A Truly New Way To Find Love [EP 236]

Introducing a truly new way to meet. Deeper For Good™, a way to find your person, find your people, and change the world. Don’t miss this!

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Listen For

03:49 – What is our mission overview?
06:24 – What is the Deeper for Good Movement?
17:59 – What are the lessons learned from the dating experience?
22:26 – How do the Deeper for Good events and app work?
Learn more about this episode. Visit https://deeperdatingpodcast.com.

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A Truly New Way To Find Love

Podcast Introduction And Mission Overview

This feels like perhaps the most important episode I have ever recorded. We are beginning a new project called Deeper For Good™ to help single people find their person, find their people, and help the world at the same time. If you want to meet people who have deep, deep values, and you want to meet them in ways that are fun and connected and have an impact on the world, please stay tuned to this episode to hear about a program that’s unlike any you’ve probably ever heard of before. Deeper For Good™, I can’t wait to see you in the episode.

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Welcome to the Deeper Dating® podcast. I am Ken Page. I am a psychotherapist. I am the author of the bestselling book, Deeper Dating, and your host in this podcast. Today, I want to talk about something that is very scary, very exciting, and very big to me about a new project that I am going to be doing, which I want to invite you all to. It is a project built to help you find your person, find your people, and change the world. I will get to that in a moment.

First, I just want to say that in this episode and every episode of the Deeper Dating® Podcast, my commitment is to show you insights and tools that will support you in finding beautiful, healthy love, keeping that love alive, and finding the self-love that can allow intimacy to grow and develop, because the skills of dating are nothing more than the skills of intimacy. Those are the greatest skills of all for a happy and meaningful life.

If you want to learn more about the deeper dating path to intimacy, just go to DeeperDatingPodcast.com. There you will find transcripts of all of my episodes. Also, if you sign up for my mailing list, you will get my free ebook, the Five Keys to Deeper Intimacy, with five keys that have gone viral in psychology today and elsewhere that I think are the heart and soul of what I teach. Okay, now I am going to jump in.

After over 200 episodes of the Deeper Dating® podcast, I have something really important to share. I have closed my practice. I am going to continue with this podcast, but I have closed my practice, my coaching practice, my psychotherapy practice, my intensives, so that I can devote myself to something that is truly calling to me right now. It is called Deeper for Good™.

Launch Of Deeper For Good Movement

It is to help single people meet in environments where they are doing positive things in the world because shared purpose is oxygen for intimacy, and it is a magic ingredient for finding love. God knows our world needs some help right now. The tagline for Deeper for Good is find your person, find your people, and help the world or change the world. I am still thinking about that. I would love to hear your feedback on which you like better on that one.

This is going to be launching shortly with an app and a way for people to make a difference and connect, build community, and find love all at the same time. Let me tell you about this new project, Deeper for Good. Let me also just say that if you go to DeeperForGood.com right now, you will be able to join the waiting list to hear about events that are going on near you, and just to learn about this project.

I have lost both of my parents. My dad died, actually, ten years ago today. This is the anniversary of his passing. He was a Holocaust survivor. My mom passed just a few months ago. She was also a Holocaust survivor, and they were amazing, amazing people who believed in the human good and stood for that.

They survived a lot, and they taught me really big lessons about hate and the remedies to hate. This is what my dad used to say. He used to say, and I think that we are seeing this happening right now, he used to say, “I know how to create a Nazi Germany. I know the steps that a leader needs to take because I witnessed them and I understood what they were. This is what they were. To make a population somehow less than you, less than human, and then you can bypass your conscience and do things that are unconscionable because you have made them less in your mind.”

That is what is happening in our country right now to transgender people, to immigrants, to our earth, to basic human dignity and justice, and to families of immigrants and so much more, so much more. That is what is happening right now. That is what my dad said. He did a lot of work on his rage at the Nazis. He knew that what kept him alive during the Holocaust was his rage, but he knew that that rage would kill him if he did not find a way to get through it. He used to say, “Whenever I found that rage, I would pull it out of me.”

We all need to make an effort to speak up against hate. Share on X

A little emotional for me to get rid of it. He said, and I had to do so, so much ongoing pulling out. He and my mom actually went on a trip to Lithuania, where he was from, and Austria, where my mom was from, because there were people who helped their families. They went back to find the descendants of the people who helped to tell them what a difference their parents and their grandparents made. For some of these people, it was life-changing because they said, “I loved my grandfather.”

Sorry, folks, a little emotional for me. They would say, “I love my grandfather. I did not understand how he could be a Nazi when I now know how he helped you in the concentration camp, Eric. It is like I can reclaim him after all of these years.” Those were my parents. My mom always said that for her at eight years old in Nazi Austria, the thing that scared her the most, the most terrifying, terrifying thing would be that she would be separated from her parents.

What is happening now in this country with ICE was the deepest horror to her. What my parents taught me and what I am now going to be creating is about the antidote to that. All of us need to make efforts to speak up against the hate. My mom and dad taught us it was not the Germans. It was the government. It was the Nazi party, but it was not the Germans. It is not America.

It is this administration, it is the racism, the hatred. Those are the things that we need to stand up against. Now, this is my understanding of how things are. I would say half the country, at least, does not like what is happening, does not think it is okay to attack and destroy and bomb an elementary school with children in it, to separate families like this, to put children in cages, to detain people in environments of profound inhumanity, to disenfranchise transgender people and gay people, to try to minimize and erase the reality of slavery in our country. No, those things are not good.

Personal Story And Family Legacy Inspiration

This administration now, and what is happening, are pushing these agendas, and it is time for us all to stand up for good. I think 50% of the country probably is ready to do that. Maybe people do not know what to do. Maybe it is hard to take action. Maybe it is scary to take action, but people know inside that something is not right when we treat human beings in this way. Of that 50% of the American population, of the adult population, let us say half of them are single. Maybe that comes out to about 50 million adults in this country who, let us say, are single and want to make a difference for good in this country. That is an army of human beings.

These human beings not only want to create good, but their hunger for connection, intimacy, and community has not abated. In times that are difficult and complicated, it becomes so much more important to have somebody wonderful who you come home to, friends and community who you can connect with and get support. Shared purpose and values are oxygen for intimacy. There is a need, a huge need for us to do good.

There is a huge need in the single population, both to do good and to create community and find love. Add to that, to this terrible storm, the apps. The apps are the most powerful way to meet and connect, and they are broken. We all know that. Downloads are decreasing and decreasing because what happens is people create new apps where they graft on novelty or little components of intimacy

Because the apps are built for matches and not for intimacy, because intimacy is not built in from the ground up, but is a secondary thought, because of that, all of these new novel approaches just have not really worked because they are transactional. They are not built on goodness and decency and kindness, which is what I have spent my professional life working toward in the arena of finding love. Now, with the help of my amazing husband and an incredible team of people, I have created both an app and a program called Deeper for Good™, where single people can meet, make a difference, and connect in new ways all together.

A lot of apps are built for matches, not intimacy. Because intimacy isn’t built in from the ground up but treated as an afterthought, many new approaches haven’t worked—they become transactional rather than rooted in goodness, decency, and kindness.

I invite you to join by going to DeeperForGood.com and signing up for my waiting list. We are expecting to fully launch in June. Before I tell you a little bit more about Deeper for Good®, I just want to say something about my story, my own personal story. As many of you know, I am in a wonderful relationship now. Actually, today is the 10th anniversary of Greg’s and my wedding. You may remember that I said that it was the 10th anniversary of my dad’s death. My dad had a dream of Greg and me getting married, and he waited.

I was slow because I was scared. My dad was pretty ill. I was finally ready. We told my dad that we were going to be getting married and we were going to be getting married in June, 10 years ago. He said, I will wait. I will wait for that, but he was not able to wait. On the last day of his life, we realized that it was the last day, and the hospice nurses said to us, “Guys, this was like a last wish of his. Are you going to give it to him or not?”

We said yes, and we told him that we were going to get married in front of him. He gave us a thumbs up. I think that was the last gesture he made, except our daughter got into bed with him and held his hand in those last moments. Greg and I got a minister, and we got cheapo rings, and the family ran out to get whatever it was that we needed, and we said our vows in front of my dad. He passed in that time.

Journey To Love And Lessons From Dating Experience

Anyway, that was the culmination of a huge journey because I was what I called chronically single for many years. All the work that I do springs out of my becoming a student of what I needed to learn to find love, because I wanted it to build a family. Because along the way of making these changes and teaching these ideas, I felt called to become a father. This was before I met Greg, and I adopted our daughter, Jessie, from Cambodia when she was eight months old, which is what led to me creating Deeper Dating® because I thought, “What would somebody like me, who is more than busy, do to find love?”

That led to me creating Deeper Dating®. What happened is that I followed my meaning. It led to my being knocked to my knees and saying, “I have to learn. I am humbled. I need to learn what I am doing wrong.” Along the way that led to my deciding to become a dad and adopting Jessie. I always told people the best way to meet people is through live events with people who share your values, which is Deeper for Good™, but I did not have that yet. I had just started Deeper Dating®, and there was an event for gay families.

The best way to meet people is through live events with people who share your values. Share on X

Many of you have heard this story. Forgive me, I will just share it briefly, but I was bullied into going to that event. I did not want to go. I was scared. I felt insecure. I felt like almost everybody there was going to be coupled, but I was pushed and bullied by my amazing mom and my dear friend, Ilene, to go. I felt that if people who loved me that much felt that strongly about it, I was going to go. I went to this gay families event in Provincetown. That was where I met my husband, Greg. It worked for me.

It worked for me to be in environments with people who shared my values. As a therapist for so many years, I can say it worked for so many people. One little caveat here is, events with people who share your values that are not heart-centered at all or warm or friendly, like some fancy donation gala or something, I do not think those do that much better at meeting people, but events where people get to talk and communicate, those do tend to.

Anyway, that story, but I just want to add one other piece to it around this same issue. I was walking down the street in the city with my dear friend, Mindy. I lived in the city at the time, and I was bemoaning the fact that my singlehood felt like completely intractable. Nothing was going to change it. She looked at me, and she said, “Ken, I know why you are single.” I said, “All right, tell me.” She said, “It’s because you do not go to events with the kind of people that you would want to meet.” She was fully right. I did not.

I went to bars, I went to clubs. I was living this wild, underground gay men’s New York City life. I was not going to the community center, to the meditation classes, or the yoga. I was not doing that. She said, “That is why you are not meeting people. It took me many years to follow those instructions, but they were right. This is what they led to.”

These were just some stories that I wanted to share from my own life. Now I want to tell you a little bit more about Deeper for Good™ and what we do. What this is going to be is that we are partnering with nonprofit organizations, with political candidates, with people who are doing good in the world and need help and need support. We have events that are online, at least to start, they will just be online events, which are geographically localized.

Find Love: We are partnering with nonprofit organizations, political candidates, and people who are doing good in the world and need help and support.

How Deeper For Good™ Events And App Will Work

We join with a nonprofit, and we have an event that is in support of them. You come to this event, and it will be filled with single people who care about whatever the subject is that this organization is founded upon. There will be a brief talk by the organization. I will say a few words about the importance of intimacy and connection, and then you will do a period of whatever the volunteer work is that they need, phone banking, thinking about doing house parties, just learning more about the organization, and connecting around that. From there, we go into a party.

There is wonderful technology that lets you mingle with everybody who is there. There are these tables that get set up, virtual tables with all different subject matters. You go to the tables that interest you, you click, and all of a sudden, you are in a breakout group with those people. You talk with them, you connect with them. You do not have to worry about getting numbers or anything like that because before the event, you have signed up on our app. You talk with as many people as you want, and you connect.

Often, there is going to be a wonderful speaker. These are dynamic warm events that you get to attend from your living room and make a difference at the same time. When the event is over, everybody who was there is going to be on the app with their picture and a profile, and you will be able to connect with them, so you do not have to feel pressured at the event. You can message them, and you can also have curated conversations, which take the awkwardness out and allow you to meet these people in a way that is warm and connected.

These are dreams of mine that I have been working on for so long, and they are finally coming to life. They are coming to life now before the midterms because we need to create a movement so that our country does not go off the cliff. I want your participation. If you feel called to make a difference in the world, if you are single, if you are interested in meeting wonderful people, even just for community, if not dating, we want you at these events.

Find Love: We need to create a movement so that our country does not go off the cliff.

If you are a nonprofit or a political candidate who is interested in having an event for you, which will raise money, raise awareness, hopefully get some good media, and help people connect as volunteers around your cause, reach out to me as well. You can do that by sending an email to Ken@DeeperDatingPodcast.com or Ken@DeeperDating.com.

Reach out to me, let me know. If you want to join our mailing list and become a founding member, which is going to give you perks and benefits and free content, now is the time. Please sign up at DeeperForGood.com, and you will get on the waiting list. As soon as the events go live, which we think will be in June, you will get to hear about this. I feel like my life mission is coming together with these things, and I feel like I need to be one of the people who is fighting for change.

If you feel that way too, if you want to build community, if you want to find an environment where you can connect, and you want to make a difference, I would love to see you there. I would love to hear your thoughts. I would love to hear your ideas. If any of you want to volunteer or support this in any way, I would love to hear from you. Again, if you are running for office or a nonprofit organization that is interested in our support, reach out to me as well. Deeper for Good™. I hope to see you there. Also, I just want to say thank you so much for being my audience.