Today begins a few-week series on how to date magnetically with a feminist dating strategy, step by step, exactly how I teach it in Main Character Dating.

We’re starting with essence-based preferences: my system for owning what you want and saying it without apology. It’s not a rigid checklist. It’s not an open-minded pile of mush. It’s exactly how you want to feel in the right relationship, even if you’ve never been in a relationship before, or never been in a good one.

Follow along with the free 14-page Essence-Based Preferences Creation Guide at datebrazen.com/workbook.

Print it out and make it a whole self-care night!

In this episode:

• What essence-based preferences are, and why “kind, funny, smart” doesn’t give you a unique and accurate picture of what you desire
• How my work as a top NYC matchmaker led me to this tool
• The two buckets to brain dump before you do anything else
• The two questions to ask about every single checklist preference: age, height, education, money, deal breakers
• How to step off the seesaw of “Am I being too rigid or too open-minded?”
• How to use your essence-based preferences with friends, in your dating profile, and on dates

Work with Lily:

📖 Get the book, Thank You, More Please: https://datebrazen.com/book

🌟 Join the Main Character Dating waitlist: https://datebrazen.com/dating

✨ Download my free Essence-Based Preferences Creation Guide: https://datebrazen.com/workbook

📸 Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/datebrazen/

🎵 Follow me on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@datebrazen

▶️ Follow me on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DateBrazen

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Show transcript:
Lily (00:00)
Hey gorgeous friends, welcome to another episode. Today begins a few-week series that I’m running on how to start dating like a badass. How to date magnetically with a feminist dating strategy. I am gonna take you step by step through this process. And uh, this is exactly what I teach in main character dating. So you will get a sense of what it’s like inside that program. But also, um, most importantly, you will have your roadmap to dating magnetically for the rest of this year and into 2027.

So we’re gonna start today with essence-based preferences. This is my uh system for owning what you want and saying it without apology. It is exactly how you want to feel in the right relationship. It’s not a rigid checklist, it is not an open-minded pile of mush. It is designed to specifically have you owning what that right relationship feels like, even if you’ve never been in a relationship before, even if you’ve never been in a good relationship before, creating your essence-based preferences are the key.

To magnetizing that kind of person to you. They’re gonna influence what your dating profile looks like. They’re gonna influence what you ask in person when you meet somebody cute. They’re gonna influence how you vet somebody on a date. They’re gonna influence how you evaluate that date afterwards. Using essence-based preferences impacts every part of your dating life. This is really holistic strategy to center yourself, to have more agency in your dating process and to uh attract the right person without settling.

And while being open to being surprised by the right person when they show up in front of you as well. So this episode, you can follow along actually in a literal workbook that I created for you. It’s totally free at datebrazen.com slash workbook. We also put the link in the description of this episode and in the show notes at datebrazen.com. But basically at datebrazen.com slash workbook, you can opt in to receiving this.

Free 14-page essence-based preferences creation guide. And you can print it out and follow along in this episode and make it a whole like self-care night defining your essence-based preferences. This is gonna bring you so much clarity, so much, hopefully, hope and uh possibility for your dating life because that’s what you deserve. What you want is possible. It is your season. Let’s fucking go. You want something that’s not here yet, so let’s fucking go.

Go datebraison.com, download that free workbook to get your essence-based preferences together. Essentially, at the end of this process, at the end of this episode, at the end of the workbook, you are going to have root words and definitions for exactly what your person will show up like, how they’ll make you feel, what values and personality traits they have. you will be settle-proof with this guide. You will also be open to being surprised by the right person.

And you’re gonna become your own expert matchmaker because of this tool. So let’s get into it.

Everybody says at a basic level,

They want something similar. Kind, funny, smart, right? And there’s not a problem with fine, kind, funny, smart lol. The only issue with not being more granular with your preferences is that you’re not giving yourself a truly unique and accurate depiction or picture of what you desire. You know, I think that when I was single and I see this experience reflected in a lot of my clients’ experiences.

When I was single and my friends would ask like, what are you looking for? What do you want? I would say, kind, funny, smart, because I was afraid to take up space in this conversation. I was afraid of how my friend would react if I said, talked about the breadth of what I wanted. you’re being too picky. Or I was afraid of like verbally processing and getting it, quote, wrong out loud, of wanting too much, of not wanting to be too rigid. There were so many fears in the room.

As it related to, you know, sort of a basic surface level answer. I also will say that a lot of people don’t know how to engage a deeper level when you’re talking about preferences and what you want. That’s okay. And you get to go deeper for yourself. So, what are essence-based preferences? They are a new lens to look at what you want with. I think of them like a pair of glasses, like you’re putting on your essence-based preference glasses, and you’re gonna look at what you want through an

Essence-based lens. When I think about the word essence, I think about root, I think of core, I think of the most palpable version of something, you know, the essence of when you’re thinking about the essence of rose or whatever, like you boil it down to the very basic molecular structure of a rose petal and what that smells like. And it smells incredible.

And so what we’re doing here is taking kind, funny, smart, getting beneath the surface of all of it to boil it down to like what is the root? What is the essence of what you want? How do you want to feel? So what happens when you create a love life vocabulary that is accurately, concisely, powerfully describing what you want, what it looks like, how it feels, you are more likely to draw that to you, right? Very similar to, you know, think about it like a job.

If you’re feeling kind of desperate for a job or really like scarce in your job prospects, or if you really like need some money, you’re gonna be like, I’ll take a job, right? I’ll take a job. I want nice, funny, smart. I want a job. I want a good job. I want to feel good in my job, whatever. When you’re in a place of emotional safety, financial safety, like caring for yourself, you’re really standing in your power, your authority, your brilliance, you can then say

I want this specific kind of job and I want the company culture to be like this. And I want my supervisor to be like this. Or if I am the supervisor, I want a team like this. And I want, you know, to feel this way at work. And I want these benefits. And I want this specific salary range. And I want it to feel really I want my life to feel really like supported by my workplace. And I want there to be humanity involved and like human dignity and emotional intelligence are woven into the culture, right? You can be really specific.

About what you’re looking for because you’re rooted in your power and your desires and your life experience that has led you to this point. You’re in a much closer position to landing that job if you’re able to clearly communicate what you want, what it looks like with granularity. Now, this is you know similar for your dating life. Obviously, we’re not gonna talk about like salary range uh or anything that granular, both and you get to know what you want. Now, to the question, what if I’m being too rigid?

I think that, you know, my response is if you are focusing on how you want to feel with these preferences and you’re being really granular there, then you are open to being surprised. You are very clear on what you want, and you’re ready to set boundaries if you don’t feel, you can be ready to set boundaries if you don’t feel how you want to feel. So instead of saying, Am I being too rigid or too open minded?

Too rigid can sound like I want somebody with this specific degree who makes this specific salary range who does this who lives in this corner of this neighborhood, right? Instead of that, which is, I believe, a protective mechanism, protecting you against, you know, what you think, it’s protecting you against like something that’s wrong for you because of potential past experience. So if that’s rigidity and open-mindedness is I just want somebody nice. I’m not asking for too much.

We don’t want to be on that seesaw. I want you to step off the seesaw and ask yourself, how do I want to feel? What does this preference make me feel? How do I hope to feel when somebody shows up with this personality trait? Or how do I hope to feel with this age range? What do I want to feel? And I’ll get more into that in a moment. So how did I come up with this concept? When I became a matchmaker, and for those of you who don’t know, who may be new to the podcast, I was a top professional matchmaker based in New York City. It was not what I was thinking I would do with my

Career. In fact, I was in the feminist advocacy nonprofit space. And then I burnt out and I needed a new job. I moved to New York. I had a billion side hustles. And I ended up being a matchmaker at a national firm. So when I would meet with my clients, a lot of times in person, I would ask them like what they wanted. And they would tell me. And I would sense that it would be sort of a cursory, you know, level, like surface level analysis.

And then it was my job to ask deeper questions, to sort of probe beneath the surface, to get to know their deeper preferences. And, you know, this idea of someone’s essence came forward in terms of like what people want and how to get beneath the surface and how to verbalize something that is deeper than surface level. And so I took this concept of essence-based preferences and ran with it and ended up

You know, creating the qualifying, disqualifying question process from my experience, getting to know people’s essence-based preferences, everything builds on itself in this world. And by the way, this essence-based preference work is ever evolving. It is not stagnant. It is a a living, breathing document of your desires, of your love life vocabulary. And so when I would find out people’s essence-based preferences in matchmaking, I was then more effectively able to set them up. Now

When I decided that I wanted to break up with matchmaking, when I realized I wanted to help people beneath the surface of a first date, I knew that when people were able to advocate for their own essence-based preferences, they were more likely to attract something that they wanted in their love life and beyond. So then I saw that it was like this tool to help people become their own expert matchmaker. Let’s get into creating your essence-based preferences.

So, first, you get to give yourself permission. Juicy, luxurious, expansive permission to want everything that you want. There is no limit to what you get to want and what you get to write down on paper. Now, know that this is not to like create a snapshot of this person. This is to create an impressionist painting so that you know how it feels there. But first, we need to write down everything that you want. So grab a piece of paper.

And a pen and write down everything that you want. I want you to focus with two buckets. Now, bucket number one is checklist items. Checklist items are age, height, location, education preference. Do you want kids? Yes, no, maybe, religious preference if you have it, career preference if you have it, and any deal breakers that you have. So write down all of those like checklist items. You get to want what you want. This is not about you don’t get to.

Have a checklist. You have to go deeper. No, this is about the essence based lens, glasses, to look at everything that you want. Okay. So write down all of those checklist items. Then write down your personality traits that you desire and the values that you desire. So the difference to me between personality traits and values, they can be grouped into one. I’ve had clients do it all sorts of ways. Remember, like

This is me giving you a roadmap and you get to decide what your path looks like. So I would distinguish personality traits and values as a personality trait could be there’s some overlap. For example, a personality trait could be compassionate and somebody’s value could be they value compassion, right? How they are distinctive is or distinct is personality trait could be gregarious or curious about the world, and uh value could be.

Cares about social justice. Cares about social justice isn’t necessarily a personality trait. That’s why I sort of bucket them separately. Now, they can go together, right? You can say somebody is compassionate about the world, and that is expressed by their deep caring for social justice. So, you know, choose your own adventure there. But I want you to brain dump all of those things. Checklist items, deal breakers, and personality traits and values. So brain dump all of those things.

And once you’ve done that, this process is a process. Then you’re gonna go through your checklist preferences first and ask yourself these two questions, really, for every single checklist preference you have. Why do I want this? Not in a judgmental way, just like curious. Like, why do I want this? How do I desire to feel with this preference?

So for age range specifically, uh, if you want ages 35 to 45, or if you wanted ages 45 to 50, whatever it is, how do I desire to feel with this preference? I desire to feel met, I divide, I desire to feel seen and understood, similar place in life, I desire to feel like what is it about that age range that gives you what you want? Now this question

I want to encourage you to invite in any sort of expansiveness or creative thinking. So for example, you could say, like, I’m age 30. I’m just gonna say if I was age 39, and I want somebody only up to 40. Now you get to ask yourself why? Why is that my preference? And maybe you discover that underneath the surface you have a story about 40 year olds.

And then maybe you have some judgment of your own age there, right? This came up a lot in matchmaking when clients would have some underlying stories that were unchecked about age and height and you know money or anything checklist related. And so that’s why I wanted to start date coaching so that we could acknowledge these deeper stories and go beneath the surface. I’m not asking you to not want what you want. I’m asking you to be curious about

How what you want shows up in the world and how you want to feel, right? Then we get into like specifically around money or education. Some of my clients at first would say something like, you know, I went to an Ivy League school, so I want somebody who went to an Ivy League school. So when asked, how do you desire to feel with this preference? Why do you want this? They would say, I want somebody who values education in the same way that I do. My family really

was very intense about education, you know, if we have kids, I want to be intense about education, whatever, you know, that desire is there, that lifestyle or cultural importance that you feel the culture of your family, it’s important to value education this specific way. You know, they might also say, I want to feel intellectually challenged. I want to feel met. I want to feel held and seen. And to that I say, okay, great. Is it possible?

That somebody values education in a similar way you do and didn’t necessarily go to an Ivy League school? Or I actually know somebody who dropped out of high school and who has this incredible mind and actually has like incredible has an incredible job and is one of the smartest people I know. Are you open to somebody who might not fit?

The Ivy League mold that you have in mind? Like, what might that be like to be curious about that? And then inevitably it comes into, my family judgment or whatever. And then we focus back on like you. What do you want? How do you want to feel? What is here for you? How we are redefining actively your rules in your love life. And so when you ask yourself these questions, I hope that you come into a more expansive definition. Because honestly, I’m going to be very honest, I think that.

Confining yourself to only these five schools in the United States, or whatever your version of that is. It may be can only make X amount of money or more, could be is into pickleball and tennis only, whatever the ideal is for you. Be curious about it and notice how you might be limiting yourself with rigidity.

And so that’s why these asking your questions, that’s why the how do you desire to feel with this preference? Why do you want it is really important to expand, to breathe new life into these preferences. Now, on the money front, let’s talk about money for a second. There is an episode of the podcast that I want you to listen to if that is something on your mind. Episode 26 of the Date Brees In podcast is all about how to navigate money in your dating life. And I think it’s really important to this conversation because I hear some

People have said to me in this work, I want to be with somebody who makes the same or more than I do. And I say, great, you get to want what you want. How do you desire to feel with that preference? Well, I desire that they treat money similarly to me. They honor it, they save it, or they are big spenders, or they have a full emergency fund and are super prudent. Like similar to how everybody’s essence-based preferences are distinctive, everybody treats money differently.

Everybody has a different relationship with money. It is an emotionally charged force and a powerful force at that. And so instead of focusing on, I want them to make X amount or more, I want you to focus on how do you hope that they treat money? What do you hope their relationship with money is like? Because it could be there’s so many different versions of income and money. I’m just saying, be curious about what you want their relationship with money to be like.

Because generally what I hear is I want to feel like abundant. I want to feel organized around my money. I want to feel cared for and safe and protected. And that goes into how they treat their money. And it doesn’t necessarily correlate to how much they make on paper necessarily. And so that’s a version of like breathing expansiveness into these preferences. Now

Deal breakers are your deal breakers. I would say know why you have those deal breakers. Why do you have this? How do you want to feel? Because there’s sort of like, I don’t want to date somebody who does hard drugs. That’s like a deal breaker for me. And I want to feel that we have a similar, you know, lifestyle and make, you know, life choices that allow us to go on a hike whenever we want or whatever the case may be. Just gain awareness on your deal breakers. Now let’s get into

Your personality traits and values. These are the big ones to me. Checklist is very important as are values and personality traits. I think that these are really the groundwork, the foundation of your essence-based preferences. So when you have brain dumped, look at the words on your page. Okay. I want you to go slowly. I want you to go word by word and

Flesh out your definition of each word. Okay. Start from the top. Ask yourself, what does this word mean to me? What does a person who has or is fill in the blank value? I want you to ask, what does a person who is my kind of fill in the blank do in their spare time? Let’s use funny as an example. What does a person who is funny value? What does a person who is my kind of funny do in their spare time?

What does a person who is funny want in their life? Okay. So after going through this process of you know fleshing out your definition, what’s gonna happen, I hope, is that you’re gonna see this and be able to say, okay, is funny the word? Or could it even be connective, witty, joyful? What feels like the root word of this preference? So you do this for each of your preference words.

What does this mean? What does this person value? What does this person do on the weekend? Like what does this mean to me? And as you go through, you’re gonna find that some words and phrases and preferences feel just a lot more rooted and core and essence to what you want. What I’ve found is that the clients that go through this process generally only have, after doing this whole process, only have three to five root words. So it’s about grouping.

And about really getting to like what do I mean when I say I want kind? And what would be the most alive definition of that word for me, the most specific love life vocabulary way to describe this? Let me give you an example. Let’s say Suzanne put down in her like personality traits that she desires, she put down gregarious, funny, really caring, empathetic, big world traveler.

I would pause there and I’d be like, What about World Traveler do you like? What does that mean to you? Well, World Traveler to me means they love going and visiting other cultures. And when they go and travel, how they travel is a huge way to get to know your preferences. They want to immerse themselves in local culture and they’re really honor local culture and they aren’t trying to come in and like assert their way. They’re really

learning and they’re a sponge and they’re soaking up information all the time. I’m like, cool. Does this person also read books? Yes. my God. They’re big readers and they love to read about, I don’t know, history and, you know, whatever this person says. And then, you know, we keep asking questions. Why do you want that? What does that mean to you? Why do you want that? What does that mean to you? And eventually this Suzanne awesome person comes to, oh my God, you know what it really is, Lily?

All of this could be summarized for me, this is talking as Suzanne, into curious communicator. She like makes curious communicator the big root word and then sort of connects all of these ways that curious communicator comes up in that person’s life, connects it to their so her then definition of this root word or phrase is enthusiasm and interest in the world around him, his willingness and ability to communicate and learn from others. Curious communicator.

And then, you know, when we keep doing this work, why do you want this? Why do you want this? We have this gorgeous like web of words. You know, what another theme that’s coming up for her is reliable slash confident. Somebody who’s looking for a teammate, willing to share the burdens and joys of life, looking for them to bring their own strengths and independence into the relationship, appreciates that I do the same. Then the third, optimistic, community-minded slash. You can put slashes in here, it can be a phrase.

Just make sure that it’s like something that feels connected. He can see possibilities and solutions and cares about the world and people beyond himself. He’s not like always positive, always sunny, but rather more class half full, right? Like that is how to get into your love life vocabulary, friends. Those are examples of your love life vocabulary. So again, most clients after doing this whole process of

You know, g drilling down, like what does that mean to me? What does that mean to me? What’s my definition? You can see the themes, what things go together. Generally, they’re only three to five root words. When you have those three to five root words, those become your essence-based preferences in addition to the checklist that you’ve now made, you’ve dipped in the essence juice. So when you have those three to five root words, when you talk to your friends about your dating life, you can say, I want this, this, and this. This is what it means. And this is what this means, and this is what this means.

And this is how it shows up in the world. And you can know when you see somebody with this, this, and this, because they will say, fill in the blank, or they will do, or they will travel this way, or they will ask you these questions, right? So you can help your friends help you in your dating life with these preference words. You can also then put them in your literal profile, in your dating profile. You can also use them to say what question, these are the

How the qualifying, disqualifying questions were born. We’re not gonna get into those today, but you can look at the root words and say, like, what question would I ask if I could ask anything to gauge whether or not somebody was a curious communicator? Also, it’s in how I perceive people and like to pay attention and really listen to how they communicate and how they show up. How can I gauge if somebody is, you know, optimistic or confident? Like, what does that look like for me? So you will be more equipped to attract what you want.

When you know, when you have the concise vocabulary to describe it, your love life vocabulary. That is exactly how to create your essence-based preferences. Remember, essence-based preferences are a lens, a lens to look at what you want. So that applies to the checklist, that applies to the deeper stuff, the personality traits and values that that person has. And always, always, always drill down into how do I want this preference to make me feel with every single preference checklist and deeper. Like,

How do I want this to feel? How do I want to feel in the right relationship? And use that as your metric. Do you see how everything builds on itself? So you’ve got this. I’ve got your back. Be sure to re-listen to this episode, to really like let it sink in, listen to it again with take even more notes, do this practice, maybe even bring a friend along, text them this episode and say, let’s do the essence-based preference episode together and set a date and do it together. You’ve got this. Like and

Validate the shit out of what your friends and loved ones want as they validate the shit out of what you want. You are a brilliant human who has everything you need to get everything that you want.

I love you. You’re doing a great job. Bye.