This week I'm getting into midlife dating in a new city, why putting yourself out there matters more than the outcome, and what I'm learning about building a life when the snowbirds leave town.

Week two of the Summer of George dropped me in Los Angeles, and the energy here is already different. I'm staying with a friend, walking to a new gym, taking my first workout class in years, and waking up to LA birds instead of Scottsdale ones. I lived in this city for four and a half years right out of college. Coming back at this stage of my life — comfortable in who I am, clear about what I'm doing — has reminded me how much the right city can match your frequency.

I also made a move this week I want to talk about. I reached out to a guy I'd met on Instagram a few months ago, someone who lives in LA. We'd traded voice notes for a couple of weeks before life pulled us in different directions. Since I'm in town, I figured I'd ask if he wanted to grab coffee. He wrote back kindly and told me he's seeing someone. Totally fine. The win wasn't the meetup. The win was the action.

For someone who is more of a traditional dater — I like the man to plan, to lead, to hold the door — pressing send on that message was the entire point. An object in motion stays in motion. I paid for one month of Hinge, canceled the auto-renew, and I'm staying open to whatever shows up in person while I'm in LA for the next few weeks.

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Can you actually be friends with your ex? I dug into the research, including the four motivations people land on when they stay in each other's lives after a breakup and the data on who's most likely to do it. Then I went a few layers deeper than the typical conversation goes. Friends with your ex in general is one question. Friends with your ex after divorce is another. Friends with your ex after infidelity is harder. And if you were the other woman, that's a different conversation entirely.

I share my own examples on all of it. I'm still friends with my ex-husband a decade out. I also answer a listener question about did my ex married man and I speak after I ended it? I share the very specific moment, four months after I ended it, when I sent him a song from the bathtub. We reconnected for a few months and I haven't spoken to him since. The difference between those two stories isn't random. It comes down to one question. What are you keeping the friendship for, and where is your self-worth in the answer?

I also get into whether the betrayed spouse can ever be friends with the cheater, how the kids' ages change everything when you're co-parenting after infidelity, and what to ask yourself if you're stuck in the deciding phase. And if you've ever wondered whether the other woman gets to stay friends with him after it ends, I have a take on that you won't hear anywhere else.

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Welcome to the first bonus episode of The Summer of George. After swearing I'd never get back on a dating app, I did. This is week one — a goal of three meet ups, because c'mon, they aren't dates, one that actually happened, and everything I learned in between.

I'm sharing what it's really like getting back on dating apps in midlife. The strange disconnect between who you talk to in an app and who shows up in person. The snap judgment debate — do I give every guy a real chance, or do I trust my gut the way I would if he walked up to me in public? And how going in with a different mindset changed how I experienced the whole thing.

There was the guy who messaged me from work asking if I wanted to get frisky. The one who opened with a crop top comment. The man I talked to on the phone for an entire hour, made plans with for Saturday night, and then never heard from again. Straight ghost. And one lunch with a newly single guy where I noticed three moments my own boundaries went loose and I want to do better next time.

The Summer of George is my commitment to saying yes more, dating again, and getting back out there. Every Friday through the end of September, I'll drop a quick update on how it's going. Week one is in the books. Onto SoCal.

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Sydney reached out on Instagram. Her husband has had three affairs, two in 2021 and one this past February, and she'd been listening to the show for a while. She wanted to ask me about something I'd said in a recent episode, woman to woman, not as a fight. I said yes immediately, and I also kind of panicked. In over sixty episodes, I've never sat across from a wife who knew I'd been the other woman in someone else's marriage.

What came out of this surprised me. Sydney is sharp, honest, and self-aware in a way that's rare. She walks me through how she found out both times, both times the same way, his phone, and what it looks like to go into FBI mode and call the other woman before you've even processed what's happening. We talk about why she stayed the first time, why she's still there now ("I'm just here. That doesn't mean I'm staying."), and the fear of leaving when you co-parent a six-year-old with a man who's also genuinely your best friend.

We get into when affairs are a symptom of something deeper, the difference between hating someone and being indifferent to them, what it actually feels like when your gut tells you he's cheating again, and what she'd say to the woman her husband was sleeping with if she could sit down with her now. She's already done that with all three. It didn't go how you'd think.

This is one of the most respectful conversations I've had on this show. Sydney's perspective is new territory for me, and if you've been on either side of this, it's worth your time.

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A quick bonus episode to put every way you can work with me in one place. Free, paid, and one offer that isn't even open yet.

I walk through the free side first — the podcast itself, Instagram, and the Self-Worth Reset, a free download where I share the five truths I had to confront after divorce and the affair that came before it. From there, I get into the 60-minute one-on-one, who it's for and who it's not, and my two coaching packages for women in the middle of infidelity, divorce, or starting over.

I also tease something I haven't formally released yet: a small, application-only group program. I share why I'm doing it this way after my Patreon for women going through infidelity didn't land, what I learned about why community around these topics has to be built intentionally, and who I'm offering it to first.

If you've been wondering whether self-worth coaching after infidelity or divorce is a fit for you, this is the one episode where I lay it all out.

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I matched with a guy on a dating app. We planned a date. Thirty minutes later, he unmatched me. That's the open. That's where this season starts.

Welcome to the Summer of George. The reference is from Seinfeld, where George gets let go with a three-month severance and decides to make the most of it. That's where I am this summer. Not unemployed, but standing in a quiet moment after a busy four months and realizing my social life in Scottsdale was built on other people's schedules. The snowbirds left. The visitors stopped coming. And I had not done a very good job of building an actual life here for myself.

So I'm doing something about it. I got back on a dating app after saying I never would. I'm going to workout classes I've always wanted to try. I'm networking. I'm saying yes. The whole point of this summer is to put myself out there and see what happens.

There's also something most single women in midlife won't say out loud. I love my life. I wake up grateful. And I still get lonely sometimes. Both can be true at once. I'm not settling, and I'm not waiting around either.

The unmatch story is the perfect kickoff because it sets up something I didn't think about when I started this show: I'm single and I'm Google-able. The person I end up with is going to love this version of me. Anyone who can't handle my past has saved us both some time.

The Summer of George runs June 10 through September 30. Weekly bonus updates wherever I happen to be. Scottsdale, LA, back to Scottsdale, then Greece. Come along.

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This week I'm joined by Danielle Stanton, founder of Fuel4Ever wellness and a woman who's been through it. Married for 20 years, two small kids, stay-at-home mom, and then one day her husband came home and said he'd met someone else. No warning. No signs she could see at the time. He went on to marry that woman, who still lives in her community. They co-parent. She doesn't hate her.

Danielle and I talk about what it actually means to forgive the other woman — not for her, but for yourself. We get into the part nobody warns you about: how the married moms at school treated her once she was single. How she lost friends she thought were forever. How she found a tighter circle in the other single moms who'd been through it.

We also get into the part of her story that almost took her out. At 38, she was hospitalized for what doctors told her was depression. It wasn't depression. It was perimenopause, missed and mistreated for years. Getting that diagnosis right, advocating for her own health, and starting hormone replacement is what built the foundation for everything she has now. She calls it being the CEO of your own health, and after this conversation, I get it.

Danielle's website, instagram, tiktok

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I've been watching the Mike Vrabel and Dianna Russini story unfold for a few weeks, and the more I dug in, the more it stopped being about an affair and started being about something else entirely. A bar in New York in 2020. A boat in Tennessee in 2021 with her pregnant and just the two of them on the water. A casino in Mississippi weeks after he got fired. An adults-only resort in Sedona this spring. Six years of "coincidences." They've denied all of it.

But the part that actually got me wasn't the timeline. It was her own words. Resurfaced clips of her on national TV calling her husband average. Joking she'd be divorced by Christmas. Telling a story about interviewing Jimmy Garoppolo the night before her wedding and calling it "a sign." She said she stayed skeptical about her own husband, in her words, until she met him at the altar.

So I had to ask the question nobody else covering this is asking. Why was she getting married in the first place? And it opens up something so many of us have lived through — women who married men they weren't sure about because they were worried about time, worried about starting over, worried about being alone. I know five women who've admitted some version of this to me. I'm betting you do too.

This is a bonus episode and I am not pretending I know what's true between these two people. I'm just talking about the question their story raises for the rest of us. Why do women marry men they don't actually want to marry — and what does that cost down the line?

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I noticed I've been saying "what about me?" in the voice I made up for my dog for over fifteen years. And one day it hit me — I've been feeling that since I was a kid. So this episode is a reflective, vulnerable share about what that question actually means when it comes to relationships, friendships, and being single in midlife.

I looked back at my four major relationships and saw something I didn't love seeing: I was the common denominator. So I talk about what I was settling for, what I was overlooking, and the question that was sitting underneath all of it. Am I worthy of being chosen the way I want to be chosen? My self-worth was lacking. That's what I keep coming back to.

I also get into the loneliness piece. The quiet of midlife. A decades-long friendship that ended without my choice. Why I think envy of younger women's friendships is real and worth naming. And the promise I made myself this week to actually go try the things I've been telling myself I'd try since I moved here in October.

There's no answer at the end of this one. I wasn't looking for one. Sometimes the question itself is all that's needed to be said out loud.

Episodes referenced:

About not marrying for a best friend

The tampon theory

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I opened up Instagram last week and asked what you wanted me to talk about that I hadn't covered yet. The questions you sent in were so good I built an entire episode around five of them.

In this listener Q&A, I'm answering the things you actually want to know. Is there anything I'd do differently about my five years as the other woman? When did I stop caring what people thought of my choices? How do I date now after the affair and the divorce, and what's an immediate no? What would I tell a woman who's still in an affair and still hoping it works out? And if I could tell single women in their early 30s one thing about dating, what would it be?

I get into the questions I wish I'd asked during the affair, what it felt like to launch this podcast and put my whole story out into the world, why I'm not currently dating and what I'm actually looking for when I am, and the one thing I'd want the other woman to hear from someone who's lived it. I also share something I think most single women miss when they're trying to figure out if a relationship is right for them.

If you've ever wondered what it's actually like to be the other woman, what comes after, or how to know what you want in your next relationship, this one's for you.

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🎧 New episodes every Thursday!

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