You see, I met my forever person back in uni at 20. Life was pretty good, with two awesome kids and a couple of cats. Until he passed away unexpectedly, and the future we'd planned vanished in an instant.

I spent a few years healing, raising the kids and retraining. Then around the 4-year mark, I started wondering what "moving forward" looked like. Cue the dating pool terror! Truth be told, during my 20s, I kind of envied friends' dating antics – but with the advent of online dating, the "fun stories" seemed more like dating horrors, and I found myself 'googling' terms like catfishing and breadcrumbing.

Terrified? Absolutely. But then I adapted some coaching tools, found a mentor, dove into books and created a system (I'm a sucker for a good system – makes me feel safe!). And I tested my theories in the real world, figuring out what worked in terms of strategy and attitude and discovered what blocks needed clearing in order to get the relationship I craved.