Hi love,

I’ve been sharing these beautiful Love After 35 stories with you for a while now, and I’ve been so moved by your messages and how much these stories have resonated with you. So today, I wanted to do something a little different...

I wanted to share my own story with you.

Not because my story is more special than anyone else’s, but because I think it might help you understand why I do this work, why I believe so deeply in the gift of timing, and why I’m so passionate about helping women navigate their single chapter in their 30s.

My story spans four years, involves a friendship that turned into something more, and is proof that sometimes the person you’re looking for has been right in front of you the whole time.

Here’s my story:

Age and where I met my partner

First met at 32, started dating at 35

How did you feel about being single before you met your partner?

I had come out of a four year relationship just before my 33rd birthday with somebody who I thought I would take the next steps with. Although looking back, the relationship was nothing like it should have been and I was settling for fear of being alone and single in my 30s. It took me a long time to get out of the toxic bind with him, and although I thought I was really ready to meet somebody straight after we broke up, the truth was that I needed to go through a period of healing and being alone before I could call in love again.

After some “husband hunting” - going on a series of unsuccessful and unenjoyable dates straight after the break-up - I decided to dedicate my time to working on myself, my friendships, and growing my coaching business. After six months, I booked a bucket list trip and moved to Central America for five months. It was during this time that I really went all in on my healing journey (think: watching the sunset on the beach, tears streaming down my face as I processed all of the anger and hurt from the last four years).

I also had a situationship with someone who was emotionally unavailable, but it turns out I was also emotionally unavailable. So in a way it worked and also led me to understand what I was actually looking for (and also understand better my dealbreakers and values).

After around 18 months of being single and about six months before my 35th birthday, I decided to go “all in” on building my next chapter in love. This meant hiring a coach to help me break through some of my barriers and beliefs about finding love, changing my dating behaviours to date a lot more consciously intentionally and not going traveling for a while to give myself the chance to actually meet someone. The last one was hard for me- I was always a flight risk!

It was during this time that I uncovered so many beliefs that were holding me back from letting love in, and actually picking the right people to date. Once I became aware of this ... WOW everything changed. I ended up dating completely differently and although it led to more rejections and more “no thank you's,”I know that getting serious about meeting someone and actually prioritizing this as a goal is what ultimately led me to love.

I also went on a fertility journey during this time, which led me to freezing my eggs two months after I turned 35. I believe this created space in my head and my heart to give love a chance.

Despite moments of panic and hopelessness, especially after each rejection or thing that didn’t work out, I LOVED my single chapter. I am so grateful for all of the work that I did on myself during this time and the fact that I used it to work on all the other areas of my life. I look back at these few years as the most fulfilling times of my life so far and I am so happy I was given the gift of being single in my thirties.

How we met

Buckle up, because this story spans four years.

Although Eli and I only officially became a couple at the end of 2022, we first met back in 2019 working together for the same start-up. He was actually one of the first people I interacted with in the company as he was tasked with setting up a VPN on my laptop. Apart from this minimal contact, we didn’t speak again whilst we were working together. In fact, he was in a relationship with another colleague and I was already three years into the relationship I mentioned earlier. We became Facebook friends, and that was the extent of our connection.

Fast forward to 2021. I was living in Costa Rica and I wanted to find a sublet for my apartment as I had extended my stay. I published a post on Facebook only to friends and Eli saw the post and replied. We didn’t know it yet, but we had gone through a break-up at exactly the same month about 8 months before, and he was now looking for a new place to live and needed a temporary sublet. The timing was perfect. He rented my place until I got back.

This was the start of our friendship. He saw from my bookshelf that we had a very similar taste in books, so he gifted me a book and left a note for when I got back. It was so sweet and thoughtful. We then became friends on Instagram and would chat here and there in response to stories. We even met for a coffee and that was when I first thought: hmmm is this just friendship or is it maybe something more?

However, because it was mainly friendly and he was five years younger than me and only in the last years of his twenties, I was quick to “friend zone” him and told myself he wasn’t an option. I shared this with him when I was unsure if he thought our friendship was leading to something and he even said, “Whilst I would love the idea of starting a relationship with you, I guess I’m not healed yet from my last relationship and not looking for something serious.”

Still to this day I'm convinced he was just saying that because I said I wanted to be friends. But there's another part of me that also knows that we were both on our parallel paths and were inside of our own meaningful chapters healing and learning how to be alone after a break-up.

Although we remained friends, there was always a sense of something more between us but I truly didn’t see it at the time, even if now looking back it was very obvious!

Over the next 18 months we kept in touch just as friends, met up a few times for coffee and to sit at the beach. Each time our conversations got better and deeper. Fast forward to September 2022 and we were having one of our usual friendly catch-ups and it was like something CLICKED. For the first time ever I felt a little butterfly/stomach flip when we met and I was like “Oh hello,” after only ever seeing him as a friend.

Of course, I took it straight to my therapist, who had known about him and our friendship for a while and she put it to me straight: “Emma I don't understand why you aren’t exploring your relationship with Eli as an option. He seems like such a good match for you and he’s clearly interested. He hasn’t given up in years.”

I sat with this and admitted to her that I was scared. It was easier to go for men who I didn’t know were “good,” or had shared values, or I could sit with and talk for hours and be vulnerable with and share myself. That way, I didn’t have to take risks. I didn’t have to potentially lose a person that I cared about. I didn’t have to put myself in a place of potential heartbreak - the thing that had almost shattered me two years before. I didn't have to risk being in my 'late 30s' going through another break-up. The thought of that was so scary, that I actually pushed true love away to prevent being single in the future.

Once I realized that I was holding my heart prisoner, I knew what I needed to do.

It seemed that Eli was also aware of this shift between us because although he had been newly seeing someone during this time, he ended that connection to see if things between me and him would develop. I happened to freeze my eggs around this time, and when I woke up from my egg retrieval and checked my phone I had a message from Eli (who had seen my Instagram stories) asking if he could bring food round for me. That was the one moment when I knew what a kind and caring person he was and I decided that it was worth giving it a shot.

It was during an encounter in my apartment only one week after freezing my eggs that I finally confronted him. I want to say here that all of this time, I'm aware that Eli could have pursued me more. Many women would maybe have given up by this point. I do remember thinking “why doesn’t he just tell me he likes me and ask me out?” But I always come back to his respect that he had shown as soon as I had said to him that I wanted to be friends. I knew that I would have to be the one to change the tone between us.

So I asked him what he wanted with me - whether it was friends or something more.

And he answered without hesitation: if you wanted a relationship, I would want that too.

It was such a pivotal moment. One that never would have been created if I hadn’t overcome my fears of commitment, or my fear of confronting someone and asking them what they want. If this had happened years before, I can say without any doubt that I wouldn't have been able to start a relationship with him.

What felt hard about love before meeting him?

It felt like I could handle all areas of myself and my life apart from love. It felt like love did not come easily to me. I was a serial monogamist but also I felt perpetually single (I was in a cycle of a long-term relationship followed by years of being single followed by another relationship). It was as though each time another relationship failed it put a stamp on my belief that “I just can’t find love.”

The last break-up I had was so traumatic (as well as the relationship itself) that any hope I had about finding love and becoming a mother was shattered during this time. Love felt like something that wasn’t attainable for me. It was something that others had, but that I had to be constantly searching for. I knew I could meet men, I just couldn’t meet the right one. It felt that my dream of starting a family and having a healthy relationship went away when my previous relationship ended.

These were all limiting beliefs of course, but this is what felt real for me at the time.

What kept me hopeful: stories just like these. Other women who also walked a similar path to me. Who once felt like they weren’t deserving of love, or that no matter what they did they couldn’t find it. A huge part of my story was expanding my mind to meeting someone later in life. When I was living in Costa Rica, I met so many women who were living their own path and doing their own thing as single women AND I met quite a few women who started relationships and became mothers in their forties and it opened my eyes to the fact that I didn't need to be limited by age. Now I am the biggest believer in expansion as a tool to call in love.

What advice would you give someone who is looking for love in their thirties and thinks it is too late?

This is the hill I am willing to die on (so much so that I run my whole business around it): IT IS NOT TOO LATE. Quite the opposite - meeting someone later can be a gift. You will be more ready, more willing to have the open and honest conversations, more mature, more experienced. You will appreciate that you worked for the relationship and you will meet your partner in a different way than before.

My practical advice:

ENJOY THIS CHAPTER. Milk it for everything it is worth. Go on that trip. Join the community. Get the new hobby. Sleep like a starfish in the middle of your bed. Take that opportunity. Do all of the things that one day will make you look back and be proud of who you are today.

Let go of that chip on your shoulder and let your heart be open to all the possibilities. And stop dating for sparks and butterflies, everything will change when you date differently.

Don’t be ashamed to set it as a goal and do the work on yourself to meet someone. It will pay off inside your relationship once you find love.
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Lastly: find a community of women that will support you and lift you up during this time. I searched high and low to find a coach and a community of women that I could rely on during this time. I knew that I didn't want to feel alone, but I couldn't find the exact support that I needed. This is how and why Turning was born. The place I wish I had when I was single and looking for love in my thirties.

So there you have it. My story. The story of how I met Eli, how I almost let fear keep me from the most beautiful relationship of my life, and how I learned that sometimes the timing is perfect even when it doesn’t feel like it.

I share this with you because I want you to know that I’ve been where you are. I’ve felt the panic, the hopelessness, the fear that it would never happen for me. And I also want you to know that on the other side of that fear is something so much more beautiful than you can imagine.

If my story has resonated with you and you’re ready to do the work, to date differently, to let go of the chip on your shoulder and open your heart to possibilities, I’d love to invite you to join the Turning Community.

Turning is where I wish I’d had when I was navigating my single chapter. It’s where we do the inner work, unpack the beliefs holding us back, support each other through the messy middle, and learn how to date according to our values (not just for sparks and butterflies).

The doors are now open and I would be so honoured to be your coach during this time.
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​As you signed up to the Love After 35 special series you get a $50 discount when you sign up for the Quarterly option- which gives you the option to join for as little as $66 a month for the first three months! (the usual price is $99). Use code LOVEAFTER35 at the check-out page.
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The code is only valid for 24 more hours- so don't hesitate to sign up now!

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​And watch your inboxes for a special bonus email tomorrow. Something is coming...

With Love, ​
Emma x

Turning 30 Coach​
​www.turning30coach.com ​

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