Many of you have been coming into my DMs or writing in the private Facebook group asking about what are the red flags to know if he's really looking for love or just a hook up?

And I'm going to share these red flags with you in this podcast, but I'm also gonna give you some tough love, because while knowing red flags is great, we need to stop focusing so much on them.

What should you really be focusing on? 

YOURSELF!

If you don't know who you are and what you want, it doesn't even matter if you know the red flags. 

And while red flags don't really ever change and can generally be applied as a rule of thumb, your values and the things you're specifically looking for in a partner are highly personal. That means that no one...not I, not another relationship expert...can tell you what to look for. 

Join me in this episode as I get real with you about red flags to look for, and how to start thinking about dating differently so you can filter out the bad guys and...

After hearing this content about Gumball Love and attention addiction for a while, many of you come to me in the DMs worried that YOU are actually a Gumball Girl.

Most of the time, you are not. Sometimes we are the ones giving and receiving gumballs, and it feels good to get that dopamine hit. This isn't always a bad thing, if your relationship with this guy is not SOLELY based on these dopamine hits.

It becomes a problem when the guy is not seeking anything more than a quick "high", and there is no deeper level of intimacy and friendship holding the relationship together, when that's really what you want and are waiting for.

If you're worried you are a Gumball Girl, wondering why you keep ending up with Gumball Guys, or wondering why you're always caught up playing games in dating, this episode will help you decode what you are getting out of being with these guys and playing the games.

Once you can understand why you're behaving the way you are, you can...

"Boundaries" seems to be quite a buzzword these days, but I know it's something we all struggle with and it can be very misunderstood, so we're going to break it down here! 

When we hear "boundaries", what often comes to mind is the image of cutting out every unhealthy person in your life, which can seem quite daunting and scary.

Cutting people out of your life can be part of creating boundaries, but this is just the surface. There's much more work to be done beneath the surface, but it's so worth it! After you do this work, you will feel calm and confident about your boundaries, rather than frantic and insecure.

Creating boundaries in your life is lifelong a process. A process of recognizing where and with who there is pain and friction in your life, grieving what you wanted but which cannot be, recognizing what YOU can do (not telling the other person what they should or shouldn't do), and LOVING YOURSELF through the mistakes.

Yes, you are human, so you will make mistakes in...

We've all been there...you're texting back and forth with a guy, and the responses are pretty quick in the beginning, everything is exciting, you're getting the butterflies....and gradually, the responses get slower and slower to be returned (or, it's very sudden that he's taking so long to reply).

You start to freak out, thinking he's not interested in you, he's texting another girl, or whatever else our creative minds think up! Your natural response may be to scold him and educate him on how he should be responding, but I want you to consider a different approach.

In this episode, I walk you through the reasons why he may not be texting back right away, why you shouldn't freak out and start imagining worse case scenarios, why you should just wait it out, and what it looks like when you're texting a healthy guy.

Other episodes mentioned

5 signs to tell early on he's not the right one

Follow and Work with Melissa

• The Back to You Academy is officially closed, but you can still work...

In this episode, we're digging into gaslighting. If you haven't heard of gaslighting before, it's defined as:

"Gaslighting is a form of emotional abuse that's seen in abusive relationships. It's the act of manipulating a person by forcing them to question their thoughts, memories, and the events occurring around them. A victim of gaslighting can be pushed so far that they question their own sanity."

If you've ever been in a situation where someone was accusing you of something that you really don't remember doing or saying, or they're totally exaggerating something you did or said and making you doubt your own judgement of reality, you're likely being gaslit.

It's a very unhealthy and damaging experience, because the more the abuser leads you to doubt yourself, the less confidence you have, the weaker you become, and the more susceptible you are to further gaslighting, and the cycle continues.

If you think you're experiencing this, you are not alone, and not all hope...

When you're in a new relationship or just starting to go on a few dates with a guy, do you ever feel like you're being evaluated against some checklist on a clipboard?

He says things like, "When you do that it reminds me of my ex, who cheated on me..." or "I have trust issues so I can't handle it when you...". Then you find yourself doing backflips and performing trying to prove that you won't hurt him like the last girl. Things will be different this time, I'm not like the other girls!!

But he's still skeptical. And the more energy you spend trying to prove yourself, the more you lose part of your identity, the more your self confidence weakens, and the more you fall under his control.

And the more dopamine hits he gets so he can feel soothed, comforted by the fact that you probably won't leave him like the last girl.

Welcome to the last episode in this "flavors of attention" series! We've covered each Gumball flavor/color that correlates to a type of attention addiction that...

Welcome back to this series, where we're talking about all the flavors of attention that the wrong guys want. They make us think that they're falling for us, but they're getting high off of attention and they're not actually building true and lasting connection.

I share this with you so you can understand how to filter unhealthy men and people out. So you don't waste your time on the people that are just taking from you, the people that are not really investing and focused on your life.

I've assigned each type of attention as a "flavor of attention" with all the different gumball flavors, and so far we've already covered red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple...and this episode is about pink! 

I encourage you to listen to the episodes about the other ones first, the links are at the bottom!

When a guy wants the Pink Gumball type of attention, he's the one who always makes every conversation about him. You could say anything, and he'll always turn it back to...

"Work is so crazy right now, but we should meet up soon." -text from a guy, probably sitting on his couch, who wants the Purple Gumball

If you're new to Gumball Love, welcome! Gumball Love is a concept created to help women see the red flags of fake love, and be able to identify real, unconditional love.

Each flavor "Gumball" represents a type of attention that a person is seeking from you. They will give you a "quarter" so you give them a gumball, and then they get "high" off the attention, like a sugar rush. They may therefore act like they care for you and love you, but it's really just to get the kind of attention they want from you.

I've been doing a podcast series going into depth and detail about each flavor gumball, or each type of attention, so you can really start to see the nuances and get really good at spotting the guys who aren't seeking a real intimate connection. The links to previous episodes in the series are at the bottom, I suggest you start from the...

Welcome back! If you haven't been following the Gumball Colors series, I'm going through all eight colors of the flavors of Gumball Love. If you're brand new to Gumball Love, Gumball Love is the addiction to attention, or to the rush that attention gives us. 

I suggest if you haven't already, start back at the beginning of the series and listen to the first four colors before moving on to this one. The links are at the bottom of this post for quick access. 

This episode is about the Blue Gumball, or as I like to call it, "Pity Me". This is the guy (or person, if it's one of your friends or family members), who is always complaining about everything and wants your constant sympathy and pity. You try and give them advice, but they never take action on anything. They just want to hear themselves complain.

We all have our low moments where sometimes we just want to vent, and we just need a pep talk. But there is a difference between this, and the unhealthy...

In the past few episodes, I've been going over the different gumball "flavors" or different types of attention that Gumball Guys crave so that you can start to watch out for the red flags.

The Red Gumball  is all about sex, the Orange is all about stirring up drama, the Yellow wants you to constantly be entertaining him and keeping your attention on him, and now, we come to the Green Gumball guy: Green with Envy, Compete with Her for Me. 

This is the guy who you'll be sitting with at your first or second date and he says, "I've gone on a few dates with this other girl, and I really thought she was it for me, but now that I've met you...I really like you too. I'm just not sure."

Just imagine, how do you feel in that moment?

You may feel the sudden urge to prove yourself worthy. Prove that YOU'RE the right choice, and start to compete with her. And that's exactly what gives him the high.

Or, you might be at a restaurant with him on a date, and he starts flirting with...