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Becoming You Again
Becoming You Again is the podcast for women who are going through divorce wanting help navigating grief, guilt, and the challenge of rediscovering who they are. Divorce Recovery Coach, Karin Nelson offers compassionate guidance, practical tools, and powerful mindset shifts to help you rebuild self-trust, reconnect with your intuition, and create emotional resilience. Each episode is a safe, supportive space that reminds you: divorce isn’t the end of your story; it’s the doorway to becoming the most authentic, confident version of yourself and creating the best of the rest of your life.
Becoming You Again
Burn The Haystack Dating Method: An Interview with Jennie Young
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
You're ready to start dating after divorce. You join the dating apps, you start to read profiles and immediately feel lost. You start to question, is this normal? Is he for real? Maybe he's too good to be true? Or are they all like this? Then you start to question yourself instead. Maybe I'm being too picky. Maybe I'm the problem. Maybe I should give him a chance. Then you think, maybe I should just give up altogether...
For the final episode of my dating, love, and intimacy series, I'm joined by Dr. Jennie Young, professor of rhetoric, creator of the Burned Haystack Dating Method, and author of Burn the Haystack: Decode Dating, Torch the Duds, and Make Room for Men Who Matter. Jennie studies how people reveal what they believe through the words they choose, usually without realizing it. She has turned that into an online Facebook community of over 295,000 women.
If you're opening the dating apps for the first time since your divorce (or for the first time ever), this conversation is your field guide.
In this episode:
- Why "burn the haystack" is the opposite of the "it's a numbers game" advice we've all been given
- Why instant, electric chemistry may be your nervous system registering fear, not love
- Why feeling nothing on a first date doesn't mean something's wrong
- Block to burn, and why you should treat dating like a job search
- Red-flag patterns to decode, including disciplinary directive (yes, even "let's grab coffee") and trad-wife code words
- The profiles that look good if you're coming out of a hard marriage: "my kids come first," "looking for my peace," and "the final piece of the puzzle," and what they're really saying
- How her method slows your intuition down enough that you can trust it
- Green flags, and real hope for finding love later in life
To skip right to the interview go to 3:37 time code.
Connect with Jennie
Website: https://jennieyoung.com
Substack: https://burnedhaystack.substack.com (everything is free to read)
Instagram: @wordcasescenario
Facebook: search "Burned Haystack Dating Method" and join the largest group. That's the real one.
Get the book
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DISCLAIMER: THE COMMENTARY AND OPINIONS AVAILABLE ON THIS PODCAST ARE FOR EDUCATIONAL, INFORMATIONAL AND ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY AND ARE NOT FOR THE PURPOSE OF PROVIDING PSYCHOLOGICAL, COUNSELING OR PROFESSIONAL HEALTHCARE ADVICE.
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Intuition That Beats Logic
Speaker"So I think what burned haystack does more than anything is slow down the intuition process in a way that affirms it logically. And I I want to quote one of the group members. She's a therapist and she wrote a piece about using burnt haystack in her practice, which a lot of therapists are doing right now. And she said, women's intuition is not illogical. It's just faster than logic."
Karin NelsonThis is just one of the many moments of wisdom that Jennie Young, my guest on today's episode, gives throughout our conversation. This is the final episode in my series on dating, love, and intimacy after divorce. So let's take a quick look back at where we've been over these last few episodes. I started with are you actually ready to date? We moved on to sex and intimacy. And last week I talked about pleasure for you. And today we're talking about the actual act of dating. Because at some point, a lot of you are going to open up the dating apps because you're going to be interested in possibly finding someone else to bring into your life. And for many of you, this is going to be the first time ever that you've been on a dating app. Many of you probably got married before Hinge or any of the other apps ever existed. And now you're scrolling through profiles and you have no idea what you're looking for or what to do. My guest today, Jennie Young, describes this as somewhere between terrifying and hilarious, and not in a great way. Because here's what often can happen you read a profile and maybe it's okay, maybe something feels off, you're just not sure. But then the thoughts start to kick in. Maybe I'm just being too picky. Maybe I'm the problem. Maybe I should give this guy a chance. I'm not really sure. And the thing is, is those thoughts start to create a feeling of self-doubt. And that self-doubt gets you to talk yourself right out of what you might have noticed was off in the first place. My guest today had those exact thoughts. She was convinced she was the problem. And then she got mad and then she got curious. My guest today, Jennie Young, is an academic who specializes in applied rhetoric and critical discourse analysis, which basically means she studies how people reveal what they believe through the words they choose, usually without realizing they're even doing it. She's the creator of the burned haystack dating method and the author of Burn the Haystack, Decode Dating, Torch the Duds, and Make Room for Men Who Matter. Her Facebook community has grown to around 290,000 women. And in our conversation, we talk about many things, some of which are why that instant electric chemistry may have more to do with fear than with love, and why feeling nothing on a first date doesn't necessarily mean anything is wrong, and so much more, including some red flags to look out for when you're scrolling through the profiles. I hope you love our conversation as much as I did. Let's dive in. Welcome
Dating After Divorce On Apps
Karin Nelsonto Becoming You Again, the podcast where you learn to step into your power as a woman in this world, where you learn to reconnect to your wholeness, your integrity, and bring into alignment your brain, your body, and your intuition after divorce. This is the podcast where you learn to trust yourself again and move forward toward a life that you truly want. You are listening to Becoming You Again, and I am your host, Karen Nelson. Welcome, Jennie. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. Um, so for the listeners, Jennie is the author of this is Jennie Young. She's the author of Burn the Haystack, Deco Dating, Torch the Duds, and Make Room for Men Who Matter. Um, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I'm so excited to have you here today. I think this is going to be really um amazing for my listeners who are uh women who are coming out of divorce and maybe haven't been dating on apps ever. And so I think being able to know what to look for in terms of finding a good guy out there is gonna be really useful. Um, so welcome. I haven't even given you a chance to say hello.
SpeakerNo, thank you. Thank you, thanks for having me on. And what what you just described is the definitely a significant percentage of the burned haystack community. So, and that was me when I developed the method, you know, having gotten married very young and yeah, entering this bizarro universe.
How Jennie Built The Method
Karin NelsonTotally. I was actually just gonna ask you that. Like that was gonna be my next question is how did you come up with burn the haystack method? Like, what brought you into this sphere of using rhetoric to decode these dating profiles?
SpeakerYeah, I mean, it was kind of a a journey. Um, it initially it was, I was just experiencing what all women experience, I think, the first time we download a dating app, which which is this confus, this like mixture of confusion and frustration and anger and and and just like asking myself, clearly there's something wrong with me because none of the kind of first of all, even like connecting with people was difficult.
Karin NelsonYeah.
SpeakerThe vast majority of profiles I saw were somewhere between terrifying and hilarious, but not in a good way. Um the first several tries, I just quit completely, never went out on a date. At one point, and this was years and years and years ago, I started like a secret blog where I was just creating humor content from the dating apps, which people do all the time now, but this was like where that was really a thing. So it didn't occur to me to share it on social media, but I would like publish these guys' profiles and have captioning content. I did this whole series at the end of the year called uh serial killers on the solstice, when I like collected the ones who most appeared to be serial killers. And so like I just kept turning it into a joke. But then eventually I got to the point where I was I really genuinely did want to meet someone and still it was just not working. And I I remember having a moment where because I had convinced myself it was me, I was the problem. Like clearly, this is just how life is now. If you want to date men, you have to send them naked pictures of yourself before you've met. Now, I didn't do that, but like that seemed to be the explanation.
Karin NelsonRight, the norm. Yeah.
SpeakerYeah, I'm not sure I can make it in this world. And then I started thinking, if I'm the problem here, like if I'm really the problem, I should be having trouble navigating other aspects of my life, right? Like I should be having a hard time communicating with my colleagues or my students or my family. And I wasn't like it was just this one very narrow, you know, instance of life. And so then I got mad. And I decided I was gonna try to start like gaming the dating apps just for myself. And I started changing everything about the way I did things. I changed the way my profile was written, I changed who I was willing to talk to. Um, I started paying a lot more attention and looking at men's words through a critical eye instead of like gaslighting myself about it. And it changed everything. And I've written about this extensively and it's out there, so I won't belabor it. But I realized I was on to something and that it was something I could share with other women and that it tied in with my academic uh interests, which are applied rhetoric and critical discourse analysis. And again, I won't eat up your podcast time with the explanation of those things because they're all in the book, but it was all those things coming together. My own experience, wanting to share it as a public scholarship project and bringing an academic lens to it. And then the community just exploded. Organically, I didn't like I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't promote posts and have my money to do anything like that. It was just that there was like a need because online dating is horrible.
Karin NelsonYeah, yeah. And and I love that you just identified this and you were like, okay, there's a space for this, there's a space where women want to learn how to find a good guy because it's so hard. And so going back to this idea of burn the haystack, will you describe what that came from? Like how you came up with that name.
SpeakerYeah.
Burn The Haystack Metaphor
SpeakerThat's one of those like life, you know how certain life moments just like crystallize for you and you can play it like almost like a movie in your head. I was, I was sitting, I this was like at one of my very low points, even though I was like having some success with the little like tricks I was using, I was still very frustrated. And I was, it was, I think, late at night. I was just sitting at my desk in my bedroom by myself. And out of frustration, I Googled, how do you find a needle in a haystack? Because that's kind of like the proverbial saying, right? Right. And I started wondering like, how do you do that in real life, like a physical haystack and a physical needle? And the answer is you burn the haystack to the ground, and then whatever's left will be the needles because metal doesn't burn. And as soon as I saw that, it was like I literally got chills because I'm I'm like, no, that's that's actually it. It's the opposite of what women are being told to do, which is pick through every little piece of hay and consider it and be like, you look like a terrible piece of hay, but maybe you're a shiny needle. And right, and you know, we hear this over and over again. It's a numbers game. The more men you meet, the better your chances are, the more dates you go out on. That's bananas. You want to do the opposite of that. You want to give nobody a chance. Don't give it out. So instead of entering, you know, like entering your hinge or whatever and like looking for a needle, your only goal is to get rid of the haystack, like focus on that, and then whatever's left will emerge as a you know, a potential needle that you should at least consider. So it it was really that night, and I thought that's it. Now I didn't know obviously I didn't know any of this was gonna happen, right? But um I knew that in terms of like a metaphorical construction, that that was it and that it was something people could understand. Yeah. It just kind of went from there.
Karin NelsonYeah. Well, one of my clients introduced me to you, and she had said, like, you gotta read this book, it's so smart. And I I when I checked it out, I was like, okay, that just the description of how you came up with this idea in the first place of like, I read, you know, how do you find the needle in the haystack? And uh, that understanding, it was just like I I mean, obviously, my experience with understanding where it came from was probably not as profound as when you had that, but I I I literally was like mind blown. That's so smart to me. It makes so much sense to like whittle down and really this is the way to weed out all of the duds out there, which I love part of your title. All get get rid of them all.
SpeakerLet's just like you know, there's kind of an implied. We spent a lot of time on that subtitle. And there, I mean, there's definitely an implied jab at men where like make room for men who matter. The implication of that being if we don't make room for you, you don't matter, which like it sounds kind of mean, but like that's sort of my thing. But but also like I don't mean they don't matter as human beings, I'm you know, on bubble.
Karin NelsonRight. And they don't matter in terms of like where your attention goes, right? Like our attention doesn't like you're looking for a possible like new partner in your life or someone to like spend a considerable amount of your time with, right? And we don't want those people anymore. It seems like many of the women that are listening to my podcast are have come out of like a 20-year plus marriage where they spent a lot of time of their own attention on someone who wasn't reciprocal in that way.
SpeakerYeah.
Karin NelsonWe don't want to repeat, right?
SpeakerRight, right. So and I would say for for your audience, for for anyone who is coming out of one of those kind of marriages, before you even like think about online dating, it's really interesting to start looking at the rhetorical patterns and applying them backwards. Like apply them to your former partner, because I guarantee if you're married to a man, you're gonna find a bunch of them. And that gives you like a much more authentic touchstone of understanding of how those patterns work, and you won't end up in that situation again.
Karin NelsonOh, I love that you just said that because I was actually, I was coaching a client the other day. She was having a conversation with her ex-husband, who they co-parent right now, and it was just that though them together, like their kids weren't with them. And she came back and she was telling me about this conversation that she had and how he showed up. And I had just finished reading, I think a couple of the rhetorical patterns that we're gonna talk about in in a few minutes, but um, and it immediately stood out to me as disciplinary directive. And I was like, I am quite positive that he, your ex-husband is showing up in this way. And I just kind of explained briefly like what that meant and where it came from. She's she's got a partner as well now that she's been divorced. And I said, I think this book might be like really useful to you in terms of looking at how your ex-husband shows up when he speaks with you and when you have these conversations. So I love that you pointed that out. That that's the place to start is not even on the dating apps, but just understanding the rhetorical patterns that you point out in this book. Yeah. Yeah. So smart. One thing that you talk about in this book that I really love because it's something that I teach my clients and the people who listen to this podcast as well, is getting out of your emotions, getting out of your body, and letting your brain do the thinking. Um, that kind of goes contrary to what society has told us in terms of dating, of like, we need to feel chemistry and we need to feel this thing. And if we don't, then it probably doesn't mean that we're attracted to them or that we're gonna have anything like
Chemistry, Fear, And First Dates
Karin Nelsonsolid in terms of foundation of a relationship. Excuse me, can you speak more on that idea?
SpeakerSure. You're right. I mean, and especially any of us who grew up in the like 80s and 90s, rom-com era, which were you know, just talk full of toxic rhetorical patterns that we somehow equated to love. Um, you know, there's so much research now that has kind of demystified chemistry and and what it actually is. And on a neurological level, it seems to be much more closely tied to fear and anxiety than to love. And that's not to say that that chemistry is necessarily negative. I mean, you might meet someone with whom you have wonderful chemistry and they turn out to be a great person, but it's just as likely, if not more likely, especially with those like real high chemistry initial connections, frequently turn out to be toxic down the line because what your body and your like sort of neurochemical makeup is registering is fear.
Karin NelsonThat's so interesting. Yeah, something that I talk to or that I teach on this podcast a lot about is recognizing when your nervous system is heightened. And that to me, what you just described, kind of ties back to that same idea. And if you don't like know the signs about that in your own body, I think it it might get confused in this same like it's chemistry and we just are connected in this way.
SpeakerWell, the biggest error I see, or maybe not biggest, but like most frequent error I see in people's thinking is that if they don't feel initial immediate chemistry, that it's not there. Some people will go out on one date and be like, he's a great person. There was no chemistry. And I'm like, how would you know? Like you don't know him yet.
Karin NelsonYeah.
SpeakerAnd and more sustainable, healthy chemistry tends to build over time. And that's not a guarantee that it's going to be, right? Like you might meet a great person who with whom you really don't have chemistry and never will. That's a possibility too. But you can't determine that after one date. And I can't believe how much pushback I get to that. Like, whenever I say anything like that, there's you know, invariably several comments right away that say, I get it. I've read the research, but I know myself. And that's that's not true for me. And I keep thinking, well, then you're choosing to not believe women because a bunch of women, like almost, I don't know, maybe 80% of Burn Haystack's success stories start out and say something like, and it's true of me too, with my partner. I didn't feel any chemistry at first, but I liked him. I liked being with him, I respected him as a human being. We seem to have shared values. Those things are more important. Like, that's actually like a better barometer of what's going to happen down the line than the initial, like, oh, we just connected in this way.
Karin NelsonAnd it was like a snap instant kind of a thing. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I love that. So for any woman kind of going into this to have that mindset of I may not feel like chemistry connection right off the bat, and that's okay. It doesn't mean something has gone wrong or this is a bad like match to begin with.
SpeakerIt might mean you're not sexually attracted to strangers, which is actually pretty healthy. Yeah. Which is actually not a bad thing.
Karin NelsonLike okay. So in the book, you talk
Block To Burn For Safety
Karin Nelsonabout 10 rules to for women to kind of follow as they get on the dating apps. And I there were two that I want to kind of expand on if that works for you. The first one is block to burn. Will you explain that in more detail and why it's important?
SpeakerSure. So I mean, number one, of course, I have to like stay cohesive within my controlling metaphor. I can't do that because I'm an English teacher. Um but on a more practical level, all the dating apps will recycle matches to you if you just swipe left or X choose the X or whatever it is on that platform. If you don't, if if you've decided you don't want to connect with someone, you have to actually block that profile. And there is a question over whether the apps are even like honoring that all the time. Okay. But most I think most of them do. It's your best bet anyway. So for one thing, it just you know saves you time and like having to look at the same people again. But it's also emotionally and psychologically protective because a lot of men don't react well at all to being told no, even if it's a really nice no. And you, you know, you just don't need to absorb that. You don't need to absorb abuse from strangers on the internet. So you need to block them. And and I use block liberally. I mean, yeah, yeah, go ahead and block them on hinge, but also block them in your phone and block them on Facebook and block them on LinkedIn, and you know, just shut that wall down. You don't need to entertain that person.
Karin NelsonNo, I love this idea. I've I've taken this um idea just in general on my social media. My social media has been growing, and I find that on the more like the videos that do better and have lots of comments, and I get these terrible, awful comments from typically men. There's sometimes women, but mostly it's men.
SpeakerRight.
Karin NelsonI have just given myself permission to block any of them that I do not agree with, don't want to hear from, don't ever want to see their face or comment on any of my things ever again. I'm just like, it's totally fine. You can block this person and it's not a problem.
SpeakerI think that's wise.
Karin NelsonYeah, agreed. And then the next, the um, the next
Treat Dating Like A Job Search
Karin Nelsonrule that you kind of laid out that I wanted to talk about is you you say treat dating like a job search. Can you kind of just talk more about that?
SpeakerYeah. So the the apps are very much engineered to give people this notion of immediacy, almost more like Uber Eats, right? Like, oh, I see this, I want this thing to show up right now at my apartment in 20 minutes. But that's not really a good way to find like a long-term partner where so if you can flip that mode, if if you were searching for a professional job, you would take a lot of time to build your resume. You'd proofread it, you'd make sure it was, you know, a perfect representation, you'd send it out selectively to places you actually wanted to work, not places you didn't want to work. Right. And then when you heard back from people, you would only take interviews that seemed like it offered you whatever happiness, satisfaction, monetary reward. And I think if we can apply all those mindsets to the dating apps, definitely, and I should say this: if your goal is to meet as many people as possible, don't use burnt haystack. Like that is the method for that. It's specifically geared toward finding long-term monogamous partnerships. And if that's your goal, you're better off to think of it in this almost like business-like professional academic mindset initially.
Karin NelsonYeah, no, I actually think that's really logical and smart. Because again, going back to this idea, you came out of this probably very emotionally volatile, maybe even sometimes relationship. Let's look at it from a different perspective, maybe in a way that you haven't tried before. Right. So I love that. So yeah. In terms of like jumping into this idea of red flag rhetorical patterns, which is what most of the book focuses on, which I love. Love, you kind of lay them out, you call them cheat codes. You highlight 33 of these red flag patterns. Um, and we're gonna go over a couple of them in just a minute. Um, you use real examples from men's profiles on dating apps. And I know you have a Facebook group, you haven't really talked about it on here, so I wanted to ask you about that. But are you continually adding to these 33, or do you feel like most of these profiles just fall under the 33 that you've highlighted in the book?
SpeakerI I feel most of them, like like even today in in the Facebook group, most of the examples people share fall into one of those 33. We have added a couple more. I can't remember what we're I can't remember. I have said like I think we added linked up. I don't that one's not in the book, is it? Linked up.
Karin NelsonIt does it doesn't sound familiar, um, but there are 33, and I can't remember exactly. Yeah, I know. Yeah, I can't either.
SpeakerI think we I think that was a new one. So LinkedIn is like the men who are trying to use LinkedIn to hook up because they're doing way too much. Um so we've
The Facebook Group That Exploded
Speakeradded a couple, but yeah, they're most I I still feel like the vast majority of them fit into the 33 in the book.
Karin NelsonOkay. I want to jump into the book in just a second and go into some of those rhetorical patterns, but tell my audience about your Facebook group and kind of how that came about and like what it is, because it's kind of a phenomenon, right?
SpeakerYeah. I mean no one's more shocked than me. So when I started the Facebook group, which was February of 2023, I think, um I it's a private group attached to my personal Facebook account because all I wanted to do was bring together like a group of women to start like hashing out ideas and refining the method because I decided I wanted it to be a public scholarship project, partly for academic interest, but also because I thought like very selfishly it'll be less terrible for me, like five in this whole mission. And I had written one article about burned haystack at that point. It was in uh the British version of the independent. And I I shared that article in a women's writers group on Facebook, and if and a few people came over from there, but it was like a small group in this private Facebook group, and it was fun. Like we just all go in there and share these experiences and ideas and you know, the yucking it up all day long. And that grew to about a thousand people over the first several months, which is pretty small for a Facebook group. And I did it like I wasn't promoting it anywhere or anything. Um, and then I wrote an article for Huff Post that came out in at the end of August of that same year. And it it was and I talk about this in the book, but it was it was published the same day I started a new job as an associate dean. And so I was like focused on that. And I knew the article had come out, and I, you know, I realized it would get some traffic, but I I really miss I underestimated the uh digital uh power of uh BuzzFeed, which is who owns HuffPost. And but I I I drove to work, like the article came up, and I drove to work, and by the time I got to campus, like things had exploded in a in a way I couldn't keep up with. And then it it just kind of never stopped. And now, I mean it, you know, it hit a peak and then it would kind of go like this. But yeah, there's 290,000 some women in that. Amazing. Yeah.
Karin NelsonAmazing.
SpeakerAnd it's been it's turned into you know a a real like a social feminist movement. And there's other channels now, but like it it does all kind of go back to that group, and that's sort of still where like you feel the sisterhood the most.
Karin NelsonYes, I was just gonna say that because I I am in the group and my audience knows I have a partner, but I first of all I love that you let women who are like me in the group who aren't looking who aren't looking for partners, but want to learn, want to be supportive. And yeah, I just I do feel that sisterhood, even just being kind of a lurker in the group who I love reading the posts, I love reading the comments. Everyone is so I mean, most people, I should say. I have seen you, you know, do a few things where I had to pick kick that person out, but that doesn't seem to be the norm. It seems to be like most women are just so supportive and like you know, people will post, what do you think about this profile? What are you seeing that I'm missing? Those kinds of things. And everyone is just so supportive and lovely in the comments, yeah, which feels good, I think, when you are in this space of trying to date, trying to find someone who you match with that you know you want to bring into your life, and to have other people who like follow you on that journey and are supporting you through that, I think is so important. It's such a huge part of like coming out of a divorce and going through this next chapter of your life. I think it's so important to have other women in your corner. So yeah, kudos to you for the Facebook group, kudos to you for this book. I just find it so amazing and it's it's great what you're doing.
SpeakerIt it is a lovely community, like and and also viciously smart and funny.
Karin NelsonYeah, absolutely.
SpeakerYeah, I mean, I I'm grateful every day. I can't imagine like take me, the the writer academic out of it. Like, I just can't imagine my life without being part of this community of women. It's really changed everything.
Karin NelsonThat's amazing. I love that. Okay, so
Disciplinary Directive Red Flags
Karin Nelsonlet's jump into some of these rhetorical patterns that you have kind of identified. I want to talk about some of the more like obvious but semi-ex even dangerous sounding ones to be on the lookout for. And then just for specifically my audience, there were a few that I want to talk about in a minute that I think might fly under the radar for women who are coming out of a divorce. Um, so we'll talk about the more kind of like let's be on the very lookout for these because they can be kind of dangerous, guys. Disciplinary directive. I I alluded to it earlier, but can you explain more about what that is?
SpeakerWe we see that one more than any other pattern. Like that there's a lot of real life examples in the book, and there were a lot that we just didn't have room for, like it, which is sad, like that there were that many examples. But you know, anytime a man that you don't know, I mean, or any man, but we're talking about the dating app. So if a man that you don't know is assuming authority over you in any way, it you need you need to block him. Like it's just going to get worse from there. And what we've looked at over time is that even in the most like low-key displays of this pattern, things tend to go south. So if we talk a lot about the LETS problem. So a lot of these men will be like, Hey, you look fun. Let's grab a copy and get to know each other. That sounds innocuous, but it's not. It's still disgrammatically and rhetorically, it's still disciplinary directive pattern. And that tends to get more nefarious and more toxic and more dangerous down the line. Because he could have, first of all, that's an assumption, right?
Karin NelsonRight.
SpeakerHe could have said, I really enjoyed reading your profile. Would you be interested in getting coffee with me? Right. A different man. Those are two different men. And people get caught up in this, oh, people don't think before they speak. Right. That's true. They don't. And it doesn't matter because their language reveals their underlying belief system. That's the whole critical discourse analysis, which is the methodology I use, is so powerful. And it's, you know, I didn't make this up. This is like a well-tested and and you know, very old method, actually. That that it yeah, I guess its central thesis is that people reveal truths to you without having any idea that they're doing it. And that's what those they're revealing. Now, the a lot of men's apps are are way more toxic than that. You know, they say things like, if you don't look like your pictures when you show up, you're buying drinks until you do. Like they write that over and over again in their gross bananas. Yeah, gross. But like it even in between, you know, there's a large spectrum in between that and let's grab coffee, and then things far worse than the one I just shared. And it's all just
January 6 Signals And Trad Wife Codes
Speakerdisciplinary directive. Like, I just don't think women should engage with it.
Karin NelsonYeah, I I agree 100%. Um, the next one I want to talk about, which I I absolutely love the title. You probably could even know which one I'm gonna say, but were you at the Capitol on January 6th? Like, can you just describe what type of guy this is and what they what you associate with these type of men who would have something in their profile that would like identify they were at January 6th or some something of that type?
SpeakerSure. I mean, the the number one thing that's indicating is alignment with conservative American politics. And this is something I've not been willing to be flexible on. And I know it's the reason I don't get asked to a lot of podcasts, that I don't get asked to speak at corporations, because I have like the entire time said this methodology, this group is feminist, politically liberal, politically progressive, zero, like room for wavering on that. Because I just don't think in America in 2026, if you're aligning with conservative politics, you are by definition misogynistic and toxic. So any of these guys who are leading with, and but usually they'll say they're moderate, they're not. If they say they're moderate, they're conservative. Unless they identify as liberal or progressive, they're not. Uh steer clear of the um libertarians as well. That usually also trends.
Karin NelsonIs a clue, right?
SpeakerYeah. I mean, so and yeah, the the were you at the Capitol on January 6th? That pattern tends it almost to be comical, where these guys go on and on about like protecting their loved ones from outside forces and they're ready to fight. And you're like, who are you fighting for? You're like a 45-year-old guy who lives in the suburbs. So, you know, like this is sort of like made up in their mind, this notion of themselves as you know, soldiers or something. And and this is all red-pilled manosphere nonsense. But yes, number one, it's toxic, and number two, it's stupid. Like you you don't want to anyone who's getting sucked into the manosphere is just not very smart, not very smart. And there's a lot of research that like it's not just my opinion, like you just don't want to date someone who's not very smart.
Karin NelsonYes, no, I love, I love, I love the political stance because I totally agree. I think that there is this idea that, like, well, I I'm I'm sure I could find someone, he's not gonna be misogynistic, but the more you understand about them and the way they think, and the the way, you know, their brain has been, I don't know, has developed experience through their life. Yeah, it just I I agree. I just don't think that it's possible to find someone who's more centrist or more right who it doesn't have misogynistic tendencies like underlying everything.
SpeakerYeah, not right now. I think there was a time in America where that might not have been as true as it is right now, but you know, we're talking about right now.
Karin NelsonSo Right, exactly. Okay, and then the last one that I think women who are going into the dating apps should really be on the lookout is kind of goes along with the same idea of looking for a trad wife. Can you kind of explain some of the code words that are used when in these profiles that these men are using?
SpeakerYeah, I I mean traditional values is is one for sure. Christ-centered marriage, equally yoked, Proverbs 31, woman. Um, anybody who starts going on about uh, you know, you can't have children with other men, or you know, I'm gonna live off the land and homestead and I want someone to homeschool our children. I I mean, if it sounds like it's from 1850, uh then you probably don't want to partner up with it because and and there's been Jessica Valenti. Do you follow her at all?
Karin NelsonYep.
SpeakerSo she she made this viral reel recently on Instagram that says if trad wifery is so great, where are the 45-year-olds?
Karin NelsonOh, I saw this. Yeah.
SpeakerBecause they're all 21 and hot, you know, a lot of them don't even have kids. So if this truly is the best thing for women, how does it look down the line? And the reality is there's all kinds of forms right now of those 45-year-old trad wives who are saying it ruined my life. I have no money, my psyche is destroyed, I'm abused and battered. Like, get out now. That's what the 45-year-old trad wives are saying.
Karin NelsonYeah, yeah. And they're coming out of these marriages where they probably don't have a credit history, they probably don't didn't have a job for 20 years, you know, have no prospects in that in the financial area, they didn't go to school, like all of these things. And let's not get I have no idea if like men older men are looking for a 45-year-old trad wife, but it's I can't say it's not possible, right? So these are just things to be looking out for. If this is not the kind of life that you want to live, probably look for these like code words that right, even like like family values, right?
SpeakerThat sounds uh nice. I'd look deeper if I heard those words.
Karin NelsonYeah, for sure.
Why “My Kids Come First” Misleads
Karin NelsonOkay, so the ones that I want to talk about next, like I said, are I think gonna be really um they I think they might fly under the radar, especially for women who are coming out of a divorce, because these things on the surface might look good in a man's profile. The first one I want to talk about is my kids come first. Like I think to a woman coming out of divorce who has kids, they would want, they're looking for a partner who like thinks that their kids are important, right? And so can you kind of explain that one just a little bit deeper so that these women know what they're looking for?
SpeakerSo yeah, this is a complex one. Yeah, okay. So the problem with my kids come first is is that it's not communicating what you think it's communicating. It him saying my kids come first is not a communication of how much his kids mean to you. It's a it's a boundary that he's laying out for women he hasn't even met yet, where he's saying, You're never going to come first and also don't expect much from me. You can't make any demands on me because I'm saying up front, my kids come first. The problem with saying that is that it doesn't need to be said. Like, of course, your kids come first, everybody's kids come first. That's literally the parental contract, right? Like that should be the underlying assumption. So if someone's saying it, you have to question why. And they're saying it defensively. And and once I started talking about this pattern, women came out of the woodwork saying, Oh my God, yeah. I was impressed that he said that until I realized that was just his way of sort of controlling my expectations and to meet. So it's yeah, and I and I agree with that. Yeah.
Karin NelsonRight. That I love yes, the pointing out that hierarchy thing, I think, is really important because again, I think you you might read a profile and be like, oh my gosh, that's so sweet. His kids come first, that's great. So what what should women be women be looking for instead? Can you give a couple of examples? If you have any off the top of your head.
SpeakerWell, I mean, you can't necessarily tell that. The problem is you can't tell at the profile stage how someone what kind of relationship someone actually has with his kids because these things can be created to look way better than they are. But um, you know, as you're getting to know someone, pay attention to how he talks about his kids. See if it looks like they reach out to him when they, you know, want help and advice, or uh it's it's hard to do this hypothetically because you know, there's such a myriad of ways with children, but the and you know, it's age-dependent too, but you you want to look for authentic displays of healthy parenting rather than their self-labeled designation about what kind of parent they are. The other problem with that is if if I say to someone, listen, my kids come first, I'm already assuming that they want to spend more time with me than I want to spend with them. That's probably right. Like that's egomaniacal.
Karin NelsonRight.
SpeakerAnd most of these guys are saying this to women they haven't met at all yet. So at this point, they're assuming that all women are going to want more of their time than they're willing to give. Like that alone, if you take the parenting issue out of it, that alone is a problem. Like that's a huge red flag about how that guy conceives of himself.
Karin NelsonYeah. And I so I think just going into it, keeping this one in mind of okay, is this something that I need to pay attention to? And what is there like, is there something underlying in this?
SpeakerYeah, don't take that at face value.
Karin NelsonRight.
SpeakerThere's a long discussion of that in the book with with more examples that are escaping me right now. No, I don't know. But you really want to, if you're especially if you're a single parent on the dating apps, like you are going to run into that and you need to understand how it manifests, or you're gonna end up wasting a lot of time.
Karin NelsonYeah. Okay. The next one I want to talk about is six flags or red flags. And
Six Flags Adrenaline Profiles
Karin NelsonI think this is important for women who, again, coming out of a divorce, maybe even in their marriage, it was like an emotional roller coaster. We don't want to get back into that. So can you just give a little like example or just definition of what you mean by six flags or red flags?
SpeakerYeah. So the the six flags, I mean, for people who don't know, I'm not sure if you might have like this is an American thing, but it's an amusement park with roller coasters. Um the there's a lot of men on the dating apps who see who seem to be communicating that their entire lives are spent like jumping over things on motorcycles and climbing Mount Everest and skydiving and trophy hunting and you know, rock climbing or whatever it is. You might want to interrogate that before you enter into it. And and that's not to say, you know, like people can have all those hobbies, and that's fine. And if you're a rock climber who wants to meet a rock climber, maybe that's a match made in heaven. But you do want to think about any sort of extremist display, because a lot of these guys have such a need for constant adrenaline. They're like adrenaline junkies, right? That long and and they might be perfectly beautiful human beings, but probably long-term monogamy that involves like going to Costco and paying the property taxes just might not be their thing, you know.
Karin NelsonRight. And you you describe something in this rhetorical pattern in the book where you say you can like pay attention to can I take a breath? Are my senses bombarded? Is my nervous system out of alignment constantly? These are things that I teach women to pay attention to in their just regular everyday life, in terms of like if they get a text from their ex or something like that. So I think if you're noticing these things just on the dating apps or if you meet up with this person and you start to notice how your body is reacting, yeah, it's something to pay attention to.
SpeakerYes, for sure.
Karin NelsonDo I want to be living in this state for the rest of this relationship? Because if not, that's something to question.
SpeakerYeah, for sure.
Karin NelsonOkay. The next one that I think looks good on the surface, possibly, is the men who who write, they are peace seekers. Like on the surface, women coming out of chaos are like, I also am
Peace Seekers And Puzzle Talk
Karin Nelsonlooking for peace. This is something that I want as well.
SpeakerYeah, yeah.
Karin NelsonThis could be great. So can you describe a little bit more about what these peace seekers are actually looking for or saying?
SpeakerYeah, I mean, you do have to kind of look at that one in context, but a lot of them will phrase it and say, I'm looking for a woman to be my peace. That's a problem. Because they're signaling that they are kind of chaotic because they need a woman to come in and settle everything down. This frequently aligns with looking for a trad wife, with red flags, um, with were you at the Capitol in January? So a lot of these toxic patriarchal norms have like cast women into the role of peacemaker, which again sounds good, maybe if you don't interrogate what that actually means, right? Which is like a blank value, right? So, like instead of conceiving of women as equal, autonomous, you know, three-dimensional human beings, right? They see women as sort of this like void of space and activity to absorb them. It's very objectifying.
Karin NelsonYeah. Yes, definitely something to look out for. And I love the way you described that as you're not actual an actual real person in a relationship like this. You're just there to kind of support them in whatever they can do.
SpeakerReally, honestly. Yeah.
Karin NelsonRight. And then the last one I wanted to talk about was um maybe that was the last no, there it is. Um, the final piece of the puzzle. And it kind of goes along with some of these other ideas. But I think a woman could see this in a profile and be like, cute. Like he just wants me to like fit into his great life. This sounds this could on the surface sound great, right? So can you talk about why it's worthwhile paying attention to this one?
SpeakerYeah. I mean, they make it sound great because they say things like, I've got a great job, I've got a great family, I own a boat, I'm financially secure, I love to travel, I'm just looking for that special woman to be the final piece of the puzzle. They frequently use that exact language, although it's not necessarily uh to satisfy the pattern. But um that doesn't make room for anything in the woman's life.
Karin NelsonRight.
SpeakerLike and that also to me reveals a similar conception of women as what we were just talking about, with the, you know, woman as like holding place for peace or whatever it is, where um you know it's sort of like an active and passive construction where the woman is passive, empty, dark, waiting to be filled by this active, vibrant light. I mean, in literature, I I talk about it in terms of the sun and the moon, where like the sun is its light and heat and fire and power, the moon reflects that light. Um, and in in literature, like men are always associated with the sun, women are always associated with the moon. This has just been something that's thematically true throughout American literature and British literature. But um, yeah, I would keep an eye out for it. And you know, it's it's not impossible that that there's a woman out there that that's exactly what she wants, right? Right who says, you know what? I don't have any family, I don't have a ton of friends or hobbies, I'm not career oriented. I would love to be welcomed into this guy's life and taken, you know, sailing around the world into Paris. You know, then so be it. Like that I don't necessarily have a problem with that, but I just want women to be really clear-eyed about what they're potentially signing up for.
Karin NelsonYeah, absolutely. And I think that's something that you talk about um in the book that I kind of want to talk about a little bit more is this idea of
Intuition Affirmed With Language
Karin Nelsonyou say something I I can't remember specifically, like I think it's more toward the end of the book, but you talk about how a woman's intuition, like we're already recognizing when something is off typically. We just maybe don't have the words to put to it, which I think I agree with. Like, I teach my women uh all the time, not not my women, but the women who listen to this podcast about like learning to listen to their intuition, learning to lean into that, because it truly is a guide for each individual person and their life and what is best and right for them. So, can you just talk a little bit more about that idea of like how rhetorical patterning and these kind of rules that you lay out help to like guide your own personal intuition in terms of each individual person?
SpeakerYeah. I so I think what burnt haystack does more than anything is slow down the intuition process in a way that affirms it logically. And I want to quote one of the group members, and I'm sorry, I can't remember her name right now. She's a therapist and she wrote a piece about using burnt haystack in her practice, which a lot of therapists are doing right now because of the patterning. And she said, and I think I'm gonna get this right word for word, because I really loved it. She said, women's intuition is not illogical, it's just faster than logic. And that's that's right. And that's I love that, right? That's like a beautiful way to stay that. So I think what Burnt Haystack and other methods do is just break it down. So they so like something you feel immediately is probably right. But if you can't explain to yourself why, then you might not trust it, especially when there's a bunch of dating coaches out on Instagram telling you to grant grace or whatever nonsense they're saying. Um it allows you to, you know, have almost an academic explanation for yourself rooted in logic that gives you more confidence in your own intuition. And then you can act on it. It becomes much more easy to act on it when you have the reasoning. I love that so
Green Flags And Real Hope
Speakermuch.
Karin NelsonOkay, so we've talked a ton about red flags, which I think is so important. We've talked about how it like aligns with your intuition and all these great things. Are there any like women might be going, okay, so there's like no hope now, right? Like you have used this, you have a partner now. I know there are lots of women in the Facebook group who have also been using this and have partners. Are there any green flags that women can be looking for that you could like spout off things to be looking for? But also, can you just give hope to women out there that it is it is possible to find love after divorce and later in life using the these these kind of cheat codes?
SpeakerSure. Um so the number one green flag is an absence of red flags. You don't need to be looking for profiles that blow you away or even that entertain you or you know appeal to you in some identifiable way. You want to start with an absence of red flags. Um, that's the initial green flag. There is actually a checklist in the in the book of what green flag behavior looks like. And you know, it's nothing surprising. It looks like clear and consistent communication, it looks like respect, it looks like thoughtfulness, it looks like curiosity, men being genuinely curious about you instead of just sitting there waiting for you to ask them the next question as though they're being interviewed on a podcast. Um and and like to be fair, the there are very like the percentage of men who would make good partners is less than the percentage of women who are already good partners. Right. It's just true. And that's why a lot of women are just opting out and and quite happily in a lot of cases. I know a lot of divorced women who are like, I actually like think I'm good. This is better. I have a lot of friends, I have hobbies, I like my shop, I love having my own place. Um, but if you do want to meet someone, they are out there, and you just have to have the set of tools to find them. When I when I I had paused my own dating from like the first two, two and a half years of burnt haystack. So I just didn't have time. So I was trying to do burnt haystack and working full time and then I was writing the book. Um, but when I did when I did go back on the apps, I did not do so with like some fervent belief that I was going to fall in love. Like, for one thing, I'm just I I'm frequently accused of being anti-romantic, which is funny to me because I'm like, yeah, like I'm proudly anti-romantic. Like you can't tell me by saying that, all you men on Instagram. Um, so I didn't like I didn't go in with like stars in my eyes or anything. I went in with a decision to apply burned haystack methodology more strictly than anyone had ever applied it before, because I felt like I have to, right? Like if I'm not wanting to do that, who would be? And it worked. And it worked quickly. And and that doesn't mean it's going to. Like, obviously, there's an element of law, right? Like you are we are all at the mercy of the apps if you're on a dating app, but right you have to be willing to be brutally honest, you have to be willing to be ruthless. The words ruthless and brutal are cited more than any other word in burned haste success stories. I've studied this. Um, one of the things we do on rhetorical analysis is code and count words, and like those are the words, brutal and ruthless. So you don't have to have any kind of like romantic conception or belief. But if you want to meet a good guy, I do think this is your best bet for making that happen. And it's, you know, it's happened a lot. Like I scrolled through yesterday just of the burned hays burned haystack success stories that I've done features of in the Facebook group. So this isn't like every time somebody says I met my needle. These are the ones I did, you know, full-blown features of. And I think it was 87, 87 couples. So that's actually quite a lot in a relatively short period of time, especially since we know it's only a fraction of people who because you know, all day on Instagram we see women saying, I met my needle, I mean, and I don't even know who these people are. I don't know their story or anything. So it is working. We have the evidence that it's working. Um, if that's encouraging, I don't know.
Karin NelsonNo, I think it's very encouraging, and I think that my audience is going to find it very encouraging as well. So, closing question
Educate Yourself Before You Swipe
Karin Nelsonfor you. You wrote this method just to validate what women already know in their bones, it feels like to me. Um, which speaks to all the women listening out there who want their intuition to guide them, who have felt their intuition their entire life and probably been told, don't listen to that. That's stupid and silly. And what you just said, like that that woman therapist in the group had said, you know, our intuition is logical, right? It just is faster than what that logic is. So for the woman listening who's about to open the apps, get on the dating apps for the first time since her divorce, and she's scared and she's nervous, what do you want her to remember from your advice from this book?
SpeakerUm I I think that the the more knowledge you have, I like I feel like the easy answer to this question is for me to sort of like articulate a certain mindset, but I don't think that's the answer. I think you want to educate yourself. You know, and it doesn't have to be burn the haystack. Like there's, you know, read on attachment theory, read books about healthy relationship, whatever like appeals to you, or listen to podcasts or whatever it is. But the more knowledge and information you have, and the more that knowledge and information is grounded in actual research, whether it's theoretical research like mine or more like social science research, uh, Logan Ury's book, How to Not Die Alone, is fantastic. She's definitely more like she's a data scientist. Um, Jillian Turecki's books are amazing for relationship dynamics, and you know, I'm sure a whole bunch of others that I'm that are escaping me, but educate yourself first. I believe in knowledge.
Karin NelsonI love that. I think that's a beautiful way to end this conversation. Um, where
Where To Find Jenny Young
Karin Nelsoncan people find you? Where can they get the book? What do you want my audience to know about how to find you? How to find your list?
SpeakerSo you can get the book anywhere, like anywhere you buy books, you can get it. Um, and in it in all formats. So I I will say if you're using it for dating, get the physical book. It'll it'll just help you, Mark, because it's like a reference.
Karin NelsonYou can like underline it and do all the things that you do with your book, right? Right.
SpeakerYeah. Um, but there is an ebook version and an audiobook version. Um, in terms of me, the if you search burnt haystack dating method on Facebook, first of all, you're gonna find a whole bunch of groups because there's a bunch of fake ones out there, but just look for the big one, the the the one that has you know the highest number of members. That's the real one. Um I'm on Instagram at Word case scenario, like worst case scenario, except it's Word. And then I have a Substack too, which is just called burnt haystack. So it's like burned haystack.substack. I am getting ready to launch a new platform, but I haven't talked about it publicly yet.
Karin NelsonOh, okay. So something in the words.
SpeakerI mean, within the next week or so. Um anything important comes out on Substack just because that's like a more trustworthy platform. Like you can always get back to it and find it, whereas things just randomly disappear from Facebook all the time. Um so and and I should say my Substack is you can read everything on my Substack for free. It's it's it's a monetized platform, but I post everything, and and like people do pay me on Substack, but I post everything in front of the paywall. So I don't want your readers to think like, yeah, I'm gonna get sucked in and be able to read a paragraph, but then I'll have to pay. I don't do that. Like, if you want to join in for free, you can just join in for free and read 100% of the content because that's part of the accessibility public school. I love that.
Karin NelsonOkay, I will make sure and have all of the links in my description. But Jennie, you are a wealth of knowledge. Thank you so much for bringing all of your knowledge to this audience. I think it's going to be very useful. You're amazing. Thank you so much for being here.
SpeakerOh, thanks for having me.
Karin NelsonHi,
Coaching Offer And Listener Support
Karin Nelsonfriend. I'm so glad you're here and thanks for listening. I wanted to let you know that if you're wanting more, a way to make deeper, more lasting change, then working one-on-one with me as your coach may be exactly what you need. Together, we'll take everything you're learning in the podcast and implement it in your life with weekly coaching, real life practice, and practical guidance. To learn more about how to work with me one-on-one, go to Karin Nelsoncoaching.com. That's www.k-ar-in-n-e-l-s-o-n coaching.com. Thanks for listening. If this podcast agreed with you in any way, please take a minute to follow and give me a rating wherever you listen to podcasts. And for more details about how I can help you live an even better life than when you were married, make sure and check out the full show notes by clicking the link in the description.
