Posts Tagged Dating and Romance
Go on and have yourself a good cry
By Juliet O
The next time you find yourself heartsick and glum, please do yourself a favor and have a good cry. Your friends might tell you that he or she isn’t worth wasting tears over, but you’d probably yourself more harm to keep the tears in rather than just to let them out.
Crying may indicate, on the emotional level, that something is wrong. But did you know that the act of crying can actually be good for both your physical and emotional health? Conventional wisdom has stated for years that crying can be good for you, and recently, scientific research has also come to support that claim. (more…)
Add comment November 17, 2009
Like a moth to the flame
By Anne B
Anytime that we experience something painful in our lives our intuitive reaction is to avoid it. If a surface is hot, we instinctively remove our hand before we get burned. We might even avoid approaching a potential love interest because of the anxiety we feel about starting that initial ice breaker conversation. However psychologists are saying that some problems just “are” and trying to make them disappear might not be the answer. (more…)
Add comment November 16, 2009
Love, versus the “idea of being in love”
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. (more…)
Add comment November 13, 2009
When it comes to love it’s worth a try
By Anne B
Once upon a time a young woman in her early-mid twenties with stars in her eyes moved to a charming little city called San Francisco. Naturally when single and living in San Francisco with a cute little apartment, what better accessory to your lifestyle could you find than a scooter? Not just any scooter, a midnight blue Vespa, 200 cc’s, with a tan suede seat. She had dreams of sunny Saturday afternoon rides spent scooting across the Golden Gate Bridge. Sigh, all too picture perfect.
Then finally it happened. She got a parking ticket. Although her girl-meets-scooter experience was slightly tarnished and it set her back 70 dollars, she looked optimistically passed it. She focused on how amazing those new bomber leather Marc Jacob pumps would look riding her blue stallion.
I don’t have the heart to tell her that just around the corner she is in for another, and slightly more serious, setback. This time she’ll have an accident on a slippery rode and have to repair a broken rear view mirror. In spite of a few lingering scratches from the slip she will be fine, but her rattled nerves will make it just a little more difficult to rationalize eating noodles again for dinner in order to pay the insurance bill she’ll have to hand over to Geico on the first of the month.
Such is life. The tragic heroine of our story saw a beautiful Vespa and without knowing what was in store or considering the possible implications of her investment she threw herself whole heartedly into the decision she made. Although it may not have been the most practical of choices, and even poses potential danger, she was determined that it was the right fit for her. Shouldn’t loving it and having an intense desire to see it work out be enough? (more…)
Add comment November 10, 2009
In love, remember to check your baggage at the door
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? (more…)
Add comment November 9, 2009
5 online dating fears and how to overcome them
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. (more…)
3 comments October 28, 2009
How to talk about relationships without talking about relationships
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.
Add comment October 22, 2009
Vote Zoosk for Best Facebook App in Mashable’s 3rd Annual OpenWeb Awards
Mashable’s 3rd Annual OpenWeb Awards are open for user submitted nominations and votes. Last year, Zoosk won an OpenWeb Award for Best Dating and Romance site. This year, Dating and Romance is no longer a category, so Zoosk is up for overall Best Facebook Application! We’re excited for the opportunity to win this category, so help us out with your nominations and we will love you forever (and ever and ever).
How do you nominate Zoosk for Best Facebook Application? Simply go to the Best Facebook Application nomination landing page. Make sure you are logged into Mashable via your Facebook username and password (to vote, you must log in via Facebook Connect). Once you’re on the nominations landing page, type “Zoosk” into the field for “Best Facebook App”. Then hit “Submit”. You’re done. Beautiful.
Nominate us, and then tell your friends to nominate us. We love you dearly. Please love us back? 
Add comment October 19, 2009
Zooskers weigh in on jealousy and how to prevent it
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.
1 comment October 17, 2009
The importance of being earnest
By Juliet Ohai
The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines the word earnest as: “a serious and intent mental state”. What does earnestness mean in connection to our personal relationships? We can view earnestness as our sincerity in relationships, our honest decision to really be ourselves. In a nutshell, our earnestness reflects our ability to open ourselves up in relationships and put ourselves out there — even if it means revealing our vulnerabilities. It is our conscious decision never to lie about ourselves or present ourselves falsely to those we love.
Part of the process of being in love means that we must let go out our fears and struggles. Love means baring your soul to another person. How do we do this? Naturally, it’s not always easy. The process takes time, trust, and commitment.
Perhaps we don’t open ourselves up right away. In fact, in the beginning, before we really grow to know another person and before we can trust our judgments when it comes to that person, perhaps it’s not so wise to bare our souls without hesitation. But once we decide that we are going to commit, that the leap into a serious relationship is one that we want to take, then we must also take the leap of faith and relinquish any fear we might have of being completely vulnerable.
5 comments October 12, 2009
