April Braswell's Blog

April Braswell, leading expert Romance Coach and Online Dating Coach blogs about Dating, Life, Romance Coach Dating Tips, Online Dating Coach Dating Advice.

Freud was right

April 3, 2008

All girls are so strongly influenced by their fathers.  In my case, I married a dear sweet version of my brother, which actually, was still and influence from my father, a reaction to him.  Today my father, John Y. Barry, died.  I'll comment on it more later.  This weekend I am introspective.  He is why I love to receive Pink Roses.  For my 16th birthday, my sweet sixteen, he sent me a dozen pink roses to me at school at PDS.  I received them in the administrative office, got a special note to go to those offices.  No intimidation there, I knew Mrs. Claghor since I was 5 first going to PDS when I was 5.  I felt like a PRINCESS.  And to this day, when men give me beautiful roses, I feel like A PRINCESS!  Don't you?  Shouldn't every woman?  God bless and God speed.  April Braswell

What can you learn from YouPorn, RedTube, and XTube?

April 5, 2008

Ladies, what can you learn from the popularity of YouPorn, RedTube, and XTube?  Did you know that these are some of the top searches online at Google and Yahoo?  Yup.  They are.  What's popular?  Porn.  OK, before you go scampering off offended, please do me a favor, stop, breath, pause and wait a moment.

Contemplate this with me here for a moment. Why are these websites so poplular?  WHY is porn so popular?  Why?  Men like to look at beautiful, sexy, and desirable  women.  Yup.  Men LIKE to look at beautiful, sexy, and desirable women.

What can you learn from that?

BE ONE.

I am.

Are you?

I'm betting that you could improve in this area.  I'll take about this more in the coming weeks and months. April Braswell  

Ladies, want to learn How to Be the Woman Men Adore... and NEVER Want to Leave?

No One Wants to Look Dumb 

April 8, 2008

MSN's new site, the title got me thinking, "No One Wants to Look Dumb.  You see, I live here in Silicon Valley.  Can we count the brain power?  Can we count the universities?  Yup.  It is oh-so-definitely part of our corporate image NOT TO LOOK DUMB.  And yet... well, it's my male clients who sort of sidle up to me, covert, subliminal... "Ah, how can I avoid looking like an idiot in front of girls?" Many of the really sweet sw engineers are NOT the smoothest guys with women.  They work with them and know how to assign trouble tickets and resolve them, but actually conversing romantically with a woman, well, that is a WHOLE other thing.  Or as Kevin Hogan would point out, THAT is a whole other CONTEXT! 

The other factor on the other side of the equation, there are DA WOMEN.  We can SMELL your masculine fear and intimidation, yes, actually 12 feet away.  I'm not kidding.  It's actually in your pheromone signature.  Your being ill-at-ease with women, we can LITERALLY smell it.

I'll continue to post about some ideas for how to BETTER position yourself with women and girls, not JUST to pick them up a la Pick Up Artists (PUAs), but also actually to establish a RELATIONSHIP.  Then you could actually get those bed benefits on a regular basis.  Or as I like to say, turn off the TV, power down your laptop, and make your OWN porn!   April Braswell

Men, want to learn the Secret Art of Approaching Women?

New TOYS! 

April 10, 2008

And it's not even the sex toys you immediately thought of when you saw that headline in conjunction with my name (that is what you thought of, right?  "I wonder what kind of new sex toys April got!  Oooo!  Well, I'll talk about those later.  Soon.  Really.  In fact I was just thinking the other night that I need to include a section here directly on some of that and things to try, like about the pleasures of anal sex.  I am really so all about have fun with sex, enjoy it, play with it, try new things, and that it itself is fundamentally about communication.)

Well, the new toy I have actually is a digital camera.  HAD to get one.  I have this dippy one on my cell phone that just is terrible.  Same with my sister's.  When my brother got baptized on Easter, she took pix with her cell phone.  Glad we had SOMETHING.  They didn't come out well. :( 

So, it was TIME.  I mean, at Kevin Hogan's Influence Boot Camp, I actually had to have all of my friends (yes, naturally, I made friends there!) take pix and email me later. They were utterly sweethearts and did.  Just, stop being such a pain in the butt, April, and get one yourself.  NONE of them said that.  I said that to myself. 

Much thanks to Steve Chambers who directed me CLEARLY with these things over at Amazon.  Steve, thank you thank thank you thank you.  OK, now could you explain it to me?  I'll bring it with me to Kevin Hogan's 's Image Take Away Weekend in Philly in early May.  Thanks for your help.

I'll be seeing all that is left of my immediate family next week.  My 3 siblings and my 2 cousins.  I want to take a LOT of photographs of us and us altogether.

Funny thing, isn't it, how when we get closer to the bottom of the hour glass, each grain of sand becomes precious.  We have finally learned the true value of each grain of sand of time.  April Braswell

True Confessions of a Clutter Queen

April 12, 2008

It's true.  I'm terrible about this on my own.  I definitely tend towards utter clutter. 

Can I let go of STUFF? 

Not easily apparently.

Part of the issue, of course, is the emotional overwhelm of so many significant deaths in a short period of time, I simply do not know the answer to the de-cluttering question, "Will I really WANT this in the future?"

Many of the ladies who have participated in the Online Dating, Marriage, and Relationship forums I have lead and moderated for the past 6 years already know this about me.  This character flaw within me.  They are my encouragers when I ping into the group about how I took 8 bags of clothes over to GoodWill.  Indeed, I had WLS a year ago.  I have been through multiple sizes.  I have to let go of certain clothes.  I would tend towards clinging to certain outfits or items because of the memory of how fabulus they had looked on me.  But really NOW they were hanging on me.  NOT figure eliding, accentuating, and attractive.  I had to be a bit a brutal with myself and get ride of them.

Still now I have friends offer me clothes.  My little Fear of Poverty (Napoleon Hill, Laws of Success and Think and Grow Rich) would kick in and I would somehow worry that if I didn't have THIS, what would I have?  And then finally overwhelm would kick in as the most serious of motivators and I would decide, I HAVE to get ride of these things.  It would also help when I would got through my SELF-BRANDING exercise and decide very clearly about BRAND APRIL and would craft some selection criteria.  Then I KNEW, I had a plum line against which to compare what I owned to determine if I would keep what I had.  As well then to determine if and what to add to my wardrobe.

Oh, ah, I just got something more about what clutter is and what the communication is for me that underlies it.  It is protection - like a buffer of space from the world.  It's like my crossing my arms over my stomach area during the grief.  It's protective shield. Hmmm.  OK, so I now I get to work on THAT one some more.

So this weekend, I am on a rampage to DECLUTTER.  How about you?  Do you need to MAKE SPACE for a relationship in your life?  First with yourself and then for another?

Feel free to join me in decluttering.  April Braswell

More True Confessions from the Clutter Queen

April 12, 2008

Well, here it is now Saturday afternoon.  I'm actually devoting some time again today to DECLUTTERING.  When you have SKADS to declutter,  WHERE do you start? 

Simply pick a corner and START.  I like to start with a box or a managable small area where once it is cleared I can really SEE the progress and the increased SPACE in my view is calming to my spirit. 

I hear from the Feng Shui experts that Clutter is STUCK ENERGY.  Yeah, well duh.  I've had how many deaths in 6 years? Yup.  Not only MY stuff, but still I find that I have a bag or a box or some files of THEIRS.  Frankly, before, it was too emotionally overwhelming to contend with.  I was just tearing up (personally shredding, the physical action I'm sure is very gestalt therapeutic of RIPPING them up!)  some old health papers of my late husband's including stuff from his divorce decree.  These were things which when I first encountered them when he died, I simply did NOT have the mental discernment to DECIDE and to DETERMINE if indeed I would need these any more.  So, I kept them.

Now it really IS fabulous and therapeutic to RELEASE these things, tear up the paper into the recycling bin (my bit for GREEN!) and getting them OUT of my house.

I know that by doing this, I am making a better space for myself and for inviting in a really good Life Partner for myself. 

How about you?  What do you need to let go of?  Any STUFF?  Any OLD negative attitudes towards men that they are the enemy left over from your divorce.  Feel free to join me in excavating those negative thoughts out of your life.  Write them down and then replace them with a positive, life affirming thoughts which better serve you NOW in your life and in the direction in which you are headed. 

Blessings and hugs,

April Braswell

More True Confessions from the Clutter Queen - Sunday

April 13, 2008

Yup.  It's Sunday.  And I've been mulling over this whole IDEA of "What is HAVING Clutter Expressing?"  Indeed, what is the unconscious mind expressing here with my, April Braswell, having clutter?

A couple of things seemed immediately clear to me.  Pretect Myself.  Shield and Buffer Myself from the World.  Which is also gently screaming, "I am in pain."  and ergo something about, "I need attention."  Hmmm.  Interesting. 

And my having layers of clutter in my life in different facets of it, well, that creates secondary problems.  Sort of like the symptom for the alcoholic is the excesssive or obsessive drinking.  And surely that IS a problem.  However, once sober and system is clean, the messages, the communications that were not happening can start to be FELT and then expressed.  And it is a whole other learning process to learn how to communicate those messages, which are often initially felt and identified as anger and rage, in a healthy, mutually beneficial manner.  Now THAT surely is a challenge.

So today, now that I have identified some of my underlying PAIN beneath my clutter, I am sorting and organizing it so I can, of course, have a tidier place, but also so I know where things are, once org'd I can then release more of MY STUFF with discernment, and then the secondary and tertiary issues that emerge from the cumulative effect of clutter in my life, well, I can address those then as well.

Today I went to STAPLES and bought manilla folders in which to org a lot of my papers.  That is step one.  It will take me AWHILE really to get through that.  But then once I have done that, I can then go through the files and decide with discernment, "Ok, do I really need these papers still?  Or can I now safely let go of these?"

What about you?  What do you need to really express with your clutter?  Do you need to clean off a paper parking space in your home and make more room for genuine connection and relationships in your life?  Feel free to join me.  April Braswell

Shower the People You Love with Love, Show Them the Way You Feel

April 18, 2008

Just a quick note.  My father's memorial service yesterday was WONDERFUL and amazingly cathartic.

Being tout ensemble with my siblings to rehash all we needed and to grieve together was such a gift from God.  And to added great joy was it was the first time we are all together - this generation - my siblings and my cousins.  The family estrangments from the divorces have all been reconciled and healed in this generation.  And we recemented the bond and the connection.

Of course, there were tears, there was laughter, much huggging, and careful, looking each other in the eyes reiterations of "I love you."

The skill of connecting genuinely and communicating build an excellent foundation any love relationship, including yours.

God bless and God speed.  April Braswell

YouPorn, RedTube, and XTube - Oh My!

April 19, 2008

I was just conversing with my friend, , over at his blog at VOX, Steve Chambers, where he was posting about the popularity of YouPorn and Google, and porn in general. Well, I'll mention YouPorn, RedTube, and XTube as all being very popular.   

Indeed, I have mixed feelings about all pornography including YouPorn, RedTube, XTube. To judge and criticize it very quickly is just too easy.  As a Christian, no, that's not how I want to go live me life.  But to consider it without approaching it with an open mind, would be foolish and not really helpful at all.  When I consider it, I consider actually what it teaches us about ourselves, what we find titillating, any good techniques to learn (more in other vids than that stuff, but I'll feature that at my website likely in May and will blog about it at the time, a few people may faint, but I can live with that.).

I find some women are very judgmental of men enjoying porn. hello? duh? Naked women. Sex. What was a surprise here? Now some of the fetishes, well, you just have to have a sense of humor and skip over those pages.....

The flip side for women is they (we) often haven't given themselves full person to embrace and ENJOY their own sexuality. So, that fear of it is also expressed in their judging of men about this.  And in Christian women's groups, we all pray about this and those poor men.  Viewing porn can get addictive, I do understand that.  But so many of these women are just judging their men for being visually stimulated by naked women. And perhaps they need to be a little more visually appealing and seductive themselves, bless their hearts.

It's that if that is ALL you are doing, your appetite is only being gratified and not satisfied. So, you will ever crave more.  Which of course, leads to addiction.

My attitude?

Turn it off.

Go find some LIVE GIRLS (lol!), go on dates, and Make Your Own Porn! (namely have a great sex life with her, filming it is optional, of course!)

And when we do so, then we find we are satisfied and fulfilled.

God bless and God speed.  April Braswell

Happy Birthday to Me!

April 27, 2008

Yup.  It's my birthday.  April Braswell.  April.... Yes, there IS a correlation.  Half expected my father to phone me or email me today wishing me a Happy Birthday, so instead I sobbed my guts out.   That's grief.  It comes up when it comes up.  I let it.  Hence my also avoiding large groups right now.

Of course, that'll be different next week, and I'll just clamp it if the grief wells up.  I'll be with Kevin Hogan et al in Philly next weekend.  More later on that. 

April Braswell, Brent Detering, and New York Times best-selling author, Larina Kase. 

Meanwhile last night?  Lovely dinner to celebrate with my brother and my West Coast-based sister (as opposed to my NY Based sister). 

God bless and God speed.  April Braswell

Sad but True...

May 31, 2008

Yup.  It's like it will be only a 5 game series if the Penguins can't pull a victory our of Monday night's game. 

As a Romance Coach and Online Dating Coach, I'm going to recommend if you're a man, go hang at the movie theatres this weekend.  You WILL see a LOT of women at the Sex in the City opening this weekend.

If you're a lady, well, go to a sports bar.  Game 5, Monday 8 pm EDT/5 pm PDT.

Game on!

God bless and God speed.  April Braswell

Just back from Joseph Cozza Salon - Practicing Excellent Self Care

June 7, 2008

Just a back from Joseph Cozza Salon where Russell did my color and Jessie styled me.  Yes, my hair looks FABULOUS, just in time for date tonight.  How about you?  Are you practicing excellent self-care?  And do you have a date tonight?  If you don't at least, get OUT and meet some new people. 

God bless and God speed.  April Braswell

Happy Father's Day

June 15, 2008

Happy Father's Day to all the dads who are reading this.  Since my own father died this past April, we're not celebrating this special holiday this year in my family.  It's just poignant at this point.  Meanwhile, I added some books to my Romance Coach Summer Reading List for my clients.  I get that from both of my parents.  They were both extensive readers and inculcated that into their kids.  We are all readers.  What legacy are you developing in your children?

God bless and God speed.  April Braswell

To contact April Braswell for her expert dating, Online Personals, and relationship coaching, just send an email to her at:  apriljbraswell@aol.com