Right around my 30th birthday, I went a little crazy.
At the time, I could have opened a consignment shop for bridesmaid’s dresses. Baby shower invitations were piling up like bar receipts. And even though I’d been pretty confident throughout my 20′s, something about 30 hit me hard. I melted down in a blur, “What’s wrong with me? Why doesn’t anybody want to love me or make a baby with me?”
All that whining and self-questioning did nothing to attract a good man. I mean, who wants to be with someone who thinks there’s something wrong here?
You guessed it, guys, who have something wrong with them.
As Patti Stanger would say, I have a “bad picker.” I’ve always been outgoing, so meeting men wasn’t the problem. Meeting the right men was. I could make MVP for choosing the wrong guy. I’d done it for so long, by then I felt comfortable while being in that recognizable, yet somehow invisible space with a man who’s interested in me just enough to keep me hanging around. It’s like pulling on an old, bally sweater. It’s not pretty, but at least I know it well.
So, there was Sam, who wanted to make every night a Blockbuster Night. He wasn’t unkind. He just didn’t want to leave the house. Ever.
Then there was Rob, the amazing guitarist who loved other women more than he loved me.
Beautiful Dean, who was great, when he was great. But he lapsed into moods so dark they scared me.
Then Charlie, whose messy basement apartment should have convinced me that his internal life was just as messy. He was smart and had potential, but what good is potential without action?
And the decade rolled on like that, dating guys who were, “good enough,” until one night in my late 30′s. My girlfriends and I were out at our favorite pub, where the wine and the whining flowed.
“It’s just so hard to meet a guy,” one friend said.
“Well, you’re not gonna meet a guy here. That’s for sure,” said my waitress friend.
This sounded so familiar. Like an annoying rerun of the week before. I think I actually rolled my eyes at them.
“It’s not that hard to meet guys,” I said.
“Well, it’s not hard for you. You always talk to guys,” she said.
“Right. Just walk up to them and say ‘hi’,” I said.
“I can’t do that,” they all said at once like I was asking them to streak through the bar or something.
“What if I dared you?” I asked.
“Huh?” They stared at me.
I pointed at a guy in a baseball cap at the far end of the bar.
“What if I dared you to go and talk to that guy?”
All four of them turned and looked. The guy shifted on his barstool and pulled down his cap.
“I don’t know,” they mumbled and gulped more wine.
“Okay, what if we had a contest? Awarded some kind of prize to the winner?”
They stared at me again. At that moment, I really saw my friends, all doggy paddling through our stagnant love lives, miserable and defeated. We couldn’t go on like that. I flipped over my placemat and began scribbling on it. Points, charts and all sorts of stuff.
“What are you doing?” They asked.
I looked up at them, raised my glass and said, “Ladies, how do you feel about playing a little game?”
I had come up with an idea for a game designed to empower women to dare to date. Like other Fantasy Sports, Fantasy Dating awards points to players. It’s just that when you play this game, you earn points for taking risks and making plays to find love.
We played and it worked. Knowing that our friends could be scoring valuable points at any moment, we checked the mirror before going to the grocery store. We smiled at strangers, stood a little taller and engaged men in conversation. The negativity melted, the points racked up and we went on more dates in the following two months than we had in the last two years.
In fact, all five of us met guys at that pub.
What we learned was that the whining and the self-questioning was killing us. There was nothing wrong with us. But there was everything wrong with us ignoring our power.
I launched fantasydatinggame.com because I wanted to give other women the opportunity to encourage each other to own their power. It’s so easy to compare ourselves to everyone around us and feel badly about everything we’re not. Fantasydatinggame.com gives women the opportunity to bet on everything we are and can be.
Fantasydatinggame.com empowers singles to take chances, build confidence and find love by incorporating flirting into their daily routines. Knowing her wing girl is winning by six points will give a woman the guts to chat up a guy waiting for his frappuccino at Starbucks. In fact, when she Fantasy Dates, the woman won’t leave the coffee shop without giving him her number.
The goal is to change the stories a lot of singles tell themselves, like, “All the good ones are married,” and “There aren’t any nice guys in this city.” The truth is, there are good men everywhere. Fantasydatinggame.com provides an opportunity for women to discover those men while going about their everyday lives. And as they dare to date, they walk taller, smile, feel more confident, and meet people with ease.
So, whether you’re suffering from a bad picker or a bad attitude, make a choice to empower yourself. Join us and play to win!
Suzanne Casamento is the creator of Fantasy Dating. She launched Fantasy Dating after getting tired of hearing her single girlfriends complain about their boring love-lives. Since then, they have all dared to date. Suzanne is a dating expert, writer and speaker. Her mission is to empower women to take chances, build confidence and find love.