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Show transcript:

Lily @ Date Brazen (00:00.815)

Hey, gorgeous friends. Welcome to another episode of the Date Brazen podcast. I am so freaking glad that you’re here. Today, I am sharing one of my favorite episodes with you so that you can hit the ground freaking running in your love life in 2025. This episode is from a little while back all about the complete dating detox, my three step process to care for your nervous system, to reset from toxic dating app culture.

to reclaim your time and peace and get ready to have the most juicy dating life possible after resetting with this intentional plan. So I’m really pumped for you to listen to this episode and for you to do your own dating detox, detoxing from dating worry, detoxing from dating apps and detoxing from bad dating advice. And I teach you in this episode step by step how to do each of those things. So because this episode is from a little while back,

I talked about a training that would help you with your most joyful as fuck love life. If you’re interested in getting a free on-demand training from me on how to find the right relationship, if you feel like a late bloomer, if you feel behind in your dating life, if you feel like you’ve tried everything and nothing has been working, I have a free training just for you. You can go to datebrazen.com slash training to get your hands on

the three step guide for late bloomers to find the right relationship. I would love to support you and your fiercest love life in 2025. And with that, let’s get into this dating detox episode. You’ve got this and I have certainly got your back.

Hey gorgeous friends, welcome to another episode of the Date Brazen podcast. I am so glad that you’re here. Today, I am taking you through the complete dating detox guide. This guide will help you release the pressure on your dating life. It’ll help you create more spaciousness and ease in your dating life as you actually have time and mental energy to envision the right partnership apart from the dating.

Lily @ Date Brazen (02:09.868)

noise that is so annoying and overwhelming. I’m going to tell you exactly how to get the clarity that you need from this dating detox to reignite your dating life with even more power and even more forward momentum than you’ve had before so that you can have that joyfullest fuck, confidentest fuck dating life that makes the right relationship inevitable. Now, if all of this sounds good, then you’re going to love that this episode is sponsored by my free upcoming training.

called Creating a Confident and Joyful as Fuck Dating Life as a Burnt Out Feminist Badass. In this free live training, you are going to learn three core things. How to create a fiercely confident as fuck dating life without the overwhelm, anxiety, and burnout. How to be completely dating app optional and find juicy dates and the right relationship in person.

And you’re gonna learn my anxiety relieving plan of action that will make dating in general more joyful and magnetize the right partner to you. This training is going to be such fire. It’s going to be so much fun. You’re gonna walk away with a clear plan of action to make the right relationship inevitable with the most confident and joyful as fuck dating life possible. So I hope you’ll join us there. You can RSVP with the link in my bio. It is October 17th at 6 p.m. Eastern.

and you can go to the link in my bio to register, or you can go to datebrazen.com to add your name and save your spot. With that, let’s get into this episode.

Lily @ Date Brazen (03:46.16)

Hey, I’m Lily Wonville, 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 share the exact steps you need to attract a soul-quenching partnership and feel amazing about yourself along the way. This is the Date Brazen podcast.

I got this question from my fabulous brazen inbox. This person asked an amazing question about a dating detox. Let’s listen in to this listener’s question. My name is Sammy and thank you so much for doing all that you do and providing all this, Sandy, when it comes to dating. So I have just decided to take a good break from everything. I just feel like that’s what I needed, but I don’t like the idea that

I have just a really bad feeling associated with dating and trying to get to know people and trying to find love. And even though I’m totally good in terms of like taking this break, do you have any methods for just, I don’t know, towards or like just building back the feelings around dating, even if we’re on this time period of like taking a break? And then another question that I have is like, if you have any methods for just sussing out whether…

finding people who want the same things as you. feel like just on dating apps, guys will just automatically ask me for more sexual favors and that’s not what I’m looking for and it can just kind of be a loan to the self esteem to be bombarded with that all the time. yeah, I’d love any tips or strategies for getting around that. Thanks. Sammy, thank you so much for this question. It is so important and I think so many people are going to benefit from

you asking it. let’s get into it. The question I hear, just to recap, you are doing a dating detox right now. You want to reframe dating. You want to feel better about dating and feel hopeful about finding the right person. And you want methods to find somebody who wants the same thing as you. This is so figure outable. The key to coming into a dating life that feels that kind of easeful, that feels that kind of joyful and confident,

Lily @ Date Brazen (06:10.8)

And sure, the key to that is how you do your dating detox. So many people are in that download, delete cycle, download, delete cycle, or they say, I’m done with dating apps altogether. And during that pause, they are not using their pause time as effectively as they could if they had a dating detox plan, which is exactly what I’m gonna lay out for you, Sammy, and everybody listening. So during this dating app pause, during this dating pause in general,

I want you to have a plan to get the most out of that time because intentional effort leads to intentional results. These three steps to create the most effective dating detox possible are going to lead to you coming into the dating world again, reigniting your dating life with renewed confidence, joy, ease and power. So there are three steps. Number one is detox from dating.

When you do a dating detox, I want you to set the intention, like what’s your why? I wanna rest, I wanna reset my nervous system, I want to get more clarity into what I want and how to find it, I want to have more fun in my life and dating feels like it’s detracting and it’s just a worry source, so what’s your intention? Set that first. Then, detoxing from dating. Looks like stop dating. Like so many people put one foot in and have one foot out.

And I want you to stop dating altogether if that is your intention to have a real pause. What that means is delete all dating apps, like truly create space on your phone. Then I want you to bless and release anybody who you are in a pen pal relationship with that is like sort of nebulous, romantic, is it not? Bless and release them. If you are in a conversation with somebody on a dating app and you think it’s going somewhere, give them your number.

You can keep those connections going if they are aligned for you. And if they’re not, bless and release them. Get them out of your heart space. You need to clear the deck. It’s sort of like walking out of the dating casino of all of the bells and dinging and all that stuff and getting into a gorgeous black SUV and being taken to the dating detox spa where you are clearing the deck of all of the noise. Another thing is if you have like

Lily @ Date Brazen (08:34.345)

friends with benefits going on, or you have a situationship going on, if it does not feel aligned for you, then bless and release it for your dating detox. Deleting dating apps is not enough to get the space that you truly need to figure out your best next step. Now, I add the caveat that you are in charge of your best next step. So if something that I say doesn’t resonate, or if a date falls into your lap, or if a hookup falls into your lap and you wanna

hook up with somebody or you wanna go on a date, great, do it, trust yourself and know that this dating detox gets to be intentional. So if something lands in your lap specifically, I’m cool with that. I would recommend not actively searching for anything in your dating life beyond the internal work during this pause. The other piece that I didn’t mention is that I do recommend that you do this dating detox for one month.

So I want you to do these three steps for one full month and be really intentional about that one month. It can be longer. I recommend a minimum of one month. That’s what we do inside of the Brazen Breakthrough, my proven 12 month program to create a joyful and confident as fuck dating life that makes the right relationship inevitable. So step one, detox from dating. Stop dating, period. Stop dating. Step two, detox from other people’s dating advice.

This one is huge. You have been ingesting so much dating advice. You want something, it’s not here yet, and you’ve been trying to figure out the solution to that. How do you get the right relationship? How do you find somebody? Why has it happened for my friend and not for me? You’ve been trying to figure it out. You want something and it’s not here yet. So in trying to figure it out, you probably have been doing some hustling. You probably have been doing some ingesting dating advice that does not align for you or…

what you want in your future. This looks like your friend or your coworker saying things that are well-meaning, but ultimately discouraging. Like, it happens when you least expect it. Are you wanting it too much? Or are you sure you’re not being too picky? Why don’t you just go on another date with him? Or I found my husband on hinge. You need to be on hinge too. Ingesting this dating advice is not helping you get closer to the right relationship if that dating advice does not feel aligned with your power, your agency.

Lily @ Date Brazen (10:59.258)

your feminist values, right? I want your dating life to feel aligned with the rest of your brilliant life, which means that you don’t have to make yourself smaller. You don’t have to doubt yourself to find love. You don’t have to put yourself into a box or go on a date that you know isn’t right. You need to strip away that dating advice and come into what is my body saying? What is my best next step? So to set that boundary,

make a list of people in your life who are giving you dating advice that does not feel good and set a boundary plan. Whether it’s for yourself, I’m just not going to talk to that person about my dating life for a month or whether it’s out loud, hey, that dating advice feels unhelpful and I’ve got this so let’s not talk about this anymore. And also the other piece of this detoxing from other people’s dating advice is unfollowing people on social media who are giving you dating advice or advice in general.

that feels minimizing, feels icky, that feels uncomfortable. The reason why you may have been attracted to dating advice that made you feel uncomfortable in an icky way, like for example, if you were receiving dating advice from a social media influencer that was saying, you need to have a roster. I think that a roster for me would feel really overwhelming and unnecessary.

and would for me when I was dating perpetuate this idea that I was behind and that I needed to have all these options and that there were a scarcity of options that I needed to build a roster to prove myself wrong, there wasn’t a scarcity, right? That advice wouldn’t feel aligned for me. So I would want to bless and release that advice, but why that advice might feel seductive or why it may have felt seductive in the past for you. And again, if that resonates the roster, great, do it. If it doesn’t and you’re like me, then…

Examine why you were following that advice in the first place or why you were pressuring yourself to follow that advice. My hunch is, is that you have been in such overwhelm and stress and cognitive overload that you have been trying to figure out what you need to do and the hustle culture that we’ve all been steeped in, the patriarchal hustle capitalistic culture.

Lily @ Date Brazen (13:12.456)

that we were all steeped in says you need to hustle to get what you want. need to strive. You need to be kind of miserable. You need to be having less sleep. You need to wake up earlier. You need to go to bed later. You need to be working harder. Dating is a part-time job, right? So hustle is what a lot of us have been used to. So dating advice that has felt aligned with hustle has made sense probably to you. The thought in a lot of people’s brains that I speak to is maybe it’s something wrong with me.

So maybe I do need to be uncomfortable in this icky way to find love. And what I’m saying to you is during this dating detox, let’s strip away that dating advice that feels icky or feels out of alignment or feels uncomfortable, feels hustly so that you can actually get to what makes most sense to me for me. That is detoxing from other people’s dating advice. Now, the exception is people that you…

like feel yummy about their dating advice with. Maybe it’s me, maybe it’s you listening to this episode, maybe it’s another dating coach or a therapist that you like with great dating advice. Like strip away the people that don’t feel in alignment and set boundaries with people in your life who are not serving you empowering dating advice for a month. See what happens. Step three, third and final step in the dating detox, the complete dating detox so that you, Sammy and everybody else listening,

can reignite your dating life with more hope and power is detoxing from dating worry. This step is so important and also is the hardest step in the process. Detoxing from dating worry means first getting aware of what thoughts, assumptions and beliefs are under the surface that are perpetuating your cycle of hopelessness, perpetuating your cycle of scarcity.

So this looks like taking out a sheet of paper and doing a brain dump, doing a worry dump, if you will, acknowledging those worries with a loving witness lens. So with all of the compassion is going to help you address the worries instead of letting them simmer and boil over on the back of your stove, like a lot of you have been doing. A lot of you who are listening have been pushing away the worries for fear that they’re correct. I’m gonna die alone.

Lily @ Date Brazen (15:31.764)

It’s not possible for me. What I want doesn’t exist. You’ve been pushing away those worries and trying to aggressively combat them with maybe some toxic positivity. Maybe you’ve been going to therapy to address them. Maybe you’ve been doing some good coaching work. Maybe you’ve been like earnest. There’s no shame here. There’s only just like, I want you to see your brain and be a loving witness to yourself. I do this stuff too. I have in the past couple of years,

had so much anxiety about so many things. I’m speaking to you from the park bench, like sitting next to you, writing my book. I had so many worries and would go weeks and weeks without deeply addressing them and weeks and weeks like pushing them away specifically around writing my book. I got a book deal last year. My book comes out in June, 2024 more on that very soon.

And I had this opportunity to write the book. I got the book deal and my brain was spinning out on anxious worries. My editor’s not gonna like what I wrote. They’re gonna take back my advance. I’m not gonna get the deal anymore, right? Like the book is not, right? All of these worries. And for weeks, my high achieving ass was trying to push those worries away. That’s not true. Stop thinking that, Lily. Lily, shut up. You got the opportunity. up. Like this seesaw of worry.

and toxic positivity, this sort of like aggressive opposite. And you know what? It didn’t work. I was still steeped in worry. I was trying to convince myself that my worries were stupid. It ended up being a cycle of self blame and self doubt, self blame and self doubt. The thing that allowed me to actually move through those worries, the thing that allowed me to actually start taking empowered action is when I sat down, I brain dumped the worry onto a sheet of paper.

with a loving witness lens. was not like, ugh, you’re having these worries. How dare you have these worries? No, no, no. These are human, Lily. Let’s normalize. Let’s practice self-compassion. Self-compassion says three things. Kindness. I’m here for you. This is really hard. Mindfulness. While you’re having a really hard thought, Lily, your brain is trying to really protect you hard. That sucks. And it’s a thought, not a fact. And common humanity. Lily, you’re not the only person who feels this way.

Lily @ Date Brazen (17:47.654)

You are among so many people who are doing courageous things. This is really hard. I’m here for you. Allowing the worry to be seen through the lens of self-compassion allowed the worry to have like rounded edges. It wasn’t so sharp anymore. And then the process was what are my feelings in my body when this worry comes up? Anxiety, shame, some sharp like panic. So let me breathe. Let me notice it.

Let me say out loud and often, Lily, I’m willing to feel anything to be with you. Treating my worries not as a problem, but as an opportunity to love myself harder and to treat myself with more kindness was exactly what allowed me to finish that book. What allowed me to finish not only the book, but it’s a great book. It is a beautiful book. The writing is amazing. I’m so proud and I know that it’s going to change millions of lives.

because of the way that I went about writing it imperfectly, messily with all of the self-compassion. That’s what I want for the dating worry detox. The detox from dating worry portion of your dating detox is like dump the worries on the page, acknowledge them, practice self-compassion around them, breathe through the hard feelings, feel your feelings. It doesn’t mean forever. It just means like set a five minute timer, breathe in your body.

Notice where it is, notice if it has a color or a shape, if it’s growing or shrinking. Say out loud, I’m willing to feel anything to be with you or another one of my favorite thoughts from Coach Simone’s soul, there is nothing that you could say, do or think that would make me wanna stop being your friend. bringing so much softness to your dating worries allows your brain to have the space outside of that panicked cycle to actually imagine what else might be true.

to start building a new neural pathway in your brain. A new neural pathway that can sound like, might be possible that what I want exists, or it might be possible that I haven’t met everyone yet. It might be possible that the best is yet to come. When you allow your nervous system to calm and reset from that dating worry, so much space is available. That, Sammy and everybody listening, is the power of the complete dating detox. Again, to recap, step one,

Lily @ Date Brazen (20:06.728)

Detox from dating, stop dating. Step two, detox from other people’s dating advice that isn’t aligned. Step three, detox from dating worry. When you do these three things, you will be set up to enter the dating space being curious about what is possible, being more open to the possibilities, and you’re also going to be caring for yourself so much more, which will inevitably lead to you being able to spot the best relationship of your life because your brain isn’t gonna be like,

constantly freaking out about it, constantly worrying about it, constantly in scarcity. You’re gonna have the tools to, when faced with the right relationship, say, woo, I have a lot of thoughts about this, I get to care for my nervous system, because you know what is activating? Finding the right person. This is prep work to you finding the right person. And beyond that, most importantly, it’s you building a stronger, more loving relationship to yourself, the most important relationship of your freaking life.

I hope that was helpful, Sammy. And in terms of how to suss out who is right for you and who is wrong for you and who is aligned and what you want, that was the last part of your question. Take a look at episode 135 of the Date Brazen podcast where I talk about essence-based preferences, and I want you to fiercely set boundaries around what you want in your messaging. So if somebody messages for casual sex and that’s not your vibe, bless and release immediately.

Go to my episode on blessing and releasing episode 140, my blessing release strategy for letting go. Allow them to not be right for you. You are for the few, not for the many. Let me say it again. Allow them to be wrong for you because you are for the few, not for the many. I love all of you. I’m so glad that you are here in this date brazen community. I will talk to you next week. Bye. Thanks for listening to the date brazen podcast.

If you liked this episode, then you’re gonna freaking love my book. Thank you more please. It’s my proven step-by-step feminist guide to breaking dumb dating rules and finding love. You can buy it anywhere books are sold and then get a juicy bonus at datefrazen.com slash book. The bonus is the dating like fix. My top 10 podcast episodes to get unstuck right now. And be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. You’ve got this and I’ve got your back.