Posts tagged ‘advice’
3 Rules for Rekindling the Old Flame
by Matthew Talbot
Many of us have had the experience of coming across someone we dated previously, (maybe someone we took to the prom?) a few years later, and have felt an old ember of romance begin glowing again. Now that you have asked him or her out to catch up and see what might be next, what are some things to remember to help connect? Here’s 3 tips for rekindling the old flame:
1. That was then and this is now.
Whether your previous connection with your flame was a couple dates in high school or a more serious relationship, remember that intervening years and experiences have changed you both. Don’t expect to “pick up where you left off” though this may indeed happen. One of the pleasures of meeting an old friend (whether romantic or platonic) is seeing how they’ve changed since you last spent time together; savor this experience on your date.
2. Avoid “High School Reunion Syndrome”
It can be a big temptation to impress someone who we haven’t seen in years with a List of Our Awesome Accomplishments Since Then. While bringing your date up to speed on your life since you last saw one another, remember that this is not a job interview. Be yourself, and perhaps share a mildly embarrassing story from your life in the years since your last meeting – this will go a long way to connecting with your old flame and also dissolving tensions.
3. Watch Your Expectations
If your previous relationship was a more intense one, it can be a temptation to make all sorts of assumptions before your date about how it will go, and what sort of feelings the other party may have about you and your date. While the fact that you are going on a date is great, it is best to guard against getting too caught up in romantic expectations or fears. Just live in the moment on your date, and enjoy catching up with your old flame, and remember to be gentle with both yourself and your date.
About the author: Matthew Talbot works in Zoosk customer support.
Photo via Flickr. Attribution-NoDerivs, Creative Commons License.
Moving in Together: A Big Step in Your Romantic Journey
By Beth Budwig
Moving in can be a great test of any relationship… sometimes the final test. But if you two are meant to be, you can make living together work! Here are two secrets for success in living together:
1. Treat your partner like a roommate… at least terms of respect and courtesy.
• Be courteous of their space – give them alone time, and be sure to take your own. Consider having your own room/desk/corner if possible.
• Clean up after yourself, at least in all common spaces.
• Don’t nag your partner any more than you would nag a roommate — try to compliment them when they clean up or decorate rather than complaining when they don’t.
2. But don’t just treat your partner like a roommate. This may seem like a contradiction, but it’s important to keep your romance alive.
• Don’t just stay at home all the time — have nights out together. Movies, nice dinners, or late-night walks all help to shake up your at-home routine.
• Bring home flowers, chocolates, beers, whatever tickles your partner’s fancy — at least once a month, for no reason other than affection.
• Make sure to keep the bedroom clean and attractively decorated, to encourage intimacy. Having your own special space together leads to more fun!
Remember, living together can be a big step to take, but it can also tell you a lot about your partner and your romantic future together. If you can sort out doing the dishes or having a pet, chances are you’ll be prepared for some bigger stuff later on. Just stay polite while keeping the fire alive!
Do you have any cohabitation advice? Share it with us in our comments section!
About the author: Beth Budwig is happily married to a man who cooks. When not eating, she builds web pages for Zoosk and goes hiking in the Oakland hills.
Photo via Flickr. Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs license.
International Kissing Day: A Guide
July 6, International Kissing Day. What does that mean? How do we celebrate “Kissing Day”? Are we supposed to lock lips with someone special this day? Do we study kissing technique? Is the purpose to increase the quantity of smooches? Do we try new styles of kisses? Or is it just a play from Hershey’s to coerce us to buy their chocolate morsels?
Don’t we all already know how to kiss already? We’ve been kissing since we were toddlers. Do we really need a day focusing on it?
To be blunt, the answer is “yes.” We need to set aside one day for the kiss because it’s such an accepted intimate act that carries so much weight in a relationship. It seems that once they’ve been in a relationship for a while, most couples’ kissing styles begin to mesh and they find their smooching groove somewhere in the middle. But, for couples newly dating, without much kissing experience or even for some “old timers”, a little guidance might be in order to guarantee this intimate act is seen as sensual, rather than as a fiasco.
Hygiene
It all starts with cleanliness. You don’t want to go sticking your tongue into someone’s damp cave of halitosis. So, if you know there might be a make-out session in your near future, brush your teeth beforehand. If that’s not possible, carry a travel size bottle of Scope, some mints or a stick of gum to freshen and not offend.
I remember in high school kissing a girl once after she’d eaten what seemed like a wheel of cheese. She wanted to make this kiss an event. Not a good thing. And, while we’re on the subject, fellas, if kissing is in on the horizon, shave so you don’t leave her with stubble rash.
Eyes
The big question: open or closed? The simple answer: closed…duh. Once you have made lip-lock, there’s really no reason to open your eyes. Keep them closed and enjoy the ride. If you open them and your partner catches you, you run the risk of coming off kind of creepy. But, then again, you just caught them with their eyes open, too. Could be a match made in heaven.
Hands
Where do you put your hands while you’re kissing? It really depends on your position. Are you standing at a door? Sitting on a sofa? Lying on a bed? If you’re standing, wrapping your arms around your partner and rubbing their back is a safe way to go (think slow, sensual strokes). Another safe bet for most any position is even placing the hands the face (a hand cupping the jaw or lightly touching the cheek). Hands in your pockets? No!
Tongue
Once the tongue comes into play with a kiss, you start to open the door to passion. A tongue can really heighten a kiss, but it can also douse the fires of excitement if used improperly. Remember, inch for inch, the tongue is the strongest muscle in the human body. So, use that power for good, not evil. That means no shoving or forced entry. And, by all means, keep it in the mouth. No one needs you lapping their lips and chin like a Golden Retriever. Use your tongue to tease and seduce, and you’ll be fine.
Celebrate the kiss today, July 6th. Smooch good-bye on the cheek. Give a peck on the lips in the morning. Increase the passion a la the French. But, be sure that there’s meaning behind each lip-lock. Have fun.
Leon Scott Baxter is America’s Romance Guru and author of A Labor With Love and Out of the Doghouse and the new book, The Finance of Romance
Got some kissing advice you’d like to share? Share your lippiest tips in our comment section!
Worth 1000 Words: Making the Most of Your Online Dating Profile Picture
Along with your profile text, your picture is, really, all you are on line. Your words are your voice and your picture gives you a face. Zoosk has policies about prohibited photos (https://www.zoosk.com/photo_guidelines.php) and we require that you have at least one photo on your profile before you interact with other members; a clear picture of just you, showing your full (or mostly) face. If you think about it, that makes sense: without a face your messages are just a voice with no body! You’re like a ghost: Spooooooky! So if you want to be not-so-creepy, you’ll want the best pictures you can get. Now, in all honesty, I am not a photographer, but from several years working online I can offer you some good advice about what is a bad photograph!
The most common problem is the blurry shot. Back in the day this was caused by poorly focused lenses and incorrect shutter speed, but no one uses such jargon when talking about digital photographs: what matters is called “resolution” or “pixels-per-inch” and when a picture gets blurry it’s called “pixelation”. Forget the lingo: what it means is that some pictures look quite nice very small but when enlarged they look horrid! Here is a sample:
Notice that the smaller version looks ok. When expanded to display size (as on your Zoosk datecard) the picture looses all clarity. This is a bad choice for any photo and our moderating team will probably delete it. The solution is to start with a larger photo:
If you have a larger photo to start with it won’t expand and so it will show in exactly the way you expect it to. A blurry pic doesn’t say anything bad. Other pictures manage to convey a message you mightn’t like however.
Don’t hide your face! This sends a message, loud and clear, to the other Zooskers looking at your profile: “I have something to hide. There’s a reason I’m too embarrassed to show off my face!” Got a girlfriend already? If you don’t want to look like some sort of creepy lurker, show your face!
One other problem affects other-wise perfectly good photos: the group shot.
Whose profile is this? Yes, you might be able to piece it together from other parts of the profile or by pairing it up with other pictures, but what if this is your only photo? We do ask that your primary photo, at least, be of you only: a clear shot of your face. Imagine going on your first date in a candle-lit restaurant, would your fellow Zoosker know you from your photo?
Of course you could edit this picture so it was only one face or the other, but then you’d have a too-small picture that would show up blurry on the site just like our first example. This is fated to be a second photo, but not a primary one.
A companion problem is pictures that are too dark. These are usually taken with your computer camera – often with a light coming from behind. This throws off what is called the “exposure” in the picture:
Natural lighting works best, but sometimes your computer may not want to travel outside! Cell phones are good if they take good photos and you can easily get the photo from your phone to the web. If you have an Android phone or an iPhone/iPad, our Zoosk Apps (available for all three) will let you take a photo and upload it directly to your Zoosk Datecard!
There are some photo problems that seem to affect some users more than others.
Guys seem to take this picture a lot, and we’ve noticed that woman just don’t like it. At all. Not one little bit. In fact, we get complaints about pictures like this and so it violates our moderation rules. We delete pictures like this whenever we see them. Why do guys take this picture over and over? This may be one of the great mysteries of the universe. This says several things to other users:
You have no friends.
You do have a very big ego.
Probably not much else, however.
You wouldn’t know how to get a woman’s attention if you tried.
Trust me: you have friends! One of them will help you take pictures! Just ask – and if you do, indeed, have the sort of body that you can show off, a picture of you relaxing by the pool on vacation is way better than inside your bathroom!
What works best for a primary photo is a nice, smiling picture; the classic head-shot. But what happens if you add a picture to your profile and instead of looking right it looks like the one below?
We’ve got you covered there! Next to each picture uploaded on your photo page, you’ll find a blue button that says “Edit”. Clicking there will help you make simple changes: you can rotate the picture and cut it to size.
There we go!
We do allow secondary photos on your profile, you can have a total of six different shots. It’s best to show your readers things you enjoy such as you skiing or you in the Community Choir, or you relaxing on the beach with a tropical beverage (preferably with lots of fruit and an umbrella).
All pictures are seen by our moderation team and in the review process they may get deleted. If a picture suddenly vanishes from your profile, it’s possible it was moderated and deleted. There are some things that we just don’t allow and you can find out about that on our photo policy page, https://www.zoosk.com/photo_guidelines.php. Those aside I hope this post helps you avoid not just “illegal” pics but also “bad” ones. Feel free to contact customer support by email (mailto:support@zoosk.com) or by phone (888-939-6675) if you have any questions.
Clean Up Your Profile!
by Huw
There are three stages of love: ‘Soon to be in love’ is first. ‘Recently out of love’ is the last. The only name for the one in the middle is “Double-Rainbow-Awesome, Yeah”. We’d like to help you from the first to the second. But it’s crucial to put your best foot forward.
This is the first of three posts about giving your profile a clean-up job. In this post we’re going to focus purely on content: what you want to say in your profile to help other Zooskers get to know you.
You want to say just enough to sound interesting, enticing and maybe a little sexy, but not so much as to commit the dreaded profile foul of ‘the overshare’! TMI (too much information) can kill a budding relationship like too much sunshine can wilt a young flower.
There are some things you want to say on your profile: you’re fun-loving and love good food. You have eclectic taste in people, decor and clothing and above all you believe in the freedom to express or do whatever you feel needs doing.
Some things are a bit too much: we all have been on a date where the other party talks about their ex, or how much they don’t drink any more, or their sex life. Seriously: some things don’t need to be brought up in the “getting to know you” stage. Nothing stops the “Double-Rainbow-Awesome, Yeah” phase faster than a guilt trip for all members of the opposite sex, or verbal abuse lumped on an unseen third party or a creepy amount of self-sharing. You don’t have to be unnaturally cheerful, but positivity never hurts!
Tell a good story. Describe the perfect date you’ve always imagined. How does your perfect match fit with you? Try not to make “campaign promises”. You’re not trying to “win” here, you’re trying to woo.
There’s a major difference.
In the next post we’ll cover how you say it. And then, third, how to take the best profile pictures! But don’t wait, share YOUR tips for creating the ultimate profile in our comments section!
Huw has been a blogger for over 15 years, a writer since high school and a geek forever. His idea of a perfect date is a tour of Alcatraz and the Barbary Coast Trail powered by dim sum.
Love Lesson #6 – Home Improvement Guy – Zoosk.com
Home is where the heart is, so who better to give advice on love? Hope you enjoy Love Lessons from a Home Improvement Guy! If you like what you see, check out the rest of Zoosk’s Love Lessons here. And make sure you fan us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for more dating advice videos, blog posts, and fun updates! (more…)
Love Lessons from a TV Producer – new Zoosk Online Dating Video
TV producers know how to present themselves, which is why we asked one to tell us how to make a good impression on a date. Check it out! (more…)
New ZooskTV Point/Counterpoint video: Can people change?
Can people change for a relationship? Do relationship ultimatums work? Morrison and Jenn discuss this dating question – in 30 seconds or less!
Point/Counterpoint is a dating series developed by Zoosk in which a yes-or-no dating question is posed to 2 singles, each w/ 30 seconds to argue their side. Submit your answers to this and other relationship question’s on Zoosk’s Facebook Page! (more…)
Zoosk has received heart-warming letters from couples from all over the world have found love on Zoosk. We are proud to share 
