If you’ve ever been told you’re too picky or need to be more open, this episode is for you. Your preferences aren’t the problem—they’re the key to dating with more joy and ease. I break down how to define your essence-based preferences so you can stop wasting time on the wrong people and start attracting the right ones.

Plus, I read an excerpt from my recently published book, Thank You More Please: A feminist guide to breaking dumb dating rules and finding love—so if you haven’t grabbed your copy yet, this is a sneak peek of what’s inside!

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• The difference between superficial and essence-based preferences (and why it matters).

• How owning your desires can transform your dating life and self-worth.

• A simple mindset shift to release guilt and fully embrace what you want.

What you want is 100% possible. You just have to own it fully first. Which is exactly what this episode will help you do!

✨ Get free “Create Your Essence Based Preferences Guide” HERE

✨ Order my book, “Thank You, More Please”: https://www.datebrazen.com/book

✨ Get my FREE training, “3 Steps to Attract the RIGHT Partner as a Late Bloomer”: https://www.datebrazen.com/training

Links:

Follow Lily on Instagram and Tiktok.

Subscribe to Lily’s Youtube channel HERE. 

Show transcript:

Lily @ Date Brazen (00:00.835)

Hey gorgeous friends, welcome to another episode of the Date Raisin Podcast. Today I am sharing an episode that I recorded last year called Owning Your Preferences is a Feminist Act. And I wanted to bring it back and share it anew with you because I think it’s really good if I do say so myself. And I want you to take your desire seriously starting right now, right? It’s important for you to…

Own what you want give yourself permission to want what you want and to go after it with as much confidence as possible I think this episode is gonna be really important and I want you to take notes I want you to download the free essence based preferences guide that I linked in the description of this episode That’ll help you create your own essence based preferences. So in this episode I’m gonna get into like why they’re important how they’re gonna help you in your dating life settle proof everything and attract more than you thought possible

It’s gonna be a rip or in good time. This episode was recorded before my book Thank you more, please came out and so I talked about pre-ordering and pre-ordering a couple of my friends and colleagues books as well Danielle Bayard Jackson and Carlo and tile and All of our books are out now so you can go to any bookstore or any local booksellers website or

You can go anywhere and get our books. Get my book, Thank You More Please, A Feminist Guide to Breaking Dumb Dating Rules and Finding Love. And in this episode, I actually read an excerpt from the book so you can get to know it, see if it’s your vibe. Not to brag and to brag, it’s being called a hilarious page-turner. So I think that you’re going to love this book. I think it’s going to change your life and your love life especially.

Take this episode to number one, get to know the skill set of essence-based preferences and how it’s going to settle with your dating life. Number two, see if the book Thank You More, Please might be your next read. Maybe even do a book club with it with your besties. And number three, just have a good time imagining that you are going to get what you want. I did this exercise last night with my clients inside of my programming character dating where we just spent five minutes.

Lily @ Date Brazen (02:18.144)

writing about the best case scenario in your dating life. And so I hope this episode feels like a big hug. hope it feels like you’re able to indulge in a little bit of the best case scenario for your love life because I am over here in Brooklyn believing that that’s possible for you. And it’s okay if you don’t believe it right now, just give yourself a little bit of permission to suspend disbelief and indulge in the best case scenario with me in this episode. With that, let’s get into it.

Lily @ Date Brazen (02:51.694)

Hey, I’m Lily Womble, former top matchmaker and founder of Date Brazen. After setting up hundreds, I realized that with coaching, women could match themselves better than anyone else ever could. With my unconventional feminist approach, I’ve helped women around the world build courageous and self-trust-filled love lives, and now I’m here to support you. Get ready, because I’m about to show you exact steps you need to attract a soul-quenching partnership and feel amazing about yourself along the way. This is the Date Brazen podcast.

Hello gorgeous friends. Welcome to another episode of the Date Brazen podcast. Before we get into it, I just want to ask you for a favor. If you like this podcast or you love this podcast, it would mean so much to me if you left a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify. And if you’re not following the show already, if you’re not subscribed, click that follow button.

because every single week my intention and hopefully the impact that you feel is that you have support in your dating life to attract the right partner as a feminist badass. so it would mean so much to me if you rated the podcast, five star review would be amazing.

And if you would give me a follow as well so that this podcast can reach even more people and impact even more people whose dating lives currently feel like a soul suck. Whereas this podcast, my job is to literally help you build a dating life that feels like an act of self care. So you doing that means the world. love reading those reviews and keep them coming. They mean so much. today’s episode is going to be very special because I’m going to read, literally read to you.

a couple passages from my upcoming book, Thank You More Please, A Feminist Guide to Breaking Dumb Dating Rules and Finding Love. If you haven’t heard about this book, I have written it over the past three years and I think it’s really good. I’ve reread it 15 times and it’s being traditionally published. It’s coming out June 11th, 2024. The more I reread it, the more new people read it who don’t know me. I hear

Lily @ Date Brazen (05:05.036)

the same feedback over and over like this is really actionable. This is a handbook for my dating life. This is something I keep hearing like this is something that I’m going to turn back to again and again and again as a handbook to attracting the best relationship and being in the best relationship. And if you’re my client, if you are if we’ve never worked together officially,

you are going to love this book as your go-to resource for the most joyful as fuck dating life possible. And it’s on pre-order right now. And before I get into the book itself, I just want to say, like, shout out to all the authors, myself included, because the pre-ordering process, I don’t know if you know how much pre-ordering means to a book’s success, but it means everything.

So when you see, shout out to my fellow authors who are coming out with books about the same time. I’m talking about Kara Lowenthal, who is coming on the podcast soon. You’re going to hear her episode in May. I’m talking about Danielle Boehner-Jackson, who has a book coming out in May also called Fighting for Our Friendships, which is so good. She was on the podcast a few months back. Kara’s book is Take Back Your Brain. Both of these books are great, but

What I am just saying is shout out to all the authors who are talking about their book because the pre-order process is so important to a book’s success, but I don’t think that people who aren’t in the book world know that. I didn’t know that before I wrote a book. When you see authors that you, people that you love who’ve written a book talking about pre-orders, just know they mean everything to a book’s success and you pre-ordering means literally the world to us. I hope you pre-order.

my friend Danielle, Danielle Boehner-Jackson’s book, The Friendship Educator on TikTok. I hope you preorder Carl Lowenthal’s book, Take Back Your Brain. Both are excellent. I hope you preorder Thank You More, Please. You can preorder anywhere you get your books. Hardcover is what it’s coming it’s going to be so pretty. This book is so beautiful. The cover is so pretty. It’s going to be a beautiful mainstay on your shelf. I think also you’re going to be taking it off of the shelf all the time. Even if you like

Lily @ Date Brazen (07:22.13)

meet your person and start a new relationship, this book is going to be so helpful for making sure you’re in the right relationship and you’re not settling at any point in your love life process. What are we here to talk about? We’re here to talk about how to attract the best relationship of your life. Duh. And I’ve been thinking about my clients who have found a relationship, a partner within the last two years specifically. And I’ve been really honing in on like, what?

unifies them? What skills did they really hone in on and figure out for themselves and really own and step into? Which skills did they master to then attract the best relationship of their life with ease and with joy? I identified three top skills. Number one, essence-based preferences, which if you’ve listened to this podcast for any amount of time, you’ve heard me talk about it. Number two, blessing and releasing. Okay?

really important to let people go who are not right for you because holding on to the wrong people is keeping you fucking stuck. Whether it’s thinking about your ex or the situation chip that you’re holding on to right now for dear life, you need to learn the skill of blessing and releasing so that your dating time is more available to the right people for you instead of your time being sucked up by the wrong people for you. And then the third skill is creating a strategy.

a massive messy courageous action plan for your dating life, both in person, which I think is, got to be the chief part of your strategy, and unbothered online, you got to create a plan that works for you and your body and works for, like works for you. Because so often dating advice is about here’s how to do the thing and if you don’t do it my way, then it’s not going to work out and you need to play by these rules and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I do not believe that you need to play by somebody else’s rules to find love. I want to give you the tools to create a plan that feels great to you, that is boundaried as hell, that is joyful, that is direct and honest with what you want. And I want you to figure out what works for you, how am I gonna get epic shit done, how can I get myself out of my comfort zone and care for my nervous system in the process to get more of what I want.

Lily @ Date Brazen (09:37.917)

So those are the three top skills that my clients who have found relationships specifically in the last two years have really owned and learned fully and embody for themselves to find love. And if you’re interested in those three skills today, we’re just going to hone in on essence based preferences. And I’m going to read from the EBP chapter of the book to unpack this a little more for us. So let’s get into the first of those three steps, essence based preferences.

I’m going to read from there’s a whole chapter in the book called it’s chapter four want more than the bare minimum, AKA someone with a job who is nice. So basically the first page is just like saying you’ve got to get more picky. You deserve to be more picky. Choosing who you want is your literal right. Now I’m going to pick up on page 64. This is page 64 of my book. so excited for you to read it. You might’ve been told or taught that your preferences were the

by the way, you can also pre-order the audio book, which I narrated a few weeks ago. Y’all, was such a process. I walked in thinking, this is totally an aside because you’re in my podcast community. I want to open up all the details. I thought, my God, I sit in front of a microphone all the time. don’t know if I’ve told y’all, but my mom is a professional voiceover actress and she had me in the voiceover booth at age four. So being in front of a microphone feels very calm.

comfortable for me. And I thought the audio book was going to be such a breeze coming home. I wrote about it on Instagram, like it’s going to be a coming home. And I got in that booth and I was 10am to 4pm, three days in a row of just talking. I have sometimes I really had the thought I’m going to be trapped in this sentence with a gurgling stomach for the rest of my life.

And I know that my director Tiffany was so great. She was this amazing human who totally loved the book and got it. And she really helped me perform the hell out of this book in a way that I think you’re going to feel is very akin to listening to these episodes. So you can also get the audio book on pre-order as well right now. Okay. I digress. You might’ve been told or taught that your preferences were the quote problem. You might believe that all relationships require work.

Lily @ Date Brazen (11:57.171)

so you might as well settle down with someone who is just good enough. Did you watch the Oscars in 2013? If not, let me catch you up. Jennifer Garner was there with her then husband, Ben Affleck. Ben won an Oscar for his film Argo, and at the very end of his acceptance speech, he turned to Jennifer and in a very sweaty, excited, panicked voice said, I want to thank my wife for working on our marriage for 10 Christmases. It’s work, but it’s the best kind of work and there’s no one I’d rather work with.

They divorced a few years later. As an adult child of divorce, I know that divorce can be a great thing. It can be a powerful force of agency, especially for women who, until pretty recently, were severely limited in their ability to make that decision for themselves. But this moment on live, internationally broadcast television sent a knowing chill down my spine. Maybe I’m just projecting, but to me the vibe was, the only thing I can say about my relationship is that it’s hard.

What I saw from Genji and Ben Affleck, my parents are Jewish marriage, and women dying on the vine and long-term romantic relationships all around me, was that all relationships are this hard. I thought, I might as well settle down with someone who’s just okay and do the hard work for the rest of my life. This kind of thinking is what led me directly to settling for that toxic relationship with Dylan a few years later. That’s what I’m naming my.

Toxic X, one of my toxic Xs in this book. This settle for good enough message was reinforced by my friends and family who said things like, well, everyone’s human. Maybe you just need to give them another chance. The answer to attracting the right partner isn’t a vague, under-functioning, open-minded list. It also isn’t a rigid, over-functioning snapshot of the exact height graduating GPA or hair length of your future partner. The answer to attracting the right

is defining your essence-based preferences or EBPs. EBPs are the living, breathing documentation of your desires that epitomize what would make you come alive across the table on a date and in the right relationship. This is your love life vocabulary and when you define it, this level of clarity will help you find the right person with more ease. Without EBPs, most daters are swimming in indecision and self-doubt.

Lily @ Date Brazen (14:18.043)

and giving the wrong people way too many chances. EBPs create a clear vision of how it feels to be with the right person for you, like a beautiful impressionist painting. There’s this gorgeous impressionist painting by Renoir called Luncheon of the Boating Party. The painting features a bunch of women and men eating, a woman about to kiss her dog on the mouth, yuck, and a bunch of flirting and laughing. This isn’t a Polaroid picture. It’s not a rigid snapshot.

but this Impressionist painting gives you the feeling of being there. With your EBPs, you’ll capture the feeling of being in the right relationship on the right date. You’ll know how your future partner shows up in the world, what brings them joy, and how it feels to be in their presence. Once you know your EBPs, you’ll use them as your standard. They will make blessing and releasing the wrong people easier and identifying the right people infinitely clearer.

Using your EBPs consistently will change everything in your love life for good. Owning what you want with your EBPs is also a feminist act. It’s a big fuck you to the systems and people who would rather you shrink, be more pleasing and convenient so as not to disrupt the status quo. In this way, you are revolutionizing your dating life to center yourself instead of centering the wants of a future partner.

I’ve seen that EBPs are the answer to attracting the best relationship of your life. In the process, you’ll be attracting the right courageous opportunities, soul quenching friendships, and bold ass boundaries. So basically then I go into how I created my own EBPs and how I thought that my checklist was going to get me into the right relationship because I was being like clear, right? But really I was so fearful that I was too much.

that I was oscillating between this like rigid checklist and open-minded pile of mush. And then when I met my ex who seemed great on paper, I was like, he meets some of my checklist preferences and he’s really cool and he’s nice and he has a great education, right? All these things. And so I thought, OMG, this is perfect. And picking up on page 67,

Lily @ Date Brazen (16:38.841)

After this relationship proved to be a soul-sucking mess, I was left with thoughts like, do I just have a bad picker? Can I even trust myself in what I want? Are my preferences too much or not enough? Is what I want even possible? I now know that swinging between being really vague and really rigid in my preferences was a trauma response. This is what I call preferences under-functioning and over-functioning.

Underfunctioning versus overfunctioning is a distinction made by psychologist Murray Bowen and popularized by Harriet Lerner, PhD, in her book The Dance of Anger. It describes these two states of being as normal human responses to anxiety and past trauma. Either we overfunction by leaning forward, muscling, and trying to control and fix, i.e. taking on super-rigid preferences, or we underfunction by leaning back or not making decisions at all, i.e.

having super open-minded preferences. This pattern of under-functioning and over-functioning is like the classic pattern of an older child manically planning and micromanaging your mom’s 60th birthday party and the youngest child literally just showing up. Preferences under-functioning means you are defaulting to the, never know, give them a try camp. Underneath the surface, you’re afraid that what you want is too much or that it doesn’t truly exist.

Under-functioning can sound like, just want somebody nice who has a job. I’m not really picky, I just want someone who can have a good conversation. If you’re thinking, well, Lily, I want to be open to being surprised, that’s like saying, I want a job and I’ll do anything so long as they pay me. You might land a dream job randomly, or more than likely, you’ll end up at a job with a shitty boss, stale break room pastries, no perks, and a mediocre paycheck every two weeks.

What’s beneath these open-minded statements is that you’re not giving yourself permission to actually want and have what you want. This negates your agency. You have to actually claim what you want in detail if you want to find the right person. Speaking of claiming every preference in detail, preferences over-functioning looks like using super-rigid preferences in an attempt to minimize the risk of being with the wrong person, wasting your time, or being disappointed.

Lily @ Date Brazen (18:58.673)

This could sound like, they don’t have a graduate degree? Not the right fit. Or they seem to spend all their time with their family. Would they have time for me? Or they don’t seem to value travel as much as I do. Pass. Preferences over-functioning comes with an energy of self-protection, being guarded and being quick to judge. And for good reason. You’ve been hurt before and or witnessed someone you love get hurt. You haven’t found what you want. So the response has been to get very specific.

Trudy, a client from My Matchmaking Days, was the picture of over-functioning in her preferences. Her checklist was as follows. Must be six feet tall or taller, but not over six foot four. Went to a top 10 US university, if not an Ivy. Works out at least five days per week with cardio and rigorous weight training. Cooks like Stanley Tucci, but not obsessive about it. Must read at least five 100 plus page books at least per quarter.

I could feel beneath the surface of her preferences was a pulsing fear. She had experienced so much disappointment in her dating life that she didn’t feel emotionally safe. She was looking around every corner for every single red flag and she didn’t trust herself to never settle again. So she over-corrected by micromanaging her preferences to hopefully avoid future disappointment. So that’s like the two extremes, right? Over-functioning versus under-functioning.

Essence-based preferences literally help you come into the middle of owning what you want with clarity and helping you to be open to being surprised by the right person because you know how you want to feel in the right relationship. So in this chapter and in this podcast, obviously, there’s so many episodes on essence-based preferences, but I really wanted to hone in on sharing a bit of this chapter to really reiterate essence-based preferences are a feminist act. It is owning what you want without apology.

without judging yourself. And I really want you to challenge yourself today to start your essence-based preferences. And you can do that by like right now, I’m gonna put a downloadable PDF guide called Creating Your Essence-Based Preferences in the show notes and in the description of this episode. So you can download the guide and start doing your essence-based preferences today. It’s a way to kickstart this process.

Lily @ Date Brazen (21:21.565)

It’s a comprehensive guide, so I want you to start the essence-based preference process now so that you are set up for the juiciest dating summer of your freaking life. Go to the description of this episode to download that essence-based preferences guide and you’ll be able to join our email list as well through downloading that guide. You can unsubscribe at any time. I’m offering all of the poo-poo platter of resources.

for you to get your needs met in your dating life so you can start attracting the right partnership on your terms right fucking now because you deserve a clear path forward. Your dating life, you are not broken. Your singleness is not something to be fixed and your desires matter to your wellbeing. So this is go time. This is go time for you and your love life and your desires. It’s time to stop taking your desire.

off the back, it’s time to stop putting your desire on the back burner. It’s time to take it on the front burner, baby. It doesn’t mean that you have to make dating your whole life. It doesn’t mean you have to obsess about dating all the time. It doesn’t mean you have to make it your part-time job. This is just an invitation to take action for yourself, to stop, to get off the apathy train, to get off the over-functioning, under-functioning train, to finally step into owning what you want, asking for it out loud, blessing and releasing the wrong people without mind drama.

and to create a courageous, massive, messy action plan that fits your brain and your desires. I can’t wait to continue coaching your face off. can’t wait to continue sharing more about this book and Essence-Based Preferences. You have so many resources below in the description of this episode to start this journey of Essence-Based Preferences. And I can’t wait to talk to you more about all of this. Let’s go. It’s go time, baby.

You’ve got this and I’ve got your back. Bye.

Lily @ Date Brazen (23:39.515)

And be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. You’ve got this and I’ve got your back.