You must look inward first before you can look outward

If dating feels like déjà vu, you’re not cursed—you’re unaligned. We open up about the inner work that makes healthy love possible, from naming your nonnegotiables to stepping off the hamster wheel of “fast and easy” connections. Instead of explaining away mixed signals, we walk through simple, honest ways to read priorities, set boundaries that stick, and protect your energy for people who show up with consistency.

We get personal about the tug-of-war between a traditional home life and a driven career, and how to integrate those desires without shrinking either one. You’ll hear why taking a year-long pause from dating can be a powerful reset, not a setback—freeing up attention for journaling, meditation, affirmations, and visualization that sharpen your vision of partnership. We talk practical frameworks for clarity: defining the daily life you want, mapping how you handle conflict and money, and choosing routines that reflect your values.

This conversation is a gentle push to trade intensity for steadiness and potential for proof. When your standards and your actions finally match, mismatched options fall away and the right person recognizes you faster. If you’re ready to stop settling, realign your choices, and build love that lasts, press play and join us. If a line here hits home, share it with a friend, subscribe for more grounded conversations, and leave a review with the one boundary you’re committing to next.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Weekly Check-In
• 0:28 The Core Idea: Look Inward First
• 1:06 Defining Your Ideal Partner Clearly
• 2:33 Misalignment, Excuses, And Loneliness
• 4:36 Traditional Desires And Career Tension
• 5:16 The One-Year Pause To Reset
• 6:22 Simple Signals And Real Priorities
• 7:45 Daily Practices For Clarity
• 8:34 Faith, The Secret, And Staying The Course
• 8:58 Final Challenge And Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hello everyone. This is Steel Roses Podcast. This podcast was created for women by women to elevate women's voices. So we made it through the week. Yay. Happy Friday to you. Shoot, my nail broke. All right. Anyway, distractions. Um, I had I wanted to share something with you. I jotted it down because I was chatting with somebody and I said it, and then she said, that's a really good quote. And I said, I'm gonna podcast on this. So what I said to this person was, you have to look inward before you can look outward to find your person. Now, I had been talking about finding a partner, finding, in a nutshell, a husband. How is this happening? Like, what do you do here? Now, for those of you listening, actually, it'd be interesting to hear from the married ones too on this, but there's there's some actual distinct steps you can take to make sure that you're aligning your energy. I know I'm gonna get, I am gonna get a little woo-woo here. You can feel free to disconnect from the show now if you want, but this is this is real. So, in order for you to really find someone that you would be happy with, you have to get super, super clear on your intention. Who is it that you actually want? Now, myself included with this mistake, you could be saying one thing. I really want a man who's gonna be, let me think here. I really want somebody who's going to be a traditional person who is going to be strong um caretaker, good father figure, a stand-up guy, take care of the family, this, that, and the next thing, right? So you could be saying all these things. You could say, I really want somebody who's gonna be simple though, too. I don't want someone who's like high-end and be really fussy and you know, has to be everything has to be a certain way and you have to be really formal all the time and this and that, right? All right. So that's I'm gonna say that as an example. Oh, I don't want any of that. But then what ends up happening is because you're not really clear on who or who you are or not looking for, you end up kind of shifting and dating people that are not in alignment with what you're looking for. And then you come home from these dates and you say to yourself, Oh my God, there's no one out there. This is awful. Every single one of these guys are narcissistic a-holes. And oh my God, you should have heard this one. Oh my god, you should and date after date after date after date, this is what you're saying. There's no, there's no men out there. There's no men out there, there's no one out there anymore. Well, perhaps. Or perhaps you are attracting the wrong person. Now, there's two problems here. One, if you're not clear on who you're looking for, that's number one. Two, if you consistently are making excuses and justifying bad behavior because you're lonely. It's hard to say that out loud because I personally can attest to this. It is hard to admit that you're lonely, you just want to find somebody, and so you will make excuses for bad behavior and you will make excuses to date someone that you don't even really see a future with, but you will try to see a future with this person because you don't want to be alone. If any of this sounds familiar, I'd like you to pause for a minute. This is all happening because you are not clear internally on one, who you're looking for, and two, who you really want to be when you get to that point. Who is it that you really want to be? I'm a bit of a conundrum. Um, I wanted desperately to have my professional career. There's reasons for that. There's reasons I wanted to make money. But deep, deep down, I really wanted to be a wife and a mother in a very traditional sense. I wanted to be the homemaker who is taking care of their household, taking care of their children, making lunch for everybody every day, making dinner, making breakfast, making sure everyone has clothes that they need, going to PTA meetings. I wanted all that. But then I have this other part of me that needed to have the career. And this that again, that's a whole other episode. I can talk about why I had to have that. So I myself am a bit of a conflict of interest. But the stronger urge in me was the traditional lifestyle and the traditional life, basically. So I had I have a mesh. I have a meshing of both. It is frustrating at times and exhausting, but it's also really rewarding because it is what I wanted. Now, to get very clear on how I eventually got to my husband, I had to, everyone sit down. If you're single and you're listening to this, you're probably gonna be like, oh my God, what are you saying? You have to take a year break and get really clear on who you are and what you're looking for. Now, that might sound appalling to you, but the truth of the matter is you are going to save so much time, so much frustration, and to be honest, so much of yourself. To give so freely to people that you ultimately don't want to be with is on is sad. Why? You're a treasure. You are the only you that's out there. You are a unique thing being here. You are a unique being here on this planet. And yet you will squander that across people that don't really care. Men are very simple. My husband says it all the time. They're very simple. They're they're simple creatures. We're the complex ones. We are now we can we will complicate men and we will project our complications on them. Oh, he didn't, you know, he he didn't call me to go out this weekend because, you know, he was busy with his, he's busy with his family and you know, and no, he was really stressed about work. So he just wanted to really relax this weekend. That's weird because you'd think that if he really wanted to just relax, he'd do it with you because that's really the goal there. There are, but if but but no, no, no, it's no, just he was just really stressed out. So I just let him be, you know, and we'll see each other during the week. Well, that's interesting, right? Listen to it though. It doesn't make any sense because once you meet that person, if it is really that person, like men are gonna prioritize a woman that they really see as like their future. If you show up in any way where it's fast and easy, guess what, sister? They're not gonna prioritize you, period. And you know, it's interesting to talk about this because in this day and age, unfortunately, it seems like everybody is going out for the fast and easy. Nobody's trying to go for the long haul. But at the end, the long haul is really the ticket. And I'm not talking about you don't have to go and get traditionally married, even if you're just living with somebody for the long haul. Having that life is actually very rewarding and is something really lovely to have. So figuring out who you are in that year period, you're gonna be like, oh my God, Jenny, and roll your eyes just like my kids. But being you authentically is going to happen through, I've said it many times, journaling, meditating, affirmations, trying new things yourself that you've always wanted to try, visualizing your future. If you really want to get married, you really want to meet someone, then you really need to start visualizing who that person is and who what their qualities are and the kind of person you want them to be. And that's only gonna come from you, because we need to know what kind of person do you want to be? What kind of person do you want to show up as? And I'm not talking about like, oh, what kind of mom are you gonna be? You don't know what kind of mom you're gonna be until you're actually a mom. That's that's is what it is because I said a lot of things before I became a mom. I'm a totally different mom than I thought. Actually, if I saw a video of myself now in my early 20s, I would have been, well, not now, but when the kids were toddlers, I would have been like, what the hell kind of mother are you? But the point is you have to get super clear because that is going to be the energy you send out. When you get that really crystal clear picture of the life that you're looking for and the person that you're looking for, then it is going to come to you. Going on dating websites and really like just throwing every book at the wall and everything at the wall and hoping something sticks, that's not gonna do it. We're being force-fed this speedy life where you have to force everything down each other's throats. And that is not how it happens. That's just not how it happens. It's going to come to you when you get really clear on what it is you're looking for. The book that really helped me in this scenario was called The Secret. That's actually what pushed me. And there was a whole year period where I got really clear, and I just continued to keep the faith until it really came back and I met my husband. So I wanted to say this because, in the loudness of our society right now, my early 20s ladies, my mid-20s ladies, my 30s ladies, my 40s ladies, even stop the noise, pull back, focus on yourself and focus on your own intentions. And then everything else is going to fall into place. But you have to look inward first. You cannot look outward for what you need, because then you're only filling gaps with band-aids and people that aren't really for you. You have to figure it out first. Then the rest is going to come. I hope we're ending this week on a high note. I do challenge you, in any scenario you're in, look at it, gauge your feelings, determine if it works for you. And if yes, stay. If you know at the end of the day that you lay your head on your pillow and you're like, I'm happy and I'm grateful for all these decisions, then good for you. But if you're laying down at the end of the day and you know you're not happy, then you do need to make a change. And what, what better time than now? Thank you so much for being here with me tonight. I hope you all had a wonderful week. I hope you guys have a great weekend, and I will catch you on the next one. Take care.