Avoid the Friend Zone While Dating, with Magda Kay

If you're dating, you've probably had the experience of being "friend zoned." And, perhaps, you're someone who relegates others to the friend zone. Friends are great to have, but if you're looking for true love, you might want to understand how to avoid this from happening.

In this episode we talk about how to avoid the friend zone. We also talk about boundaries, sexuality, body language, why chemistry can be a red flag, and to bring sexuality into your daily life (trust me, this is a good thing!). I'm glad you're here!

Biography:

Magda Kay is an intimacy expert, certified Tantra teacher, speaker, and author on a mission to help individuals around the world experience more love, pleasure, and intimacy. For almost a decade, her advice on relationship dynamics has helped countless singles and couples alike live more fulfilling and authentic lives in and outside of the bedroom. With a degree and background in business, Magda has a natural gift for translating esoteric concepts into practical, easy-to-understand ideas so that everyone can enjoy the fulfilling intimate life they deserve.

Magda is the founder of the School of Intimacy, an online academy that teaches people essential skills for building happy, passionate relationships with others and themselves. This year, she published her first book, No more Faking It, a guide for women to living a more fulfilled life. She also works one-on-one with individual clients both online and in person.

How to learn more about Magda:

Website: https://magdakay.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/magdakayofficial/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/magdakay

How to learn more about Karin:

Website: https://drcalde.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theloveandconnectioncoach/

TRANSCRIPT

Intro:

Karin: This is Love Is Us, Exploring Relationships and How We Connect. I'm your host, Karin Calde. I'll talk with people about how we can strengthen our relationships, explore who we are in those relationships, and experience a greater sense of love and connection with those around us, including ourselves. I have a PhD in clinical Psychology, practiced as a psychologist resident, and after diving into my own healing work, I went back to school and became a coach, helping individuals and couples with their relationships and personal growth. If you want to experience more love in your life and contribute to healing the disconnect so prevalent in our world today, you're in the right place. Welcome to Love Is Us.

Episode:

Hello, everybody. It's February and I am longing for spring. I don't know about you, but it is Valentine's Day week and I thought about doing a special episode for Valentine's Day. But the thing is, every day is Valentine's Day on this podcast because we're always talking about love. So I'm just going to keep going. And today I'm going to be talking to Magda Kay, who is a relationship and intimacy expert. So imagine this. Imagine you're in the dating world and you are seeing someone and you really like them, but then all of a sudden they start dating somebody else and you realize you've been friend zoned. Or perhaps you're a woman and you've been dating men and they're all just too nice to be in a relationship with and you haven't been able to find that true love. So on today's episode, we're going to be talking about this. We're going to be talking about the friend zone and how to avoid it. And this is for men and women. All right, I hope you like it. And here we go. Welcome, Magda.

[02:10] Magda: Wow. Thank you for having me.

[02:12] Karin: I'm really happy to have you here. Thank you for making the time. Tell us where you are in the world.

[02:18] Magda: Well, at the moment, I am in Poland, which is my home country, and it's very, very cold. I'm not used to this anymore because I spent over a decade in Southeast Asia, living in tropics, in fact, on small tropical islands. And then I decided to come back to Europe and it's minus twelve and it's really cold and my body is like, what are you doing, you crazy woman?

[02:44] Karin: What is going on here? Yeah, now that as we're recording this, it's the beginning of January, so I can imagine you must be in the heart of the cold.

[02:56] Magda: I'm handling it.

[02:58] Karin: Good. And what drew you there?

[03:04] Magda: Well, so I am from Poland. I was born and raised here. But you know what? When I was a teenager, my dad went bankrupt, and I just so happened to be doing a high school exchange in the US when that happened. And so I went through this weird association in my mind that Poland equals poverty and all the problems and just all the bad things. And the host family I was staying with in the US, they had this massive house, they took me to Hawai. So I just associated being abroad with a better life. So ever since I was 17 when that happened, ever since, I honestly have been just trying to run away from Poland. And yes, like I said, I spent over a decade in Southeast Asia, which is a lovely place. I lived in Malaysia, Thailand, Bali, but I was feeling more and more that I am missing the western drive. I'm missing being around ambitious people a bit more business and money focused, because I was living in a. We'll get into this. But I was living in a yogic tantric community, which it's a bit know the hippie world, and I was missing this western mindset. So I decided to come back to Europe. But I will be honest with you, discovering that I actually want to stay in Poland, that was a surprise, because, like I said, I spent half of my life trying to escape this country. I still don't really know what this decision is all about. And honestly, it would seem so easy to just, yeah, let me go back home. For me, it is really a big decision. I feel like it's clearing a lot of things. A lot of things, yeah.

[04:46] Karin: Good for you. It sounds like a good growth opportunity for you and an opportunity for self discovery, that is for sure.

[04:53] Magda: Yes.

[04:54] Karin: That's great. Good. Well, tell us what you do.

[04:58] Magda: So I am an intimacy coach. So what I do is I help people have better love and sex life. And my work is about combining tantra with psychology. So, like I said, I lived over a decade in those crazy yogi, tantric conscious communities that are very unique. To be fair, I can just say it was a sex cult, because pretty much it was. But I dove very, very deep into tantric teachings, the teachings of sacred sexuality and yoga and energy work and meditation. But I always loved human behavior. I always loved psychology. So I combine these two words, making it on one hand, making tantra more accessible to an average person in the west. But also what I see is that usually in the west, if you have anyone talk about sexuality and intimacy, these are sexologists, and they have this very medical approach to intimacy. And I feel like we are missing a more subtle, spiritual aspect to it. So I try to blend these two words in my work. So that's what I do.

[06:08] Karin: Beautiful. And what I have been learning is that tantra is not just about sex, it's about so much more. And that's not the focus of our conversation today. But I do want to say that out loud for the people listening, because I think that especially in the US, it's come to be synonymous with sex.

[06:29] Magda: Yes. Unfortunately, I get asked very often, what is tantra? Is it just about sex? And I think tantra is a spiritual path. And like you said, it's so much more than sex. But what happened is the same that happened with yoga. We took this profound, complex spiritual path and we just took one bit of it. And now everyone wears leggings and goes to yoga studios and stretches their body and we call it yoga. That has 8% to do with yoga, maybe. And it's the same with tantra. It's a much more complex path. But our society just took one bit that we're most interested in, which is sex, and we're focusing on that. So unfortunately, if you search Tantra online, a lot of things you're going to get. It's going to be erotic massages and some form of sex work. So I will tell people that, yes, tantra is more than that, but a lot of erotic services use tantra as branding because it's popular now. So just be mindful. When you search for something and for some coaches, just be mindful. You may get some strictly sex offers.

[07:35] Karin: Right. Okay, well, thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, that's definitely a future topic of conversation on this podcast. But today we're going to be talking a little bit more about the dating world and specifically about something called the friend zone. So maybe you can tell us a little bit about what that is.

[07:59] Magda: Yes. So, you know, when I talk about intimacy, what is intimacy? I always explain it like this. We know what it means to be a friend, and we know what it means to be lovers. But intimacy is somewhere in between these two relationships. So we have the friendship, we have the depth, we have sexuality, but it's this area that not many people talk about, and that is really intimacy. So if you end up being friend zone, you're not in intimacy, you're not in an intimate relationship with the person. You get stuck a little bit out of it because some of it overlaps, but you're kind of not playing the game that you probably want to be playing. And unfortunately, it is a big issue these days because the society has changed a lot. The dating world has changed a lot. There's so many global changes. We let go of gender roles, and we don't yet know what to replace it with. But people feel lost because they don't have a new sort of guideline to follow. We have dating apps, which, if you think of it, it's like a modern way of match