Ever wonder if it’s possible to start over—emotionally, romantically, even financially—at 60? In this episode, I talk with Victoria, a powerhouse of resilience who walked away from a 30-year marriage, faced down fear, and built a brand-new life from the ground up. We explore what it really takes to leave a relationship that looks fine on the outside but feels empty on the inside, how to trust yourself again after decades of self-doubt, and why reinvention isn’t just possible—it’s powerful. If you’ve ever questioned whether you’re too old or too late for lasting love, Victoria’s story will show you what’s possible when you finally put yourself first.
Hey, this is Evan Marc Katz, dating and relationship coach for smart, strong, successful women, your personal trainer for love. Welcome back to the Love U podcast, where you can learn everything there is to know about dating and relationships, sex and men from a man’s point of view. If you are a regular listener, do me a solid subscribe on whatever platform you’re on, YouTube, Spotify, Apple, I think.
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There’s nothing big going on. The big thing going on is that I am doing the latest in my series of interviews with former Love U members. Today’s interview is with a very special friend.
Her name is Victoria. Victoria, welcome to the Love U podcast. Thank you, Evan.
We’ve been talking for a half hour prior to this because the gardener with the leaf blower was in my backyard. It feels strange to start a conversation when we’ve already been in mid conversation covering a lot of ground. I’m really excited because Victoria, out of everybody that I’ve ever worked with, has a really, really strong voice.
She’s almost like a second coach in my private Love U Facebook group. She does some of the dirty work that I don’t want to do sometimes. She’s someone whose opinion really, really matters to me.
For those listening, I think even though she’s a stranger to you, you should listen to her as well. Before we get into why she’s such a special Love U graduate, I’d love to get a sense of who you are. I don’t even know the answer to this because of our professional relationship.
Where are you from originally? Where do you live now? How did you become you? I was born in North Carolina. I’ve lived in 12 states in the United States, all over the place, southeast, midwest. Now I’m in the southwest.
I’m from a pretty normal kind of academic family. Brothers, sisters, suburban upbringing, good girl, straight A’s. My medical school father was a naturalist and kept us in the woods a lot when we were little.
Of all the kids, he picked me to go to law school because he wanted a lawyer in the family. I was the obedient kid and I did that. I was married for 30 years and that evaporated.
That was a big shock to me. I needed a rebuild. I needed to rebuild my health, my location, my home, and then my love life.
That’s how I came to you. We’ll get there, I promise. If you’re comfortable, would you share how old you are and where you live? I’m 72 and I live in Phoenix, Arizona.
You take Love U 2016, if I recall. I think it was the first one. Then it would have been 2015, but okay.
Yeah, it was in the first one. We’re going to get there in a second, but prior to that, you get divorced after 30 years. How old were you at the time? 60.
And who left whom? Wonderful relationship for 20 years. The last 10, it was really bad and I should have left sooner. He precipitated the divorce.
Got it. In retrospect, where did it go wrong? Where is he to blame? Where are you responsible at all for how it fell apart? It’s interesting. I do not now see it as blame.
I think that whoever you fall in love with when you’re 22 or 25 is a different man than you’ll fall in love with when you’re 32 or 35. It’s probably a different man when you’re 45, probably a different man when you’re 65, probably a different man when you’re 80. And you have to either grow together or cycle through men.
Kind of, but I think it’s also a process of learning who you are and what you want. I have four children and are you kidding me? How did I raise four children and get everybody fed and get everybody to all their stuff? You are in survival mode a lot and it’s a joyful survival mode. It’s a raucous experience with a bunch of kids and you’re parenting together and you bond together over that and you might lose a little of the connection that you had when there weren’t any of those kiddos around and when it was just the two of you and when you had your own dreams.
And so I think women lose some of that over time and men don’t particularly step up and say, Hey, you’ve lost a little bit of yourself. What are we going to do about that? They’re off doing their own thing. And so I think it’s very, because we don’t train anybody in how to sustain a relationship.
And my parents were married until they died and had a loving relationship, but nobody taught me the details. I wasn’t behind the doors and I wasn’t really paying attention. I was a kid, being a kid, right? Wendy Lund.
And so in that marriage, the last 10 years, what was going on? We had gone in our separate directions professionally and also with hobbies and still going to kids baseball games and taking this one to college and driving this horse across country so that one could go horse show. We didn’t make time for each other. And I think we also grew to very different places.
And maybe that was growing into more of who we each were. And maybe we didn’t really belong together anymore, which I do now believe. I think, I think certainly he would say that he couldn’t make me happy.
And I would not have admitted that then. But it’s true. He couldn’t make me happy.
I had to make me happy. And then I had to go find the man at this time in my life that gives me what I wanted, needed, felt I didn’t have. I think more compatibility in on some real fundamental levels that I couldn’t have even identified when I was young, because in my family, doctor, lawyer, pharmacist is what you’re allowed to be.
And it wasn’t said, but that’s kind of what you’re allowed to marry also. And so that sort of academic track and the, you know, education was everything. And I didn’t know what else there was.
I didn’t know that there were other paths through life that were honorable. Yeah. And you didn’t really look at or sample from that menu to really even get a taste.
It’s almost like it didn’t even exist because it wasn’t on the table. And I felt constrained in that environment. So my ex-husband was an MD and that has, in the type of practice he had, that has some social sort of norms.
And I was never really comfortable in them. I could do it. I could perform, you know, I could show up, but I don’t think it was filling my bucket.
Okay. So post-marriage, you’re in your 60s. What were you going through then that, when you said, I was sort of rediscovering myself, you build a life with someone for 30 years, it’s almost like cutting off a limb.
There’s all this freedom to do whatever. But I would think that would be really scary. I couldn’t imagine being without my wife.
Yeah. It was terrifying because we both came from parents with intact marriages to death. In fact, after I divorced, I was obligated to go to his, both of his parents’ funerals.
And his dad is holding my hand after we divorced and saying, you’ll always be my daughter. And I’m thinking to myself, no, I won’t because I’m not. Right.
And of course, when Will was red, I wasn’t his daughter. Right. So emotionally, maybe at that time.
So yeah, there was a lot to it. I was terrified. I was very broken because having come from intact families, there was no such thing as divorce in my mind.
My attitude, and I had told him this, we have two choices. We can be miserable together, or we can work on this and try to be happy together. Those are our two choices.
This is not an alternative. And I didn’t understand that he thought there was an alternative, which was divorce. So yeah, I’m alone.
I have no one. He’s an MD, a prominent one in our community. Zero people reach out to me.
Zero. So he maintained all of the social contacts. And I mean, even the families whose kids, our kids was our kid, our last kid at home was playing baseball with.
Right. So, you know, I have nothing left, basically. So actually, my kids helped my oldest son.
My kids precipitated the divorce in the end and said, Mom, what are you waiting for? And I said, Well, I’m waiting for your dad to ask me on another honeymoon. And my son who was college age at the time said, How’s that going for you? You’re a brat. And he said, I had dinner with him in Atlanta.
He said, Mom, go home, put whatever will fit in your car and go to Phoenix. You know, my youngest kid was there. And they miss you and they want you and it’s beautiful and you don’t need a passport and it’s reversible.
Just go. And I said, Well, I have a business. I have employees.
I have a building lease. I have a big home. I have all these obligations.
I can’t. And he said, Yeah, you can. So I did.
I packed up and I left. And I got a little room in a, you know, a little furnished one bedroom vacation place and cried all the way from Mississippi to Arizona and literally baby steps day at a time, you know, recontacted clients, you know, took sort of dissolved and minimize the business that I was doing at the time. And I worked up the nerve to brush my teeth and comb my hair and go to Starbucks and make eye contact with somebody.
And at this point you’re how old? I’m 60, 61. And I thought at the time, this is what I thought when I realized he really did want a divorce and it was really ending. I thought, wow, this is really bad timing for me.
There is no premium in the United States of on women who are 60. I mean, I’m, I’m screwed. This is really bad timing.
You know, maybe if I were 40 or maybe if I were 50, but now like I’m, I’m not a desired quantity is what I thought at the time. That’s the internal limiting beliefs. So that’s, that’s sort of where I wanted to go to next.
And when your husband leaves you, when you’re that age, what, what other conclusion could you come to? And, you know, you talk about confidence a lot in the, um, in Love U. And I was taught and I believe, and I’ve always done it, that you behave as if you’re confident and doesn’t matter if you’re confident or not, but you need to behave that way. Right.
So I’ve always been able to do that. Did I feel it? No. But did I, you know, buck up and take care of it? I went and found a personal trainer.
I had lost a lot of weight and was just gray and sad and skinny. And I found a personal trainer. I said, you got to fix this, help me.
And I’m still with them and love that. And then, and then I started looking, I, I, I thought deeply about, I like men and I like being around men and I’ve always been attracted to men. And as my marriage deteriorated, I didn’t, I didn’t even have a friend anymore.
I had had a friend for a long time. And then when the friendship went away, I really had nothing, but I knew inside myself that I had a lot of, that I wanted love. I wanted to be in love.
I wanted to have, you know, a real passionate, exciting relationship. Did I know it was possible? No, but I kind of suspected it was. So I went online, you know, and talked to a bunch of men on the, you know, apps and stuff and, and, and, and enjoyed doing that.
Even before I met anybody, just had some nice phone calls. And, and then I decided I didn’t, that I was the common denominator in this marriage ending, you know, he left me. So what don’t I know? What don’t I know about this and what are the next steps? And, and as I looked online, it became obvious to me that I didn’t want to listen to women because I didn’t think they had the answer.
To understanding men? I only wanted to listen to men’s advice about what men wanted. And that’s how I found you and listened to you enough and reached out. Okay.
So, uh, hearken back to 2015. Uh, what do you remember? Cause again, it’s a, it’s, it’s at this point, it’s ages ago. What do you remember about that experience? Either something you learned or the experience that you had with the other women? Um, I’m not trying to put any words in your mouth cause we didn’t, we don’t prep before these things.
So what do you remember about your time in Love U? I remember making the decision to spend the money to do it because I knew that I, I wanted to do something for me. And I remember thinking, if all I get out of this whole Love U experience with all these calls and education is some good girlfriends, it’ll be worth it. That’s what I thought.
So I, I had very low expectations, which you need to do when you’re dating. And I, and, and when I got in it, um, I had some resistance. I mean, you were pretty blunt and you were, um, I would say, I would say blunt about, um, dating.
The one thing that I do remember you’re telling me, I had been out with a guy who was like a federal judge and did a little acting on the side and thought he was all that. And, uh, I did not pick up on the fact that he was a player because I think my mindset was there. And you pointed out to me, you know, I said he had taken me to the movies or something and then took me back to his house and like walked me into his bedroom.
And I’m like, what are you doing? This is, you know, no. And, and he, and he got kind of offended. And then he asked me to watch his dog the next weekend, like put, sort of put me in my place.
Didn’t I understand how cool a guy he was and shouldn’t I be compliant? And I’m like, no, not, not who I am. And you know, it wasn’t even that good a movie. And, uh, and you also told me that I was kind of alpha and that I probably did not need to be with these high drive, you know, I’m smarter than you.
I can win an argument. I, I think I, I think I learned that I had always attracted men because I was a challenge, maybe a cute challenge, but I was a challenge and I was feisty and could stand up to them. And I, I, I knew I was smart enough to go toe to toe with anybody.
And I was not aware that that’s not what they liked about me. That’s what they put up with, right? Right. They liked you for all these other reasons.
And it’s the, it’s the same flip story of, you know, uh, why do women date assholes? Well, they don’t like them because they’re assholes. They put up with the fact that they’re assholes because they’re smarter, charismatic or charming or rich. They put up with that.
And so for me, I think I was, I, and I hope this isn’t too weird to say, but I think I was a little bit of a fantasy girl in a way that I was, um, a lot of men fell in love with me when I was young. And so I was easy for me to charm somebody just using that whole, I’m confident, you know, but what was missing is that I wasn’t getting that deeper love. I wasn’t getting that, I see you, I want you, I’m going to protect you.
I want you by my side. I wasn’t feeling that. You’d have their respect, but because you didn’t spend any time in your feminine, you didn’t have that warmth and protection maybe? Yeah.
I mean, I think it’s more that I was a very attractive challenge because I knew how to flirt. And I, um, so it wasn’t hard for me to attract men, but it was very hard for me to feel loved and I didn’t know how to articulate what would make me feel loved. I wasn’t probably even aware that that was missing.
Okay. And so somehow over 26 weeks with me that planted a seed in your head that, again, I don’t want to put words in your mouth because I don’t know what you’re thinking, but something about, uh, making men feel needed or showing your vulnerable side or no? Uh, I would say that came a little bit later. What came first for me is, you know, I’m a little, I can seem, uh, arrogant or, um, elitist.
And what came first for me was allowing in, uh, people of different backgrounds. You know, you talked a lot about, you know, wanting to be with a hot, smart, Eastern, sure. Snappy girl.
And, and for me, it was like opening my eyes to different sorts of men. And I did it by different ages and different backgrounds and people that I never could have brought home to my academic family and a lot of experimentation and a lot of opening myself up to the stories that other people had about how they’d lived their lives. And so that was the first thing.
And I, I think during Love U, I dated men who were quote beneath me socially. Right. So I had a wonderful boyfriend who was a retired street cop.
He was wonderful. And I actually, you know, took him to my daughter’s wedding and everybody loved him and he did great. Even though, you know, his grammar was less than what I would have preferred huge heart, good man, kids, loved him, raised a good family.
There, there were core things that I had in common within a way, all good men that I was not aware of. Cause I was thinking, you know, I only need this little elite, you know, high paid, well-educated. But the story goes, cause someone’s listening right now and they’re hearing, hearing your version of events and their immediate reaction is so you settled.
So someone else should settle. Oh no. And we’re going to get, we’re going to get to him.
I’m being the audience right now. When they hear street cop, they’re like, okay, so she, she took Love U and she learned to lower her standards. No, no.
What I did is I learned to experiment and I learned to be open and I learned to allow men to come to me and show me who they were before me making that snap judgment. Oh, I can read this profile and I can tell, you know, you’re this level in this company or whatever. No, I, I think I learned to be open to the wonderful world of what’s out there.
Cause when in our lifetimes, have we ever had an online catalog of men who are single? I mean, and I, when women in love, you complain about having to, you know, be on the apps or whatever. I’m like, this is genius. It’s so good.
It’s like to go home, make yourself a cup of tea, curl up in bed and browse men, you know, who are telling you about themselves. How good is that? You know, when in other era have we had that opportunity? So I’m hiding in my little apartment in Phoenix. When am I going to meet anybody? You know, and most of my work is online.
I’m not. So learning to be open to all the people, you know, filed away in their little homes, longing for maybe what I was longing for that closeness or that joy of connecting with somebody. So just, just opening up, I didn’t act during Love U.
I don’t think I knew what I wanted, but it’s the beginning of the process of understanding what I didn’t want. Okay. Yeah.
And that’s half the battle. Any other specific takeaway that you remember? A turn of phrase, an idea, something that opened you up? Because you’re giving sort of broad overall feelings. Is there anything specific that you remember that you go back to? Because we’re going to move past Love Uin a second.
Right. So the talk about, you know, we did a lot of, I think, labeling of people and relationships. So there was a lot of conversation in my group about, oh, he’s alpha and he’s beta.
I no longer really buy into that. And one of the things you said to me is alpha means selfish. And I remember that very distinctly, because of course you say that to anybody and it came from Franz de Waal’s anthropology studies with chimpanzees.
And it’s not really right because like an alpha female is a collaborator and a peacemaker. And we could also come up with the alpha male he protects and provides for everybody. But if we just say masculine is more about self and feminine is more about others.
Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think paying attention to that and then getting comfortable with the idea that none of us are that black and white and that no man is that black and white.
And a guy can be very protective in one scenario and yet ignore your needs, you know, at home when the game’s on. So what I think that for me, the process was learning about myself and learning what would make me happy. So I love that.
How many dates, how many years did it take for you to get into the relationship that you’re in now post Love U? Well, let’s see, I think I was 60 or 61 when I was in Love U. And I met my current boyfriend who I’ve been with for four years now when I was 68. And he’s a few years younger.
And when I broke up with the previous boyfriend, who was also a great guy, but not a fit for me, which I knew because of Love U. I knew to let go earlier and not try to hang on because I liked him a lot. There was nothing terribly wrong with him.
We didn’t have a fight. We didn’t break up that way. I just knew he wasn’t going to fulfill me long term and that I would grow to resent that he couldn’t give me everything I needed.
And it wasn’t his fault. He was giving me everything he had to give. So getting out early was one of the things that I definitely learned.
So how long were you with that guy? Because you talked about, I stayed 10 years, and I know marriage is a different story, but I stayed 10 years in a marriage where it was deteriorating. If you had that time back, it’s almost impossible to think about. In the previous relationship, how long was the relationship and how long did you stay past the expiration date? Oh, I didn’t stay past the expiration date on any of them.
So the cop that I dated, who was really wonderful, I let him go in about 18 months. And the next one, not even that long. So we were together about a year, spent a Christmas together.
I thought about it and I just said, you’re wonderful. There’s nothing terribly wrong, but I’m never going to be the number one I want to be with you. He was much younger and career oriented and had other things to do.
And so I didn’t get a lot of his time. Victoria was awesome, but there wasn’t enough Victoria time. And I wanted that.
But that’s great that you chose to insist on, he may be a great guy, but this relationship, on these terms, if it were to continue, I don’t feel satisfied with the status quo. Right. And that was always my issue.
Am I ever going to find somebody who I can really, I’m not a settler, I’m a maximizer, as you put it. So am I ever, is there anybody out there who’s enough for me in the things that I need? Not enough in society’s definition of what a great guy is, but am I going to find someone where I don’t feel like I want to run away? So you meet your guy four years ago. Was he online? Yeah.
What was the first date like? He’s two states away from me. So I’m in Phoenix, he’s in El Paso. So we connected online and then he called me every day for a month.
And we talked for long periods of time. It was COVID. So I was very reluctant to meet anybody at that time physically.
And it was also in June in Phoenix, it’s brutally hot. So he offered to come take me to dinner, to drive all the way over here, fly over here and take me to dinner. I didn’t want to go inside in a restaurant at the time because of COVID.
So I suggested that we just, his profile had him out hiking by a pretty waterfall in the mountains. And I was wanting to get out of here because you’re cooped up in your house. And so I said, let’s go hike, let’s take a weekend and go hike and we can meet each other that way.
Because it was so far, he was six and a half hours away. So we continued to talk on the phone. We talked about, we got an Airbnb, I asked him to get me an extra bedroom in case I didn’t like him.
And then we talked about what we would do and how far we would go in terms of a romantic relationship since this was actually our first meeting. So it was really bizarre. And I made up my mind ahead of time, honestly, that if I liked him, I was going to let it happen.
I was going to be intimate if I felt like it at the time, but that I was also going to steal myself and know that it might be only that one trip. And if that turned out to be true, I was going to give myself that treat if it felt good. And I was going to expect nothing.
That’s the healthy way to break sexclusivity is if you’re okay with the possibility that this might be it, then absolutely you can do that on your terms.
And mind you, I was 68. I’m not going to get pregnant. I’ve already had a family.
This is really just for me. And it was COVID, and I was lonely. And I was like, this is such a nice man.
I know everything about him after this month. He has six kids, and I have four. And we’ve been through all of that.
And where have you lived? And what’s your business? And so we got pretty comfortable with one another. And for lack of a better word, the chemistry, was it off the charts? The chemistry on the phone was very off the charts, because that’s just a real high priority for me. And it turns out it was a high priority for him.
Well, how do you dip your toe in that? Right? Well, in a normal situation, if you’re both in the same place, you can gradually date and, you know, develop an intimacy that way. But both of us were, we were grown up enough to be able to talk to each other about it. And I would be okay with this, but I would not be okay with that.
And I literally said to him, I want my own bedroom. And I cannot promise you how I will feel when I’m in your presence. And he said, well, I can promise you, I’m going to try.
And I won’t, you know, he obviously was not going to force himself on me. But, but he was highly motivated by the time we talked. And, and I was honestly really apprehensive about it, because I know about myself that no matter how good you feel about somebody on the phone, no matter how good their pictures look, for me, I, I know that I’m very scent oriented.
And I think there’s something to that with people. Some men smell really good and sexy to me, and some don’t. And I think it has to do with, you know, you’re not supposed to marry your litter mate.
Right? So we have, we have things that bother us. And so I knew that until I was in his physical presence, I wouldn’t know whether I wanted to go there. But after this spectacular first date, were you basically, instantly a couple? Yeah.
So I, because I left, he, he gave me a little ring and a little antique Roman ring that he got out the last night and said, you know, I bought this for you. I didn’t know you. So I couldn’t buy it for you, you, but I’ve carried this with me on dates because I was hoping to meet somebody that I would want to give it to.
So that was how we parted. And he called me the next day and asked if he could come that weekend. So I probably got home on a Thursday and he showed up again on Saturday.
And we really have been together ever since. Not crazy passion. Yes, there was crazy passion, but talking all the way, you know, what, what do you want to do next? Can we do this? No, we’re not going to make any promises.
We don’t know yet. We don’t know each other well enough yet. And so we’ve taken our getting to know each other at a, at a really mature pace.
How is he different? Because you were hinting at it earlier. How is he different than men in your past? He’s confident. He’s almost overconfident.
He’s a happy guy. He wakes up every morning with a smile on his face. He doesn’t have self-doubt.
He’s, he’s a college dropout, built his own business 40 years, still successful, keeps it going to keep his employees paid because he wants them to have a good life. And he’s intense enough to be very successful, but he’s, when I say he’s confident, you wouldn’t know it to look at him. You would think really nice guy, nice smile, really pleasant.
Very driven, but not, I would say what appeals to me is that he does not appear to really care one whit about what anybody else thinks about him. Makes his own decisions, kind of follows his own path. And this is very different from your husband.
My husband was very, very social and very connected. He was very much a team player in his medical practice and very beloved, knew what to say to people. Yeah.
Very socially connected and like to the sort of traditional, you know, he knows how to go to the right restaurant, find the right restaurant, go to the right restaurant, order the right wine, you know, go to the right place in Italy for the right bike trip, you know, with the beautiful people. It was a world that I felt really constrained in. And this man is free and a loner and I can, I feel freer and I feel smothered in a very, very good way by his love.
I have never doubted his attraction for me. And that is just blissful for me is what I was missing. So, and it’s beautiful.
I mean, I love hearing that from you. What challenges, I mean, I know that you guys still remain in a long distance relationship where he drives six hours to see you. Um, are there any other obvious challenges that you guys had to overcome over the past four years? Uh, I, I, well, I think there are always challenges.
I don’t think we’ve really had any issue overcoming anything because in our conversations, both of us are at a place in our lives where we understand that the only way to live day to day is with the golden rule. And so we both take the attitude, I don’t want to do anything to mess this up. This is just too good.
So, so our, uh, our time together is just really special and really focused on each other. And we, I would say we have probably a whole lot of really differing opinions. It’s completely maddening to me that he wants to talk about astrology.
I find that just absolutely idiotic. And, you know, I’m a very science academic based person and, and he’s just so easygoing. I, I think if I really cared and really went down the road with him on whether there’s magnetic pull from the planet, you know, I, I, so, so because he’s easygoing, because he doesn’t feel really passionately about a lot of things.
He has some beliefs that I think are wacko, but they don’t dominate. They don’t matter. That’s the point, right? So it’s the ability to agree to disagree.
People, but I think almost in particular, women underestimate the value of easy and agreeable. Oh, right. We really like ourselves a difficult man.
Well, and I think Evan, you need to know what you want because I, I, and I say about him all the time. I don’t know any woman in my whole sphere of friendships who would tolerate this guy. I don’t know any, uh, he, uh, he dresses like a homeless person.
Uh, he, uh, he’s so completely individualistic that, um, he, and, and, and, and a little rebellious, you know, on if it’s supposed to be this way, he’s going to take an opposite viewpoint. Um, uh, I find him very, well, here’s a great example. Um, he’s extremely generous, um, and he’s financially very successful, but you would never know it to look at him or to see how he lives.
He actually, when I met him and is still living in a fifth wheel on a piece of like parking lot outside of El Paso beside a mountain, that’s just desolate looking. And he was dating women here in Scottsdale. And when I, when I had the first day with him, he said to me, I have to tell you something.
And I was like, Oh boy, here it comes. What could this be? And he says, well, you know, I live in a trailer. I was like, okay, so I, you know, I don’t care where you live.
I’m it’s the man. It’s not the lifestyle. And if the lifestyle demands that I go somewhere else or demands that I do what he do, but he was living in a transient situation because he wasn’t sure what he wanted.
He knew he wanted to be with a woman. He knew he wanted it to be monogamous, but he didn’t know after that where he would want to end up. So he’s owned large homes and designer this and that, but that’s not what he was doing right now.
And women were judging him for that instead of, uh, really the fundamentals, you know, he’s secure and he’s well-to-do and he’s a great provider to the people around him. He just doesn’t care about the trappings of it. And I’m all about the fundamentals and the honesty and, and especially, especially how I’m treated.
I wanted to be adored. That’s the thing that I get from listening to you in our private Facebook group is how this guy literally goes the extra mile for you and you never have to doubt where you stand with him. You don’t, he, it sounds like he, he speaks all five love languages.
Uh, yeah. I don’t know if it’s all five. I think just, I think what I want to say is it’s who he is.
He’s just being who he is. He’s a guy that wants to get shit done. And if it’s my house that needs shit done or his car or whatever, he’s going to get it done.
And I find that very caring and very supportive because sure, I can do it all myself, but I don’t want to. And the fact that he is gratified to support me that way and I get to thank him for it is completely amazing. Right.
So I’m just going to put a pin in this for a second and make it explicit to everybody listening. Is that your phone dinging? Oh, sorry. No, it’s on the computer.
Okay. I was wondering if it was my phone dinging. We’ve already established just in this conversation, right? Academic, lawyer, blunt, challenging, right? Tends towards masculine energy.
And you’ve allowed this guy to do for you. And all I hear from women on the phone is, okay, I take care of my clients and I took care of my ex, taking care of my adult kids. Who is taking care of me? And you’ve found a guy and allowed a guy to do that, even though you could very well take care of yourself.
Right. There seems to be something really profound in that. Evan, it’s that I always wanted it, but I couldn’t even put words to it.
Until he did it for me, I wasn’t able… I started dating him in June, right? He came to my house in July. I had a patch of dirt behind my house and I had some tile other places. And I just kind of offhand said, God, I wish I could get that tiled.
And he goes, oh, I’ll do that for you. Fourth of July, 110 degrees in Phoenix. And the man is on his hands and knees and built me a gorgeous patio that matched the rest of mine.
Bought all the materials, installed it all, didn’t want anything back and says he enjoys the work. The man in his 60s doing this. Oh, I mean, yeah, he’s so strong and so physical.
He’s a hiker. An ideal hike for him is seven or eight hours, nine or 10 miles in the mountains, in the heat, whatever. And I’m pretty into fitness.
I’m a gym girl and I play tennis and stuff. But what I tell you is, it’s who he is. He gets to be appreciated for who he already is.
And I get to be appreciated for who I already am. So neither one of us had to change at all. You brought me to my next question.
And it’s literally on my sheet, exactly where we’re supposed to be in this interview. Did you have to change yourself to find love? No. Did you have to change your choice of men? No.
Well, my choice of men, I wasn’t making bad choices. I don’t think. I think I was making good choices.
I was dating good men. Yes. Because I don’t let bad behavior, I don’t let any bad behavior in.
Somebody who’s a jerk to me one time, and I mean a real jerk, not just accidental. So I wasn’t with bad men. I was with men that weren’t enough for me.
They weren’t confident enough. They weren’t competent enough. They weren’t strong enough.
And I just, I didn’t feel safe. I didn’t feel like this is somebody I could really lean on if push comes to shove. It would be me that I would be leaning on.
So you embodied what we call the CEO energy by learning to fire decent men who just weren’t fit for this one very, very important job. There’s only one job available for the rest of your life. And these guys after six months, one year, couldn’t cut it.
Right. Well, it’s not, yeah, I couldn’t cut it. They weren’t built for me.
They weren’t, they didn’t. And so I think it’s this business we learn in Love U about you cannot change a man and this concept of acceptance. And I’ve talked to him about it too.
And he doesn’t like the word acceptance because to him, he says acceptance implies that there’s something about me you don’t like that you have to put up with. I think that’s true, but he could quibble with that. Right.
And so I think that’s, you know, we talk about it a lot that you can’t change a man that he’s going to do what he’s going to do. And a lot of it for me was honestly looking at the things that I hadn’t looked at before, because I’m a justice warrior and I’m looking for injustice and I’m looking for mistakes and I’m going to fix them and I’m going to change this or that. Looking for what you’re grateful for is such a better way to live.
Yeah. It’s such a better way to live. So I, you know, I got up this morning to go to a medical appointment.
I went out front and he was on a ladder in front of my garage tweaking my motion detector lights. You know, I didn’t ask him to do that. And there’s a filet mignon dinner from a Texas steakhouse in my refrigerator that he showed up with last night.
And he shows up Sounds like a traditional acts of service type guy. Absolutely. But beyond that, because his desire is to do it better.
I think his capability is a big source of comfort for him. He’s been repairing cars for the neighbors since he was seven. And so that ability to solve that kind of problem is what makes him happy.
So this is all like everything, right? You talked about how the man who’s right for me at 25 may not be the right man for me at 55 or whatever. So we’re all a product of our own evolution and growth and experience. And so maybe there was no other way to arrive here other than the path that you did.
But what would you say to younger Victoria about choosing the right kind of partner for her? Younger Victoria wasn’t capable of doing better than she did. Younger Victoria chose a man she believed would be a great father to her children. And she didn’t choose for herself, for her own passion.
She made a mature decision. And I honestly don’t think you can do it better at a very young age. You can get lucky.
You can get lucky in making that choice. And I think most people don’t get lucky. And most people muddle through anyway.
But I think the study is in knowing yourself. And I think we just don’t. When we’re young, we want men to think we’re pretty.
And we set these goals. I’m going to get here in my career. And I get to go to Washington, D.C. and sit at this table.
And then we’re going to go out to this French restaurant. I think I dated before I married pretty successfully in a pretty wide variety of people. But I think I’m just quirky enough.
I think each of us are so individual about what it is we want. I have a dear girlfriend in that you know who is in LoveU that I met through LoveU. And she wants a man in a perfectly cut blue suit and a perfectly tailored white button-down shirt with a tie.
And her idea of a great time is to go to a cool bar for cocktails. And then go to another really posh restaurant for dinner. And then stroll around a little bit.
And go to another place for dessert. And then go home and maybe make love. I don’t know.
That is not my idea of a fun date anymore. Now maybe when I was 30 and there was that Wall Street lawyer that I met when I was working for Shell Oil. That was kind of fun at the time.
I liked it. But do I want to? And this is a great story, Evan, if I can tell you. So I dated this guy briefly who was a Wall Street lawyer.
He’d been a pro football player. And we met in New York a couple of times where he lived. And I was starry-eyed.
It was so impressive. He could hail a cab and took me to all these cool places. And so I invited him down to Florida where my parents lived.
And I had gone to high school there. So it’s very familiar territory for me. And the dude actually shows up in black socks on the beach.
And what was so cool in his environment, you take him out of it. And he mentioned some, I think he mentioned a red, he’d look at that red bird. And it was a freaking cardinal.
You know, this is city boy. You know, take him somewhere else. And so those are the kind of experiences that I find so interesting.
What I find so interesting about this pursuit of love is I see somebody in different environments. And you advocate that. Like don’t connect, don’t make a decision about getting married until you’ve been with somebody while seeing them in different environments.
And, you know, maybe traveled with them some or maybe or gone through something, right? Been through a stressful holiday season, kids coming to visit, loss of income, loss of libido, something. Right. And then know what really, really matters to you.
And it doesn’t have to be what matters to anybody else. You can love your girlfriends and let them want what they want. And people are saying to me, you know, a lot of the love you girls are like, he lives in a trailer and this is who Victoria picked, right? Well, got to look beneath the surface, ladies.
I was just this week, I was quoting a Lori Gottlieb’s book, Marry Him, from 2009, 10. And every other chapter of the book, I was coaching her through it. And she talks about the time that she first met my wife.
And she describes her as average. That was her description. I thought Evan, as a Duke graduate public figure, would hold out for someone more impressive, but she was pleasant, but I wasn’t overwhelmed in any meaningful way.
My point exactly. Right. And again, we’re hitting our 17th anniversary this year.
And it’s all because you strip everything away, right? The credentials and the achievements. And what I’m left with is like just my favorite person on earth, who I could say anything to, and she’s not going to get mad, and we’re not going to get into a fight. I’m not gonna have to apologize.
It’s just very, very easy. She’s genuinely like my best friend. And I guess I can’t speak more powerfully about how important it is to go beneath the surface.
And the hard part is, we all have dating apps, and all we have is the surface, right? So what advice would you give Victoria to a single woman who has gone this far in our interview, is listening to this podcast right now? What would you leave her with? Well, for me, I needed to be in love with you. I needed to go through the course. I needed to patiently tick those boxes with you and hear what you had to say about how men think, because I would have made the same assumptions she’s making.
Oh, they’re all assholes. They’re, you know, they don’t care. They just want to get in your pants.
You know, there’s this long list of things that women believe about men, none of which are actually true. They’re like a quarter dial off. So yeah, he wants to get in your pants because you’re the most beautiful thing he’s come across, and he wants to get close to you, and he wants to find out who you are, and he wants to get as close as possible.
That’s not an insult. That’s never an insult. That’s always a compliment, and women don’t take it that way because we’re, you know, we walk the planet in fear of the bad guys out there, when in fact 95% of them are good guys, right? And so we label all, and so I would say that, number one, I’m a huge advocate of Love U.
Having the support of women who are trying a different approach. If I had listened to my girlfriends, if I listened to my very best friend about one boyfriend ago, when I said I was going to leave him, she goes, oh, you know, don’t do that. You’re not getting any younger.
And I thought, you don’t get it, sweetie. I’m going to be sleeping around in the nursing home. I’m going to have it.
It’s not a problem, right? I thought, you know, when I was 60 and newly divorced, I thought, who’s going to want me? But that was a momentary dip, and the fact is that men want women. Men want women. They like being around us.
They like how soft we are. They just like our presence. They like a lot of things about us, and the more women who allow these nice men to try to be nice to us, and yeah, I think you need the support.
I think you need the program. I think you need the support. If not, if you’re the kind of person who can teach yourself, really absorb it all, and you know, don’t buy the standard line.
Don’t ask a woman what men think. Don’t ask a woman to interpret what men are doing. Don’t ask a woman to interpret a man’s text.
Don’t ask a woman to interpret a man’s behavior. Just don’t do it. It just doesn’t work.
Ask a man, and you know, as far as I’m concerned, you’re the man to ask, because you’ve thought it through. You’ve seen a lot of it. I doubted you, honestly, because you were so young, and I thought, oh yeah, I haven’t, you know, he’s got this sweet young wife, and they’re starting their family.
Of course things are good. Of course he’s going to advocate for marriage, and I’m, you know, I’m a, you know, technically a failure over a long period of time, and I’m thinking, what does he really know about my life? I put all that aside, and I took what you did have to say about how men think, and so my interpretation, I remember this not specifically, but offering you some text that I’d gotten from a man. Okay, he said this.
What on earth does this mean? And you’re just like, that’s what it is, and of course it was something that never would have occurred to me, because I’m thinking with my brain, and how I would go about it, so to me, getting the point of, getting your point of view was really important, and getting the support of women who want to do it better, and just because you’ve had five failed relationships doesn’t mean you can’t put your head on, you know, the chest of a man who’s going to hold you all night, and never let you doubt that you’re cherished. It’s out there, and if I could find it at my age, come on, a little 30-something, a little 40-something, a little 50-something. Right.
Victoria, I wasn’t expecting such a full-throated endorsement, but I thank you for your kind words. I thank you taking time to share your experience and wisdom with the women listening to the Love U podcast. I love you.
I appreciate it. And I’m going to interrupt you one more time, because there’s one more thing I want to say. Yeah.
Look, I’ve listened to pretty much every dating coach out there, and I picked you for your business model, because you follow through with people like me, what are we, 10 years later, and these are individual successes of real women. You’re not on some podium spouting off, here are the 10 things you did wrong, right? Or it’s not a, it’s not a, hey, look at me, I’m the expert kind of program. It’s a supportive role.
It’s an educational role, and providing this community of women where we can really freely talk to each other, pretty uncensored, other than you, you know, wagging your finger at us a little bit, is huge. And I think it’s the best dating coach model out there that there is. And I selected it for that reason.
So, okay, finish up. No, it’s okay. It’s nice that you said that.
And once again, we don’t coordinate these things in advance. I’m very grateful. Thank you.
Thank you for the validation. Guys, you know, guys need that in general, but I think I need that especially. So, for everybody who’s listening, you know what you need to do now, go to evanmarckatz.com/now, book a time to talk with me, because I am not Matthew Hussey.
I do not have millions of followers. I am not having women throw their panties at me on stage, even though I like the guy. It’s very different.
I like working with women. I like coaching women and building relationships and seeing their growth over time. So that’s why it’s always really thrilling to get former clients who are willing to come back after all these years and share their experience.
For the rest of you listening to the Love U podcast, who are not going to do any form of coaching, I hope you enjoy the free stuff.
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