Elizabeth Laing, 49, was fed up of awful dates, terrible boyfriends and horrible situationships – so she learned how to flirt, and approach complete strangers
A café owner looking for love turned to a flirting coach and hypnotherapist after decades on the dating apps – in three months, she found her future husband. Elizabeth Laing, 49, was fed up of bad relationships as she looked for the one – so she decided to take drastic action.
“I had awful dates, terrible boyfriends and horrible situationships,” Elizabeth, from Greenwich, London, said. And slowly, she began to realise she was the problem.
“I was too scared to talk to attractive people, and I was addicted to chaotic relationships,” Lizzie, who owned a café in Greenwich, said. After seeing a flirting coach and a hypnotherapist, Elizabeth set herself a goal: find a husband in three months.
Not long after setting herself the target she met Owen, 50. And two years later, they were engaged. “In my café, I watched couples come and go.
“They’d get married, divorced, and remarried, all in the time I was still single. I couldn’t understand it,” she said.
So Elizabeth decided to do something about it, and she attended a flirting coach’s workshop. “I could never speak to anyone attractive. My heart would just go and I wouldn’t know what to say.
“In our first workshop, the flirting coach made us walk around the National Gallery and start conversations with three different strangers. I wanted to die. I was terrified.
“She said you have to walk around and make eye contact with people and then ask them a question. She taught us how to smile with your mouth open. It made me look like I was snarling. I was getting really funny looks.”
Elizabeth also attended a one-to-one session with the coach, who made Elizabeth walk around Tesco, and choose three men from three different aisles to ask about the products they were looking at.
“I went to the carrot aisle, and I asked a man, ‘what are you making with your carrots?’ He answered and then wandered off. “But it got easier every time.”
Soon, Elizabeth found the joy in talking to strangers. “It became so easy. It became like breathing. There was a turning point where I just felt like a natural doing it.
“I’d smile at people. People would chat with me on the train. There were more than a couple of times where people followed me off the train asking for my number. It was fun and flirty. And I was cleaning up because every other woman was at home on a dating app.”
Alongside learning to flirt, Elizabeth gained confidence through hypnotherapy. “It was light hypnotherapy, but it made me go back to the root cause of why I was attracted to these bad men,” she said.
“It turns out I was addicted to the chaos. There was a lot of chaos in my life so I just felt safe within it because it was familiar. I was so used to chasing someone just to like me, I was just repeating patterns from my childhood.”
As soon as Elizabeth realised her self worth, she set herself a project: find a husband in three months. “It was just like any other project to me. I set myself the task of talking to a new man and flirting everyday,” she said.
Elizabeth would visit pubs and bars on her own, and chat to the men around her: “It was like my husband was at the bottom of a big pile and I just had to pick through all the other men to find him.”
And it wasn’t long until she did.
“I was on my way somewhere and I realised I hadn’t spoken to a new man that day. So I popped into pub to do my daily flirt,” she said. “I was flirting, making eye contact, being available. And then a man walked up to me and said, ‘today, you’ve met a cheeky Australian.’ Instantly, I was like ‘that’s the one.'”
They agreed to see each other again, and sparks flew. Two years later, they were engaged. Elizabeth could not believe how well the hypnotherapy and flirting lessons had worked.
Inspired to help other women, she sold her café and trained with Marisa Peer – a well-known hypnotherapist – to learn rapid transformational therapy. This form of therapy combines a lot of different methods to get to the root cause of a problem and help people make long-lasting changes.
Elizabeth had already been trained as hypnotherapist, so she set up her own coaching business: Your Power Within Therapy. She also shares her advice via her Instagram: @lizzielianglovemindset
“I’ve lived this, I know what they’re going through, the crumbs and the ghosting and the pain, it’s something I can fully understand. It brought me joy to help other people. I’m combining hypnotherapy with flirting coaching,” she explained.
In her practice, she encourages women to delete the dating apps and start talking to people in person. “People are so desperate for a real-life connection.
“I feel like people who have grown up on the apps don’t even realise you can put their heads up and see people in front of their face. And it’s so much easier. Dating apps are a process – swiping, messaging, getting ready for a date, wasting your evening. Talking to someone you bump into in a shop is easy.”
Elizabeth has been overwhelmed by the success her clients are seeing in their love lives already. “Even just friends of mine have changed after I speak with them about this,” she said.
Elizabeth and Owen have been married for two years, and together for six. The pair are now living happily in Tunbridge Wells, Kent.
