Love in a time of COVID: The game that landed me a fiancé.

Be your own coach - Hayley Carr - Leadership coach

"Can you come and pick me up from the backpackers?"

"NO!"

"I'm not a weirdo!"

"How do I know?"

Our first phone call. Aaaaah, love.

I was nervous, you see.

The last guy I had gone out with... it didn't end well. That's putting it mildly, actually. There was a restraining order and a court case involved. I was tentative to be exposed to it again, still not quite sure how it even happened. But it had been months. And I knew I was stagnant. I needed to do something different for things to change.

I sent my friend Candice a text saying "This is where I'm going. If you don't hear from me in three hours, I've probably been abducted and you should call the cops."

Followed by, "I think I might tell him I broke my leg at yoga. I don't know if I can do this."

Then I remembered the promise I made to myself the day before. What was I thinking?! I should have been more specific!

"The next person who actually asks me on a date, I will meet. Just to get myself out of this funk"

Two days before…..

On a Monday night, three self-employed young women sat on a cabin floor made of stone, by a fire, drinking wine, one of them was me.

I told them I was thinking about leaving town to move somewhere new. I didn't wanna run the risk of running into the psycho guy getting my morning coffee any more. This place is too small. One of them decided it was a good day for me to get on Tinder.

I was not pleased.

I'd had two experiences of Tinder in said small town. Both people were nice "boys", local "boys" and typical of most of what the town "boys" were known for. Up for a good time with the travelling backpackers, not much ambition for anything besides a good wave and the next night out. All getting older on the outside, but not on the inside - to be perfectly blunt.

I didn't want to go down the Tinder path, but two wines in, I decided to play a game.

If I was to get out of my funk, I had to get moving, imperfectly.

I didn't trust myself at all. The last one had completely side-swiped me, and I questioned my own judgement. I felt lost as to where to even start - but here we were.

I decided to forego my idea of what type of person I thought I was attracted to, seeing as my attractions weren't particularly leading me down the aisle, so to speak - more like the garden path (not that the aisle was even a goal - I didn't plan on getting married!)

So, we had to go back before the beginning.

The criteria for creating what you want. And I was starting from waaaay back.

Step 1 - What the heck do I even want? I didn't know. So this isn't about who I think I'm attracted to, this is about the human underneath. What values do I have in my life? What types of experiences and qualities in a human are important to me? That might not look like the person I think it has to look like.

Step 2 - Remove everything that says you can't have it right now. If not now, when?

Step 3 - Take action - do what IS within your power, even when you're shaky at the knees but it's available - OK Tinder, here we go.

And the golden rule of manifestation…

Step 4 - Become Infinitely patient. Not passive - patient. Let go. Don't attach yourself to the options, just see what shows up.

The criteria

In order to remain detached, and in the spirit of allowing my trusted friends and family to help me in developing my trust in my own judgement again, my friends were allowed to play.

We had one criteria each.

If the people we looked at didn't meet one of our criteria, no matter how good they looked on paper, it was a no. Swipe whichever way.

Me: No shirtless selfies.

Why? Because I'm sick of seeing boys posting their six packs. I don't care much for peacocking. My thoughts were, if he cares so much about that to put it in a picture-reel, where his body-tone today is one of the first things you can make a judgement about him on, he's gonna be looking for the same thing in me. We don't share the same values. There are plenty of other ways to express a love for fitness, health, and the outdoors or whatever else - without bathroom selfies.

Jules: No Fishing Photos.

Why? Pure logic. Classic Jules. "He has 1 in 5 photos to tell you who he is. If one of them is fishing, that's 20% of his photos. Guess what you'll be spending 20% of your time together doing? Fishing. Nobody likes fishing." (I actually don't mind fishing but this was Jules' rule for the game, so I obliged No fishing photos!)

Candice: No Bad Boys. Why? She had a thing at the time for bad boys,. "If I like him" she said, "he's a bad boy". So, anyone Candice found attractive, We swipe no. I didn't want a "bad boy". haha!

Good, no bad boys, no shirtless selfies, no fishing photos.

We're good to go!

Off we went. For three hours, we had a hilarious time rummaging through profiles of every single male within a 30km radius. It took us about three hours. We'd like someone, read their profile, think "oh yes he might be alright", swipe though his pictures then riiiiiiight at the end... shirtless selfie.

"Noooooo! Why!!!!!!" BAM. GONE.

We were brutal. We had to be. If we really did believe that in a world full of humans we can't meet our match, we have to be willing to say no.

Next! Candice: "ooh, he's hot".

SWIPE. GONE.

Next! Jules: "He looks niii.... FISHING! GONE!"

Maybe we swiped past hundreds of perfectly good humans.

We weren't really judging on anything beyond our criteria - but we read every profile, we sometimes looked at what other information there was, and if we liked it, and they met the criteria, they made it though our filter.

I didn't know where this was going, but something was moving, and that felt good.

I woke up the following morning, and there were a few messages on my app, but also, a few new faces.

For some reason the criteria had stuck. I swiped through about twenty more profiles and proceeded to have a couple of conversations with a few of the people I had matched with the night before.

I kept telling myself, "Hayley, this is just to meet people. That's all.”

I was quickly getting over it though.

My resistance to the app was because I believe in fate. A part of me resisted being out there "trying" to find someone like it was my job - I'd prefer just trusting that if it was meant to be, it would happen.

I was walking a fine line of truth, and fear of putting myself "out there" and getting rejected. I was secretly just unwilling to participate and do my part of actually being in the world. I called it "trying" because it sounded lame and it gave me an excuse not to do it - but I was scared.

It was about 11am and I was already over the stupid app.

I had spent my morning distracted from work, and answering messages from people, in a way that might spark some kind of deeper conversation or humour... something... to no avail. I was bored of the surface level questions everyone was asking. The same way I get when I go to a party and the conversation is shallow.

I was becoming restless. Ready to delete the app. Convinced it was stupid. Yet something was keeping me there. I don't walk out of parties when the conversation doesn't ignite immediately, I wait. I become patient. Sometimes I feed people alcohol. I ask more interesting questions. I make my own fun. So, I decided not to get so hung up and judgemental, and just remember we're playing a game, and the aim of the game is to find nice people to meet and be social with and learn to trust my judgement again.

So, I made a pledge. And the pledge aligned with one other criteria I had for myself, secretly.

This was Level 2 criteria.

Once you'd made it through the filter, and we were in a conversation.

I wanted him to come to me.

I was sick of being the one who flew to the other side of the world for love, only to get dumped. To be made wild promises that were never fulfilled, to hang on for too long because of words with actions always just out of reach.

From now on, whoever was going to take main stage in my life was going to be someone who showed me right from the start that he was actually into me, with his actions - not just words. The same way I do with the ones I love.

So, out of my usual MO, I decided not to just simply ask someone I was talking to if they wanted to actually meet, but see who would do that themselves.

Here was the promise I made..."The next person who actually asks me on a date, I will go out with - just to get me out of this funk, and then I will delete the app".

To be continued...

Stay Curious, Stay open. The life you crave is so much closer than you think.

LOVE