www.zgoddess.com

Women who are single and 35 or older are generally fabulous, seasoned, mature women. They have had a lifetime of experiences, and hopefully learned something from each one.

The experiences have enriched their lives and empowered them in countless ways. Unfortunately, some of those experience can also be booby-traps for a woman suddenly thrust back into the dating world. And many women are far more self-critical than they should be—they don't view their histories as positively as they could.

No woman should let her relationship history turn her into a jaded dater with a polluted view of the future. Each date should be treated as an entirely new opportunity.

This is not the same as examining your role in past relationship failures (Commitment #4: If It's Not Working, Change Something) or having a positive attitude on a date (Commitment #9: Self Speak equals Energy Emitted).

The issue is bigger: too many women bring all the baggage from their prior (ultimately unsuccessful) relationships into a new one. They dump it all over the new guy, complaining about ex-husbands, money, child-support, kids.

It’s all stuff no one wants to hear early in a friendship, and it can discourage even the most optimistic guy. Life can be hard for everyone, but a date should be the anti-dote for that.

Later, when a relationship deepens, is the time to share life’s ups and downs. It sounds obvious, but it must be said: negativity, complaining and unloading volumes of hurt are an instant turn-off.

This Commitment emphasizes the importance of a woman permitting herself to look back and see how far she’s come. It stresses the ways conduct can help you move forward in your search for a life partner.

Too many women allow past relationships to handicap their dating efforts, and they dwell on the nightmare dates that bury them in relationship quicksand. Learn from the past and move forward.

Getting Started

Step One—Make sure your missteps take you someplace. Think of your heaviest baggage from previous relationships and for each one, find at least one way to use it to your advantage.

Step Two —Keep Step One to yourself! Don’t broadcast your worst mistakes, even if you’re doing it when telling a new man how much you’ve learned from them.

Commitment 10 Exercise

Create your own date equivalent of an Academy Award acceptance speech—keep it brief and include only the details that are most appropriate for the moment. That means learn to edit yourself. Consider the five most important or interesting things about yourself that you want any man to know and understand. For each one, write a succinct, two-sentence statement.

Be as straightforward, as clever or as funny as you like. Be completely honest, and be comfortable with your words. But stick strictly to the “need-to-know” approach.

Don’t ramble, don’t digress, and above all, don’t include every minor detail, every remembered slight, every word of each conversation. Prepare your statements in advance and practice them, so you’ll know when to shut up when talking to a man.  Never make your date think, “okay, that’s way too much information.”

Don't Forget

What he doesn’t know can’t hurt him—or you. Don’t start every story at the beginning. You can just tell him the ending (“I like my work because...”), rather than delivering a blow-by-blow account of events that happened years ago or with people he doesn’t know (“Well, I like my work now, but that’s only after my previous boss was forced out, because he was roundly disliked and that affected morale in the entire office, and I was particularly miserable...”).

There’s time for the back-story later. Once you get to know each other, he may want and need to know about your nasty boss, and how you handled the situation. But wait for it.

Take Home Message

Good often results from bad, and whether it does or not is within your control.