The Single Spark with Chantelle the Coach (previously The Single Girl's Guide to Life)
Welcome to "The Single Spark" podcast – a journey dedicated to single millennial women who want to reignite their confidence and shine brightly in their dating lives. Hosted by Chantelle Dyson, this podcast delves into empowering stories, expert advice, and practical tips to help you rediscover your inner glow and build meaningful connections.
In each episode, we'll explore topics like self-love, personal growth, and navigating the dating world with confidence. It's the perfect podcast for all the single girls out there who want to know they aren't alone. "The Single Spark" is here to help you navigate the crazy world of being single alongside someone who truly gets it! Stop asking, "Will I be alone forever?" or "When will I have it all worked out?" and start having fun enjoying this messy thing called life as you embrace your singleness and celebrate with other single women ready to live and love their life, no matter their relationship status.
Whether you're overcoming heartbreak, leaving a situationship, or just seeking to find joy in your single life, "The Single Spark" offers the inspiration and tools you need to embrace your brilliance and attract genuine love.
Learn what it takes to be single and confident so you can enjoy your single life, regardless of your relationship status! Instead of wishing your life away, hoping to meet a partner before you start living fully, "The Single Spark" encourages and inspires you to embrace your single life, whatever you choose to do with it. Whether you're looking to date or choosing to stay single, this podcast is about enjoying life and all its ups and downs while being single.
Join us every Thursday as we uncover the secrets to shining brightly and connecting deeply.
The Single Spark with Chantelle the Coach (previously The Single Girl's Guide to Life)
Why Feeling Lonely Makes You a Target in Dating | Ep 124
Feeling lonely?
Ironically, you’re not alone (ironically).
But here’s the thing... loneliness can make you a magnet for the wrong people!
The ones who don’t have your best interests at heart.
The ones who seem too good to be true at first…
... because they are!
In this episode, I'll be talking about how certain types of people sniff out loneliness and use it to their advantage.
If you’ve ever found yourself swept up in something that felt amazing at first but later left you drained, confused, or questioning yourself - this is an episode you'll want to make sure you arm yourself with, before you find yourself caught up with a tricky character in dating.
You can expect to hear about:
🔥 Why loneliness makes you an easy target in dating
🔥 The red flags to watch for when someone’s love-bombing you
🔥 How to shift your energy so you attract the right kind of attention
🔥 What to focus on before jumping into a relationship
This isn’t about scaring you off dating - it’s about making sure you’re stepping into it from a place of confidence, not desperation.
And keeping those nasty characters away - and not letting your loneliness make you vulnerable.
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RESOURCES:
- Download my FREE Dating Non-Negotiables Guide
- Visit my website: www.chantellethecoach.com
- Follow me on Instagram: @ChantelleTheCoach
- Follow me on TikTok: @ChantelleTheCoach
And if you loved this episode, HIT SUBSCRIBE to stay up to date for your weekly dose of The Single Spark.
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Music from Ep 110 onwards by Kadien Music. Get your own podcast music here!
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life coaching for singles, how to be okay on you're own, overcoming loneliness, how to stop feeling lonely, single women, divorced in your 20s
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DISCLAIMER: The podcast and content posted by Chantelle The Coach is presented solely for general informational, educational, and entertainment purposes. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast or website is at the user’s own risk. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical or mental health condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their healthcare professionals for any such conditions.
Welcome back to the Single Spark, and today we're going to take things a little bit more seriously than normal, because we need to talk about something that you may or may not have realized that you are doing, and this is for people that are currently dating, finding it difficult and feeling lonely. In this whole situation, in this whole version of being single, you feel like you are the only one. Everybody else is coupled up, having a great time. You don't feel like anyone really gets what it's like to be single, because you've been single for ages and everybody else has um, maybe they haven't been single forever, but you know, even then, they've been in their relationships for a year or two now and they've forgotten. They've forgotten what it's like to really be single on your own, coming home every night to a space where it's just you and and not having anyone to necessarily talk to in between.
Speaker 1:And maybe you do come home and you've got the odd club to go to, you message a couple of people, but that loneliness takes its toll. You don't feel like you've really got a reason to get up. You don't know what your reason for being here is, what your purpose is and, let's be honest, the chances are, if you're feeling this, your relationship with your own family is not that strong. You have them and there's nothing wrong with them, but they don't get it either. They're not in a position to really understand you and you just feel like you are out here on your own, you, and you just feel like you are out here on your own doing the day-to-day, wondering when am I gonna have something to do? Like, is it meant to be this hard? There's probably a lot of tears that go on if you're becoming aware of this, like you know, this is a problem and you, you try, you're doing everything. You, you go into these clubs and events, as it it were.
Speaker 1:You know to try and socialise hobbies, to find people that might be like you and, yeah, fine, you meet people, it's nice enough, you socialise, but you're just there, yeah fine, it's all right, it's mediocre, though Not in the same way like when you're at school and you could find a friend and you develop a real friendship. But even those friends you know have situationally moved on. They're in different scenarios with their partners, got kids of their own, their priorities are different rightly so and you don't spend as much as an intense time with people as you do with people when you did at school. The only people that are close to that now are your work colleagues, which for some of you you'll find the odd friendship in. But at the end of the day, they're work colleagues for most of you, and if you work remotely in any way, shape or form, you're meeting them over a laptop, looking at them on the other side of a screen. You might never, ever, have even met your colleagues in person, but you don't want to stay this way forever. You don't want to fuel this loneliness Because if you do, that's not going to make you feel any better Mental health wise.
Speaker 1:We've looked at this a lot on this podcast. As to, you know how that can perpetuate and how to get yourself out of that scenario, but one of the solutions that people come up with for this is going out dating. The answer to my loneliness is if I'm with someone, if I am in a relationship, then I won't be lonely, then I will be okay again. That will show that I'm not unlovable, that I have someone to be with. There will always be that default person and as we start to build our life together, I'll have purpose, we'll work as a team, we'll get married, live in a house together and maybe we'll introduce a child, say or think about it. If not, we'll get a dog. And you think, well, if I do that, then that's going to solve it all. And, through the difficulty of managing your loneliness as it is, you decide to go out there and date.
Speaker 1:The problem is is that, with this undercurrent of loneliness, this is making you vulnerable in dating and, as I said, we have normally looked at the concept of loneliness causing you mental struggle for yourself operating and how to get yourself out of that, and I always discourage going out on dating because it doesn't solve the issue. But it came to my attention and realisation recently that I think some people do end up going dating for the reasons I just described and they don't realise that it's posing them a problem, because we'd like to think that everybody out there is dating because they have good intentions, that they're nice people. But in this world there are people that are there that don't always have the best intentions, that are going to take advantage of people, and these people don't fare very well with people that have good boundaries, with people that are confident about themselves, with people who know who they are and they can suss them out very quickly. And they can suss them out very quickly, secure people very much. What do they call it? Smoke these people out very quickly, because they push all the wrong buttons of people that are going to take advantage of others.
Speaker 1:On the flip side, if you are presenting yourself unintentionally, I might add, but presenting yourself as someone who is lonely, someone who needs somebody and somebody that needs a reason, a purpose, you're particularly vulnerable to someone that might take advantage. You're particularly vulnerable because you're the exact kind of person they need to be able to get what they want, and you're the exact type of person they are looking for and will say what they need to say to convince you that this, that they are the right next choice for you. It's really difficult because this will have happened to people time and time again and they will feel at the time like this is wonderful, this has changed me, I have found someone to be with. It's almost like the Disney princess movies. This is too good to be true is what you'll be thinking, probably because it is, but you won't think that at the time. But this is a knight in shining armour scenario, someone that has come to save you, someone that gives you a reason, someone that pays you a lot of attention, that delves into the area of love bombing, but you just see it as romance because it feels good. For once you don't feel lonely anymore, because it's what you needed, because you felt lonely.
Speaker 1:And people don't realise what's going on. They think the enthusiasm is a good thing. Of course enthusiasm's a good thing, but they don't see the dark side of the enthusiasm, the way that the person is liking everything that they are liking. They're getting into things that they otherwise wouldn't be into. But because you said you're into, they're into, and they'll make you feel like you're saving them too, like you're helping them, like you're getting them out of a sticky situation, and that they had problems in their past with their exes.
Speaker 1:The relationship will probably move quite quickly, but you'll feel like it's right. It just feels right. Everything is right about this. There's no way this could be wrong. This is it, and you won't worry about that speed. And that's exactly what they want you to think, because they need you. They need you and their job is to take advantage of your vulnerability, of your loneliness, of your not feeling enough, and to make you feel that, at least for long enough that they can tie you in and you know that you'll be living together, engaged to be married, married and, hey, planning a future together, big time in a very short space of time. In a very short space of time that others would question, mark, and be like are you sure? This is very quick, is this necessary? Did this have to happen now? And it still won't occur to you that this is something that you have allowed by the energy that you've put out and it's okay. You can't have known it.
Speaker 1:You were in that situation where you were feeling particularly low, like you needed something, and they showed up. The knight in shining armor came along and you were like help me. And they were like sure, but it wasn't for all the best reasons. And I wanted to bring this up because I've never spoken about it before and I realized how dangerous it could be if you find yourself in a scenario like that, because when you do end up married or having children with someone, that tie is significant, that tie is long, long. Yet if you know about it ahead of time and you are aware enough, self-aware enough, to go look, I know I feel lonely then we have options to make sure that this doesn't happen to you in the process. In the process of trying to overcome your loneliness, to try and fulfill who you are as a person and to go out there and date, you can find ways not to let your loneliness be taken advantage of in dating. Now, the first thing that we need to do is make sure you're only dating at a point when you're not really feeling as lonely as you are. Now I can't say that I solved all of my loneliness, but we have to get you operating at a level that, if you are not in a relationship, you are still happy with your life and your loneliness can, on occasion, be solved by somebody coming along for a relationship and this is where this often happens. But the reality is that it doesn't need to be a relationship that saves you. Our sense of loneliness doesn't actually get solved through being with someone all of the time. It comes from being able to share our lives with other people.
Speaker 1:The quote from the book that I always mess up is Lost Connections. You'd have thought by now I'd have learned it, but Lost Connections Loneliness isn't the absence of other people, he said Is how it starts. Loneliness isn't the absence of other people, he said oh, almost, I'll recall it now for you From Lost Connections by Johan Hari hope. I said that right. Loneliness isn't the physical absence of other people, he said. It's the sense that you're not sharing anything that matters with anyone else. If you have lots of people around you, perhaps even a husband or wife or family or a busy workplace, but you don't share anything that matters with them, then you'll still be lonely.
Speaker 1:If we take that and I truly believe in it, it's probably the quote I've quoted the most, even though I still don't know the quote I normally only quote the first part. If we take that, though, however, as the thing that actually undermines a lot of people's loneliness, it means that having a bunch of friends doesn't really matter. Having a relationship doesn't really matter, although, in this kind of scenario, if someone's taken advantage of you, it will feel like it's solved until they've managed to isolate you and until they're ready to withdraw again. And they know this, because when they found you, you expressed that you were lonely, didn't have much of a purpose. They will exploit that later down the line, because they already knew where you were. Then they've brought you up a little bit and then, as they get ready. You're going to drop to at least where you were before, if not lower now, because everything you thought was true was an illusion. What we have to work on is making sure that you are sharing the things that matter with other people.
Speaker 1:Why do you think this podcast exists? I was incredibly lonely, felt incredibly lonely when I started making this, and that was because I'd gone home after my divorce and I wasn't dating. By the way, I was dating, but not in a way that I because I'd gone home after my divorce and I wasn't dating. By the way, I was dating, but not in a way that I thought I could be taken advantage of. But, um, I was exploring who I was. I had vowed I wasn't going to get into a relationship. I had to work out what I really wanted as an adult, and I was taking part in dating to help work some of that out.
Speaker 1:But no one got it. No, really, no one got it, and I not not saying anything bad about my friends. They were there for me as I needed them. No one got it because they were all in relationships. I didn't. I didn't feel like I could communicate to them what I was experiencing. I didn't feel like it was coming back in a way that they truly understood. They tried to when I shared it with them, but it wasn't quite there. I don't hold that against them at all. They're still my best friends but no one could get it in the way that I was feeling it, and my parents thought I was crazy. They at one point they were like, is this a cult? And I was like no, it's not a cult. I mean cult by definition. Yeah, it is, because it's a belief system that you don't believe in, but not cult as in I'm being abducted and and going anywhere and gonna go off and never come back again. Not that kind of cult, not kind of problematic cult.
Speaker 1:And so it wasn't a conscious decision to sit there and think I'm going to overcome my loneliness by starting a podcast. But what I thought was I do need people more like me that get it, that understand this, and I think the best way to do this is to put this online, and I think the most effective way is to do it for a podcast and share these thoughts. And part of me thinks well, I haven't felt lonely, but I've felt like I haven't been doing everything that I wanted to really do in life by not having this podcast and it brings me back and I can feel, as I talk about this out loud, like, oh god, it probably is. It wasn't that I was lonely, but it is that I was missing something. I started to do all the podcasting stuff and I love helping other people but I genuinely felt peeved that I wasn't getting to help people. And helping people is is. I've never had it as a value. It's not ever come up as a value, but I think everything I've ever done in my life something that is majorly important to me is about helping others.
Speaker 1:I'm a teacher teaching maths in a way that I don't think maths gets taught well enough in general. You know it was bubbly, it was fun. I was trying to do things where children weren't told that they were crap at maths just because they were put in bottom set. You know what I mean. Like I didn't believe in that. I wanted to help the people at the bottom be treated in the same way that inverted commas. People at the top didn't like that, otherwise. I then moved into teaching still, but something different pshe. We're dealing with social issues, an expansion of what this is to you guys, but in a classroom to the 30 children minds that I can help, um, and I don't even think I'm shaping them. What I think I'm doing is expanding them, because whatever they say, I say the opposite. Um, so I challenge them with the opposite. So if they think this, I think, well, what about this? You know, and make them better at those kind of things.
Speaker 1:And the podcast itself, I think, helps people majorly. The amount of people that have ever messaged in you're always welcome to message. It is me on the end of the DMs, even if you're you know it's years on. Tell me, I don't intend to ever shut this account down and keep the podcast going, and I think I was missing a little bit of that by not having the podcast. It was part of my purpose, part of my reason, and the beautiful thing is is that the podcast I don't care what the numbers do, because it's out there.
Speaker 1:I would love to keep making it more of a thing, more because I know there are a bunch of people out there who are just like me back then, who need help right now, who feel lonely, who feel alone, and I do not want you ending up in a scenario where you decide well, I'm lonely, so I need to find someone to be with, and as you're out there, it just screams I'm in trouble, please help me, please save me someone, and then you get taken advantage of in whatever way that looks like, because I tell you now the ending won't be fun, getting out of it won't be easy, and so my job, my helping in this version of things, and the reason that this became such an important one for me to record and do my best to explain was because I want to help make sure that no one ends up in that scenario and that we don't let anybody's loneliness make them a vulnerable person in dating that can be taken advantage of. That ends up in a scenario that is not good for them long term, and instead I want to introduce you to this show if you've not been here before, or for anyone that's been here a long time, remind you and just highlight something that I've kind of overlooked a long time and help you find a way to find your reason to be here, to find a bunch of people and they do not have to be single people, but find a bunch of people who know what it's like doing what you're doing or who care about the things that you care about, and that's hard to do. I I get it. It's so hard to find. Essentially, what we're saying is find new friends, but find new best friends. I don't know how people do it without work and without school date. In is the only way I think we can do it, and it sounds contradictory. But, shonto, you just said don't find people through. No, but once you're at the right point, then I think you've got to find their friends first.
Speaker 1:Jason's been a wonderful addition. If Jason disappeared for any reason, my life would be sad, for whatever reason he left, but I'd still have this beautiful group of people. There is something that Jason does bring that I can't talk to other people about. I can, but they don't talk to it in that level. Jason challenges me intellectually big time and it's things like this. Sometimes he listens to these episodes and he'll actually talk to me about it and give me more. I like what you said there. I don't think I agree with what you said there. Okay, okay, babe, but in a good way.
Speaker 1:We have a lot of healthy debates about the world all the time, you know and I get that from the PSHE classroom, but I know that I'm talking to teenagers and there's also an imbalance. Right, I'm the teacher and they're the children, and whilst I try and create an even playing field, at some point I have to go. But here's the actual information I need to teach. Um, oh yeah, I don't know. I feel like an adult debating class would be good. You know, when they did those things at school where they had like mock trials and things like that. Where's that for the adults? Where's that? Or do you have to just become part of a party to get involved? I don't know, but it's finding the stuff that means something to you and trying to get yourself in those spaces.
Speaker 1:It's really interesting because I'm also now in the entrepreneurial space and in part, I thought that would would be a space that would help, because I got to talk about business things and I do, but again, there's a subsection to it, like there's hundreds of people doing it, but you don't just and I've made some good friends out of it. You know people I would call or ask for help from, but still no one that like fits that top five circle, who I would, you know almost every other day or also message about, uh, something I'd seen or like. What do you think of this business technique? Oh my god, have you seen that marketing xyz? Like I don't.
Speaker 1:I don't think it's easy to solve this in terms of friends, and so, if I take a step back to what I actually did when I was first experiencing this, I had to lean on the people who were there for me already I had to go back to. I couldn't, I didn't have time to make new friends, like not in a horrid way. It takes a lot of time to make new friends, so you have to cherry pick. Who is going to make the cut. Who are you going to open up to? Who are you going to take first steps with to deepen your friendship? And the way to do it is to open up, because in dating, you would open up quite freely to a person that you have just met. On the confidence that one well, I think part of it comes because you're like this is a relationship. It should be open and vulnerable. But two, there's also a little bit and I don't think anyone really thinks of this but you open up because they don't know anything about you and there is nothing to be questioned or challenged or to lose At the end of the day if this all goes badly, if they hate what you say, they were just a date, whereas if you open up to someone that's quite a good friend right now but not in the best friend zone, you have a risk of losing them. But right now we need some people up in the top friend zone, and that's what I call the inner circle. We need some people up in the inner zone. We need people that can understand us enough to give us something.
Speaker 1:It might not be everything, as you heard me say. I would still miss the input and the outlet I have in Jason. I would struggle there. I don't know what I'd do. Probably end up making more podcast episodes because I need more, but that's interesting. I'll come back to that thought another time. But what we need otherwise is for you to have this good group of people three to five people at the top that you can truly start opening up to, that feel like they can get it, just about be there for you when you need them to, and you can test to see if any of them can be on the same page as you.
Speaker 1:After that, once you have that secure, you have to find something you love doing and do it, and it might not pay you, and I think that's where Chantelle the coach, came in for me and yes, I did make money from it within reason. It's pretty. I think it was even input output overall. If I look at everything again. It always does in the first setting up a business, but it it was something that deeply mattered to me. It was something that gave me a hobby. It was something that gave me a reason to present online, and I'm not saying you need to go out there and change the world or create a podcast. It might be that you go volunteering. I tried volunteering with my local brownie group, did that for about a year or so. I didn't get loads from it in the way that I wanted to, and that's okay. Maybe I didn't put as much effort in, maybe it just wasn't the right fit. It was nothing about them.
Speaker 1:What else could you do? Have you given up art? One thing I realised I'd given up in my late teens, early twenties, was music. I didn't have Spotify and I was like what are you? Where have I been? I'm this. I was studying sound engineering. I stopped listening to music.
Speaker 1:You what got back into music since and I haven't, like, fully embraced it. But I had a period where I didn't go into any concerts or it felt like I didn't go to concerts a lot and I was like what's happened to me? And that wasn't COVID, by the way, and so that's when I started getting into David Guetta again and all these dance music. I wanted to go to festivals a lot. To me, there was this period where I didn't do as much of that. I got back to these things that I loved.
Speaker 1:I sometimes think I'll paint and then I'm like no, I don't paint, I'm not really much of a painter, but some of you will feel that painting, reading, reconnecting with especially these things from childhood, I always think well, you know things that you never pursued. Maybe you went ice skating, maybe you were an ice skater when you were younger. Get back ice skater. Maybe you were an ice skater when you were younger. Get back on the ice, swim in, run in, whatever it is, sort these things out. For one, to solve your loneliness, to stop you being vulnerable in dating, but two, because then, when you do come to date, you present as a much more well-rounded, cultured, interesting character, to the point that you will become irresistible to a bunch of people not all, but more people than you're attracting than when you're in this kind of low loneliness zone.
Speaker 1:When you actually present as a person who's got themselves together. You scare off the people that can take advantage of anyone. Because you have boundaries, you know what's important to you and you're confident, and that goes everywhere of anyone. Because you have boundaries, you know what's important to you and you're confident, and that goes everywhere. It like seeps out of you. No one's taking advantage of you when you're in that mode, so you have to sort this out for your own sake. You have to have enough self-awareness to go.
Speaker 1:I am lonely and if I start dating now, I'm going to end up with some, some bugger. That's going to do me over. I can't have that. I have to make it a priority to find my friendships, to find my own reasons for getting up in the morning, and they do not have to be life-changing for yourself or for anyone. They just need to be stuff that you care about, that you enjoy, even if that means getting back into a sport and competing. I don't know how it works in terms of competitions as an adult, but there must be ways to compete and get better. I don't know.
Speaker 1:Go and do a high rocks. Go and be part of a netball team, go skiing I don't know. Do something you've never done before. Go and learn something new. Find something, have experiences with people. Do something with one of your friends together hey, I really want to learn to ski. You want to go to go to the dry soap? Hey, I really want to do a high rocks event. Let's do that together. Hey, I really want to go and visit berlin. Do you want to go on a trip? Okay, combine them and overall it gets rid of all the nasty people that you might come across and it allows you to attract, at the right time, the people that can then elevate everything to the next level by giving you something else that you couldn't quite right time. The people that can then elevate everything to the next level by giving you something else that you couldn't quite get from the people that are already in your zones. Until next time, keep sparkling.
