“Guide to Stop Getting Dumped!”
Jasbina Ahluwalia interviews Lisa Daily
Lisa Daily is the love and relationships expert on DAYTIME, a nationally-syndicated morning TV show, and a popular media guest who has appeared everywhere from MTV Live to Entertainment Tonight, and been quoted everywhere from the New York Times, Washington Post and Chicago Tribune to Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Men’s Health, Christian Science Monitor and US Weekly magazine.
Lisa did a cameo as a real-life dating expert on the HITCH movie DVD starring Will Smith. She’s is the author of 7 books, including Stop Getting Dumped!, Fifteen Minutes of Shame, How to Date Like a Grown-Up, Southern Fried Farce, Beauty, Is He Cheating? and Is She Cheating?
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(1:03): Hello everyone and welcome to Intersections Match’s Talk Radio, a monthly holistic lifestyle show focused on the continual evolution into the best versions of our authentic selves. We and our guests discuss relationships and health and wellness, each of which contributes to meaningful and fulfilling lives.
This is Jasbina, your host. I’m a former practicing lawyer and the Founder of Intersections Match, the only elite national personalized matchmaking company focused on singles of South Asian descent nationwide in the US.
I’m very excited to welcome Lisa Daily to our show tonight. Lisa is a dating coach and speaker who has been interviewed on numerous radio and television shows including E!, Daily Buzz, MTV Live and Entertainment Tonight. Lisa has also been quoted in numerous publications including the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Cosmo, Glamour, Men’s Health and US Weekly magazine.
Tonight, we’ll be discussing Lisa’s book, Stop Getting Dumped! Welcome, Lisa.
Lisa Daily
(2:09): Thanks so much for having me.
(2:11): It’s a pleasure to have you. As a professional dating coach and matchmaker, I’m fascinated by insights and perspectives regarding relationships.
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading your book and would love to explore some of the insights shared by you. Lisa, what prompted you to write this book in the first place?
Lisa Daily
(2:28): I was always the one who was giving dating advice to all of my girlfriends. Even on the playground in third grade they would ask, “Do you think he likes me?” It was something that I was always really interested in. After college, I went into advertising. I still found myself as the amateur dating coach for people that I worked with and knew. In the space of about a year, seven of my eight girlfriends and I got married. I decided that it was time to write the book on it.
(3:11): Your book uses the term “dream girls.” Tell us what you mean by that.
Lisa Daily
(3:15): It’s sort of this aspirational idea. It’s not the picture of the dream girl that we have in our heads of this perfect blonde Harvard educated veterinarian. It’s really the best version of ourselves. Maybe the you that you dream of being is a scuba instructor, someone who makes just enough to get by but spends all of their time organizing prom dresses for girls who wouldn’t have them otherwise or feeding homeless kids.
That’s what it is to be a dream girl. As women, we always think that we have to meet this ideal. We have to look a certain way or be a certain way in order to attract a really great guy. The truth is that, no matter who we are, there is some great guy out there for us.
(4:18): I love that. I’m going to quote directly from your book. “Here is a list of the dream girl decrees. In order to feel really fabulous about yourself, confident and beautiful and as comfortable in your own skin as you can, you must start caring for yourself.” Tell us about that.
Lisa Daily
(4:41): Guys do this too, but it’s not to the same degree. We as women tend to take care of other people before we take care of ourselves. We focus on our work. We let things slide. This isn’t just when you’re looking to date someone, but also when you get married and when you’re a parent.
You really need to spend some time taking care of yourself, and not just the outside things. You need to take care of yourself spiritually and do things that fulfill you in your life.
(5:22): I think that’s really important. I love how you emphasize in your quote being comfortable in your own skin. I talk to men and women every day and I hear that. They say, “I’m looking for someone who is comfortable in their own skin.” You write, “Never ask a man out on a date, ever.” Tell us about that.
Lisa Daily
(5:50): When I wrote the book originally, I was basing my advice on experiences that my girlfriends and I had, things that my mother and great aunt, who was married for 50 years, told me. A lot of my theories were built on those experiences and the things that worked really well for me and my friends. Again, there were things that my great aunt told me. Stop Getting Dumped! came out in 2002.
It was a bestseller. It still is a really strongly selling book. I do the Daytime Show, which is a nationally syndicated morning show. I’ve written a column. What I’ve discovered was that all of these things that my great aunt, my grandmother and all these people had told me were based in evolutionary biology. It seems like something that your mom would tell you. “You should always make the guy ask you out. Don’t ask the guy out. Make sure that the guy is the pursuer in the relationship.”
There is a reason for it biologically. Men are more compelled to make the relationship work if they are the people who are pursuing us and not the other way around. It’s sad. I interviewed probably thousands of men between when the book first came out and now. What is really interesting is that they all like it when a woman approaches them, asks them out or approaches them for sex. They love that. It feeds their go. The truth is that they don’t really respond to it, at least not in the way we want them to.
(7:48): One of your chapters is cleverly entitled A Pair and a Spare: Using Rotation until You Find the One. Tell us about that.
Lisa Daily
(8:00): The idea with the pair and the spare is that, anytime you’re not in a committed, monogamous relationship, you should be dating at least three guys. We call that the rotation. Women are serial monogamous. Even if a guy is not quite the guy that we’re looking for, we think, “Maybe I can fix him. I’ll just stay in this relationship until someone better shows up.”
The problem is that all the time you’re spending with the wrong guy is time that you’re not spending finding the right guy. In order to keep you from focusing too much on one guy at a time while you’re out there socializing before you meet someone that you want to spend the rest of your life with, it’s always a good idea to date at least three guys at once.
Candace Bushnell had a radio show for years. Even the Sex and the City girl said, “Oh my God. The pair and the spare.” Men do it all the time. Men have dated multiple women for years, every chance they get. A lot of women feel really funny about it. I get more letters on that than probably anything else in the book. Once women try it, it really does work.
(9:25): I agree with that. Women have more of a tendency than men to have a really good conversation and then mentally and emotionally disconnect from other guys at that point. I think seeing more than one guy takes a lot of pressure off the interactions with one guy. That is definitely a chapter worth paying attention to.
Another cleverly entitled chapter is, Don’t Count the Days, Make the Days Count. Tell our listeners what you mean by that.
Lisa Daily
(10:15): A lot of times, women are so focused on when their real life is going to start. They think that they’re just hanging out. We’re working. We’re in our apartment. We’re going out with our friends. We’re going to put off the trip to Tuscany or learning to surf until we get married and our real life starts. The truth is, you don’t know when that’s going to happen.
You could be 29 or 59 when you meet someone that you want to spend the rest of your life with. You don’t want to waste your life hanging around, waiting for someone to show up. I think it’s really important to live every single day of your life like it could be your last. If you want to learn how to surf, learn how to surf. If you want to take classes, do that.
If you want to travel, find a way to make that happen. You’re going to meet someone who is really compatible to you when you are most fulfilled and happiest with your life. The last thing you want to do is meet someone the day after your mother’s funeral. You’re going to be in a different place than you would at the happiest, most fulfilled point in your life. You’re going to attract different people.
(11:37): I love that. You want to make the days count and live your life fully. I think that reflects on how you interact with people. It’s very magnetizing to the opposite sex.
In your book, you provide a list of topics that you suggest to avoid in the first months of dating. You have a long list in your book. Can you share a few of those with our listeners?
Lisa Daily
(12:20): Woman, especially as we get older, we really want to find out where things are going and what the potential is. We don’t want to waste any more time than is absolutely necessary. We start brining things up that aren’t things that you should be talking about in the early stages of the relationship. If you bring things up too soon, the guy is going to feel guarded, and rightly so.
He might give you the answer that you want to hear, but it’s not really the truth of who he is. In the first couple of dates, you want to avoid asking things like, “Where do you see yourself in five years romantically?” or “Do you see yourself married?” Guys know what we’re up to when we ask those kinds of questions. They think, “Oh God. It’s another one of these.” They know what we’re up to.
Just avoid those questions. You don’t even know the guy. You want to make sure that you like him before you try to suss out his marriage potential. You should absolutely get into these topics a little later in the relationship. Topics like abortion and politics are conversations that you probably don’t want to have in the beginning. People will say, “I want to know right away if he’s a Republican or Democrat.” A lot of times, people have similar values but we make these judgments based on these labels.
You want to make sure that you give yourself time to get to know the person before you bring those topics into it. Those things end up not being deal breakers. You think they are on the first date, but your values might line up the same way. Maybe you call yourselves different things.
(14:34): I agree. It could be an easy way to eliminate people, but you might eliminate people at the outset who really show potential. It is actually possible to be a bit too efficient in the whole dating process. No one has time to waste.
Lisa Daily
(15:11): It’s true. It is very possible to be too efficient. We’re burning through dates as fast as we can so that we can hurry up and meet “the one.” You enjoy your life and dating more if you let yourself enjoy it and don’t just think of it as a bunch of stuff you have to get through in order to meet your Prince Charming. Dating can be fun, even if it’s the wrong guy.
I think we’ve all gone out with the wrong guy and it was still a fun time. Certainly, we’ve all gone out with the wrong guy and we want to climb out the window in the bathroom of a restaurant. Sometimes, you go out with the wrong guy and you know after an hour, a date or a week that you’re never going to marry this guy. Yet, you end up going to see the world’s largest ball of string, having the best date ever or maybe he introduces you to the person that you eventually end up with.
When we eliminate these people and think of them as disposable or we’re on our iPhone in the bathroom in the middle of the date, putting our profile back up on Match, just try to focus on the date that you’re on before you worry about where it’s going to be in the next three months.
(16:35): Our clients know this. Dating is an adventure. If you have that mindset, it can serve you so well. It keeps it fun. It can be difficult. There are challenges, but you want to have that mindset of adventure. You mentioned that the guy could be the person who introduces you to his cousin’s friend and that could end up being the guy for you.
Something great will come out of that date. You might go to a restaurant that you wouldn’t have gone to otherwise or make a connection that you wouldn’t expect. That mindset is magnetizing. These are the things that can really draw what you want to your life.
Lisa Daily
(17:55): I mentioned that seven of us got married in one year. One of our girlfriends did not. She was not in a place where she was ready for anything serious. In fact, she just got married last year. I wrote an article about Tina. The thing that I love about her is that there were no disposable boyfriends for her. If she liked someone enough to go out with them, somehow they were just added to her giant circle of friends.
Guys who were former dates ended up being guys who she introduced to her friends. She ended up working for one guy. Another guy ended up working for her. You never know when you’re going to meet your next taxidermist or massage therapist. Her husband was introduced to her by a friend of a guy who she had gone out with on a date. It wasn’t a great match but she thought he was a cool guy. You never know.
(19:06): I really appreciate you sharing your insights with us, Lisa. They’ve been really interesting. I’m wondering if there is a last thought or take-home message that you’d like to leave our listeners with.
Lisa Daily
(19:18): The main thing that I would love to leave people with is that, whoever you are is enough. A lot of times, we feel like, “I can’t meet the guy or girl until I lose 20 pounds or get my degree.” We talk ourselves into this idea that we’re not worthy of someone really wonderful until we meet some guideline or goal. For women, it’s often things like your weight. We think that we have to be something else before we deserve love. The truth is, we all deserve love right now. You don’t have to be something different than what you are. You just have to be yourself.
(20:08): That’s empowering. I love ending on an empowering note. I’d like to thank Lisa Daily for joining us today. It’s been a pleasure.
Lisa Daily
(20:20): Thank you. It’s been wonderful.
(20:24): If you’d like to learn more about the insights that Lisa shared with us today, her book is entitled Stop Getting Dumped!
In case you joined us late or would like to share this show with people in your life, I’d like to remind you that today’s radio show will be archived and available as a podcast on Intersections Match’s website, which is www.IntersectionsMatch.com. I can be reached at jasbina@intersectionsmatch.com. I appreciate you hanging out with us. Do email me with topics you’d like discussed in future shows. Make sure to join us for next month’s show. Thank you so much.
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