Too many women confuse feeling empowered with acting like a "ball-buster." Empowered dating is all about embracing and exposing your most uncomfortable, vulnerable and tender feelings. Empowered dating is about being brave enough to sit in the anxious, yucky, totally-out-of-your-comfort-zone feelings associated with letting down your guard. So how do you do that? The key is to allow yourself to feel and share your "emotional nakedness" with men while having a sense of ownership of your emotions. Owning your feelings will let you feel more comfortable sharing your true self and will help him feel safer in acknowledging those feelings. 1. Be vulnerable, but never susceptible. The difference between being a soft, sensitive woman a man would want to snatch up and love forever and being a needy, over-emotional, dramatic woman who makes men run away, has everything to do with susceptibility. Are you susceptible to losing yourself in a man? Are you susceptible to feeling overwhlemed with neediness and other insecurities? Do you allow your feelings for a man to make you so weak for him that you compromise your self-respect and dignity just to connect with him? 2. Be grounded, but not guarded . If you feel you are susceptible to your more needy side, it's time you find your grounding. I call it making a conscious effort to "sit on your hands” and not reach out to men. Sharing and exposing your true feelings, needs, desires and dislikes. should be done from a grounded place—from a place of feeling like you aren't uncontained, needy and out of control emotionally. A lot of women confuse being grounded with being guarded. Being grounded actually allows you to not be guarded, but instead to be vulnerable and open. Once you feel yourself shutting down or putting on a friendly, sexy, fun "act" for a man to hide your true self, you are losing your grounding and becoming guarded as a result. (Visit my blog ConnectWithHisHeart.com to learn more about how to feel grounded with men so that you'll never fear feeling needy and out of control emotionally again.) Keep reading... More dating advice from YourTango: /node/135850 /node/99473 /node/119016 3. Be comfortable feeling uncomfortable. This goes back to what I said in the introduction. When you participate in empowered dating, you live outside of your comfort zone. You invite men to see the true you while also placing yourself be put in situations where you risk being: honest instead of playing games; fragile instead of putting on a fake show of strong character; uncertain instead of trying to gain control over him, the relaitonship and yourself, etc. 4. Be sweet, but not sugar-coated . Be honest with men. Be direct and up-front about how you feel. If a guy, for example, gets on his phone during a date and it bothers you, speak up. Be sweet, polite and feel empowered about your ability to be heard. Don't be afraid to voice your feelings. ("I feel annoyed when a guy gets on his phone on a date. It makes me feel unimportant.") 5. Be silly, but never foolish. Having strong personal boundaries allows you to trust yourself and it melts away "the edge" a lot of women have in the beginning stages of a dating relationship. If you know what you won't tolerate from a man (no matter how handsome, rich, funny or smart he is) you end up feeling a lot more relaxed, silly and playful. Once you feel like you can't trust yourself to walk away from a guy who hits all the right buttons in your heart, you start acting like the uptight bitch who's always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Be playful with all men you meet. See every guy as practice for the big game. Start getting more comfortable with male attention and with utilizing the massive power of your sexual and sensual energy. Practicing will show you that it's OK to want and seek out male attention and that there isn't some boundary-breaking thing you have to give them back in exchange for that attention. So many of us get uncomfortable with male attention because we associate it with negative things like feeling guilty that we teased a man. We feel like we have to break a boundary and give something back to men in exchange for their attention, like reassuring them when they get angry. You don't owe a man anything just because you flirt with him. Don't let a man's poor sense of self make you feel like you have to be responsible to his experience. If some guy gets pushy, angry, rude or judgmental, then that's his problem. Be free to be yourself and express your sensuality and sexual beauty on a date. Have innocent intentions. Don't be overly sexual or play power games with men to watch them squirm for your sexual attention, but have fun. Only a foolish woman would put a man's dating experience in front of her own. For more empowered dating, sign up for my Goddess Love Advice Newsletter . You'll be part of my exclusive goddess circle and receive tips and tools every week in your inbox that will show you how to be soft, sweet, luscious, loving and tender without being swayable and too impressionable. Men will gooble you up!
