the most controversial dating advice that ACTUALLY works
You’ll be shocked by this dating advice.
It flies in the face of everything you’ve seen on the internet.
And it will sound weird at first.
But if the current advice was working, there would be much fewer amazing humans who are struggling to go from “single to chosen”.
Here it is…
Treat every man you meet as a king
Treat every man as an opportunity to practice engaging with a king.
(yes, sometimes this will be much harder than other times).
“But Anna what if he’s not worthy of being treated like a king?
What if he’s scum?”
Then he’ll very quickly disappear
You cannot fool the frequency
When you treat people as they’re the highest and best versions of themselves, they start to show up like that more and more.
Recently I told my man that I started saying ‘you’re the best man I’ve ever met’ way before I actually knew you were.
And now just wow!
You really are the best man I’ve ever met.
The way you’ve stepped up and up is exceptional.
King is an energy I serve
Before this energy was connected to my person, it was an energy that I served.
Are there wounded kings and kings who need a lot
And I mean A LOT of work?
Yes and they’re most probably not YOUR king.
This is the ultimate hack to meeting the man of your dreams.
Treat every man you meet as an opportunity to engage with a king.
Most importantly…
Have fun with it.
If you’re buying a red Audi, you’ll start seeing red Audi’s.
If your filter is set to frogs you could kiss
That’s what you’ll notice
If your filter is set to kings
That’s what you’ll be shown more of
You can’t fool the frequency!
PS: I created the Relating Intelligence Quiz to help successful women finally understand what’s been blocking real connection.
Relating Intelligence is your unique blend of three things:
— Identity Script (the story you unconsciously live by)
— Love-Receiving Capacity (how open you are to truly letting love in)
— Magnetism Skills (the energy that naturally draws the right person toward you).
Take the free 3-minute quiz now to discover which one needs strengthening… and unlock the fastest path to a deeply nourishing relationship.
Oodles of love,
Anna
relationships are ratios: the surprising secret behind inspiring relationships
Most people think the key to great relationships is…
Say it with me:
Communication.
It’s not.
The real key is ratios.
There’s an invisible architecture holding your relationships together.
When something feels “off,” chances are a ratio is out of balance.
Here are the main ones that determine whether your relationship thrives or slowly dies:
🎾Fun to Feedback
When we first start dating someone, it’s fun, fun, fun.
Later (especially when you move in together),
it becomes feedback, feedback, feedback.
The art is learning to restore a healthy balance between the two.
When there’s enough fun in the relationship, it’s easy to receive feedback.
When there’s not, even small suggestions can feel like criticism.
This goes all the way back to childhood
and how important fun is in human development.
🎾Play to Pressure
Fun-to-feedback happens in the daily rhythm of a relationship.
Play-to-pressure shows up during big transitions… like planning a wedding, starting a family, or building a business together.
What starts as lighthearted play can quickly turn into overwhelming pressure.
Balancing both is what keeps love resilient.
🎾Feminine to Masculine Energy
Both men and women have feminine and masculine energies. It’s about knowing how much to use and when.
The skill is learning to consciously switch between the two.
As a woman, it’s perfectly okay to step into your masculine energy when needed,
you’re not trying to eliminate it.
But if you want polarity with a masculine partner,
you need access to your feminine traits:
receptivity, flow, emotional expression, intuition, and presence.
Most women don’t realize they’re stuck in one mode
and they wonder why the spark is gone.
Their energy ratio is quietly killing attraction.
The same goes for men.
And the polarity they bring to the table.
🎾Positive to Negative Interactions
Relationship researchers John and Julie Gottman discovered the “magic ratio” of 5:1
Five positive interactions for every one negative.
If you’re below that, your relationship is already deteriorating.
This ratio is one of the cornerstones of lasting love.
🎾Support to Challenge
Too much support and we stagnate.
Too much challenge and we shut down.
Thriving relationships have a dynamic balance of both.
When this ratio is off, you either feel like roommates or adversaries.
🎾So what?
Most people never examine these ratios.
They relate on autopilot, repeating patterns they learned in childhood.
That’s why I created the Relating Intelligence Quiz (RQ).
Your RQ measures your ability to build healthy, authentic, and resilient connections… with yourself, your loved ones, and the world around you.
It’s a blend of emotional awareness, communication skills, honesty, boundaries, and repair capacity.
Think of it as EQ’s deeper, more relationship-focused cousin.
🎾 Click here to take the 3-minute quiz and discover your Relating Intelligence score.
Best wishes,
Anna Shilina
Founder of the Relating Academy
Creator of Relating Intelligence (TM)
Imagine Being as Successful in Love As You Are In Business
Smart, successful high-achievers struggle in relationships for 1 reason: they've never developed Relating Intelligence™. Here's the missing link you've been searching for.
What the heck is Relating Intelligence?
You’ve never heard of it. That’s not surprising… no one’s teaching it.
Until now.
But here’s what you might have experienced:
The gap between how successful you are professionally and how successful you feel in your personal relationships.
Growing up, I struggled with relationships.
I remember being mortifyingly sad on the playground at school.
Hiding in the library playing chess during lunch breaks.
At age 15, a boy asked me to be his girlfriend.
I said yes.
That was the beginning and the end of our ‘relationship’.
I had no idea what it meant to be a girlfriend.
The relationships modeled in my childhood were chaotic and full of conflict.
When I later studied human behavior, I learned something that stuck with me:
Our perceived voids as children shape what we value as adults.
My void was deeply nourishing relationships.
So I made it my life’s mission to learn everything I could about relationships and human connection.
10 years of coaching has led me to create the Relating Intelligence quiz:
Shining light on blind spots
Fortifying relating strengths
Breaking frustrating relationship patterns
So What Exactly IS Relating Intelligence?
Relating Intelligence incorporates three key areas:
Identity script: How much of your relational patterns come from childhood experiences, and how much have you consciously designed? What are your levels of self-love, self-trust, and self-respect?
Love-receiving/vulnerability capacity: Do you openly express your needs, feelings, and boundaries? Can you speak your truth even when it risks conflict or discomfort?
Relating and magnetism skills: Conscious, intentional, and compassionate communication skills that draw incredible people to you and draw the best out of the people around you.
These are the exact elements I used in my own life to create amazing relationships across the board… with my life partner, friends, family, business partners. Bar none.
And now I want to help you do the same.
Find Your Starting Point
Click the right quiz for you:
For high-achieving single women who want epic love
For leaders & entrepreneurs who want better personal relationships
This Is Your Chance To...
Stop repeating the same relationship patterns that leave you lonely, misunderstood, frustrated and confused.
Finally understand why your relationships haven’t matched your other successes.
Develop relating skills they sadly don’t teach at school.
The quiz take less than 3 minutes.
Get your report instantly.
Completely free.
You’ll get immediate insights into where you are and specific guidance on where to grow next.
Your professional success didn’t happen by accident.
You learned skills, you practiced, you got better.
Your relationship success won’t happen by accident.
Take your quiz now and discover the missing element in relationships.
All my love,
Anna
Founder of RelatingAcademy.com
Creator or Relating Intelligence™
break the frustrating relationship pattern, rewrite your story: join the Relating Academy
Decades of research, and multiple studies show that people with strong, healthy relationships live longer (sometimes up to 50% longer) than those who are isolated.
I spent decades and hundreds of thousands of dollars learning how to create healthy habits and create meaningful relationships. I share my journey to guide anyone who’s done trying alone and is ready for real freedom - freedom in habits and freedom within relationships.
Relating Academy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
If you want to see how the 8-week Relating Academy applies to your unique story, book a call here:
https://go.oncehub.com/RelatingAcademy
“What’s wrong with me?”
“Why do I keep repeating the same patterns, even though I ‘know better’?”
“How many times can I swear it’ll be different… and still break promises to myself?”
“Why do I keep disappointing myself?”
These questions plagued my mind, even though on the outside, my life looked like a highlight reel.
Here’s a haunting moment, burned into my memory like a hot iron on the deepest layers of my psyche…
I promised my boyfriend (at the time) I’d stop drinking. He was in Mexico, I was in Cape Town, and we were set to meet in Mauritius for a friend’s wedding. By the time he saw me, I was stumbling off the bus, obliterated after a boozy flight with the wedding party.
Charming.
A week later, he ended things.
That breakup set off nearly nine years of emotional and energetic infertility: staying single, unconsciously attracting unavailable men, and numbing a deep cosmic loneliness with unhealthy habits. I use the word ‘infertility’ because having a family was always one of my deepest desires, yet my choices in habits and relationships kept me far from stepping into that role.
For seven of those years, I lived in a state of being ‘sober curious,’ constantly wrestling with the exhausting cycle of promising myself, I’m not drinking today, and then breaking that promise.
I threw every solution I could find:
Books
Podcasts
Apps
Coaching programsEven the Sinclair method (yes, I tried taking an opioid blocker)
Nothing worked. Why?
Because the problem wasn’t drinking. Or overeating. Or binge-scrolling.
Those were symptoms.
The real problem?
My identity script.
The identity script functions like a subconscious operating system, silently influencing perceptions, decisions, and behaviors. Developmental psychology suggests that much of this script is established in early childhood, typically before the age of 7, when the brain predominantly operates in theta wave states.
My identity script was shame.
Shame → Numb → Shame… loop.
On the outside, it looked like:
Drinking
Overeating
Scrolling endlessly
Binge-watching series
Smoking
On the inside, it was this hidden script written in childhood:
“Hide the parts of you that are unlovable. Show illusions instead that make you lovable.”
Looking back, it’s not surprising that I turned to alcohol to numb my shame and the loneliness that followed. Loneliness is inevitable when we feel compelled to hide parts of ourselves from the world. I grew up in a Soviet household where the unspoken norm was to conceal anything ‘shameful’ and present only a polished version to others. As Dr. Gabor Maté, a parenting and trauma expert, explains, children often learn to abandon parts of themselves in order to secure their parents’ love and approval.
The Turning Point
Nothing shifted until…
The Pain-to-Pleasure Scale Flipped
If you take just one thing from reading this, let it be: all behavior is governed by the pain-to-pleasure scale. Whenever we feel stuck (in a habit, a pattern, a relationship), it’s this neural scale that keeps us there. Flip this scale, and life can change instantly. I’ve seen this not only in my own life, but also in coaching thousands of people over the past decade.
We assume we’re addicted to pleasure. We’re not.
We’re addicted to what’s familiar. From the brain’s perspective, the neural pathways wired through repetition feel safer (even if they lead to pain) than the uncertainty of creating new ones.
For me, the pain and shame of drinking and numbing eventually outweighed the safety of those familiar neural pathways. Each broken promise carved the discomfort deeper until change became unavoidable. But we don’t have to wait for rock bottom for the pain of a behavior to outweigh its pleasure. Many of my clients stop drinking after realizing it no longer serves them.
There’s pain and discomfort in being in a relationship. There’s also pain and discomfort in being single. When I was single for all that time, I didn’t realize I was subconsciously choosing the familiar pain of being single over the uncertainty of connection. Flipping that scale opened new possibilities.
Identity Script Rewired
Understanding where our patterns come from is one thing. Developing the real-time awareness to change them? That’s where real transformation happens. Only with real-time awareness can we make conscious decisions that phase out the default identity script that’s been running our lives.
My breakthrough moment came when I realized I was struggling to feel loved.
Intellectually, I knew love surrounded me. I knew people loved me. But I wasn't accessing that feeling. My identity script whispered that I was only lovable if I achieved enough, performed enough, earned it enough.
I committed to rewiring that script. When we fall in love with a person, we think the love comes from them. It doesn’t. They’re a catalyst for the love activated within us. We have the power to access that state of love anytime. Once I started accessing this feeling, my frequency shifted, aligning me with a new reality, one where I could shower another person with the love unlocked inside me.
Two weeks after this inner shift, I met an amazing man. The connection was instant. Two months later, we moved in together and have been co-creating a beautiful life ever since. The transformation was palpable.
My parents modeled conflict, so my identity script told me relationships equaled conflict. I feared recreating the relationships I saw growing up. To build the nourishing, safe, and exciting relationship I craved, I needed a new model, one rooted in radical transparency and intuitive connection.
My identity script shifted from shame to compassion. I learned to love, trust and respect myself by embodying healthy habits, and that changed everything.
The Invitation
After a decade of coaching entrepreneurs 1:1 and inside high-level programs, I created the 8-week Relating Academy program.
This isn’t just another coaching container.
It’s a pattern interrupt for your entire life.
It’s a paradigm shift.
This is for you, if you’ve
Scaled businesses but can’t scale your own joy
Mastered cashflow but not your relationship
Built companies but still feel that cosmic loneliness
Perhaps you’re single, like I was, and tired of the same old patterns.
Perhaps you’re in a marriage where you feel misunderstood, lonely, or lost.
Perhaps you’re estranged from family, longing to reconnect but feeling like it’s impossible.
Perhaps you’re trapped in tension or conflict with someone you love, or your business partner.
The Relating Academy goes straight to the roots:
Crack your Identity Script – discover why you’ve been treating yourself like a liar or failure and finally unlock self-trust, self-love, and self-respect.
Build Relating Intelligence – master the tools to repair, deepen, and transform every relationship in your life. All relationships are a mirror, and an opportunity for self-mastery. Learn to bring out the best in others, and to speak to the higher self in others, no matter who they are.
How do we do this?
At the Relating Academy, we live by two codes:
All relationships are a mirror. They reflect your inner world and offer valuable blind spot awareness and a path to self-mastery.
Do the hard thing now. We promise ourselves we’ll change tomorrow, but today is the easiest it will ever be. If we give in to old, frustrating patterns today, we reinforce those neural pathways. Tomorrow, making new decisions is harder.
Imagine this: You stop waiting for anyone or anything to change. You stop hiding behind your achievements. Instead, you wake up every morning knowing you’re living your most aligned, authentic life. You’re proud of yourself… not just in business, but in your habits, your relationships, your entire existence. You’re no longer in relationships where you feel like you need to translate your soul.
The Choice
At the end of the day, you’ll need to de-addict yourself from your habits and relationship patterns. The only question is when.
Now or an imaginary tomorrow?
Tomorrow is always harder. Today is the easiest it’ll ever be.
You can wait for the pain-to-pleasure scale to tip, or you can tip it and be in the driver’s seat of your habits and relationships.
Join the Relating Academy and build a life and relationships you don’t need to escape.
If this sounds like it could be for you, book a call to chat with me.
https://go.oncehub.com/RelatingAcademy
The Guarantee
What if coaching worked like Amazon?
Try it.
If it’s not for you, “return” it.
100% guaranteed.
No awkwardness. No guilt. No risk. No reason not to take the leap.
Joining the Relating Academy is a no-brainer.
Book a Private Call to make triple sure this is the right fit for you - https://go.oncehub.com/RelatingAcademy
why you’ll never break your bad habit(until you break this)
You think your bad habit is soothing stress or boredom.
Emotional eating
Late-night scrolling
Vaping, drinking…
But what if I told you… it’s not?
Your nervous system isn’t craving discipline. It’s craving relief.
And the thing you're soothing isn’t stress.
It’s a deeply embedded sense of shame.
A quiet, hidden subconscious belief that whispers:
I’m bad. I deserve to feel bad.
So you scroll. Eat. Drink. Vape.
And then beat yourself up for doing it.
That’s not a bad habit.
That’s a shame loop.
And as long as you're trapped in it, no amount of discipline will set you free.
Because this isn’t a behavior problem.
It’s an identity wound.
Why Most Habit Advice Doesn’t Work
You’re smart—you’ve figured out the “diet starts Monday” mindset doesn’t work.
What’s making it worse is calling them bad habits.
Your brain hears: “I am bad.”
And that fuels the loop:
I am bad → I do bad things → I feel bad → Which proves I am bad.
In my book Habit Freedom, I write that habits are limiting, not bad.
Because when you call your habits “bad,” you strengthen the very identity that keeps the habit alive.
Your habits aren’t bad or random. They’re doing exactly what they were programmed to do.
Imagine you’re a supercomputer with a core program running in the background.
That program was installed years ago—based on what you experienced, what you were told, and what you came to believe about yourself.
If that script says “I’m bad,” then every decision you make is filtered through that lens.
The habit isn’t the glitch.
It’s the output of a specific code.
Trying to change a habit without changing your shame identity is like changing the font on a document riddled with viruses—the destructive code runs the show.
You don’t need new habits.
You need a new identity script—one that says:
I’m safe. I’m worthy. I don’t need to suffer to feel in control. I am lovable.
There’s No Such Thing as Self-Sabotage
Only reinforcement of subconscious programming.
If you're stuck in a shame loop, your habits are just showing you—over and over—that you’re right to feel unworthy.
So what actually breaks the loop?
The only thing that can set you free is rewiring your identity of shame into a self-concept based on:
- Self-compassion (not punishment)
- Self-trust
- Self-respect
And there are 3 steps to do that.
But First, My Story
I’m not saying any of this from theory.
Yes, I studied human behavior, habits, and relationships. And I’ve coached thousands of people in the past decade.
But I also struggled with destructive patterns and limiting habits—deeply—for over 7 years.
Alcohol. Food. Scrolling. Binging series.
The worst part was… I was a mindset coach with every tool under the sun.
And still, I was stuck.
Stuck in patterns that felt heavy, compulsive, out of alignment.
And I was brutal on myself:
“How could I know so much and still be doing this to myself?”
The answer?
I was trapped in a shame loop—one that had been running quietly since I was very young.
Until I cracked that loop, no tool could have worked.
Every technique, every strategy, every mindset shift got filtered through a core belief that said:
“I’m bad. I deserve to feel bad.”
That shame lived in my body.
And it showed up in every part of my life.
But when I stopped trying to control the habit
And instead started unclogging the shame underneath it.
Everything changed.
Today, I feel at home—in my body, my mind, my choices.
Not because I fixed myself
But because I met myself with compassion—and rewrote the core script.
The 3 Steps That Set Me Free
Step 1: Reparent the Inner Child
Habits don’t start as problems—they start as solutions.
Protective mechanisms. Emotional shields.
When your inner child didn’t feel seen, soothed, or safe… you found ways to self-soothe.
For me, that initially looked productive.
I buried myself in schoolwork and academics to avoid the chaos at home.
It wasn’t until later that I turned to food and alcohol to medicate the pain of being me.
Reparenting is about becoming the adult you needed when you were a child.
As kids, we don’t have context or perspective. Even with the best parents, we all encounter moments of:
Disappointment
Rejection
Loneliness
Abandonment
When those emotional states are repeated, they form a blueprint in the body—a felt sense of how the world works.
When I coach someone who’s afraid they’ll be disappointed by the process, the first thing we do is dismantle the disappointment blueprint from childhood that taught them:
“Things don’t work out for me. I always end up let down.”
Reparenting happens in a multitude of micro-moments—through new, aligned decisions.
It’s building new neural pathways and reinforcing them with self-respect.
You start to replace self-punishment with self-compassion.
You build self-trust by choosing your highest self—again and again.
You’re not fixing the child.
You’re leading them.
Step 2: Retrain the Brain’s Reward System
1. The Real Addiction Is Familiarity
Most people think they’re addicted to pleasure.
But they’re actually addicted to what’s familiar.
If you’ve lived with shame for years, your nervous system reads it as “safe.”
The brain prefers predictable pain over unfamiliar peace.
So the work isn’t just to feel better.
It’s to make better feel familiar.
2. Do the Hard Thing Now
Every time you give in to the habit, you’re rehearsing it.
“I’ll stop tomorrow” is a trap.
If you’re reinforcing the neural pathway of the limiting habit today, how could it be easier to stop tomorrow?
Tomorrow is harder. Not easier.
You can do the hard thing now—or do the harder thing later.
Either way, discomfort is the toll.
Doing the hard thing now is the ultimate key to freedom.
3. Reframe Discomfort as Progress
Cravings aren’t failures. They’re invitations to rewire.
Eventually, you might even start to enjoy them:
“This hunger means I’m mastering my impulses.”
“This craving is a rep in the gym of my nervous system.”
Discomfort is your best friend. It’s you choosing a new narrative.
4. Replace Escape with Regulation & Joy
Your nervous system doesn’t want discipline.
It wants relief—the kind that nourishes, not numbs.
Most people make the mistake of removing the habit… but don’t replace it.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
You have to offer your brain a better deal.
Start filling your life with aligned inputs—moments that feel safe, soothing, and fun:
Movement
Music
Nature
Awe
Deep play
Real connection
These aren’t luxuries. They’re your rewiring toolkit.
The more joy and presence you bring into your day, the less your system will crave escape.
Of course, even in a full and beautiful life, stress still happens.
Solving problems is part of being human.
But with more joy in your system, you expand your capacity to hold stress without defaulting to the old loop.
When you’re nourished and connected, you have the capacity to meet life instead of hide from it.
5. Delay Gratification & Master the Now
The habit exists to pull you out of the now.
But all your power lives in the now.
Meditation trains your mind to stop reacting to every craving like it’s an emergency.
Each time you sit with discomfort instead of reacting, you are mastering the present moment.
Want a step-by-step guide to never struggling with cravings again?
Download the free Cravings Freedom Kit — a guide specifically designed to take control even when most triggered.
https://stan.store/relatingacademy/p/free-download-never-struggle-with-cravings-again
Step 3: Relate with Radical Honesty
Shame grows in secrecy.
One of the fastest ways to break its grip is to speak your truth—out loud, in safe company.
We heal in relation to one another.
Not by telling everyone your deepest secrets, but by finding a space where you can be fully honest—without fear of judgment.
Something powerful happens when you finally say the thing you thought made you unlovable…
and someone else looks at you and says, “Me too.”
That’s the moment shame loses its power.
On this journey, radical honesty isn’t just encouraged—it’s required.
There is no substitute for radical honesty in a safe community.
That’s why community is a core pillar of Habit Freedom.
Healing doesn’t happen in isolation.
And neither does freedom.
These 3 steps—reparent, retrain, and relate—don’t just break the habit.
They rebuild who you believe you are.
That’s how you go from self-punishment to self-respect.
From coping to choosing.
From soothing… to wielding freedom.
Never struggle with cravings again
Download the Free Cravings Freedom Kit
Question for you today:
Who would you be without your shame loop?
Your story might be exactly what someone else needs to hear today.
have you ever quiet quit your relationship?
I'm coaching two people, a couple. They've been married for over 30 years. They've considered separating many times over the decades.
Everything came to a screeching halt a couple of months ago when they became very serious about parting ways. But they didn't. By a hair, they stayed together. Kind of.
When we started working together, I spoke with them individually before a joint session. It was clear. They were both 'quiet quitting' their relationship.
What is quiet quitting? It's a TikTok phenomenon where you do the bare minimum, just enough to scrape by until there's no longer a job for you.
That way you don't have to make the bold and brave move to get out. You let it happen, you let it slip away.
Unfortunately, my client's story is not unique. Special, not unique. Many people quiet quit their relationships for years.
By the way, this goes for friendships too. One or both parties do the bare minimum until it disappears altogether.
When I pointed out to my clients what was happening, they didn't even flinch. It rang true. I told them they had to make a decision. Either they are to continue on the exact path they're on, but at least be honest about it. You have already quit the relationship, in one sense or another. Or metaphorically sit up and do the work.
It all depends on if the longevity of the relationship is important enough. Sometimes it is, sometimes it's not.
I am guilty of quiet quitting a relationship in the past. I know how difficult it is to turn things around when you're emotionally checked out.
It absolutely can be worth it when you have the right structure and support. After all, love is not a feeling, it's a series of vulnerable and supportive actions.
The Frankl Pause
Victor Frankl wrote the book Man’s Search for Meaning, after surviving the Holocaust. Here is the exact quote:
“Between the stimulus and the response, there is a space. In that space, we have the power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.”
Any transformation requires new decisions and new actions. Within you, there is the older version of yourself and the new you.
The old you chooses certain actions, the new you chooses new actions. For example, if I’m wanting a new level of fitness and I have the decision between going to the gym or staying home… the old me would prefer to stay at home. The new me chooses to go to the gym. If you want to change anything you have to make millions of these micro-decisions. You have to choose the new, over and over again. At least 80% of the time.
In relationships, this decision could look like this. You and your partner have a disagreement. The old you would have chosen to respond in that way. The new you chooses the new way.
The decision of choosing the new you is always harder than the counterpart. The brain likes comfort. If you let your conditioning choose it will always choose the easy path. When you choose the harder option over and over again you will inevitably hit that fitness, business, or relationship goal.