Don’t go grocery shopping when you’re hungry.
You’re probably familiar with the advice, “Don’t go grocery shopping when you’re hungry.”
Several studies have found that going to the supermarket on an empty stomach leads to not only buying high-calorie groceries that are bad for you but also overspending on the items you don’t need.
One of the reasons is self-control— hungry people are more likely to grab instant food that satisfies their cravings than to buy healthy ingredients and spend time cooking a proper meal.
In a nutshell, they make bad decisions that they often regret later.
The same logic could be applied to dating.
If you use dating apps when you’re lonely, you’re likely to pick unsuitable people to date. …
Quality over quantity.
What is “intimate”? It means familiar, private, and personal.
To have more intimacy in your relationships is to build close, meaningful, and deep connections. It makes you healthier, happier, and more fulfilled, especially in the long run.
When you’re young, you might care about being popular and having as many social media followers as possible. You prioritise your study and career before everything else, even at the expense of your relationships. But your perspective changes as you move through different stages of life.
When you get older, your need for meaning and companionship increases. You realise that intimate relationships add a great deal of value to every aspect of your life, and you want them. …
A practical guide to communicating your needs and boundaries
You probably have heard of the advice, “Respond, not react.”
It sounds simple, but it’s not always easy to follow. And if you fail to do it, it can leave lasting consequences, especially in romantic relationships.
Romantic relationships are painfully fragile in the early days. But even between long-term couples, enough communication issues can lead to devastating breakups.
It doesn’t help if one partner suffers from an insecure attachment style or anxiety when dating — like I did.
I wasn’t just reacting, though. I reacted terribly.
Worse, sometimes, I didn’t even react at all — I just let things slide and pretended everything was okay even though my boundaries were violated and I was deeply hurt. …
A logical explanation and a practical solution.
There are many reasons why a person might have a low sense of self-worth. Regardless, it can negatively affect every area of their life.
They might not put themselves forward for a promotion because they don’t think they deserve it. They might sabotage themselves in relationships because they believe they’re destined to be alone.
Even when they’ve achieved great things and surrounded themselves with great people, deep down, they feel like a fraud. They’re worried they’ll get exposed at any minute and lose everything they have. There’s always something they need to do before they can proudly be themselves.
In a nutshell, they don’t feel enough for themselves. …
Reward actions, not words.
In the dating world, future fakers are people who sell the idea of a future to get what they want in the present.
If you’re looking for a genuine, serious relationship, it can be incredibly frustrating and painful to fall victim to a future faker.
They come across charming and keen and know just the right things to say. They lead you to believe that you’re the world to them only to drop you at a drop of a hat when you’ve become attached to them.
You have no idea what was real and what was fake. You end up getting hung up on them and making excuses for their behaviours while feeling foolish for letting them treat you that way. …
You might want to combine both.
After a break-up, you often feel a sense of loss. You might know deep down that you need to move on, but it doesn’t always come easily to you. You’re overwhelmed by many different emotions and scared to face your new reality without your (now ex) partner.
I have definitely been there.
Throughout my early twenties to mid-twenties, I went through many intense break-ups. The younger and more immature I was, the messier the break-up. …
He might genuinely believe it’s what he needs, but don’t buy it.
When a guy says he wants a strong woman, he might believe that he does, but don’t buy it.
In the famous Cool Girl monologue, Gillian Flynn, the author of “Gone Girl,” explained what guys mean when they say they like “strong women:”
“How do you know you’re not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: ‘I like strong women.’ If he says that to you, he will at some point fuck someone else. Because ‘I like strong women’ is code for ‘I hate strong women.’”
At the time the movie was out, I was barely 20.
That insecure, wide-eyed me did genuinely think that the Cool Girl, though fictional, was the ultimate goal, and being a Cool Girl would equate to having a happy relationship with a guy, as opposed to being a Strong Woman. …
Let’s admit it — it’s hard to be a human in 2020.
Healthy self-esteem is essential to living a happy life. But it’s not always easy to build and maintain it, especially when social media make it seem like everyone is doing better than us. Worse, the pandemic has shaken up our sense of normality and security, filling us with deep anxiety about the near future.
Many things we knew about life and ourselves have now changed.
For some of us, we might not know what we’re going to do next. We question our place in the world. We feel like you’re falling behind our peers. …
There’s a critical difference between what you want and what you need.
To those of you who keep choosing unsuitable people to date, let me illustrate your dating approach through this simple analogy.
Let’s say your goal relationship is a movie script and you’re the casting director for this movie.
Your goal relationship means a relationship that meets your expectations, boundaries, standards, and needs.
In the casting process, you meet someone who you know is not quite right for your movie, but part of you think you could work with this.
You’re scared you will never find someone who is this close to the role again and this might be your last chance of making this movie, so you don’t want to pass on them.
As you spend more time with this person, you grow to like them and get fixated on the details about them — you find them interesting even though they have nothing to do with your script. …
Is your new relationship heading towards toxic territory? The answer is in you.
Dating is supposed to be fun, but navigating a dating pool full of undateable people is neither fun nor easy.
Instead of being black and white, relationships are muddy shades of gray. You don’t just get a notification telling you your relationship is sh*t and it’s time to get out.
It’s entirely your job and decision. And it’s tricky when your emotions and attachment get in the way. Sometimes you even meet people who are manipulative and abusive without appearing so, making it almost impossible to make ruthless judgments and leave.
Luckily, there are signs you could draw on to tell if your relationship with a new partner is heading towards toxic territory and it has everything to do with you and the way you feel. …
