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Last time we talked about the importance of “creating a memory” at your engagement. At Kelleher International our job doesn’t end when we introduce you to “the One”, quite the opposite, this is exactly where our 24 years of experience comes into play to help you at every stage of your romance.
Okay, we’ve already covered THE PROPOSAL and it’s time to move on to AFTER THE PROPOSAL.
She wants to know that you are as excited about your now-pending nuptials as she is, and the more you do in the days immediately following the engagement, the more energy and anticipation you will creating heading towards wedding day. You have to consider that
immediately after the engagement she will want to call her friends and family to tell them the great news, but you can plan your AFTER THE PROPOSAL memory to begin very soon after she says “yes”.
Here are a couple of great things I’ve heard from recent proposals:
- Two tickets to Paris – a classic that never gets old
- He booked a reservation for the next night at a four star restaurant with her best friend and his best friend – they would go on to be the Best Man and Matron of Honor
- He planned brunch the next morning with her parents (he flew them into town) and his parents at a beautiful bay-view restaurant
Again, congratulations on getting ready to take that next step and good luck making a memory that will last a lifetime.
Whether you are a new client flying off to Paris for your first match or have been happily married for more than twenty years, Kelleher International wants to be your resource to make your journey of love wildly fulfilling, exciting, dynamic, and deeply passionate.
We’ll talk about strategies for dating success, navigating relationship land mines, and the mindset it takes to find love and make it blossom. We will put current events in the context of seeking love and even give you a little window into the match making business and how a centuries-old tradition continues to evolve in our modern world. The “right one” is out there for you, so check back weekly for updates or follow us on Twitter to make the most of our partnership in your future.
Let us come with you on your journey!
Jill & Amber
The first weekend of November marks one of my favorite athletic events – the New York City Marathon. It is invigorating to watch thetriumph of human spirit as runners cross the finish line in Central Park – if you’ve never had the chance to experience it, I recommend the trip to NYC.
You have just decided to rededicate yourself to finding “the One”, are you hunkering down for a marathon or stretching for a sprint?
I won’t try to overplay the metaphor, but there are many parallels:
- The initial thrill: just like the runners first crossing the Verrazano Bridge to start the race, there is high adrenaline on your first couple of dates with a new romance. A runner is just excited to be in the race – if you’re in the early dating phase, enjoy that you have the good fortune to be spending time with interesting people and are actively creating your own future!
- Hitting the Wall : You’ve been running for hours, the finish line is intellectually “close” but seems physically infinitely away, and it is the runner’s commitment to the goal and belief in themselves as a runner that gets them through this phase. This is also where “sprint-like” goals come into play. The marathon runner adjusts some of their focus to closer sprint goals – catching the runner ahead of them, making it to the entrance of Central Park, kicking to the next water table. If you’re “hitting the wall” in dating, what are a couple of sprint-goals you can go after?
- Finishing Strong: that final kick hastens success and makes it feel even more magnificent. If you’re in a romance and you can see the “big next step” is on its way, this is not a time to cruise, it is a time to find your next store of energy and cross that line with POWER.
No matter where you are in your search for “the One” (and I hope you are in the race!), the pursuit of love is a combination of sprints against close goals while keeping your motivation rooted in the long term goal. Now stretch those hammies, picture yourself breaking the tape, and ready, set, love!
At Kelleher International we bring together the most successful singles across business, sports, entertainment, education and philanthropy. It’s thrilling to work with leaders from every corner of the globe and help them find “the One”. There are dozens of books and whole schools of psychology around the “Alpha Male” and what makes them tick, and our network is full of these incredibly successful men.
 But our network is also full of wildly accomplished women. Whether they are TV Anchors, entrepreneurs, UN delegates or Heads of Surgery, they are at the top of their games and similarly deserve the title “Alpha Female”.
Are there different considerations when dating Alpha Males vs. Alpha Females? An important part of a Kelleher International membership is relationship coaching, especially in the early stages of new love, and we work closely with our members to identify great matches and then light the spark romance. So what advice do we give our top men as they begin to date the Alpha Female?
- Don’t Assume that the “Alpha” mentality defines every aspect of her life: while it’s true that many Alpha Males are also extreme athletes, adventure vacationers and collectors of the “best” of everything, the Alpha Female may follow a different pattern. Her Alpha may be only professional, but in a relationship she seeks equal partnership. She may enjoy beautiful Tahiti sunsets to the challenge of K2, or a drive through the Fall trees instead of a 10 mile bike ride. There are no universal truths, but as you approach the relationship, do not jump the conclusion that she is 100% Alpha.
- Don’t mistake self-sufficiency for not wanting someone to depend on or to pay attention to her: She may have been incredibly successful on many fronts and is a self-made winner, but that doesn’t mean that she isn’t seeking a strong male. Centuries of conditioning have built into female DNA to seek the Provider and Protector. No matter what her success, it is hard to fight hundreds of years of evolution. What does that mean for you? Don’t hesitate to take the lead on making plans (every woman loves a man with a plan), don’t hesitate to open the door for her, do exhibit your virility in the right circumstance.
- Let her play down her success if she wants to: if she doesn’t want to talk about her many successes, do not take this as a sign that she doesn’t want to share, or that she is shy or even overly humble. Just like she can’t find centuries of evolution, she also knows that men can’t fight that either. There is nothing inherently feminine about great success (although they are not in conflict in any way) and hundreds of years have carved into men’s DNA certain characteristics that she may choose to emphasize over her success. She may choose to seem more nurturing than domineering, more sensual than aggressive – let her be who she wants to be and don’t define her by her Alpha status.
Great singles come together to make great couples, and at Kelleher International we see elite “Alphas” of all flavors come together and find a lifetime of happiness. Are you one? Call us and see if we have the match for you!!
Next Time: Are you an Alpha Female? Tips on finding Love….
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Today’s Question: you’ve just wrapped up a first date, it was good but not great, do you agree to a second meeting?
 Romance blooms at different rates for different people, and at Kelleher International we stay very involved during the early stages of our matches so that we can coach our clients as well as capture feedback for future matches.
When working with clients that are unsure about a second date, we ask some very simple questions to put some further granularity on their date experience. When probing into what didn’t meet their expectations we ask our clients to divide their feedback into “Values Issues” and “Performance Issues”. Values Issues are just what they sound like –a mismatch/conflict in the lifetime goals, personal outlook or deep-rooted opinions of two people. As part of our in-depth screening we conduct with every client, we usually are able to preempt potential Values Issues, but matchmaking is an iterative process and what may not have seemed important to a client during our interviews may have jumped in importance when faced with it over an appetizer. If there is a values mismatch, then graciously decline a second date and move on – ignoring that signal just postpones the pain.
 Performance Issues in dates occur when someone could just be potentially having an off night. “He’s boring”, “She talked too much”, “he’s dressed like a slob”, anything from a long list of examples of someone just not putting their best foot forward. In working with a client considering a second date and working through some performance issues, we often take them back to the earlier Values discussion. “Did he have the same vision for the future, that you did?”, “Does she have the zest for life you were hoping for?”, “Is philanthropy part of his life in the way that you hoped?” and based on the strength of those answers, a second date may now be in the future.
Now don’t get me wrong, Performance Issues are not to be taken lightly, and a repeat performance triggers a very different conversation with our clients. However, just as in the screening process, we work closely with our clients to center in on those characteristics in a partner that will deliver a lifetime of happiness.
This post is for the fellas. Most of the questions I get are around finding “the One” and then the many stages of courting and romance. In the past two decades we have worked with thousands of couples at Kelleher International and have seen hundreds and hundreds of marriages between our clients. If you are lucky enough to be in a relationship and are considering a proposal, then my top piece of advice for you is “make a memory”. Whether you are 25 or 55, your engagement day can be a shared memory that continues to build the excitement to your wedding day.
 Okay, now that you’ve decided to “make a memory”, think hard about how your future wife (so exciting!) would want the event to unfold. Picture her on the phone with her girlfriends the next day retelling the story. Imagine her on the phone with her parents sharing the news.
Personally, the thought of being proposed to on the Jumbotron at a Knick’s game is more embarrassing than exciting – so be careful not to confuse BIG EVENT with GREAT MEMORY. Plan carefully THE PROPOSAL and the AFTER-PROPOSAL. Let’s start with THE PROPOSAL – what are the three words you want your fiancée to use when she is telling the story the next day (and for the next twenty years). Here are a couple of great things I heard from recent engagements that hit the nail on the head:
- He held a dinner party that had the same six attendees and exact menu from the dinner party two years earlier where he had taken her on their first date – at the end of the meal he proposed
- He paid two camera men with telephoto lenses to capture the event from a distance, and later that night he presented her with a photo record of the event (I can only imagine how much better the story telling was the next day)
- He organized a private dinner on a beach at sunset – complete with string quartet playing background music
What these all have in common is that they create a memory that your future wife can’t wait to share (verrrrry important!) and it starts of your journey to the altar on the perfect note….
Next time, Engagement Part II – AFTER PROPOSAL
 Recently there was a fascinating article in the Harvard Business Review that condemned the inevitable ‘bad equilibrium’ of online dating and then conducted an experiment to force more deliberate successes and failures in the early stages of relationship formation. For those of you out there a bit removed from your last Econ course, a ‘bad equilibrium’ is a strategy that all the participants in the system are able to adopt and inevitably converge on, but it won’t produce a desirable outcome for anyone.” Or more simply, in online dating participants generally choose a relationship style that results in failure.
The premise of their study was that online dating is geared less towards SUCCESS and more towards NOT FAILING, and that analysis of early email exchanges were dominated by safe, and inevitably boring topics which led to diminished interest. Of course it’s easy to point out what’s wrong in this model, but their study also tested how things might be different if participants were forced away from the “bad equilibrium”. The results were fascinating and very much in line with the advantages of active matchmaking versus online dating.
The Problem: People try to express themselves and find out about the other person, but they are careful not to be too expressive or risk offending someone. Potential daters lean towards amiable over controversial, even at the risk of sounding boring. You learn where someone went to school or if they like to ski and maybe even if they like Thai food, but you rarely touch on the meaty topics that will eventually emerge in a young relationship. However, as you spend more time talking about the weather, you become bored and potentially miss out on on the opportunity to find out if someone might just be “the One”.
The Experiment: after identifying what was broken, the researchers took the great next step and pushed daters to actively avoid the ‘bad equilibrium’. Instead of allowing riveting questions like ‘how many siblings do you have?” or “what did you think of the ‘Lost’ finale”, they forced potential daters to ask more intimate and revealing questions, like: “How many romantic partners have you had?”, “When was your last breakup?”, “Have you ever broken someone’s heart?”.
The Results: a higher percent of very short email interactions (some people don’t like when you mess with the rules), and a boom in the more engaged interactions that led to a real first date.
Their Conclusion: “By forcing people to step out of their comfort zone, risk tipping the relationship equilibria, we might ultimately gain more than if we just fall back on those tropes that are safe for everyone, and useful to no one.”
We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.
When we work with clients at Kelleher International, we enable our members to skip over that part of first meetings that are “safe for everyone, and useful to no one” to quote the study. Sure, when you meet someone you inevitably go through the preliminaries of “where did you grow up, etc.”, but because of our rigorous screening process and proprietary matching approach, you will quickly move into that deeper engagement with someone that is based on shared values.
If you’re single and a heavy online dater, you may have already met your perfect partner and bored them with “what’s your favorite restaurant?”. If you’re ready to get real and shake lose the ‘bad equilibrium’, give us a call and we’ll create a stimulus package for your personal love economy. 
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