- Jenna Thompson, a model and presenter, thought that she was intimidating to men and that her beauty and success was preventing her from finding love.
- But after working with Sami Wunder, a modern dating coach, she told Insider that her perspective had changed and that she didn't just attract "bad boys" anymore.
- Wunder teaches her clients — 145 of whom have gotten engaged in the past three years — to date rotationally, which means not being exclusive with someone until they fully commit.
- Thompson said she was attracting the wrong sorts of men for her because her dating profile was showing an image of herself that wasn't honest and true. Making the adjustments Wunder suggested has meant Thompson is now dating men who aren't just looking for a noncommittal fling.
- "You have to really do some work on yourself first to understand what you want so you can go out there and get it," Thompson said. "Having a wishy-washy sort of idea of what you want only attracts wishy-washy sort of people."
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"It's a minefield," Jenna Thompson, a swimwear model and presenter, said when she appeared on the British TV show "This Morning" earlier this year to talk about her disastrous love life in a segment titled "Woman Believes She's Too Good-Looking to Find Love."
"I think it's the dating apps, because they're just — it's just impossible," she said. "It's absolutely impossible."
Thompson believed that the "nice" men she wanted to attract were intimidated by her because she's beautiful and successful. The only men who were interested, she thought, wanted flings and no commitment.
"They were guys who were emotionally unavailable, or guys who weren't looking for anything serious," Thompson told Insider. "I got stuck in this sort of area of attracting guys who were just throwaway relationships really, nothing serious."
Thompson has two children, who are 1 and 5 years old, and she split up with her partner about two years ago when she was pregnant. When she started dating, she wasn't really looking for anything serious either, she told Insider. But as her life changed, so did her priorities.
"As time went on, like a year or so, I thought I wanted to meet someone a bit more serious," she said. "It's funny, because I suppose I changed, and I didn't really change what I was doing to attract the right person."
It's easy to fall into the trap of having 'limiting beliefs'
Thompson believed that her curse was being a gorgeous, successful model and that men found this intimidating. But it wasn't until she met Sami Wunder, a modern dating and relationship coach, that she learned this wasn't the reason she was having trouble at all.
"Men love good-looking women, so it's nothing to do with being intimidated by them," Wunder told Insider. "When a woman talks this way — and a lot of successful, beautiful women do talk this way — it gives them a justification for why they're single."
This puts the blame on the guy, she said, something she calls a "limiting belief."
Thompson said she wasn't aware that even the smallest decisions could attract men who were totally wrong for her.
"It was silly little things, like even how you write your dating profile, what sort of pictures you have on there, and all that sort of stuff," she said. "I had to reevaluate everything and really understand what kind of guy I wanted, so to really attract that sort of person."
Wunder, who is paid thousands by her clients and has had 145 engagements come from her sessions in the past three years, taught Thompson exactly what she was doing wrong and how to find the love she thought was out of reach.
Lesson 1: Time management
Thompson thought she had no time to fit in dating because she was a single mother — a "disempowered story," Wunder said.
"There's always enough time," she said. "If you have time to brush your teeth, and if you find time to take a shower, and if you find time to gym, because you're a model, then you have time to make your love life a priority."
People devote time to what they think is important, she said, so she had Thompson block out two evenings a week for dates, should they come up. This way she could plan ahead when she needed to ask parents or friends to babysit.
"So when a guy asks you for a date you don't have to think about how I'm going to squeeze it in," Wunder said. "You know the time is there — Wednesday evening or Saturday evening."
What Wunder wanted Thompson to realize is that work is important, but so is her private life.
Lesson 2: What you're putting out there
Thompson struggled with putting an authentic version of herself on her dating apps, which in turn was attracting men who didn't see her true self. She told Insider she was going for men who suited a superficial aesthetic she liked, with a "bad boy" vibe and tattoos.
"When Sami saw my dating profiles, she was like, 'No, no, no get rid of that,'" she said. "I was like, 'Oh God, really?' And when she said it, I was like, of course — it made total sense."
Wunder said Thompson's profile, with bikini photos and a description saying she was looking for a "wild, passionate lover," was really underselling what she had to offer.
"I'm sorry, but the kind of men you will attract with such a profile will probably be intimidated by a confident, successful woman, because they are looking for something else," Wunder said. "I think just the pool of men she was attracting was very low-quality."
Wunder had Thompson delete everything on her profiles and start fresh. She added photos of her in nice dresses and walking in nature, and made sure to mention her children and how important they are to her.
"It was just really toning down the wild side and bringing in the things about her that are attractive, and her essence, you know," Wunder said. "Who she is as a person, not just her looks and her body."
Thompson said that when she made these changes, the shift in the men she was attracting was immediate. She learned that being up-front and transparent was the best way of finding someone who would fit in with her life.
"I thought I would have been judged about being a single parent before, which is just ridiculous," she said. "You have to be authentic with yourself — then people are taking you as exactly what you're presenting to them. Otherwise, it's not fair on you or the other person."
Wunder also noticed how rapid the transformation was.
"She did it, and she started attracting so many men, and good men — men who within two or three texts were saying, 'Let's meet, let's set up a date,'" she said. "And she was quite shocked that the right profile and the right pictures could take her from the famine to the feast, so to say."
Lesson 3: The online-dating process
Once Thompson was setting up dates with men who had potential, she was overwhelmed by all the attention, so Wunder helped her work out how to organize it all.
Wunder's process is exchanging four online messages before asking for a phone call, then a real-life date. A five-minute phone call, she said, helps filter out anyone who might not be a match for whatever reason.
"You use your intuition, like is this right or not," she said. "So it's a very foolproof process of not wasting time chatting with men all day like teenagers."
Thompson was also encouraged to try Wunder's tried-and-tested method of "rotational dating," or dating more than one person at a time. It doesn't mean sleeping with multiple people — it just helps prevent getting too involved too soon with someone before they're willing to commit.
Read more:Why this relationship coach swears by dating several men at once, known as 'rotational dating'
"I found it the hardest thing to get my head around," she said. "Guys kind of rotational date naturally anyway, without them even realizing they're doing it, but then the idea of a woman doing it, it didn't feel wrong exactly, but I suppose society makes us feel like we should date one person at one time, so it kind of felt unnatural."
But Thompson soon got used to the idea and realized she wasn't getting hurt as much as she had before, as "it stops you getting obsessed with someone in the beginning."
"When you're rotational dating, the ones who are not for you will naturally fall away," she said. "I was used to dating someone and, because we'd been together a while, thinking this would be it. But it's not always the way, is it? So it seems to really be working out well."
Lesson 4: Chemistry patterns
Thompson's previous relationships had all been about physical attraction, Wunder said, but that's just one aspect of finding a romantic relationship.
"You have to be able to evaluate men on their compatibility with you," she said. "We made her identify her deal-breakers and her non-negotiables ... I said, 'You need to get clear and identify what it is that you want, who is it that you want, and what would work with your kids.'"
There's no point dating someone who is wildly attractive but has your non-negotiables, like not having a job or wanting more children, because it just won't work out.
"So this was very streamlining for her; it gave her a lot of clarity," Wunder said. "It is challenging when the hormones kick in and the physical attraction feels strong ... But once you sleep with a man, you get attached. And you often get attached to the wrong man."
Wunder added that before someone gets attached, they have to evaluate the person in front of them. "Make sure he's passing over the hurdles and the tests before he gets that precious gift of sharing your body," she said.
Thompson said that she'd met someone who really has potential but would continue to date rotationally for now.
"The longer I've been single, the more comfortable I am with it," she said. "Before, I was apprehensive about dating, and it was bringing worries into my life, whereas now it's not."
She added that she'd learned to relax through realizing exactly what it is that she wants, "because if you don't know what you want, you can't possibly attract it."
"You have to really do some work on yourself first to understand what you want so you can go out there and get it," she said. "Having a wishy-washy sort of idea of what you want only attracts wishy-washy sort of people."
- Read more:
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- 5 ways your body is showing you you're in the wrong relationship
- How to tell if being single for a long time has made you bad at relationships
- 11 signs your old relationships are affecting your current one
- Playing hard to get might be a terrible idea if you actually like someone — here's why