Anushka & Varun

Anushka & Varun

This is a wonderful story of the amazing journey of Anushka & Varun —ending in pure happiness. Anushka heard about Smart Dating Academy when Bela was interviewed on another podcast - and after 2 Ivy League degrees and a great job, she knew she needed a new PLAN to find love since what she was doing wasn’t working.

If you want to listen to the whole podcast episode, click HERE

The Beginning…

A little background on me - I have always been an overachiever, and most of my life have been on a "track" towards what I thought was a "successful" life - from the time I was a kid, my plan was to go to an Ivy League school, get a competitive job, get married at 27 and have 2 kids by the time I was 32 - I also had the ideal guy in mind he'd be handsome, athletic, smarter than me, good with my family, and have a ton of friends.  However, as I got older, the school and job part were checked off my list, but the marriage / kids timeline started to worry me - I was a "late bloomer" who never had a serious relationship until I was 25 - before that, I had never been asked out on a date

After my first serious relationship, where I met my ex at business school, I was 27 and it took me a while to get over it. I moved to Boston and had all the elements I wanted in life - my ideal / dream job, an amazing group of friends, an incredible apartment - except for a relationship. So, I started online dating - but found it extremely discouraging. Most of my friends were in serious relationships, getting engaged and planning weddings- and I could barely get a first date. I spent about 2.5 years on the apps, making what I thought was a meaningful effort - with no success. My friends would tell me, you're such a catch, you're smart, fun, and beautiful - you'll find someone, just give it time. But as time went on, I had trouble believing them. I kept thinking, what is wrong with me, why do i have such a hard time getting matches / messages / dates? At a certain point, I even asked my parents to help me find someone - being from a South Asian family, that felt like a normal way to meet someone. They set me up on several disastrous dates - it was always something like "he's a doctor, from a good family, but he lives in England" - not sure why they thought I would move halfway around the world to meet someone.

Finally, I turned 30, and was really starting to lose hope. I started weight watchers, because I thought, if I'm skinnier, maybe I'll start getting dates - on my WW journey, I started following various “fitfluencers”, one of whom was Erica Eckman or @everythingerica on Instagram. I saw that she had a podcast - and a couple episodes were on dating and relationships. I listened to those podcast episodes, where Bela was the special guest and that's how I learned about SDA. I reached out right away and started working with Bela and Lindsay. Starting with the in-person meeting in Chicago and the photo shoot, they helped me realize that my "ideal man" needed to be thrown out the window - I was looking for all of the wrong things. What I loved was that they made dating formulaic - I am great at following instructions - and they gave me a playbook that I just had to follow and made me confident it would drive results. They helped me to build my profile and gave me rules to follow - e.g., spend 30 mins a day on the apps (no more / no less), aim for 1-2 dates per week, don't spend more than 90 minutes on a first date, screen out people with specific red flags, always go on a second date unless there are red flags.  Following their rules, I immediately got way more dates in my first month on the apps than I did in my prior 3 years of attempting online dating on my own. I got a lot of first dates, a lot of second dates, but by the third / fourth dates, the other person or I would feel it wasn't worth continuing.

Until finally, in Feb 2020, after a daylong date with yet another unsuccessful family set up, I trekked out on a 15-degree Sunday evening to meet up with a first date I had scheduled - I actually was so exhausted before that date because of the terrible date I had earlier in the day, that I considered trying to reschedule it - but I'm so glad I didn't.  I met up with this guy who had been talkative on the app, and also had been very proactive about meeting up - we agreed on a date, and he provided me with 3 potential spots to meet up - I decided on the wine bar he had suggested .

The date went pretty well - I liked that he was talkative, asked a lot of questions, and was just comforting to be around. But, I was exhausted and also wanted to be mindful of Bela's 90 minute rule - so when he asked if I wanted another drink - I politely said, I've really enjoyed meeting you and would have loved to, but I need to head home and get ready for the week ahead.  I also loved that he was direct - on the first date, he asked if I'd like to meet up again on Friday for ramen (we'd talked about how we both love ramen earlier in the evening) - he said no pressure to give him an answer now, just to let him know later. The next day he checked in how I was doing, and I told him I'd love to meet up on Friday for a second date. Meanwhile, I was freaking out, because Friday was Feb 14th, Valentine’s Day, and I wondered, "Does he realize its Valentine's Day? is he going to cancel when he realizes its Valentine’s Day, because that's a weird day to go on a second date..." all these paranoid thoughts. But we kept the second date and had a great time.

And then…

From there, we built up a regular cadence - I was still keeping up my dating pipeline and going on other dates, but the more time I spent with Varun the more and more I liked him. 

He told me he wasn't dating anyone else and didn't want to and I had to admit that i was still going on other dates. Then after a couple more first dates that went terribly, I became more sure that I didn't want to date anyone else - and I asked him to be exclusive.

In the meantime, it was mid-March 2020 and the pandemic hit - as a result, we ended up spending more and more time together (because we couldn't see anyone else).  it ended up being a "make or break" moment for our relationship - spending all this time together so early could have made us realize we couldn't stand being together all the time - but it had the opposite effect. We actually enjoyed having all of the quality time together. Thanks to covid, our relationship timeline was accelerated, and we realized pretty quickly after becoming exclusive that we wanted to be together forever.  We met the parents in April / May 2020 and then decided to move in together in September 2020, then got engaged in Feb 2021 and married this past June.  Looking back to early 2020, I never imagined that in 3 years I'd be married to a man that I never imagined could be more perfect for me.

The best love ever…

He makes me feel loved unconditionally for who I am, he is a true partner who balances me out - and helps me realize how to be a better friend, daughter and partner. He supports me in everything I do but will call me out when I'm being unreasonable and help me realize why I need to rethink things - be it with my family or at work. 

I am so very glad I worked with Smart Dating Academy, and can’t recommend it enough!  If you’re on the fence, do it!