“Guys have no problems getting over a breakup. They break up on a Monday and have a new girlfriend by Friday. They don’t suffer like women do.”
Breakup coach Nancy Ruth Deen has heard those stereotypes, but she’s found little evidence to support them. In her experience coaching men, men struggle with relationships just as much as women. They want to work through their feelings, figure out what went wrong, and fix it so that their next relationship succeeds.
So how DO you go from heartbroken to healed, happy, and ready for love again?
That’s what this week’s YBTV interview is all about.
Find out why your past is still running the show when it comes to love, how you can make those dysfunctional dating patterns disappear, and why healthy love is closer than you think.
Don’t miss Nancy’s special offer just for Your Brilliance viewers!
Get 15% off a regular 90-minute coaching session with Nancy
What You’ll Learn
We want healthy relationships. We want to work on our relationships. We want to work and find ourselves after a breakup. That’s the point of breakup coaching. It’s not just a shoulder to cry on.”
Have you ever heard of a breakup coach?
I hadn’t until I met Nancy Ruth Deen.
A breakup coach does two things:
- She helps clients in a relationship decide whether breaking up is the right thing to do, and
- She helps newly-single clients find themselves and their path to love again.
From Matchmaking to Breakup Coaching
Nancy began learning about love as a matchmaker. It was a fascinating opportunity “to see exactly what’s going on in the male brain when it comes to dating.”
She began to notice a pattern in the men she worked with. She noticed “just how much they were either looking to repeat old dating patterns or looking for their ex in someone new.”
Even worse, they weren’t even conscious of it.
“No one really knows how to date, or what to look for, or why they want to date who they want to date,” Nancy says. Dating from that place of confusion creates mixed results.
As a matchmaker, it wasn’t her place to counsel men about their dating choices. But she realized that she not only wanted to help singles get into relationships; she wanted to help singles get into healthy relationships that lasted.
So she left matchmaking to “create a business where people can come talk about their breakups [and] breaking old dating patterns.”
Who Uses Breakup Coaching?
People come to Nancy “when they’re feeling ready to look inside and see, ‘Why isn’t this relationship working out?’ or ‘Why didn’t this relationship work out? What was my contribution? How was I showing up that contributed to this?'”
Although we tend to think of women as the more introspective sex, that hasn’t been true in Nancy’s experience. Men have been just as willing and eager to process their breakups as women.
They come to Nancy “because they are looking to work through something. What that something is, they may not necessarily know … but they are naturally aware that there is something to be done here. Because men are humans, too! And they love to work on themselves.”
Nancy admits that her clients are special. They tend to have good support systems, but they need that extra help to identify what they’ve been doing wrong in their relationships and how they can fix it. “I’m seeing guys who are conscious-minded, which means that they are wanting to be a little bit more intentional and they are willing to look deeper.”
But surely it’s a breeze for men to get over breakups?
“Guys are struggling just as much as women” when it comes to relationships, Nancy says, but “it looks different.”
Guys may appear to move on faster, but they’re often rebounding with another relationship to get over their ex, not because they’re actually over her. They use dating as a way of distracting themselves. And it’s not just men—women do this, too!
It’s normal to be scared when a relationship ends. You don’t know who you are without your ex. But that doesn’t mean another relationship is the answer. You’ve been handed an opportunity to get to know yourself better, and it’s up to you to take it.
Subconscious Patterns Sabotaging Your Love Life
Who’s in charge of your love life?
Not you.
Not men.
In all likelihood, it’s your subconscious patterns.
“Many of us are dating subconsciously,” Nancy says. We’re in thrall to dating patterns that come from “beliefs that we make up from we were very young, that show up in every area of our lives.”
You might recognize patterns such as, “Why does every guy I date leave me?” “Why does every guy I date treat me like crap?” or “Why do I give way more than I get?”
These dating patterns “can feel so real,” Nancy admits. “It can feel like you’re the only one going through it.”
But all of us have a story. Until we investigate what these beliefs are that have created the story, [only] then we can start to say, ‘I’m going to date for me and what I want and what I need in a relationship,’ and not because of this victim story that we don’t know we created in the first place.”
So how is it possible that YOU are creating the patterns you’re experiencing in your love life, patterns that very much feel out of your control?
When “we’re very young, we create simple meanings based on our caregivers and our interactions with them,” Nancy says. “And then we just live our lives with these hidden beliefs.”
We bring those stories into our relationships, where our experiences “serve as evidence for the beliefs that we have.”
For example, take the belief that “every guy leaves me.” Where does that come from?
To find out, Nancy would ask a client to describe everything she feels when a guy leaves her. After naming those emotions, her client would then be invited to think back in her past to the first time she ever felt that way. Often, her client would be able to find a specific incident in the past that kicked off the belief that men would always leave her.
But how can a belief—which is intangible—translate into real-life relationship stumbles?
In the example above, “this belief is so strong in our bodies and our minds [that] we actually act in relationships in such a way that pushes men away, so that they will leave.”
Once you spot the belief that’s governing your love life, its hold over you is released. You no longer have to re-enact those old patterns.
Nancy knows this first-hand. She discovered a belief that she was inadequate, enabled by her tendency to put the men she dated on a pedestal. She began to say to herself:
My birthright is to be happy, to love and to be loved. I’m fully adequate, whole, and complete exactly as I am.”
And today, she’s proving that new belief true. She’s in a healthy, happy relationship.
Is it your turn to give this a try?
Work with Nancy
If you want to get into your ideal relationship and you’re curious about what patterns are holding you back, then Nancy is offering a special discount for Your Brilliance readers!
Use code “YB2019” for 15% off a regular 90-minute coaching session with Nancy. Sign up now!
It is so important for us to recognize that we don’t need to be somebody that men want us to be. We can attract the exact person that is right for us by accepting ourselves and knowing that we really are whole, perfect, and complete.”
Jump to Topics of Interest
1:45 From matchmaking to breakup coaching
3:43 Helping guys through breakups
4:37 Do guys hurt after a breakup?
5:43 Does hooking up with someone new mean he never loved you?
7:47 Men’s support system
8:33 Breakup coaching
10:16 Do you want your ex back?
10:54 Dating patterns
13:18 “All guys leave me”
16:10 Nancy’s own dating patterns
17:48 Special discount offer for Your Brilliance subscribers
18:40 You don’t have to be who men want you to be
Nancy Ruth Deen
Breakup Coach Nancy is a certified coach, breakup specialist, facilitator, contributor, former-matchmaker, and personal development junkie. She was inspired to start her business after realizing just how many people don’t seek support after a relationship ends. Now, she helps men and women all over the world process their breakups in a healthy, conscious way. Her work has been featured in Cosmopolitan, Bustle, and many more. Get 15% off a regular 90-minute coaching session with Nancy!
Let us know what you think!