If you’ve been single for a while, you know the two characters. One is the hot guy you’d love to be around who isn’t ready for a relationship. The other is the guy who’s ready, asks you out, plans the dates and checks the boxes, while you sit across the table trying to convince yourself to be attracted to him.
Dating doesn’t feel natural. You’re playing with the biggest thing you have, your endless love and devotion, and trying it out on people who might ghost you the next day. Then you see couples who actually met their person, had a child and are still together a decade later, and you wonder if that’s a fairy tale.
So for episode 676 of the Highest Self Podcast, I brought back my personal friend Christine Hassler, one of the top relationship coaches in the world. When I first met her, she was 40, had been single for all of her thirties, and had just started dating Stefanos Sifandos. They came on my podcast together back then. Now they’ve been married for years, have a daughter, and teach women how to call in their divine counterpart. In this post I’m sharing her wisdom on settling vs. standards in dating, what’s truly a deal breaker, and how to magnetize real love.
Christine’s Story: Single Through Her Thirties
Christine has been engaged three times, married twice and divorced once. Her fiancé broke up with her shortly before their wedding in her twenties. She married someone else at 28, and by her early thirties they were separating. While her friends married and had babies, she was very, very single.
At first it felt good. She’d gone from relationship to relationship her whole life, her career was booming, and she went deep into her spiritual practice and the divine feminine. Then she got honest with herself: “I’m whole on my own, and I also want to grow in relationship.”
Around 35 she decided, “Now that I’ve chosen it, it’s going to happen.” It didn’t happen for five years. She tried dating coaches, every app, numbers-game strategies, not caring, trying harder, getting set up, traveling the world, astrologers, past life clearing and sexual healing. She left no stone unturned.
The Night She Burned Her List
On New Year’s Eve at 40, her landlord told her she wasn’t renewing the lease on Christine’s dream home on the ocean. She was single, about to lose her address and nowhere near a relationship. She called it the ultimate expectation hangover.
That night she went out to her fire pit and burned her list, the one most single women keep with everything they want in a partner. “Okay, God. Clearly I’m not trusting you, and my picker isn’t working. I’m actually going to surrender.” Then she scrapped every strategy and built her own Calling Him In journey.
That April she was at a friend’s house, a house she was only visiting because she’d lost her lease. Her friend’s husband asked her for feedback on a website. She sat down, and Stef’s picture was on the screen. “Who’s that?”
He lived in Perth, Australia. She lived in San Diego, literally the opposite side of the world. One of her dating guidelines was that she’d only be introduced to men who were relationship-ready, and he was. They talked on WhatsApp for three months.
Hang Out With Healthy Couples
Another guideline: spend time with healthy couples. In the past it hurt to be the fifth wheel, so she’d stuck with single friends. She decided to put herself in the energy of what she wanted to create, and said yes to a couples mastermind trip in Greece as the only single person.
Then she found out Stef was Greek. She invited him to meet her in Greece. He showed up at her hotel at 9am that July, and that was it. The couples trip she booked as a single woman, she attended as part of a couple.
Desire Without Suffering, Longing Without Lack
The first inner shift Christine made was learning to embody desire without suffering. She’d tried the “I’m so happy with my life, if it happens it happens” approach. She’d tried the numbers game, going to events she was too tired for and Whole Foods trips she didn’t need, her head on a swivel. “Where is he?”
Neither worked, because searching and seeking aren’t natural for the feminine. It’s exhausting, and it reinforces the old belief that we’re here to be chosen. So she let her desire and longing feel amazing instead. She lived in how she wanted to feel. She believes our longing is our psychic knowing of what’s coming, and we attach suffering to it because we live in a 3D reality.
She also stopped treating singlehood as proof that she needed to heal more. Many women reach a point where they’re ready and he needs time to catch up. Christine believes her feminine magnetism actually sped Stef up. She points to biology: the egg can sense which sperm is the best fit and draw it toward her. If our eggs can do that, why can’t we?
Soul Mates vs. Soul Matches
Christine distinguishes between the two. Soul mates are people destined to teach us something significant through a karmic contract. We have lots of them. A soul match is someone aligned enough to go the distance.
She describes the healthiest relationship as a side-by-side partnership. Two people stop looking at each other to heal their parent wounds or provide security, and look forward at a shared vision and set of values, walking in the same direction. There are still lessons, and sometimes they face each other or turn their backs. The essence is: where are we headed together?
What Settling Really Means
Christine defines settling as the energy of “I won’t do much better than this, so I’ll take what I can get.” She also learned it isn’t black and white.
One of her non-negotiables was that her partner had to make as much money as she did. In Estonia, a few weeks in, Stef told her he needed to be honest about where he was financially. He was nowhere near her, and he had debt. Her heart dropped onto the floor.
Here’s what made her stay. She felt safe with him. The attraction wasn’t drug-like fireworks. It was a settling in her nervous system. She’d dated plenty of charismatic, emotionally unavailable men where the chemistry felt huge, because the moments of connection were the only times she really had them. With Stef she could be herself. He was clear, so she always knew where she stood, and he was consistent.
The Fear Underneath Every Non-Negotiable
Christine teaches that every non-negotiable, whether it’s age, looks, money or how much spiritual work someone has done, has a fear underneath it. We don’t want to get hurt or disappointed. That’s why many women never truly surrender: we believe surrender means we’ll have to compromise.
She compares it to ordering at a restaurant and then following the server into the kitchen to make sure your order goes in correctly. For Christine, the fear beneath the money requirement was that she’d have to stay in her masculine doing energy and would never feel taken care of.
Potential vs. Character
The key question she asked herself: “Am I falling in love with his potential or his character?”
Women can see potential in anyone, and when we’ve been single a while and someone checks other boxes, we talk ourselves into it and start grooming him. Character is different. Christine looked at whether Stef had a work ethic, whether he was a man of his word, whether he understood his numbers and whether he was actually trying. The answer was yes to all of it. She also saw a man who had never had anyone believe in him.
Becoming His Muse
She made clear agreements. She told him her fear, presented a prenup (he didn’t push back), and said, “I’m not going to coach you. I need you to show me you can do this.” She passed him a few balls, and he ran with every one. Within six months he’d paid off most of his debt, within a year he was profitable, and within three years he’d caught up with her financially. By the time their daughter was born, he was earning more, so she could step back and be with her.
Her lesson was learning to be a muse: to call a man forward without doing it for him. If you feel like you’re working harder than he is, nagging him about therapy appointments or the gym or the book you sent, that’s exhausting for the feminine. Christine framed it as a need: “I don’t want to be the primary breadwinner forever. This is a need, not a request.”
What Is a Real Deal Breaker?
Some things are always deal breakers: he’s married, he’s in active addiction, or you detect narcissism or narcissistic selfishness. Christine notes that when we keep choosing these, there’s usually a childhood pattern with a similar flavor, and we’re hoping this time will be different. It never is.
Many other “standards” deserve a closer look. In her first marriage, Christine wanted a husband who understood her spiritual world. Her ex was supportive and not on that path, and it was a big part of why they divorced. Today she says it wouldn’t be a deal breaker, because her consciousness is so embodied that she doesn’t need anyone else to understand it. What she does need is a good communicator who’s willing to learn repair and self-responsibility, and who values growth in his own way.
The Hot Unavailable Guy and the Good-on-Paper Guy
When I asked Christine about the classic dilemma, her answer stopped me: “You’re in more of your dating energy than your magnetizing energy.”
She was there for years. The emotionally unavailable men were fun, the chemistry was great, and the anxiety of waiting for texts was brutal. The relationship-ready guys she wasn’t attracted to left her picturing the end-of-night kiss and plotting her exit. Both choices came from protective parts. The unavailable man was safe because it would never go anywhere. The good-on-paper man was safe for the same reason.
Christine can line up every man she dated and see no physical type at all. What she can see is which part of her picked each one: her teenager, her little girl with daddy stuff, her codependent patterns. Dating reflects what we’re working through.
She also had to become a no to the nos to be a yes to the yes. You can’t call yourself sober and have a little sip of tequila now and then. She stopped dating hot unavailable men, no matter how good the chemistry. She’d really believed she could make them relationship-ready by being a healthy woman. You can’t.
Trust Your Nervous System
When I shared that a friend dated a man for a year before he said he wasn’t ready, Christine said she has never met a woman who didn’t see orange flags. Our nervous systems are finely attuned. When we get out of the fantasy, we can feel whether he’s clear and consistent. Too often we gaslight ourselves, calling our anxiety “my trust issues” when our body is telling the truth.
Christine’s nervous system was relaxed with Stef. She had no anxiety in the dynamic and brought up whatever bothered her. Once, when a lot of his stuff was coming up and she felt like his mother, she put him on a train to a friend’s place for ten days. “You deal with him.” He kept showing up, from self-responsibility rather than neediness.
What Keeps a Relationship Together
Social media sells the fantasy of a man who sweeps you off to Monaco. Christine would rather ask: Do you know his phone password? Is he aware of his family-of-origin wounds? Can you talk about how you trigger each other? How do you repair?
Her husband has done plenty of sweep-me-off-my-feet gestures. What matters most is that he takes responsibility, comes to her and repairs, and tells her when he’s holding resentment. Having a baby was hard on them. They’ve faced real challenges, and they always come back, because her biggest non-negotiable was someone who’d sit in the hard stuff with her until they worked it through.
Did she get everything on her list? No. Did she get what she needed? Yes.
My Takeaways
Before my brother’s wedding, I put so much pressure on myself to meet my man in time, and I subconsciously thought he needed to be Persian so he’d fit in with my family. When it didn’t happen, the pressure lifted. Another layer of programming dissolved. As Christine says, we don’t need to do more. We need to remove what’s in the way.
Looking back on everyone I’ve dated, I can see the coin at the mall swirling closer and closer to the center. Every connection brings us nearer to what’s truly ours. There’s no expiration date on love. Christine’s community includes a woman in her seventies who reconnected with her high school sweetheart.
Listen to the Full Episode
Press play on Highest Self Podcast episode 676 with Christine Hassler, or listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Send it to your girlies still in the dating trenches. Learn more about Christine and Stefanos’s work at christinehassler.com/Sahara.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I know if I’m settling in a relationship?
Settling carries the energy of “I won’t do better than this.” Look at whether your nervous system feels relaxed and safe, whether he’s clear and consistent, and whether you’re falling for his character or his potential. Releasing a surface preference is different from abandoning a real need.
What should be a deal breaker in dating?
Marriage, active addiction and narcissism are always deal breakers. Many other requirements, like income, height or spiritual background, deserve a closer look at the fear underneath them.
Why am I attracted to emotionally unavailable men?
Unavailable partners often feel safe to a protective part of you, because the relationship won’t go deep enough to truly hurt. The intense chemistry comes from the rare moments of connection.
What is magnetizing energy in dating?
Magnetizing means holding your desire and longing as a pleasurable feeling rather than a lack, trusting your body’s wisdom, and letting a clear, consistent partner come toward you instead of searching and strategizing.
If you’re healing from the hot unavailable guy right now, my Ultimate Heartbreak Healing Course will help you glow up after heartbreak. Read more on why men ghost, how to remember your worth and divine feminine energy. The right one will meet you there, love.