#single is going international y'all!!  It's our very first episode featuring a single guest from another country and we're so excited to get down and dirty about dating in other cultures.  Jeane, originally from Singapore, is a New Yorker celebrating her 10th anniversary here (woohoo!), and invited her friend Govin from Malaysia to join us virtually - and there is *such shade* thrown between a Singaporean and Malaysian it's a good thing everyone is sheltering in place in their homes!! haha

Jeane brings a unique perspective of dating, from her upbringing in Singapore to six years in Australia, back to Singapore and now residing in the US, but of course a lot of universals remain, like... oh, getting set up by your mom on dates and wondering why the hell guys who like you criticize you for your looks???  LOL.  We also talk about how our parents' relationship influences our dating fears and expectations as adults.  If your parents have a rocky relationship, does that shake your core belief in finding happiness for yourself?

We hope you dig this cross-Atlantic episode and we WANT MORE, so if you're living in another country and single, hit us up!!!!! 

Have you ever thought about your app response rate?  How about your message-to-conversion rate?  Have you ever done a controlled experiment to see what exactly elicits a response?  Nah, me either.  But Erika Ettin, online dating coach and founder of coaching service A Little Nudge, has.  In fact, with a masters degree and a background in finance, she loves to get downright nerdy with her dating data.

Dating is, after all, a great experiment, and Erika joins #single to share her tips, ideas, and suggestions to set you up for success, and how to handle dating in Covid, even answering some listener Q's for us at the end.  We hope you love Erika and her advice as much as we did - if you wanna learn more about working with her, you can learn more here!

Erika Ettin is the founder of A Little Nudge, the leading online dating coach in the US.  She has helped hundreds of clients in the US and abroad.  Ms. Ettin currently writes a regular dating column for Philly.com and JDate, and has published "Love at First Site: Tips and Tales for Online Dating Success from a Modern-Day Matchmaker."  She currently lives in Washington, DC.  

Trying to date with health issues is hard enough.  (When do I bring it up, before the date? After three dates?  Should I put it in my profile??)  But what about the period of time when your health has stabilized and you're just dipping your toe back into the field?  Aside from the challenge of coming back to app dating after a hiatus, it brings up a lot of anxiety and emotion about how to address "what you've been up to" and the desire to be honest but not scare people away.  

There have been so many singles sick with Covid-19 this year, so whether or not your health issue is ongoing, in the past, or Covid-related, dealing with the competing desires to stay home and get well and find an intimate partner can be tough to navigate.  And while apps are great for increased accessibility while we're stuck at home recovering, what if all you really want to do is meet IRL?

In this episode we talk to Lauren, a self-described demisexual, defined as someone whose attraction to a partner is qualified by an emotional connection first and foremost, and not necessarily a physical attraction.  Our VOP Neal sheds some light on whether men, and specifically gay men, consider themselves demisexuals or is it just women?

If you're feeling aligned with either of these two topics, please know you are certainly not alone.  Also - if you're one of the .01% of the world population that (like Lauren and Neal) find Kevin Kline sexy in "Pirates of Penzance" at a young age - this episode's for you!!

Welcome to a new series of episodes we're offering with different matchmakers & dating coaches!!  If you're feeling super tired of using endless apps in quarantine, maybe you're starting to get curious about what it'd be like to work with a matchmaker and just have someone else take the reigns for a bit.  Or maybe you just want some tips & tricks about how to manage virtual dating right now.  Either way, we've got you covered, and we can't wait to bring you a bunch of awesome new guests on this topic.

For our first episode of this series, we welcome Ashley Campana, Certified Matchmaker & Director of Recruiting at Lisa Clampitt Matchmaking, a high-end, personalized dating service that gives men (and now women too!) a bridge into a social network that allows them to feel as if they have a best friend to introduce them to other singles of quality and style.  (And I KNOW we all want that, right?)

So what's exactly up with matchmaking during COVID-19?  Isn't matchmaking old-fashioned?  And what makes a successful match anyway?  And what is UP with those notorious "databases" of women??  We talk all this and more, giving you the insider skinny on what it would be like to work with a matchmaker in 2020.

If you're intrigued and want to work with Lisa Clampitt Matchmaking in NYC either as a paying client or as a gratis member of their database, head on over to www.lisaclampitt.com.  Note that while the site is currently geared towards male clients, Ashley tells us this has recently begun to change, and their bespoke boutique services are now being provided to women as well.

To work with/ learn more about Ashley, head here.

There's a common belief that in certain circumstances - work, brunch with your grandparents, maybe the odd bachelorette party - it's considered impolite to broach certain topics.  You can probably guess what the trifecta is:  sex, religion, and - of course - politics.  But as mainstream culture begins to call out biases, the way forward just can't be to hide in your corner and pretend you don't have any opinion about anything.  How do we find a happy medium between the way we've been socialized as women to behave - mannered, respectful, not ruffling feathers - and asserting an opinion about what's happening in our culture?  And most of all, how do we do that in dating?

My badass friend Melisa is unapologetically leaning in to her own personal standards and directly addressing today's hotbed issues face on.  We dive in with the curiosity: does that attract or repel men?  VOP Justin weighs in on his end about engaging in these conversations and what it is that makes a woman attractive to him.

Where do you stand on letting someone you're interested in in on your political beliefs?  Is it important to you?  What's the timeline for asking someone where they stand politically? 

The future of dating may just be determined by men who are not scared by strong, independent women who have an opinion about what's happening in our country.

What if you had an unapologetic, informed, entrepreneurial, badass comedienne as your sex ed teacher?  Maybe you woulda listened more in high school, right?  And it mighta saved you a few years of awkward, uncomfortable, and plain old bad sex too.

Raylene Taskoski is the best friend, aunt, and sex ed teacher you always wished you'd had.  She's a motivational speaker and stand-up comedian who has spoken to over 10,000 women about sex over the last decade through sex toy parties, her keynote talk "Let's Talk about Sex: the Importance of Open, Honest Discussions about Women's Sexual Health," and her comedy show Stand Up Comedy Sex Ed.  For 13 years she's educated women about how their bodies work and why they work that way, and is a true believer in the importance of lube. :)  She's on a mission to improve the sex life of as many women as possible through communication and most importantly, laughter.

Raylene joins the #single family to tell us single women that the best thing we can do for ourselves, especially right now when we're likely to be isolated from sexual interactions, is to love ourselves - in both the emotional and physical way.  Here's two of her favorite products to make that happen, as mentioned in the episode:

TWILIGHT MOOD

JUST LIKE ME LUBE

Wanna have a virtual sex toy party with Raylene?  Hit her up here and tell her #single sent you!

Select all that are true: Dating online is frustrating.  Dating online is isolating.  Dating online is boring.  Swiping is tedious and does not lead to anything meaningful.(If you're like us:  ALL OF THE ABOVE.) 

Ever find yourself wondering if this is truly the only way to date?  I mean, your friends and family must know at least one single person, right?  Maybe two?  And if so, why the hell can't they just hook a girl up already?!

My 1:1 guest this month, Renee-Michele, and I discuss why exactly setting up your friends has fallen by the wayside in today's culture and more importantly, what we can do about it (Friend-of-a-Friend #single picnic, anyone?).  We also end up having a really important detour convo with our VOP Lee.

A small heads up:  To give context to his experience with matchmaking, Lee brings up a past experience with a woman he was in a relationship with who experienced vaginismus, a condition involving a muscle spasm in the pelvic floor muscles that makes it extremely painful, difficult, or impossible to have sexual intercourse or even insert a tampon.  While this condition is uncommon, and a result of various factors such as menopause, radiation, or gynecological surgery, it can also be a result of prior sexual trauma.  If this conversation feels particularly triggering to you, please proceed with caution.  Because we don't discuss any of this woman's surrounding circumstances, we're unable to address the issue with any real medical reference; however, I thought it was important to leave this topic in our episode because of the wider relation to our conversations around dating.  Sexual health issues are a large part of dating and are rarely - if ever - talked about with honesty and sensitivity.  If you'd like to learn more about vaginismus or other sexual health issues, we encourage you to visit https://www.womenshealth.gov/ or to speak to your gynecologist.  

Well singles, we're heading into month THREE of quarantine and social isolation.  How's everyone doing out there?  Maybe jumping from app to app searching for a less shitty experience?  I hear you.  For this month's 1:1, I chat with my good friend Chris who like me is a dating app junkie.  We go head to head talking about the ones we've tried and then deleted and then downloaded again six months later.  

If you thought *I* had some crap dating stories, Chris has got some doozies that will be sure to make your mouth drop.  It's amazing to me how many men are still out there using women's vulnerability on a dating app for their own gain.  JUST KIDDING I'M NOT SURPRISED IN THE LEAST.  But if you don't believe this is happening, this episode will remind you just how tough it is to be an open, honest, kind, and trustworthy person on the internet.  

So here we are, two months into quarantine.  Chances are, you're sick of swiping right, getting ghosted, sifting through profiles, and unmatching (or getting unmatched yourself), and there's been a moment or two where you've thought:  there's gotta be a better app.

Enter Chorus, a female-led matchmaking app where friends swipe for friends.  It's a way for people in relationships to participate in online dating and support their friends in this culture that is now, as founder Emily Smith puts it, "notoriously kind of terrible."   Remember when you used to go to parties and you'd say to your friend, "Hey, who's that cute musician in the corner?  Is he single?  Can you introduce us?" and how, for whatever reason - one of them maybe being um, we're not allowed to have parties right now - that doesn't really happen anymore?  Emily, single herself, approached creating her app with that community vibe in mind.  We should all be helping our most beloved single friends find someone!!  I vote that dating should be a team effort from now on!  Help me out, tribe!!

If you're curious to check out a new approach to dating online, listen in to this episode where Emily & I talk about what it takes to build an app from the ground up, women and matchmaking, and why making a judgement on a stranger is inherently entertaining.  And then go to the app store and download Chorus!  Anybody can be a matchmaker and anybody can be on the app and it's 100% FREE!!!  

You're checking in with family.  You're exercising at home.  You're meditating and taking sanity walks and me time.  But... where's your sexuality in this quarantine?  

If you're single and in isolation (like me) I'm gonna guess it's preeeeetty dormant.  But this is a time of high stress, and whether or not you realize it, sex and stress are, er, bedmates.  On this episode I'm blessed to have two very badass women from the world of sex positivity, Dr. Jess O'Reilly and Marla Renee Stewart, who have recently teamed up to write a very cool new book called "The Ultimate Guide to Seduction & Foreplay." 

Now, I know what you're thinking:  That sounds like a book for couples!  But here's what I learned from talking to these two women:  while the idea of seduction often operates in our culture on the assumption that you have a partner, in actually it isn't about "performing" or "achieving" but learning your own sexual/ seduction language in order to have more meaningful connections and to better understand your sexual values.  Ever wonder what your own personal seduction style is?  What exactly turns you on?  Why you have "chemistry" with some people and with others it's like flirting with a plaster wall?

This alone time is an awesome time to learn more about what makes you tick in order to have stronger interactions when we all get to date IRL once more.  I don't know about you, I'm gonna be armed and ready with my favorite movie sex scene at the ready. :)

Learn more about Dr. Jess here.

Learn more about Marla Renee Stewart here.

Learn more about the Sex Down South Conference here.

Buy the book here.