Watch the full interview on Youtube here or on our website here.
In this third episode of the Fearless Love Forum, I had the pleasure of interviewing Rachel Teeling, a renowned dating, relationship, and confidence coach. Rachel shares her transformative journey from a devastating nine-year relationship breakup to becoming an empowering coach for single women. Rachel’s personal struggles with heartbreak and self-discovery led her to recognize and overcome limiting beliefs. When Rachel discovered the secrets to having healthy relationships, she began sharing her discoveries through a fulfilling career in coaching.
Rachel emphasizes the importance of self-love, confidence, and setting boundaries in healthy relationships. She offers practical advice on navigating the dating scene, such as taking breaks from dating apps and engaging in activities that foster personal growth. Rachel also discusses the societal pressures on women to be independent and the misconception that this means being alone.
Through candid anecdotes and valuable insights, Rachel highlights the significance of understanding and aligning with one’s values to attract the right partner. Her story is a powerful reminder of the importance of inner work and self-awareness in building healthy, fulfilling relationships.
Join us for this inspiring conversation that is sure to resonate with anyone seeking to improve their relationship dynamics and personal growth.
Transcript for Self-Love Secrets for Healthy Relationships: Rachel Teeling on The Fearless Love Forum
**David:** Hello Rachel.
**Rachel:** Hi, how are you David?
**David:** I’m good, I’m good. Okay, so welcome everyone to the Fearless Love Forum. We’re back for another day and another guest and today I have Rachel Teeling with me today. Rachel, how are you?
**Rachel:** I’m very good and I’m very impressed you got my name correctly. Nobody gets my surname correct.
**David:** Really?
**Rachel:** Irish family, no one ever says that name properly. It’s always T, what?
**David:** Yeah, it’s Rachel Teeling from Rachel Teeling Coaching. So Rachel, tell us a little bit about who you are and a little bit about your background.
**Rachel:** So I am a dating and relationship and confidence coach. I work with ladies, single ladies who are looking for love, currently on a one-to-one basis and I help them work out what it is that is going wrong for them out there in the dating scene, what it is that’s holding them back from finding that relationship that they truly desire and just digging deep into people’s kind of unconscious beliefs with them really and helping them realise that they can overcome all of these things to actually attract the relationship and the man that they actually want instead of settling. Do you want my background as well? Should I just go for it?
**David:** Well, that was my next question either way. Either way because I’m just kind of curious how someone gets into something like that.
**Rachel:** I know it’s kind of wild. So I was in a relationship for nine years and that relationship broke down quite spectacularly and I was left quite broken. I was left quite sad, quite lonely and I jumped back into dating without a question. Just thinking, you know, that was it. I needed to be with somebody. I needed to have a relationship. I needed that other person to complete me and I hadn’t dated since I was like 26 years old and I was in my late thirties at the time. And it’s a very different world to when I was first dating. And yeah, it left me probably more traumatized than I was after the breakup of my relationship because it was a cruel world out there. Dating is hard, attracting like the right person. It was, yeah, it blew my mind. And what I didn’t realize at the time, that I was my biggest problem. It was my brokenness and my heartbreak and everything that happened to me previously, not just from that relationship, but from life in general is what held me back from finding somebody because I had these beliefs that I just, well, they were beliefs. They were ingrained in me. This is what it should be like. And I didn’t realize that I could overcome these beliefs. So yeah, I then, I mean, I’m sure we’ll get into it as we go along, but I then stumbled across like a course that I could train as a life coach. So maybe me just jumped into it. I trained as a life coach and then I got into this as my niche because I just felt this is what I want to do. This is how I want to help people. I want to help. And I know so many single women who just don’t get why they’re not finding what they want. I know them in real life as well as in, like, playgrounds.
**David:** Yeah, that’s crazy how similar that is to my story. So, do you want to go into a little bit more about your story and just like into the nitty-gritty a little bit?
**Rachel:** Oh, you want the, you want the dirty details. So I was with my ex-partner for nine years. I met him when I was 27 and I, at the age of 27, thought I was ancient and that nobody would ever love me and that I’d never settle down and have babies. And so I just met this guy in a bar one night and it just happened. Life just, you know, happened. We met, we had a long-distance relationship, I lived in London at the time, we traveled for six months, we just fell into a relationship and then the next step was to just move in with each other because it was the easiest thing to do, it was the most financially easiest thing to do, let’s be honest. Living together instead of living apart would have been a lot easier so we just moved in together after six months of knowing each other, not even having like known each other very well or very closely, because we lived a couple of hundred miles apart. And then to be fair, we lasted nine years. So, you know, we had a business together, we had a baby together, we had a house together, we had all the lovely, beautiful things that a relationship should be, you know, traveled, money. We had a really lovely life together, if you ask me, but I was just going along with everything. And then one day, we were getting married. It was planned for like October. It’s tomorrow, my wedding anniversary, actually. So like October 2018. And in the September of 2018, he just suddenly said that he was having second thoughts. He didn’t want, he didn’t know if he wanted to get married. He didn’t know what was happening. And he moved out. Apparently, he moved in with a friend. And, yeah, he basically disappeared. And then a couple of weeks before the wedding, he called everything off. Didn’t give me much communication. Just, you know, disappeared. Totally and utterly blew my mind. I was obviously left very heartbroken, ashamed. I didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t have answers for people when they asked me if the wedding was going ahead. I was like, I just don’t know. And if you don’t know then maybe that should have been my answer. If I don’t know then definitely not, but I just didn’t know what was going on and it turns out I didn’t find out for 18 months, but it actually turns out that he was having an affair for the whole time while we’ve been having an affair for the previous year. He traded me in for a younger model, how dare he, so he traded me in for somebody 10 years younger than me and you know, an attractive blonde. He did the typical middle-aged man thing of going for a younger woman and I think in my mind he had everything going for him so he made sure it blew up in his face, he like he made that happen, but in hindsight it’s probably the best thing that ever happened to me because I literally was just going along with the relationship. I literally just was going along with, well, this is what you do. You have a house, you have a job, you have a baby. You just carry on like that. You do all these things. I was actually, in my podcast this week, I’m actually talking about the fact that I used to get taken on some of the most amazing holidays. We’d go to Orlando every year. We would go on cruises. We’d go around the world, literally, but none of these things were my choice. I was told that we were going on holiday, pack your bags, we’re off. It sounds amazing, doesn’t it? But actually, none of that was my choice. None of that was what I wanted. We never went on beach holidays. We never went anywhere that had sand or sea because that’s water. But I love those things. You know, I didn’t really know myself well enough to know that this is fun. Yeah, but this isn’t what I choose. So I think I got kind of sidetracked by the glitz, the glamour and the security or the perceived security of that situation. It was quite the traumatic time.
**David:** And you really like when something like that happens. A lot of people just kind of are like, well, that’s it. Relationships are, you know, BS. Men are evil. And I’m just going to be a cat lady, crazy cat lady.
**Rachel:** Well, do you know, it’s dogs for me. I’m not going to have puppies and stay at home forever. There is that, but I think when I came out of that relationship, I would have done anything to not be alone. I was terrified of being on my own. I had never lived on my own. I come from a family of four children and I moved straight in with my first boyfriend and then I lived in house shares. I had genuinely never lived on my own in my life before and you know living with a child doesn’t count because they are dependent on you so I still haven’t really lived on my own but I’ve never been an adult and responsible for myself before so I just got out of that relationship and thought right I need to find another man immediately that’s what I need another guy is going to save me I won’t have to like be financially independent. As a woman, I just did not want to be alone. I didn’t want to be a single mom. Yeah, I just did not want to be alone. So the aim was to find somebody immediately. Hopefully they would save me from all of that. And obviously that wasn’t gonna work out because I was doing it for all of the wrong reasons. I was looking for somebody for all of the wrong reasons.
**David:** Yeah. What was the turning point?
**Rachel:** So, I actually got into a situationship with somebody and, you know, he was clearly avoidant, if I look back at it all now. He clearly, with all of his actions, showed me that he did not want to be in a relationship. He didn’t want to be part of my life. He didn’t want to be part of me. He wanted the fun side of things. He wanted to get out there doing things. He wanted the fun side of things, but he didn’t want to be part of my world. And
the one thing I had said to him is like, please, if there’s anyone else, or if you’re dating anyone else, or you’re seeing anyone else, just be honest with me. I can’t take that kind of thing again. I can’t take finding out that somebody has cheated on me again. I realized, you know, we’re not in that committed place, but I couldn’t take somebody cheating on me again. And then I actually discovered that he had been seeing somebody else, and that broke me. That was my, I am worth way more than this. I’m worth way more than just having guys who want to date me and nothing more. I’m worth way more than this. And that was my turning point to me just going, I can’t carry on dating people and it not going anywhere. I can’t carry on just dating people and them not being committed or them being aloof or ghosting or all the things that happen to you when you’re out there dating. I was like, that is not happening to me anymore. I am worthy of so much more. And it took a lot of coaching for me to get over all of the limiting beliefs that I had and all of the things that I believed about relationships for me to get to a place where I was ready to date again. But yeah, he was my turning point of me just thinking, I’m not having another guy cheating on me. And at the time, I think I believed that, you know, well guys just cheat, don’t they? And they’ll just have to accept it. And it broke my heart so much. I was like, there’s just no way I’m doing this again.
**David:** Yeah, that’s crazy. So you went into coaching from there?
**Rachel:** And then I’d, yeah. So I’d kind of got my coaching certificate already. I’d already trained as a coach and got my life coaching certificate and I was just bumbling around coaching people, but I didn’t realize that, that, you know, I wanted that to be my niche until I had then been coached and I realized, you know, there’s, there’s me and so many other women out there who don’t realize that we’re worthy of love and of relationships and of that committed relationship.
**David:** Is there like one piece of just wisdom that just that just that whole thing was just trying to tell you over and over again, kind of slapping you in the face until you got it?
**Rachel:** Yeah, until you get the message, Rach, that this is not meant for you. I think that we have, not destiny, not a path, it’s something like that. There’s something bigger than us. And, you know, I think things have to explode in our faces to realize that actually this is not the path for me. You know, I was young when I was with my ex-partner. I just went along with it all. I didn’t really know what I wanted. I hadn’t really got a healthy relationship role model to base a relationship on from my own parents, from grandparents. There was no one to really look up to and think, well, that’s what a relationship should be like. So you just go along with what feels right at the time. And then when all of that exploded, and then when the next one exploded as well, I got the message. It’s not what I’m meant for. So yeah, I do think that actually, you know, having a positive male role model in my life and having a positive male role model in my daughter’s life was the aim of the game. And to be able to show people that this is possible, like having a positive, healthy loving relationship, and it’s not perfect, you know, we’ve got lots of, we’ve got three kids in three different schools, and we live like quite a far miles away from each other, but it’s not perfect, but it is definitely possible to have that with somebody. It’s definitely possible to overcome everything that you believe about relationships, that you believe to be true, that you have been shown that it’s true. I want to be able to role model that to the women, that it’s possible, that relationship out there is possible.
**David:** Yeah, yeah, that’s really great because I think it’s something that’s really undervalued these days with all of the drive on success and career and all of that. There’s so many things going on in the world and I don’t think that we’re focusing on the right things because who’s to be there at the end of your life.
**Rachel:** And you got a long ways to go. When you’re 40, when you’re 50, I’m 53. I got a long ways to go.
**David:** A lot of life to live still. Yeah. Are you going to do that on your own? Do you want to share that with someone or do you want to…
**Rachel:** And my kids are, my youngest one is nine, but my oldest one is 21. Like who’s going to be there?
**David:** The kids are going to grow up.
**Rachel:** What am I going to do with all my time? And so getting this piece right is like a big piece of the long-term view of my life.
**David:** I find that women get really celebrated as well for being independent, buying your own house, doing it all on your own is really, really celebrated. But do you really want to be on your own or do you want to share that with somebody? Do you want to share your achievements with somebody? Do you want to share your life with somebody? Do you want to actually go on holiday on your own or with your friend and her husband and their kids? That’s what’s going to end up happening to you or you will become the crazy dog cat lady.
**Rachel:** And that doesn’t sound too bad to me, because they don’t answer back, but it’s a lonely place to be. And staring down the barrel of being in my early forties and thinking, gosh, you know, my child is nine too. She’s very independent. She spends half a week with her dad as it is. She’s got friends and play dates and all sorts of things. She’s independent now. So what’s that going to be like in five, 10 years time? I very much would be left alone wondering, you know, impining for her as company. And she doesn’t think I’m cool anymore. So she doesn’t want me as company. So having somebody to share life with, future with, experiences with, holidays with, somebody to actually share my life with was a really important thing for me to achieve.
**David:** So when I had my moment of realization, I started on a little bit of a path too, and my path went something like this. The first thing I wanted to do after all of my relationships were completely in rubble, smoking rubble on the ground, was I wanted to learn how relationships work because I knew that something was wrong there. Once I learned that, then I thought, well, I can’t attract a good partner because I don’t have the confidence. So I wanted to learn self-confidence. And then the next thing was, well, it’s hard to have self-confidence when you don’t love yourself that much. And I realized that I had some self-love issues. And then after that, I wanted to learn about boundaries. And then after that, I learned how to identify my triggers and kind of erase them. And so it just went like, it’s like an onion, you know? I realized at the end, at the end of all that, I realized, gosh, I did this whole thing completely backwards. I should have started at the end. Learning about how healthy, happy relationships were should have been the last piece, but it was the first piece because it was like the surfacey thing. But I’m just curious if like, like how it kind of went for you, or if you ever like thought about kind of breaking it down into steps.
**Rachel:** Yeah, so I think I probably did do it backwards to you. I did it the other way around. Because I got left on my own and because meeting all these people that I had been meeting wasn’t really working for me, I started to learn about myself because you’re always influenced by everybody who’s around you, aren’t you? You’re always carried by your friends, your relationships. You go along with what everybody else wants, but when you actually get left alone in your own company, you start to realise that this is what I like. I like doing these things. I like going to the British seaside in the rain and I like going on long runs. I don’t mind the cold weather. I’m not chasing the sunshine. I learnt a lot about myself. I actually did an online, I stumbled across this online course that gave you these tasks to do every week and one of them was to take yourself out on a date every week. This is what I get clients to do now because you just don’t know about yourself until you’re sat alone in a coffee shop and you know you’re met with a challenge of some description. You know you don’t know how you’re going to deal with something without somebody else there holding your hand. So learning about myself was the first thing, you know, learning what I liked, what I didn’t like, taking myself out on a date. I used to go to the cinema on my own all the time because it’s like dark and no one would notice and I was really very self-conscious about being alone. I thought everybody in the whole wide world would be looking at like, what’s she doing here on her own? No one cares. No one gives a flying about what you’re doing. So it was the most like liberating experience of just spending lots of time on my own doing stuff that I like doing and finding things hilariously funny on my own. Like I do stupid stuff and fall off of things and go on lessons for random things like paddle boarding. And it was actually brilliant to find out how I could cope with things on my own. So that was
my first kind of step. And then I learned to actually really love what I had. I was really resentful of what I’d been left with by my ex, you know, I got left in the family home. I got left in a job I didn’t like. I got left holding the baby. I was really resentful of all those things, but I broke it down into actually, I was really grateful that I had a really lovely home still. I had a beautiful daughter who has somehow come out of all of this unscathed. I hope. Yeah, I had an income. An income I was really not very happy in the role I was doing, but I had money to do things that I wanted to do. I could still drive a car. I still had neighbours. I then learned about what I valued, and I’ve got really good neighbours. I live in a lovely community. My neighbours helped me out with childcare, my neighbours helped me out with a cup of sugar, I’m not even joking, a pint of milk. We are that kind of community, we all know each other’s names. So I know that I valued my community so much and I started to work on what else do I value? I value people being honest with me. I don’t want to be lied to ever again. So I started working out, you know, honesty is up there with one of my biggest values and I love my daughter, I love my friends, I love people around me, so love and honesty and my community became my values that I started to live by. If it didn’t fit in with my values, then it wasn’t for me. So that built boundaries with people. If I was dating somebody and they weren’t bothered about family life and children, then they weren’t for me. If I dated them and they weren’t all about being friends with my neighbours and social, then they weren’t for me. That it made me get boundaries of actually that doesn’t align with my values, so I’m not gonna do that. And I found it easy to say no to people. So when I knew that that wasn’t gonna work for me, that wasn’t for my bigger picture, then I was like, no, that’s not for me then, no, thank you. And it’s really easy to say no when you know what you value and you know that’s not gonna work for you. It’s really easy to just go, no, thanks. And that gave me confidence in myself. So that gave me the confidence to say no, the confidence to do what I wanted to do, the confidence to start doing a role that I love, you know, coaching people. It gave me confidence to start helping the women. It gave me confidence when I was out there dating. It gave me confidence to not give a flying cow what anybody else thought of me. Or, you know, if I went on a date and they didn’t like me or they never text me back. It was their loss, not mine. And it gave me genuinely like, this is who I am. And if you like it, fantastic. If you don’t, it’s your loss, not mine. And that I think is what attracted my current partner. Well, I have to ask him, but that is how I then attracted somebody who was emotionally mature. How do you get together? Had responsibilities. He was, he’s me, but male, genuinely. So that’s how, you know, I attracted somebody with confidence, because I just, and when you know, you know, it’s right. And if you’re unsure, then it’s not for you, is what I always think, you know. So those were the steps that, you know, learn. And then, you know, obviously, learning about relationships, Learning to navigate relationships is even trickier, isn’t it? When you’re now with a partner, it’s not just you showing up and taking what you want from your partner. You have to show up and have something to offer them. You have to put into that relationship, you have to offer them something. And then you throw three kids into that, and a dog. It gets messy. And although on the outside you see like, you know, Instagram highlight, you see the good stuff. You don’t see the like, breakdowns of the kids and the arguments and things that aren’t quite working out for us. You just see the good stuff. But so navigating all of that is tricky. But we are really good at it. We’re really good at communicating. We’ve worked on, we’ve actually got relationship rules, which are like a bit of tongue in cheek joking. But we mean that these are our rules. And if they don’t work to our rules, then that’s not right for us. So it’s really funny. Like some of our rules are stupid stuff. Like, you know, always try and pull each other, which is let’s make sure that we have a date night and let’s make sure that we feel good about ourselves and we go out and we do something together that we have fun doing. And we just do really, but sticking to those rules and making sure that we have that time for each of that is so important when life is happening around us.
**David:** And I don’t think anyone, don’t think people think of those things do they when they’re in a relationship they just go along with it.
**Rachel:** Yeah.
**David:** Yeah there’s a lot of things in relationships that are… But I mean we have we have like a 50 percent-ish divorce rate and and we have like… Split relationships are failing at 60%. So worldwide, like, like there’s obviously, obviously some, you know, some mistruths are out there. Some, some misconceptions about how it works, for sure.
**Rachel:** People just think what it should be, you know? And if it’s not what it should be, then, then it was, it’s not for them. Or people not truly believing in themselves or in the relationship that they already have.
**David:** Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. If someone is either in a not happy relationship today, or is maybe single and is just like thinking, maybe I should just forget about the whole thing and get some cats.
**Rachel:** No, with the cats, puppies.
**David:** Okay, so aside from advising them to get dogs instead, what kind of like advice would you give someone who’s just like kind of, you know, going back and forth with the whole relationship? Should I, should I, should I pursue relationships at all or what should I do?
**Rachel:** I would say stop exactly what you’re doing right now, because it’s clearly not working for you. So stop dating, delete the apps, have a good clear out of all of that negativity that you’re getting from that current relationship or current dating situation that you’re in. And just re-evaluate what it is that you want, because, you know, if you are unclear about your vision for your future, then you’re just going to meet somebody and go along with whatever their vision is, and it’s not going to work out because that’s not what you wanted in the first place. So if you can just stop and get to know yourself and get to know what you want, get to know what you value, you will then start to see a clear vision for your future without having to think about anybody else, without having to think about, you know, it was such an epiphany to me to think, oh my God, I can choose whatever future I want without having to think of anybody else. I don’t have to include my ex in my future. This is amazing. So just getting to know what I wanted from my future or getting to know what you want from your future, well, where, you know, what job would you do if you really could choose? Where would you live if you really could choose? Would you have a dog or a cat if you really could choose? And then genuinely get a dog. Because when you’re walking the dog, you meet people, you talk to people. And instead of being stuck in dating, swiping, and it’s a vortex of time, energy, and pure exhaustion, getting out and doing different things. Like I said, I went on dates with myself back in the day. Doing that was the best thing I could have done because I met so many new people, and you just don’t know what opportunities are going to open up for you. And you just don’t know whether you’re going to like it or whether you’re not going to like it. Are you going to love doing this new hobby that you’ve thought you might try, or you’re gonna think it’s awful and it’s gonna scare you to death. But either way, it’s gonna push you out of your comfort zone. It’s gonna make you realize how strong you are as a person. It’s gonna make you think, I like this and I’ll come back and do this again. And you’re gonna meet new people. You’re just gonna broaden your horizons on all levels if you just stop and start doing things for yourself instead of pushing to meet new people, pushing to go out on dates, you know, pushing, swiping constantly. It’s a vortex of energy drainage, isn’t it? But meeting new people is the, yeah, coming back to yourself, knowing what you want, learning what your vision for your future is, is the best thing you can do before getting out there to meet anybody else before, you know, even considering getting into a relationship.
**David:** Yeah, delete your apps is the best piece of advice, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone give that advice, but I love it. I think that’s the best thing I’ve heard.
**Rachel:** Yeah, I mean, there is a time and a place for the apps. But if you’re not in a place of full confidence, and you can detach from them, you know, if you’re on the apps, and they’re taking over, because they do, they take over, delete them, get rid of them. They’re not for
you until you’re ready for them. When you’re ready for it, you’ll be able to look at it in a detached way of being like, okay, maybe I’ll date that person. That’s how I did meet Ed on an app, but I was very detached about like, yeah, he looks all right. I’ll meet him for a drink. And it went from there. You know, it wasn’t that, oh my God, he’s the next love of my life, but he hasn’t replied to me, which is what people do. So you get very attached. So deleting the apps and just getting out there and just doing different things, do something different. Don’t sit, swipe in, get home on your own.
**David:** Yeah, that’s gonna be a massive insight for somebody, I can feel it. Just like delete, because what would that feel like to delete your apps?
**Rachel:** Liberating, liberating. And do you know another piece of advice for the women out there on apps? Don’t go on dating apps when you’re due on your period. You are gonna be down about the world. You are gonna hate every guy you meet. Just get rid of them while you’re on your period. You come back to it a week later when you’re a bit happier, but if you are miserable that week, get rid, don’t do it. And you’re not gonna attract somebody who’s gonna even like you because you don’t like yourself that week. So that’s like my best piece of advice.
**David:** Well, this has been extraordinary and so below the video here there’s some links to some different places that you can find Rachel but um Rachel do you um have like a special place that you would like for people to go specifically?
**Rachel:** That’s making me giggle. Yes, I mostly hang out on Instagram. I have a podcast because podcasting is an easier way for me to give out all of my spectacular advice and to tell my story in more detail because, you know, a seven second reel doesn’t do it. But I mostly hang out messaging most of my clients and chatting to people on Instagram. You can go listen to my podcast and I think there’ll be a link to my website as well, which will show you my one-to-one coaching packages that I do with my ladies and that’s just, you know, working on inner child healing and healing all those things that you believe about yourself and about relationships and getting you to that place of confidence and, you know, being unapologetically yourself. So, but if you want to find out more about any of those things you can drop me a DM on Instagram or listen to my podcast.
**David:** Perfect. All right. Thanks so much Rachel. It has been great to chat to you.
**Rachel:** Thank you so much for having me.
