This past weekend I led an amazing retreat with a group of women who are in one of my programs. I felt so tapped in to the group and the emotions that surrounded all of us for two days.

These women have come so far – one is planning her engagement (he already bought the ring!), another is moving in with the man she’s been seeing, and another just made a big decision to shift her career after finally feeling supported by her family through our work.

They really helped me reconnect with the soul of my business and remind me why I do the work that I do.

And OF COURSE I loved answering all of the questions that came through from them, but one specifically struck me and I knew I had to answer it here for you:

How do I weed out the wrong men when I’m messaging them online so I don’t even need to waste my time going on a date with them?

I loved this question because it’s SO true.

When you’re online dating your inbox can be inundated with a bunch of “potentials” with no guidelines in sight about how you’re supposed to know who to keep talking to and what to say past “I really like your profile”.

I know every dating expert on earth talks about knowing your “non-negotiables”, but there’s a really good way you can turn them into fun, harmless questions and figure out if the guy you’re talking to is worth more conversation.

So do you have 3 non-negotiable values? I’m not talking about characteristics like “He needs to be at least 6ft tall” or “Masters or MBA is a must-have”.

Those things are NOT what define someone’s character or how good of a match a man is going to be for you, so let’s stick to things that are focused around things in your life that you value.

Are you looking for a man who is family-oriented and close with his own family?

Is travel super important and do you want to be with someone who would be up for traveling the world with you?

Do you want to be with someone who is open to sharing in some traditions with you that are super important? (Like for me I knew that if I wasn’t with someone of my own religion, someone who was accepting and understanding and open to it was still a must).

Once you have a couple of areas pinned down, throw some fun questions into the mix of your conversations or messages to get more insight into who this man is.

There are SO many ways you can frame a question around your values to get an answer that will help you filter out the guys you wouldn’t want to go out on a date with.

For example, if you want a man who is family oriented, you could ask him: “What’s one of your favorite memories of a family vacation/family tradition?”  and if he comes back with an answer like “UGH I really don’t like family vacations, I haven’t gone in years” then this gives you insight into that part of his life that might not match with what’s important to you.

You could ask him the favorite place in the world he’s ever been or wants to go in the future, and then tell him a fun story about your travels.  

You could let him in on a great tradition you have with your girlfriends to meet up every year in a different city because you’re spread out all over the country and ask him if he has any weird traditions with his friends.

The point is to have fun and clever with this.

Having fun and being flirtatious in these conversations is one of the tricks to having interactions with men online that turn into dates and can STILL get you the info you need to know if he’s worth your time.

If you ask a question around each of your values, you will get the information you need from him to discern if you’d like to keep getting to know him or not.

WITHOUT spending your time on a date with someone that you don’t really want to see again.

Now let me just put a caveat here because SO many of my ladies (being the smart, successful women that you are) have this huge “thing” around a man’s grammar online and will probably even consider that to be one of your top values.

Like not just a few of you. 🙂

I TOTALLY get that you want to be with someone who is intelligent and knows the difference between your and you’re, but I don’t think you can discern someone’s ability to be your true love based on their grammar.

What you CAN gauge when online dating is whether they are being lazy while they’re typing messages to you.

The guy that writes his messages to you like he’s texting, for example: “How r u?” or “What r u doing 2nite?” IS showing laziness and a lack of effort, and can probably be screened off at this point.

But grammar does not mean a man is right or wrong for you, so ASK him your three questions based off your values to get a better look into who he is as a person.

If his answers are thoughtful and peak your interest, his grammar may not be as important to you as you thought. 🙂

Your Lovework this week tell me how do you currently weed out the men you feel aren’t the right ones for you?

I’ll be scoping out the comments to help out!

In Love,