself about how you think you look, that's where you need to start. Be really loving and kind to yourself. Because first of all, that transfers when you're with somebody else, then you just get out of the space of being negative. But really it shows in how you carry yourself. If you really genuinely feel good about yourself. And it doesn't mean you need to be a supermodel. You don't need to be a fitness model. You just need to be your best self. And not comparing yourself to others, I think, is the biggest piece of it, especially if you've had a husband that cheated with somebody else, and especially if she was a younger woman or you perceived her to be prettier than you, because I hear that a lot. He left me for a girl who's just so much prettier than me, right? Says who, right? That's your perception. So it's really about coaching people to love themselves in the things they say to themselves and not picking themselves apart and really just loving themselves. You get altered. There are just certain things that you need to love about yourself that you probably can't really change without jumping through cosmetic surgery hoops. That's okay. It really is. And I meet people all the time that I was down the shore last summer, and friends of mine, their sister, she was like approaching 70, had just lost her husband. And I sat with her for quite a while and really talked to her about it. And she wanted to find somebody else. I helped her build an online dating profile, and she met a man at her church, actually. And they're adorable together now. They're both attractive people, neither one of them are like stunners. And I'm not saying that to be mean, I'm just saying it's less about the physical, it's about how you feel about yourself. It's not how you actually look, it's about how you feel about how you look that is the difference. And yes, taking good care of yourself, I think also lends to feeling better about yourself. But you are what you think you are. So you need to be really careful what you think about yourself.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think it's a great uh important concept of the idea of how we feel in our own skins, in our own bodies, and in our lives. I could say that it's interesting when my marriage ended, I was at a completely different self-confidence level than I am now. And I'm grateful that I had the seven years to really explore various parts of myself and remind myself that I literally am great. I'm really great. And I've had a lot of success not only during my marriage, but my life. And that counts for something, right? Even though I was in an unhappy marriage, I had a really great life that I co-created and uh contributed to, and my kids contributed to, and and all that matters. And I think that's I'm grateful that I didn't lose sight of that. That's what helped me remember. Oh, that's right, I did that and I did this, and I have much more to do, which is why I'm so excited about this stage in my life, because this is the time of permission. I'm giving myself full permission to live a life according to Anna, the way that I really want to be. And because I don't have to take care of anybody. Really can be me.

SPEAKER_01:

Exactly. And permission is a big word. And I think partly why coaching is effective, because I'll have clients say to me, Thank you for making me do that. And I always say, I didn't make you do that, I suggested you do that. You decided to do that, but I essentially gave them permission to do it, which I think for a lot of people, especially if they had a husband that was very big in his personality, are needing permission to do things and to reframe that thinking that you can give yourself permission to do anything at all that you really want to that can make you happy in a different way than holding you back, waiting for someone to tell you, yeah, no, it's okay for you to do that.

SPEAKER_00:

I love the thought about that because I feel like so many women that I meet have, particularly if they come out of a relationship with a divorce or they've lost someone that they're still figuring out who they are after that. There's a bit of a misunderstanding that it first begins with the permission to find that out, to explore that in whatever way that looks like to them. They don't have to do it according to even the way it worked in the last relationship. They can do, like you said, begin anew. And also society.

SPEAKER_01:

Because unfortunately, when couples divorce, people keep different people. The wife gets people, the husband gets people, people choose sides. And I was just having this conversation with somebody. It's really unfortunate that people feel like they have to. Why can't you stay friends with both people? You don't need to talk about the other person. It's like drawing that boundary of saying, look, I'm still friends with him, but I'm not going to talk to you about that. I just want you to know so that you don't feel like I'm hiding something from you. But I think the peer pressure of what other people think prevents people from giving themselves permission to do something. And that's a big piece too, in not caring at all about what anyone else thinks. Oh, thanks. It's about what you want for yourself. You're a full-blown adult. And even what your children, yes, you want your children to have good thoughts and things like that, but you don't need anyone's if they're adults, yes, you don't need their permission to do anything.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think that is probably going to be one of my biggest takeaways of this conversation, Donna, because I feel like I really needed to remember that the only person's opinion that matters is mine. Because this is my life. We all get one that I know of. And I want to make sure that I don't leave anything behind. I can't take it all with me except for my experiences, and that's what I want to make sure that I don't leave any of that behind.

SPEAKER_01:

And the really value of starting a new life is that it can be anything at all that you wanted. If you've always wanted to jump out of an airplane, go jump out of an airplane, right? Things that maybe you never ever even wanted to do before, you can do now. And your life can look completely different than it did before. And especially if you were a wife and mom, that's a very specific role, right? But now you're a single independent woman who has a career, hopefully, a little bit underneath you, that you can have choices of things that you'd like to do. And you don't need to wait for someone else to do them with. And that's the biggest change when you get out of a relationship. I hear people say all the time, Well, I have no one to do that with, so I just don't do it.

SPEAKER_00:

I hear that too. I hear that too. I'm of the believer, like, what are you waiting for? What are you waiting for? I travel alone. I've done a lot of solo hikes, things that I didn't think I ought to be doing on my own. I just was like, I'm going. And I went. Yeah. And I'm grateful because it's certainly the adventure that adds to this time in my life. I'm definitely living my best life right now, which is good one of the things I'm excited about. And I'm really excited about this conversation. It was very hopeful, very open because it gives women like me that are getting a little older and still single some thoughts about what we can do to be comfortable where we are, and also ways to meet people. I'm going to go to Whole Foods right after that and see who I can talk to. You never know.

SPEAKER_01:

You never know. Honestly, one year on New Year's Eve, I had no plans. I had nothing to do. I was in Philadelphia. I'm from Philadelphia, so I'll split my time. And I went to a liquor store on South Street in Philadelphia on New Year's Eve, New Year's Eve day. And there was a big long line that was wrapping around the store, but it was the highlight of my day. I just went to buy a bottle of wine. But waiting in line for, oh geez, it probably was a good 45 minutes or something like that. I was talking to the people around me. And I walked out of that store feeling a whole lot different than I felt, like lonely by myself walking in. I think if you can frame it, that you don't need to do things with a romantic partner. There's a lot of fabulous, wonderful people that you can connect with and do things with. I was just in Rehoboth Beach dog sitting for my brother. And in taking the dog to the beach in the morning, because there's a dog beach, I met some wonderful people. I went to Happy Hour with them one night because you're all walking the dogs together, you talk. And that's the idea of being single. I guess do things that you couldn't do when you were part of a couple. There's certain things that if you're in a relationship and someone asks you to do something, commitments, you have other things, you're like, oh no, I really can't. Yeah. Yes, you can now, which I think can make you feel better about being single if you start doing things that you didn't do while you were a member of a couple.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow. Yeah, I hear you. As we wrap up here, I want to say, what's one question that you wish more women would ask themselves when it comes to dating?

SPEAKER_01:

Once you're in a relationship, I always say, Do I feel loved? is the primary question about the quality of your relationship. Because if you don't, because unfortunately, a lot of people get in relationships with somebody that they love, but they are not feeling loved back. And that's the biggest piece of a relationship is does your partner make you feel loved?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And are you allowing them to love you? Sometimes it's just scary to let that wall down and to let someone really into your life, but you need to.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. Yeah, I look forward to that. I also want you to help me tell our listeners how to find you. What are some important places where they can go to find out what you're up to and what you're sharing?

SPEAKER_01:

Donna Barnes.com is the hub of everything, which I've had that since 1999 when I was still an actor. I have my Broken to Brave podcast, which is on regular podcast platforms, but largely on YouTube, because I've had my YouTube channel for a long time. And I created a couple of online courses. First, I had created to help people through a breakup because in coaching people through a breakup, I was basically having the same conversation with everybody. And I've been living with a man and we broke up. So in real time, while I was going through my own breakup, I was making all these videos about how to get over a breakup based on what you really need. So I'm very proud of that. And then out of that, the way you get over a breakup is by becoming the best version of yourself. I created a second online course that's really more dating-oriented, which part of that, the breakup course is it's a five-step course at the end. It's dating again and it's getting you ready. So then the just me, my best me, I called it, is about becoming your best self and finding your best partner. Oh, great. Proud of my online courses because I think that's a you can go at your own pace.

SPEAKER_00:

So we have your channel, we have your podcasts, we have your website, and we have your online courses. And of course, I do coaching, so they would find you through your website for that, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, Donna Barnes.com has all of it. So that's the easiest way.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you so much for joining us on She Ass, where practical hope meets healing. I really felt healed and connected to the best version of me through this conversation. So I want to really thank you for that. Awesome. And hopefully we can connect next when you're back in New York City.

SPEAKER_01:

I would love that. I intended to be there today, but then I I I actually had an appointment this morning that I had to run to. Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

And so when we talk again, we'll talk about. I moved here from Philadelphia, so we'll have a lot to catch up. I'm very familiar with Rahov Beach. And so anyway, great to get to know you. Thank you so much, Donna. Well, yeah, thanks so much, Anna. We'll be in touch. Take good care. All right. Bye bye. Bye.