Spiritual Dating

Why Dating Appears To Be Harder Than It Really Is

• Joe Amoia • Episode 5

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Ever feel like your dating life resembles a chaotic amusement park ride? Maybe it's a merry-go-round where you're constantly in motion but never actually getting anywhere. Or perhaps it's more like a roller coaster with extreme highs quickly followed by devastating lows. Whatever your experience, there's good news: dating doesn't have to feel this challenging, regardless of your age or past experiences.

This eye-opening episode breaks down the three key reasons why dating appears more difficult than it truly is. First, we explore how your current life stage naturally creates different dating circumstances than you experienced in your younger years – not worse, just different. Second, we examine how accumulated emotional pain from past relationships often builds invisible walls that block genuine connection. Finally, we reveal a profound mindset shift about what dating actually is – not a punishment to endure, but a purposeful process similar to how companies thoughtfully hire important executives.

Drawing on spiritual wisdom and practical psychology, I share the story of a woman who transformed her dating experience from a nightmare roller coaster into a meaningful journey that led to her ideal partner. You'll discover why online dating has become the number one way people over 50 meet partners today, and how approaching it with the right mindset and strategy can make all the difference.

Ready to make your dating life less frustrating and more fulfilling? This episode provides the framework to stop making dating harder than it needs to be. You'll walk away understanding that God didn't place the desire for partnership in your heart without providing a path to fulfill it – and that path can be far more enjoyable than you've been led to believe.

Feel free to contact me with any questions/comments you may have about this episode via email at drjoeamoia@gmail.com

You can also send a DM and follow me on instagram or reach out in our facebook group. You can also find more inspiring and empowering content on my YouTube channel.

I aways love hearing from you!

Speaker 1:

Is your dating life like a ride at the amusement park? Maybe it's a merry-go-round, where you're going round and round but you're not really going anywhere. Or maybe it's like a roller coaster filled with constant ups and downs. Or maybe it's the haunted house, where it's so scary and overwhelming and all you want to do is run out the back door. Well, if any of these sound like you, I want you to pay close attention, because today's podcast is for you.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Spiritual Dating Podcast, where spirituality, psychology and successful dating strategies come together to help you turn the love you desire into a reality. I'm your host, joe Amoya, your spiritual dating and relationship coach. If you're a spiritually grounded woman who has almost everything you want except a great guy to share your life with, you're in the right place. If you're done settling, tired of the dating merry-go-round and ready to attract a high-quality, emotionally available man who will love you the way God created you to be loved, this podcast is for you. I'm here to show you how to date smarter, love deeper and create the kind of relationship your heart desires and truly deserves. Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Smarter Dating Podcast. Oh boy, am I really looking forward to this one, because this is something I hear all the time from the members of our community and it's like when I say the word dating, it's like remember the nails on the chalkboard at school, like it just would send chills down your spine. You know, for so many members who are at this stage of their life, who are single and looking for love, the word dating just brings up that kind of feeling, doesn't it? And listen, I totally, totally get it.

Speaker 1:

When I was single, there was a time in my life where I didn't like to date. I was a relationship kind of guy. I didn't mind going on dates and getting to meet someone, but the whole dating process and trying to find someone and engage them and figure out if they were the right person and invest time and energy and it not working out, it was a horror show, right, Until I learned it didn't have to be that way. And so that's what we're going to talk about today, because right now, if you're like most individuals who are single and looking for love and you're looking for that special partnership, that holy relationship, it's tough and I get it, but what I want you to understand, it doesn't have to be so. Right now, dating appears to be more difficult than it needs to be. I'm going to say that again. I want you to pay close attention Dating right now appears to be more difficult than it needs to be. Now I know you're saying, are you crazy? Like, do you know what's out there and do you know what it's been like? And you know what I went through. I get it. Trust me, I do get it. I understand and I promise you you're not the only one who's going through that. There are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of quality single men and women who are just having such a hard time.

Speaker 1:

But that's not really the way God designed it. And remember, god gives us free will. So, the way I see it, god's up there going all right, my children, I give you this wonderful playground. I give you free will. You can make a heaven of hell or a hell of heaven. It's up to you. That concludes make a heaven of hell or a hell of heaven. It's up to you. That's concludes dating. So now go, be free.

Speaker 1:

And because God doesn't give us an instruction manual and we're not taught certain things, we make things so much more difficult than it needs to be. But I believe God gives us resources, is constantly guiding us and supporting us, like in this podcast, to help make your journey easier and more enjoyable, if you're willing to look at the role you're playing in it. That's something I see is so prevalent. It's that everybody wants to look outside like dating sucks, online dating sucks, men sucks. It's different at my age and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I get and again I get it, but it doesn't have to be so today.

Speaker 1:

What we're going to talk about is the three reasons why dating appears to be more difficult today for you. Okay, so the first is just where you're at on your journey. If you're listening to this, you're probably, you know, in your forties, fifties, sixties, maybe even a little higher, and life is just different at this stage. Like that's it right. It's where you are today physically, emotionally, spiritually is very different than where you were 20, 30, 40 years ago. And again, the world is different.

Speaker 1:

Just look around you and the problem is we want it to be like it was, you know, for a lot of individuals, when we were younger right, we were single and a lot of our friends and family member were single and there were a lot of opportunities and places we could go, where we would interact with other people who were at that stage, who were single too. There was just a larger number of them. So it was just easy. Whether you're at the beach with your friends, you're at a park, you're at a barbecue, you went to a game where, like, you were usually in larger numbers, and it just became easier, right, most of the women that I met I met just in naturally, organically, and that's kind of how it works. Right, we put ourselves out there, the opportunity presents itself, we meet someone and then we go forward. Right, we're going out, maybe to clubs, you know, happy hour after work, whatever, like that single life like.

Speaker 1:

But then as we get older, you know people start getting married. There's a lot more responsibility, you know. You start having kids and you have homes and you have property and investments and family stuff. There's just a lot more responsibility, and so it makes it seem more difficult, but it's not more difficult, it's just different. And if you don't understand that and you don't understand why it's different and what you need to do to make it easier we'll talk about that at the end of this podcast then it's going to be a constant struggle.

Speaker 1:

It's kind of like you know, I use the analogy of losing weight for most people being in shape. You know, if most people, or a lot of people when they're younger, it's kind of easy, right, right, unless you were somebody who struggled with weight from day one, it's like okay, I didn't really have to exercise, I can pretty much eat what I want, and you know, I was looked and felt pretty good and that works for a couple of decades, if you're lucky. And then you get to a point where, oh man, it's getting tough, I don't have the energy, don't have the time. You know, now I look at a piece of cake and I gain five pounds. You can understand, you can relate, you see who you are, where your body is today and where you are at in your journey right now is very different than it was 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago, and that's just the reality of it. Now we can accept that or we can fight it. We can argue with reality, and I think arguing with reality is kind of insane. So what I've learned in my journey is that there's what my mind and my ego thinks is real, the perception that I accept as being true, versus God's reality, which I call the truth, the divine truth, and so what I truly believe at this stage is that we are where we were meant to be on this journey. But what we create from here, if we align ourselves with God and God's truth, can be miraculous. And that's really what we're doing here on this podcast is helping you get to the divine truth, god's truth, so you can go forward and create an amazing relationship with an amazing guy who will love you the way God created you to be loved. But it starts with taking some inventory, taking some mirror time and seeing where you're at, and so, if you can just wrap your head around that life is just different right now and that's okay. Again, we can play woulda, coulda, shoulda, or it was better back then, and I'm not saying it wasn't but this is the cart, this is a deck of the the. I have some brain flaccions here. People, you got to help me up. This is the hand. We've been dealt right, so we can make the best hand from here going forward, or we can just say I'm never going to win, I fold and quit. Again, it's your journey. I totally respect where you're at. So that's the first thing is you have to understand that where you are on your journey and just accept that. Okay.

Speaker 1:

Now the second part and it kind of ties into the first part is that at this stage of the journey, for many single men and women, or let's just say, adults in general, the pain of our past has affected us and it's caused certain thoughts, certain feelings, certain behaviors that very often work against us in life. And that's just the reality. Now let me preface this. I'm going to put like a little asterisk here is that I don't think it's anybody's fault. Nobody is intentionally making their life more difficult, more stressful, more frustrating, more depressing than it needs to be. I think you'd have to be a sadomasochist, like someone who loves pain, to intentionally do that. And what I know to be true is even those individuals don't really love pain. It's just how they've learned to function in life. It's how they learned to get their needs met. They just do it in an unhealthy way.

Speaker 1:

But the reality is that at this stage, a lot of single men and single women have pain which are affecting them and their ability to open up, to having a relationship, to being a healthy relationship partner. It's kind of like. This is how I see it is each painful experience that we have in our lives is like a brick in creating a wall right Now. Sometimes it's so traumatic that wall goes up automatically, but for others it's like, oh that sucked, here goes a brick. That sucked, here goes a brick. That sucked, here goes a brick. And especially in dating, right, it's disappointment, frustration, upset, all the stuff being ghosted, like all this being lied to guys who you know pretend to be one way and act another way and then show you their real colors three months, three years, three decades down the road and you feel duped, you feel lied to, which I totally get. So each of those things is like another brick, another brick and next thing you know we've got a wall. And what does the wall do? It protects us, right? So because we have these unconscious and sometimes they're even conscious hurt, pain, we put up these walls and it affects us from going forward. And I'd see a lot of wonderful, amazing single men and single women who have just been hurt by their past and haven't done the work to overcome the pain that they felt.

Speaker 1:

And to me, I always use the analogy as, like the boogeyman under the bed, right Is, we're so afraid to look at what's there and we're convinced it's real and so we avoid it Instead of we just, like, got down on the floor, pulled up the covers and looked and go, oh, you're not really that scary at all. But again, there's a part of us when you understand human behavior and psyches and how the ego works, there's a part of us that doesn't want to look under the bed. Because there's a part of us that wants to be in this victim mode, in this separation from God's truth, because if we see God's truth, then the illusion is over. Then we have to let go of it and sometimes the illusions that we buy into are working for us. There's a lot of juice in being a victim in life.

Speaker 1:

Look at the world we live in today. Right, everybody's blaming everyone and everything for why some aspect of their life sucks. Right, it's just the way it is. But again, again, I always have this image of God laughing, going oh, you people really fucked it up. Like this isn't what I had planned. It was really supposed to be so much easier than this, but I love you anyway. So go make a hell of it. And that's really how I see it.

Speaker 1:

And not to make light of it, but just to shine light of the truth is that it doesn't have to be as difficult as it appears, and one of the reasons why dating is more difficult today is because of individuals in their 40s, 50s, 60s just have several more decades of pain that they haven't dealt with, and that's why, if you're going to have a holy relationship, you have to find a partner who is at peace with their past, who is completed, who has done their work, and sometimes that doesn't mean that they have to go to therapy, it's just they've done their work on their own to look at their life and what they've experienced and they've learned from it, and they use it as an opportunity to grow, and that's the sign of a healthy relationship. Partner, okay, so now we understand the second reason. It's that the pain of the past yours and men is what made dating more difficult today. Right, so let's get on to the third. Now this is another one. Okay, again, let's step out.

Speaker 1:

Look at dating as observers. Why is it more difficult? Why was it easier when we were younger? And it's more difficult today? Again, the first two reasons. That's why, okay.

Speaker 1:

But the third reason is you don't understand what dating really is. You know, I can't tell you how many individuals I speak to on a regular basis who say you know, I just hate dating. Like I just want to be in a relationship. I'm like that's like saying I want to be in shape without going to the gym and eating well, like that's just not how it works Unless you've got again great genes. It's just not how it works. At this stage in life, if you want to be healthy, you've got to eat well and you've got to exercise. It doesn't mean you have to go to the gym, but you've got to do either resistance training or get some cardiovascular training. You have to do things to burn off the calories and to burn off the fat and to get stronger and to build muscle, right. So dating works the same way. Dating is simply a process to meet the type of guy that you're looking for.

Speaker 1:

So I like to use the analogy of a company who's going to hire someone, right? So let's say it's a Fortune 500 company and they're looking for their senior vice president and they're gonna pay this guy multiple six figures and they're like you know what, before we give this guy the job, we got to make sure that, you know, we hire the right person and we find the right person. So what do they do? They first they define an outlook of who their ideal senior vice president is. Like they know what are the criteria they're looking for, what are the skills, what are the talents, what are the personality traits Like they're clear on that and it's like, okay, great, now we've got to go find that. So we got to advertise, we've got to work with headhunters. Like they do things to connect, to attract the type of person, to either go find or attract the kind of person you're looking for.

Speaker 1:

But it doesn't stop there. Then they say, ok, now we got to go through an interview process, right, and so we're going to get these resumes and we're going to look at them to kind of determine if this is a good fit or not. And then just because they get a resume, it doesn't mean that they hire this guy and they give them six figures and it's like, okay, well, now we kind of narrowed it down. We think we have some ideas of who might be a good candidate, so let's bring them in for an interview. And they go through an interview, and sometimes they go through multiple interviews, multiple rounds of interviews, so they find someone. Like I think this is the right guy feels right, looks right. But do they give the guy the job then? No, they usually put them on some kind of probation period.

Speaker 1:

It's like, look, we appear to be the right fit for you, you appear to be the right fit for us. So kind of, let's go forward and give it a shot and see how it works and we'll give it, you know, 90 days. And at the end of 90 days we'll sit down and go, okay, this seems like the perfect fit. You're hired If you still feel the same way and you want the job right. So that whole process is kind of how dating works.

Speaker 1:

Now, yes, it'd be wonderful if you just got a guy's resume and, okay, this was the perfect match. It's similar but a little different. But it doesn't have to be as difficult as it appears to be. And this is one of, again, when you understand and have a strategy why online dating is one of the best places to meet the partner you're looking for at this stage in your life. Is it the only place? No, absolutely. But according to research, today, online dating is the number one way that individuals over 50 are meeting and it's the number two way for individuals under 50. So it's the top two for anyone under 50 and the top one for anyone over 50. And that's just how it is. Because, again, life is different today.

Speaker 1:

So, instead of having to go out and go to happy hour or finding places hoping that you're going to meet someone I see this happens all the time Individuals go to a meetup group. Oh, there's a singles meetup group and they go to this thing and there's like 60 women for every three guys and the three guys there are not quality guys at all. And then they get frustrated. It's like oh, I went to this single event and we'll talk about that in future episodes as well, because that tends to be forcing instead of understanding. It doesn't have to be that difficult.

Speaker 1:

So I wanted to share this with you today to help you understand that this whole dating thing doesn't have to be this albatross. It doesn't have to be like a ride in the amusement park, right? It doesn't have to be this albatross. It doesn't have to be like a ride at the roller coaster, ride in the amusement park, right? It doesn't have to be the merry-go-round or the roller coaster or the haunted house or the tilt the wheel, like it doesn't have to be any of those things and it really can be. This easy, enjoyable experience Does that mean you're never gonna have moments or days of frustration? No, no matter how much we want beautiful weather, this easy, enjoyable experience Does that mean you're never gonna have moments or days of frustration? No, no matter how much we want beautiful weather, we get cloudy days. That's just the reality of it. But it doesn't have to be this long, dark, gloomy process that just is a constant source of frustration, anger, resentment, depression, like all of that stuff.

Speaker 1:

So let me give you an example. There's this woman that I met a while back and she was at that point where dating for her was the roller coaster. It was up and down, even had some loops that went around, and she just wasn't having it. She's just like you know, if this is what it's like, I'd rather be single wasn't having it. She's just like you know, if this is what it's like, I'd rather be single.

Speaker 1:

But she had this deep desire in her heart to find someone special to share her life, because she knew, like, why would God deny me this? Like, this is what I truly desire. Why, why would he not? Why would he put this desire in my heart and not let me have it. I'm like, yeah, I get it. I'm like, yeah, I get it.

Speaker 1:

So, long story short, I helped her learn how to date with the strategy Right, kind of like we talked about hiring someone. Like I showed her the steps to dating successfully today and she was like amazed because she was making it so much more difficult than it needed to be. And it wasn't her fault, it's just. Nobody ever showed her the right way, and not that long after she started dating.

Speaker 1:

And the interesting thing is, once her mindset about dating shifted, she started experiencing different results in her life. You know me, or if you don't, I'm a big believer in this universe and energy and quantum physics and all of that stuff. And so, as her mindset changed and she felt a shift in her energy, her reality started to shift and God started putting people and resources in her direction that ultimately allowed her to meet good guys and she started having some good dates and really came to. She met one guy and he was a good guy, but he just wasn't the right guy. But she, like her hope, became restored Like hey, they're out there. And then she met a guy and he was the right guy, and now she's married and she's got an amazing relationship. You know, I see her husband and posting pictures of them on Facebook all the time and it just melts my heart because it's like that's what God wants us, that's what God wants for us.

Speaker 1:

And so, you know, in this journey we talk about the three pillars of spiritual dating, you know, and how having a strategy, a successful strategy, a successful strategy, a successful dating strategy, just makes the journey so much easier. Imagine if you had a company and you wanted to hire somebody, the right person, and you had no idea how to hire the right person. You can try and throw a bunch of things at the wall and you might, you know, fingers crossed, things might work out. Or, as you say, you know, if I can learn how to attract the right person and how to screen that person to determine if they were the right fit for us and that we were the right fit for them, and put that person on probation to allow them and God to show us if this is the right fit, right, how much easier would this whole thing be. And really, that's the way it's designed to be.

Speaker 1:

And again, if it's not up until this point, that's okay. It's not your fault. You were never taught. I'm sure you're a smart, educated woman and in all your years of formal education, from kindergarten to the day you got your high school, college degree, master's, doctorate, phd, whatever it may be for you how many courses did you have on what it takes to attract the right person and to know how to put yourself out there to make sure that you pick the right person for the right reasons and you were the person who was picking you for the right reasons? Your answer is probably zero, and that's okay. It doesn't have to be that way. That's why God's having you listen to this today. So if your goal is to have a holy relationship with a man who's just as committed to you in the relationship as you are to him in the relationship, having a successful dating strategy is going to make the journey so much easier and a lot more enjoyable. Well, I hope this helps. I hope it resonates and, as always, if you have any questions, feel free to put them below, because I read them all. Have an amazing day. We'll see you in the next episode.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for spending this time with me on the Spiritual Dating Podcast. I truly hope today's episode helped you to feel more hopeful, more empowered and more connected to the love that you're meant to have. If this episode resonated with you, please make sure to follow the show so you never miss an episode. And if you really feel inspired, I'd be so grateful if you left a review or shared it with another amazing woman who you know deserves to have a great guy by her side to share life with. And if you're ready to go deeper and get real guidance on your spiritual dating journey, come join me in our private Facebook community. Just grab the link in the description of today's episode. Until next time, remember you're not too old, it's not too late and the love you desire is absolutely possible, because God didn't put that desire in your heart for no reason. This is Joe Amoya, your spiritual dating coach, reminding you that true love is your birthright, so let's make it your reality.