This is Dating While Gray, the grown-up's Guide to Love, Sex, and Relationships.

I'm Laura Stasi.

Have you ever thought about paying someone to help you find a partner?

On this episode, we're exploring love help for hire I was married for a long time to a do-it-yourselfer, so I'll use the analogy that dating is like a home improvement project.

It seems simple enough, and you've got the interest and the energy, so you decide to DIY.

But after you get started, it doesn't go as smoothly as you thought it would.

Maybe your skills are rusty, or your confidence is shaky.

Maybe it's time to get some professional help.

I realize that I need coaches.

I really like coaches. I do boot camp. I've done nutrition

coaches. I need that connection with one person to help guide me. That's Cheryl, who's in her

early 60s and divorced. In the year shortly after her split, Cheryl went online. But then she was

introduced to a friend over friend.

They clicked romantically and were together for seven years. And then when that finished,

I started trying the online dating again and ran into a lot of frustration. And so in 2020,

a friend of mine told me about this dating coach that gave you

one session free and helped you with the online process. You've expressed something that so

many of us feel, which is you're online and it's not working. And some of us are wondering,

why isn't this working? It looks like there's a whole bunch of people out there. What were

your specific, I guess, disappointments or frustrations with online dating? I found that I just

couldn't connect with men that I was interested in. Or we would have like

days and days of talking on the phone and then meeting in person and it just falling apart.

...