As the year winds down, Zoosk looks at the work we’ve done through 2009 with feelings of accomplishment. We’ve become the fastest growing online dating site in the world, and we’ve released some amazing new products like Zoosk Desktop, Zoosk Mobile, Zoosk Coins, and our new product, Boost Views. We’ve also brought people together from all over the world and helped so many of our users find love. We sincerely hope you’ve had as much fun with Zoosk this year as we’ve had, working for you. If that’s been the case, please vote for Zoosk for a 2009 TechCrunch Crunchies Award, and nominate us for Best Social Networking Application.

Nominations just opened, but you can vote each day until the ballots close two weeks from now. Each vote counts, so please remember to bookmark the site and vote for Zoosk every day from now until December 4 so that we can make it to the next round of voting!

The more you show your support, the more people will know about Zoosk. That means our user base, YOUR dating pool, will get bigger and bigger. We know you want your dating pool to grow so that you raise the chances of finding that someone special, so remember to vote for Zoosk this year. Our hopes are that Zoosk will grow so we have a better chance of matching every single one of our users up with someone who works for them. We’d love to win a Crunchie so that this can happen. Thanks Zooskers! Vote for Zoosk!

By Juliet O

Have you ever heard the phrase “I’m in love with the idea of being in love”? This phrase relates to a real phenomenon. Many of us, your author included, have at one time or another been in love with the idea of love.

It is actually quite easy to be seduced by a concept. And love is a seductive concept. Our literary and artistic culture is riddled with hyperbolic, overwrought, and unattainable descriptions of what love means. The way love is described in famous novels is so exaggerated, it becomes almost absurd. In Goethe’s famous novel, Sorrows of Young Werther, the main protagonist actually takes his own life because the woman he loves doesn’t love him back. When the novel was published in 1774, it inspired a wave of “Werther fever” as young men throughout Europe began dressing in the style of the main character as described in the book. This “Werther fever” even lead to many copycat suicides as readers actually took their own lives, like Werther did, when confronted with unrequited love. This example shows how susceptible we are to ideas of love, even when these ideas in no way resembles the real thing.

Love shouldn’t drive you to die. It should give you a reason to live. And yet if you were to read The Sorrows of Young Werther or Romeo and Juliet or Wuthering Heights, you’d think love and suffering were one and the same, that you couldn’t fully love someone without suffering great pain and loss. Even cinema reflects this strange comparison of love and suffering. Just look at movies like Titanic or Gone with the Wind or Moulin Rouge or Casablanca. Even though the two main characters in all these movies are separated by the film’s end, even though we’re deprived as an audience of a happy ending, we blissfully watch these movies and use them as actual examples of “true love”. Would these movies have been as romantic had the characters gotten together and lived happily ever after? I doubt it. I certainly wouldn’t have cried so hard at the end of Casablanca had Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman flown off together in a plane to get married and settle down. We love their story because it ends in loss.

These stories that we tell ourselves are beautiful and enjoyable, but it’s important to realize that they’re just stories. They’re a work of fiction that represent an idea that has little bearing in real life. Real love is far from the idea of love. Real love isn’t always exciting; it’s actually frequently boring. Unlike these dramatic stories and movies that operate by a series of ups and downs, high highs and low lows, mystery and intensity, unexpected twists and turns, the real thing is actually far from turbulent. Real love, the kind that sustains over time and contributes to ones life in a positive way, is actually really stable. And when you love someone, you don’t expect them to be like heroes or heroines in plays, movies, or novels. You accept them as real people with real personalities. People are not ideas, and if you like someone because they symbolize or represent something to you, you’re in for a disappointment. No one can live up to your ideas, because those ideas aren’t theirs but yours, and as such, when you love your ideas, you aren’t in love with anyone else; you’re actually in love with yourself. You’re in love with a figment of your own imagination.

So next time you tell someone that you like your guy because he reminds you of someone else or that your gal is great because she represents an attractive ideal, think long and hard about whether you’re actually in love or just infatuated with the idea of love. These things are distinct and highly incompatible, and to think they are one and the same is to accept a delusion that can only lead to disappointment.

Real love sustains and leads to happiness. So wouldn’t you rather go for the real thing?

If you enjoyed this article, be sure to check out our other articles on love:
When it comes to love, it’s worth a try
In love, remember to check your baggage at the door
How to talk to women 101
Online dating rule: take things slow

Photo credit: deardarling

By Juliet O

A widely accepted law of dating states that the longer you date, the more baggage you accumulate. Thinking back to your earliest relationships, don’t certain words come to mind, like naive, innocent, simple? Things were so uncomplicated way back when all you had to worry about regarding love was a curfew and what your parents were going to say. A first love is such a beautiful thing, because the first loves seem so innocent, unbridled, and pastoral. But the moment you get hurt for the first time, everything changes. After our first loves wane away, we develop shells and shields and build walls — we close ourselves up out of defense, and we don’t let anyone access those deep, vulnerable parts of ourselves quite that way ever ever again. And like a hermit crab that carries everything on its back, we start dragging our baggage along everywhere.

But baggage can also destroy relationships, especially when one tries to hoist their baggage on someone else. Say that your baggage is the memory of your ex. And you take that memory with you everywhere, including on dates with new people, and your ex becomes the ubiquitous elephant in the room? That can definitely damage your chances at a new relationship. Or what if your particular baggage is the jealousy that you developed as the result of getting hurt in the past? Hoisting that baggage on a new, unsuspecting partner cannot possibly be conducive to a future relationship. And when you act jealously toward people, and they leave you because they can’t take it anymore, you only become more jaded and more jealous. The danger of baggage is that it has a way of multiplying itself.

So how do we deal with this baggage issue? We all suffer from it, so what are some things we can do to alleviate the weight of all this emotional baggage we carry? How do we keep all the baggage at bay when getting to know someone knew — and then continue to keep it at bay as we grow relationships with new people?

The answer is: we have to make sure we’ve checked our emotional baggage before starting a new relationship. A new boyfriend or girlfriend can’t carry your bags or get rid of your demons for you. Embarking on a new relationship when you haven’t healed from old ones will just add fuel to the flame, and give you more baggage to carry down the line. We have to make a conscious effort to look on our past relationships and past history and heal all the wounds we’ve accumulated before stepping into a new relationship.

It’s important to remember that healing takes time. And healing isn’t easy. Getting rid of our baggage is often times more painful than merely carrying it along with us wherever we go, and it takes commitment and dedication to exorcise all that negativity from our lives. Find a path toward closure. If your baggage is due to a mistake you’ve made, ask for forgiveness. If your baggage is because of something that someone else did to you, try to find it in your heart to forgive. Our relationships with other people are the biggest cause of emotional baggage, but no matter how negative those relationships are, it’s important that we try to move on in a clear, positive manner. If closure cannot be found, then cut people out of your life that contribute to your emotional baggage. Cut painful relationships out, be they relationships with your exes, your frenemies, your acquaintances that add nothing positive to your life.

When dating new people, we should all adopt the basic philosophy: tabula rasa. This term, “tabula rasa,” means clean slate. This doesn’t mean that you have to treat every relationship like the first relationship you’ve ever had. Rather, this means that you should approach new relationships with all the wisdom and insight and learning that you’ve taken from past relationships — the positive forces — and relinquishing all the negative forces at the door, or to in all literalness check your baggage at the door.

For more dating tips and helpful dating advice, check out these articles as well:

Having a positive outlook will get you more dates
5 online dating fears and how to overcome them
Jealousy and how to prevent it
The importance of being earnest

photo credit: striatic

We have some fun news to share with you today! Zoosk has just launched Boost, a new service on our site that helps you get noticed by your fellow Zooskers. Every time you buy a Boost View, we’ll put you at the top of the search results or in a special place on the homepage of people interested in you.

Boosting your views is simple as can be. If you wish, you can purchase a set number of Boosk Views using your Zoosk coins. Getting a set number of Boost Views means that your profile will appear that same, set number of times at the very top of a search result or on a Zoosk front page.  Meaning, if you buy 500 Boosts, you will land at the top of the search results or the front page of Zoosk 500 individual times. How’s that for a leg up?

You can even track your current Boost numbers by visiting your Settings tab and clicking on the Boost link (like in the photo above). See the icon with the lightening bolt on it? Click that lightening bolt icon with the word “Boost” next to it in order to track your views.

With Boost, this is how your Date Card will appear in the search results of people who run searches that fit your criteria:

And with Boost, this is how your Date Card will appear on someone’s homepage:

Not only does Boost help you get noticed, but it gets you noticed in a big way. In life and in love, why not go bold?

*This number refers to the searches/logins of other Zooskers — not you. We never factor in how many times you view your own profile, so you should view your own profile as much as you want!

We hope you enjoy Boost! In the meantime, here are some other Zoosk features you might be interested in:

Breaking the ice with a virtual gift
Zoosk Desktop helps you work it real good
Zooskbox 101
How good photos increase your popularity on Zoosk

By Juliet O

No one likes to be around a negative person. This principle applies equally in the real world as in the world of online dating. Any hint of negativity on your Zoosk dating profile can really kill the mood with a prospective match. On your online dating profile, negativity (and its kin: sarcasm, pessimism, abrasiveness, misanthropy, and rancor) should be used cautiously and sparingly, or better yet not at all.

Why do we develop negative patterns of thinking? Many psychology experts believes that we become negative because negative thinking is easy — and it can easily become a habit. Bad thoughts perpetuate themselves. It’s the easy way out (and a total cop out) to be negative about our lives, because the alternative — positive thinking — requires a lot more effort. We have to choose to be happy and positive, and that choice has to be maintained over the course of our lives. Positive thinking takes constant work. In many ways, positive thinking is a choice. And positive thinking is absolutely essential for a relationship to succeed.

Hmm… takes constant effort, is a choice, requires reinforcement and reevaluation over time, and doesn’t come easy? Doesn’t it sound like positive thinking here can sort-of correlate to being in a relationship? Take out “positive thinking” and insert “a relationship” in the above sentences, and you see where I’m getting at. If you show signs of negativity on your profile, it indicates that you’re taking the easy, cynical way out — and if you’re that kind of person, how can you be the sort of person who can really put in the work necessary into being in a relationship, or even open yourself up to being in a relationship in the first place?

Being pessimistic about life can and does translate into being pessimistic about relationships with other people. Negative individuals close themselves off to others and constantly worry that they are going to be let down by the people around them. You can’t maintain that kind of thinking if you want to a relationship to succeed, because dating and relationships take hope, faith, and a belief that in the end, everything will work out. “Happily ever after” doesn’t just happen. You have to work at it and believe in it. And if you show signs of negativity on your profile, you are sending the message that you aren’t the kind of person who is capable of doing that.

So how do you change a negative framework into a positive one? Here are some simple tips that can lead you in the right direction.

• Think positively. Negative thinking becomes habit over time, and just like quitting any other bad habit, you have to be highly conscious of your bad habit and reroute your behavior and thinking patterns. When you find yourself lapsing, take a deep breath and be present in the moment. Be aware. If you start feeling like you’re going to have unjustified negative thoughts, catch yourself before they get the best of you and think about something positive instead — even if it’s entirely unrelated. After enough emotional distance has passed, perhaps you can re-evaluate the situation more clearly.
• Have faith in yourself and other people. If you think that you’re going to fail, either start thinking about success or tell yourself that failure in one thing does not signify failure in all things. Take life in stride. If you find yourself thinking about the faults of other people, think about their strengths instead. Always look at the good in others.
• Write down all the negative words you can think of. Now change them to positive words. “Can’t” becomes “can,” and “failure” becomes “success” and “loss” becomes “gain”. Etc.  This is a good mental exercise.
• Stop complaining, cold turkey. Probably the best thing negative people can do for themselves is to stop complaining for a day. If you find yourself trapped in negative patterns of thinking, try this exercise: for one who day, don’t let yourself complain. Out loud or in your head, complaining is off limits.
• Decide that you aren’t going to let your negative thinking get the best of you. Make an executive decision to change your life.

If you decide to alter your negative thinking into positive thinking, make sure you take a good look at your Zoosk Date Card and make sure that it coheres to that positivity. Make sure that, in your date card, you avoid the following patterns of negative thinking.

• Self-deprecation. In your date card, don’t talk about the ways you hate yourself or your low self-esteem. Take out anything that comes off as self-loathing.
• Sarcasm. A little sarcasm in person is fine, but it doesn’t translate well over the net. You can’t hear vocal inflections, you can see facial gestures, so sarcasm often comes off as rudeness. Take it out.
• Pessimism. Get it out of your date card.
• Anything that indicates a cynical worldview.
• Any and all complaints. Your date card is not a forum for your rants or complaints. Don’t use it as one.

Now that your date card has lost its negative elements, infuse it with signs of positivity. Here are some ideas:

• Talk about things you love and that make you happy.
• Discuss your goals for the future.
• Write about your relationship hopes.
• Let your sense of humor shine.
• Get your friends to write great testimonials for you.

Good luck. Like relationships, positivity isn’t easy, but if you’re up for the challenge, the rewards of happiness make everything worth it.

For more reading on getting dates on Zoosk, check out these articles.

Simple tips on how to get more attention on Zoosk
How to trick out your Zoosk date card
How to use Zoosk to get over a broken heart
Zoosk advice on how to overcome shyness

Photo credit: aussigall

By Juliet Ohai

I think we could all benefit from a little Zooskbox 101 today. It’s always nice to have a quick brush up just to make sure we’re all on the same page. To begin: what’s a Zooskbox? A Zooskbox is your “message inbox” on Zoosk, where you receive messages, flirtations, winks, and virtual gifts from other Zooskers. As you see on the image above, you can sort your messages by categories like sent, received, unread, and trashed — just like most email inboxes. However, your Zooskbox is different from regular email in important ways too. It’s geared toward Zoosk and functions as a dating portal through which you communicate with other members of our site. The purpose of this post is to guide a beginning user through using their Zooskbox, but even seasoned Zooskbox users could benefit from glancing at this tutorial — who knows what you might learn?

The above image is what tiered messages look like in your Zooskbox. You can see the link to the profile of the Zoosker who sent the message, a small icon of their photo, and the first few characters of the message they sent you. To read the rest of the message, you have to either click on the few characters of the text of that message or the reply icon. Clicking either of those things will take you to the next page, that looks like the image below:

Clicking to expand a message from your Zoosk inbox takes you to a new page, at the top of which you will see a reply screen. The reply screen is at the very top of the page, because the rest of the text is below. To see the entirety of the message thread, simply scroll down. Everything exchanged in the thread will be below the reply box, as you can see in the following image.

Continue scrolling until the end. The messages are staggered by how current they are — the most current message will be at the top (first below the reply screen). The messages are also all individually dated by how long ago they were sent.

Easy breezy!

Just remember, only premium subscribers on Zoosk can send unlimited messages. If you are a basic member contacting another basic member, coins or an upgrade to premium subscription are necessary in order to continue the conversation permanently.

This concludes our brief, simple Zooskbox 101 tutorial. Now that you’re an expert on your Zooskbox, why don’t you go at this very moment and send some messages to a cutie on Zoosk?

Some topics you might also be interested in:

• How to write that first message on Zoosk
• Breaking the ice with a virtual gift
• How to be a better online flirt
• How to talk to women 101

Photo credit: Sabrina’s Stash

By Juliet O

All daters have fears. By dating, we make ourselves vulnerable to being hurt in many ways that are precluded by choosing to remain single. As daters, we tend to hold onto our fears, much to our own detriment. Fears hold us back and hinder us from opening ourselves up to love and fulfillment. Part of the battle of dating is in eliminating your fears — of intimacy, of vulnerability, of emotional honesty, of betrayal, of rejection, of ourselves — so that you can open yourself to the possibility of love. It’s not always easy.

Online dating presents a unique set of fears and challenges. While it may seem difficult, these fears need to be overcome if you want to date online successfully. We want to guide you through these online dating fears and give you tips on how to overcome them, because we want online dating to be a great experience for you. And why shouldn’t it be a positive experience? By online dating, you have an automatic dating pool of singles all using Zoosk for the same purpose: to hopefully find romance and connection. But how can you find romance or connection if you’re still holding onto all that fear and baggage? If you still hold onto fears or reservations regarding online dating, read this post for helpful tips on overcoming your trepidation, in order to engage with the online medium openly and fortuitously.

Fear 1: Fear of the telephone.

It’s not always easy jumping into uncharted waters and talking on the telephone. For some, the telephone is viewed with a disproportionate amount of anxiety. Most of the anxiety stems from a fear of not having anything to talk about (which can be awkward indeed). But the phone isn’t as scary as it looks or seems. In August, we published a tutorial on how to be a smooth operator on the phone. We discussed some of the basic rules of phone conversation, and we even offered some wisdom on why the phone is an important first step in online dating. Another part of the fear re: phone calls is an absence of things to discuss, of awkward pauses and momentary glitches in the flow of conversation. Fear not: here are some conversation ideas. There is no shame in writing down topics in advance to make phone conversation smoother. Honestly. The only shame is in being so scared of the phone that you don’t even make it past the online stage to a real life meeting.

Fear 2: Fear of getting close.

We all have a fear of getting close to people, but we must overcome that fear if we want to find love. As we wrote previously, “our earnestness reflects our ability to open ourselves up in relationships and put ourselves out there — even if it means revealing our vulnerabilities.” A good way of overcoming this fear is to simply look at the alternative. Being hurt is painful, but there is also pain in prolonged solitude. What’s worse? The pain of heartbreak, which dulls over time, or the pain of solitude, which only grows as time goes on? In the end, love is worth the struggle, so swallow your fears and take the leap. Even if you fall, you’ll get back on your feet.

Fear 3: Fear of other people.

Other people can be really, really scary. The scariest aspect of other people is not knowing if your idea of who they are coheres with the actual truth of who they are. You might think someone likes you, for instance, but how do you know they actually do? We fear other people most when we have an unstable view of ourselves. We fear people because we fear that they have the ability to affect us, that their being in our lives somehow affects how we view our lives. What we must realize is that no matter what happens to us, we are still fundamentally who we are. No one can remove or take that.

Fear 4: Fear of failure.

We all fear failure, not just in our relationships, but in everything. But things that are high risk are sometimes associated with the highest rewards. Love is one of those things. By letting your fear of failure hold you back, you are also denying yourself the rewards of love. That doesn’t sound like a great trade-off. Unfortunately, people do fail in love — it’s a fact of dating. But people also succeed and win big all the time. Look at how many weddings are held each day, or how many people connect with one another each day to establish rewarding, substantial relationships. It’s a total game of chance, and sometimes, playing it safe has the biggest risk of all: the risk that, in the end, you’ll miss out on love completely.

Fear 5: Fear of real life.

Real life is definitely a scary place. When you’re dating online, you are shielded from the distractions and pressures of dating in real life. The thing is, all online relationships go to the real life stage at some point, if they are to be considered successful. And if you’re so scared of real life that you don’t ever take your romance out of the virtual realm, then you miss out on the possibility of growing your online relationship into something real and lasting. How do you overcome this fear of ‘IRL’ (in real life)? Get to know someone that you meet pretty well online first, taking it slow, before heading out to meet them in real life. That way, if you feel like you already know them, you can be confident that this person won’t surprise you in a negative way. One of the first rules of online dating is to take things slow, after all. Make yourself comfortable first, before heading to real life — no shame in overcoming fear slowly.

We hope these tips have been helpful. If you like these and other Zoosk online dating tips, remember to vote for Zoosk in Mashable’s 2009 OpenWeb Awards as best overall Facebook App! We love our fans and we’d love to see you love us back. Afterall, we’re both in the business of love!

By Juliet O

You’ve put all that work in making a great Date Card, but you’re still not fully satisfied with the number of clicks you’re getting? You want to raise your page views, but don’t know what to do? It’s not you, don’t worry. But it’s not your Date Card, either. There are simple ways to get even more profile views and raise your chances of meeting the right person on Zoosk, by simply following some of our tips on promoting your online dating profile via social media tools.

Great online dating profiles shouldn’t just sit there waiting to be discovered. Take your online dating fate into your own ambitious, single-person hands! If you want love in this day and age, there is no shame on promoting yourself, within reason, to making finding it an easier process. There are definitely ways to raise your chances of having your profile fall across the path of the right person, on Zoosk and on the web. Here are our suggestions.

Post on Zoosk’s Community Pages

Our Community Pages are a great place to get valuable dating advice and voice your opinion on topics relevant to online dating. The pages are also a great place to have your profile seen by the dating community at large. By making yourself prominent on our boards and contributing great content to our community, you expose your profile in a positive way to the numerous Zooskers who visit them daily. Your comments on the boards are also added to your Zoosk status feed, which shows up on your Date Card and on the Zoosk front page that is seen by singles in your local area.

Fan Zoosk on Facebook and comment on our updates

Zoosk has a very active Facebook Fan community that is growing  by the day. Check out how many people comment or “like” each of our status updates! Join in on the discussion via our Facebook Fan page and meet other Zooskers via their virtual discussions. Invite your friends to join our Facebook community as well, and you might even get free coins from one of our Facebook fan contests! Keep an eye on our Fan Page in the future, to hear about Zoosk news, releases, dating advice and information, as well as future community contests and programs of interest to our beloved Zooskers.

Integrate Zoosk on Facebook

We are aware that not all people want to be public about their online dating lives. Our Facebook application allows you to adjust your privacy settings to hide all your Zoosk activity so that no one in your Facebook network has to know that you are involved in any manner with online dating. But for people who want to be a bit more public about Zoosk, you can install our Facebook application to your main FB page and let others know, via FB, that you are single and searching.

Tweet about online dating and follow us on Twitter

Another way to publicize your online dating profile is to use Twitter and “tweet” out about your involvement with Zoosk. Follow us on Twitter and tweet @Zoosk and we promise to send you a shout-out in return. Use #hashtags to talk about online dating like #zoosk or #onlinedating, write about your topics “@Zoosk,” and discover that Twitter is a great way to publicize your Zoosk Date Card to other  Zooskers on the site. You can also contact us on Twitter via a direct message or a Tweet if you have any questions or concerns about Zoosk. As we say, “Roses are red, violets are blue, you follow us, and we’ll follow you!”

Blog about online dating

Finally, blogging is a great way to let off some steam and write about your experiences. Who doesn’t have a personal blog these days? They can be so cathartic and therapeutic. There are so many online dating blogs and singles blogs that deal with issues like dating and romance, so why not join in on the dialogue and get your voice heard? The blogosphere is a great way to publicize your online dating profile, if you take the leap of faith and put yourself out there! Don’t worry, the web isn’t such a scary place. Embrace the future of love!

Photo credit: bobby-james

By Juliet O

You know in those beginning stages of getting to know someone (whether in real life or online) when you know you like this person but you’re trying to figure out if they like you? You don’t really know how they feel 100% (plus you’re shy) so you don’t really want to start talking about being “in a relationship”, plus you don’t know how to bring up the topic in the first place without being the weirdo who brings up the topic in the first place. Right? How existential and circular. I feel like I’m in a Charlie Kaufman screenplay. But seriously, how do you talk about relationships without talking about relationships? Specifically, how do you say things like “I want to be in a relationship with you but let’s talk about it” without sending out total creep or stalker or crazy person vibes?

Through my extensive first person research and years spent analyzing this very topic exactly, I know of some great methods for talking about relationships without talking about relationships. There are ways, as counterintuitive as it seems, to bring up the relationship chat without explicitly bringing it up. I suppose some people would view this as a failure of communication, but I think of it more as “communicating subtly” (i.e. self preservation). For the shy ones out there, here’s how you do it.

Talk about love, vaguely and generally.

What better way to segue into the relationship chat than to talk about love? Rather than being all “So what are we?” you can simply talk about your feelings and hopes and desires. This is an ingenious way to talk about a potential relationship, because you can give very concrete and specific opinions you have on love and then ask for affirmation or denial. If you get affirmation, great, perhaps you have more courage now to move forward and explicitly state your wants. If you get denied, then you know that you should probably stop wearing your heart on your sleeve and move on. Like? “They say that the moment you meet someone you realize you could love, you know it. Do you agree?” Hint.

Bring up a scenario in a movie/novel/play/music video that mirrors your situation.

There are millions of instances in popular culture where this very emotional conundrum appears. Uncertain love is everywhere, so find a situation that sort of mirrors your own and bring it up and see what your person has to say. For instance, if I was totally in love with my friend but he didn’t realize it, I’d bring up the movie Some Kind of Wonderful (1987) and say something to the effect of, “I feel sort of like Mary Stuart Masterson’s character in that movie.” And then I’d look at my guy and see if he starts shying away uncomfortably or if he looks into my eyes and tells me that he wants to be with me forever.

Make your person listen to a really romantic love song, inch closer to them, and see how they respond.

This one works every time. So you are feeling crazy romantic toward someone but you’re sort of getting mixed signals and you want to see once and for all if they’re into you that way or just want to be friends? Pop a love song (something super cheesy like “True” by Spandau Ballet) while you’re alone together, sitting on the couch maybe, and then move closer to them and see what happens. Maybe you should make an entire playlist in case things start going really, really well. If they’re not into you, they’ll get awkward and move away. If they’re into you, they’ll put up with your advances, and then who knows what will happen.

Talk about past relationships, but not in a nostalgic way.

If you really want this thing you have with someone to turn into a relationship, another way to bring up the relationship chat is to talk about past relationships. Talk about how your relationships developed, how you knew it was love, what you did in the beginning of that relationship when things were uncertain, and then cautiously move the conversation toward your situation with this new person. Again, if they’re not having it, they’ll change the subject and you can move on with your life. If they start talking to you about their relationships in return, this is perfect timing to bridge the topic of the possibility of a new relationship, between the two of you.

Talk about how you want to avoid dating people who aren’t on the same page as you.

If none of the above approaches sound like they’ll work for you (like if your person is totally dense and doesn’t respond well to hints), then maybe you need to be more direct. How can you be more direct without being entirely direct? Why not just bring up how you hate people who string you along or lead you on and then look at them accusingly? This approach might not work for everyone, but it’s sure to bring the skeletons tumbling out of the closer if your person is really, in fact, leading you on. Who, if they are leading someone on, can stand there innocently as someone is essentially going off on people who lead people on, and then staring accusingly?

I hope these tips help. Obviously the best advice is just to be direct, but I understand that it’s not always easy and sometimes we need a temporary crutch before we go back to being the honest, earnest people we are.

Photo credit: zabara_tango

By Juliet O

If you let it out of its cage, jealousy is the green-eyed monster that can and does cause irreparable damage to your relationship. A little bit of jealousy can be cute and even healthy. You should care if you see your partner flirting with someone else at a bar, but you shouldn’t get into a bar fight. But when it rages out of control, jealousy can damage your relationship with your partner, your friends, your family, and worst of all, yourself.

Fundamentally, jealousy is an insecurity: an inability to trust another person to be truthful to you. At its heart, jealousy stems from a lack of trust. Because jealous people don’t trust that their partners will act honestly, they attempt to coerce their partners with controlling, manipulative, and angry emotions. Nobody enjoys being manipulated or controlled, so often times, jealous behavior has the opposite effect than the one it intended: you end up pushing people away.

It makes sense that the closer you get to someone the more susceptible your relationship might be to issues of jealousy. The closer you get to someone, the more vulnerable you get and the more you have to lose if this person steps out of your life. As you fall in love, you are letting your defenses down and opening yourself up to be hurt by someone. But love means that you have to trust that the other person won’t hurt you and won’t break your heart. If they love you, they won’t. If they love you, they’re also opening themselves to that same level of vulnerability. While the stakes get higher, you and your partner are both on the same team. But jealousy assumes that both parties aren’t on the same team, that there’s a power dynamic, that one person stands to win if the other person loses. This is no way to love. Jealousy is unhealthy and destructive. It is everything that love is not.

How can we control jealousy in relationships? How can we live free of jealousy, let go of our insecurities, and love openly? I posed this question to our Zoosk Community, and the responses I received were thoughtful, accurate, and full of wisdom and truth. If you need advice on how to control your jealousy, look no further than these tidbits of wisdom from our Zooskers:

“Jealousy does stem from insecurity. I think it’s more about how we act when we feel jealous that matters than the idea of trying NOT to be jealous. It’s been my experience that the more we try to NOT feel one way or another. It’s a hard balance to walk, but I think we just need to learn to recognize it when we feel jealous and to keep it at a reasonable level. I also think it’s critical to talk with your significant other when things make you feel jealous. To explain (in a non-confrontational manner) that you feel jealous and explain why you feel that way. Make it clearly understood (if the behavior the jealousy stemmed from was reasonable) that you’re not wanting them to change the behavior but simply sharing your reaction to it so they understand where you’re coming from.” -SemperTry

“I don’t like being jealous, and I am working on it as well. If someone breaks that trust with me, then I do not know what I will do. I have a hard time trusting people. My last relationship, I was jealous and was possessive and controlling. I do not want to be that same person if I were to be with somebody else. It is a horrible feeling to be jealous and have insecurities. Everybody has insecurities but it’s up to you to control them, and establish that trust and do not break it.  I feel if I continue to grow as a better person for myself, and feel good about it, then it would maybe work out better in my relationships. Again, trust is a huge deal.” -Reana

“I think that jealousy is normal to a point, then it grows irrational. If you are going to be in a healthy relationship, there needs to be a measure of trust. Both people need to be able to go out with their friends, both male and female, and just do their own thing. Then it makes it that much more exciting to see the other person later on. You get to tell each other the stories of what you both did. And you don’t have to go separate ways all the time. Going out together with friends is good, too. Just not good every single time.” -Artsydoodlebug88

“Jealousy can manifest even if there is not a lack of trust or no insecurity involved. I myself have felt that form of jealousy. I don’t know if you can have a love relationship and never feel any type of jealousy. It sounds strong and noble to say you are not a jealous person and feel no jealousy for any reason, but personally I would have to question the deepness of my woman’s love for me if I flirted around and showered other girls with attention while not showing my woman an equal amount of attention at least, and she didn’t feel a scrap of jealousy that her man gave more attention to other women than to her.” -Voice Guy

“I think jealousy is a human feeling that should be one of the seven deadliest. Furthermore I think jealousy stems from someone having the ability to cheat on their partner their selves. Or perhaps they do not have a fair amount of self esteem or confidence. Meaning if someone is doing something I do not like as in a behavior I probably have that behavior myself. I may be to a greater or lesser degree but it is there. So, it is my belief when someone is jealous they cannot be trusted themselves. I hold to the belief that the more mature a person gets and the more secure they are in themselves they will lose the penchant to exhibit jealous tendencies.” -Chefboy

It seems that Zooskers agree that jealousy is a negative force on relationships and has the power to destroy them completely. Our Zooskers also agree that jealousy stems from insecurity and lack of trust. Rather than controlling people with jealous behavior, we should all try to be more mindful of our own issues. Treat jealousy at its source. Look into your own mind and ask yourself where your insecurities come from. Recognize that your jealousy has more to do with your insecurities than it does with your partner’s behavior. The path to overcoming jealousy is inside you and no one else!

Photo credit: Nifty