Today we’d like to present a special success story from Lexie and Robert from Texas! Robert and Lexie both sent us letters sharing their wonderful news. Their enthusiasm, love, and appreciation for each other shows in every word they’ve written. Robert calls Lexie “the most beautiful girl in the world” and Lexie describes Robert as “the most amazing guy in the world” — and that’s how it’s done, folks… that’s how love is supposed to feel.

Let’s start off with Robert’s letter:

I made a Zoosk profile on a Thursday because I was bored. The moment I finished the profile, I saw the most beautiful girl in the world on my homepage. I winked at her. Later that day she responded, “Hi, how are you?” I paid $10 for Zoosk coins so I could email her. On Friday we exchanged numbers, and the next day we arranged to meet.

On Monday, I met the most beautiful girl in the world. Early in the date, a little girl told her that she loved her dress. I agreed. We played two rounds of putt putt golf, and raced in go-karts. A small girl tried to run us down during the race. At the arcade, we played Guitar Hero… I won. Then we played air hockey… she won. She drove me back to my car because I’m a moron and I parked really far away. Before I got out, the most beautiful girl in the world asked, “Do I get a hug?” I said “Of course.” And I hugged her.

The most beautiful girl in the world lives with her parents, because she goes to community college. The next Saturday, I saw her again, and was allowed to pick her up. The most beautiful girl in the world and I went to a sandwich shop. She eats slower than me. I told her I liked her dress… then realized that she was wearing pants and a top. Not a dress. She laughed at me because I’m a moron. I loved it. We played four games of bowling. She won the first, third, and fourth games. Before the second game, I walked up to her and said, “Ok… If I win this one, I get a kiss.” The most beautiful girl in the world agreed. And she tried to beat me. Almost did. I won that game by 4 points. After looking at the scoreboard she walked toward me, pouting, and said, “I lost.” I smiled, wrapped my arms around her, and said, “I won.” We kissed for the first time in a bowling alley surrounded by screaming children. It was amazing.

The most beautiful girl in the world and I planned to see each other the following Friday. But I couldn’t wait. I asked if I could see her sooner. So on that next Wednesday, the most beautiful girl in the world came to visit me. We got ice cream. She got bubblegum flavor, and had a hard time eating it because of the gumballs. It was adorable. We played another game of bowling… she won. I brought the most beautiful girl in the world to my dorm because I wanted to sing to her. I got my guitar, and tried to sing “Realize”. She laughed at me, because I sang the wrong words. I loved it. I sang her a song I wrote. The most beautiful girl in the world told me it was cute. She told me she liked it. And I kissed her. As we lay in each others arms, not moving, scarcely breathing, I did something that I was terribly afraid to do. I told the most beautiful girl in the world that I love her. And she told me that she loves me, too.

The most beautiful girl in the world owns my heart. Her name is Lexie. I like to call her Lexiebear. I met Lexiebear on Zoosk dot com. And I can still barely believe it.

We were touched by the spirit of romance in Robert’s letter. When we read the letter Lexie sent us, we found it to be equally adorable. Read what Lexie had to say about Robert, below.

I’m Lexie and my wonderful boyfriends name is Robert, who is the most amazing guy in the world.

I decided to take a friends advice about joining Zoosk.com. The next day Robert winked at me and I was immediately attracted to him so I messaged back. Over the next few days we started emailing and texting each other back and forth and before I knew it we were planning our first date.

I was so nervous about meeting him because never in my life have I tried online dating site; I was completely out of my comfort zone. But as soon as I saw him and he smiled at me, all of my fear just melted away. On our first date we decided to play mini golf which we both horribly suck at but at least we sucked together. Through the date we rode go carts, played arcade games, and my favorite our air hockey game. At the end of our date I was so scared about how to the date was going to end I figured I couldn’t go wrong with at least asking for a hug. He responded with words that will always make me smile “Of course”.

The following Saturday we went on our second date, we decided to go bowling. After winning the first game, Robert said to me “If I win this game, I get a kiss.” And I agreed, I really did try to beat him but at that point I could care less and I was definitely glad that I lost that round. So we had our first kiss in the middle of a chaotic bowling alley, but in that moment nothing else mattered to me it was only him and me, and I loved every minute of it.

After our second date I couldn’t wait to see him again so I decided to drive up to his dorm. When I got there he took me to get ice cream and on campus bowling. The moments that happened next are the ones I will always hold close to my heart. He took me back to his dorm, when he then picked up his guitar and started signing “Realize” by Colbie Calliat, then he sung me a song he had written himself. I have never in any of my past relationships had a guy sing to me and look at me the way Robert did that day. His words touched my heart and soul. In that moment we kissed and layed in the comfort of each others arms. He then lifted my face up towards his and said the 8 letter, 3 word phrase we all want to hear someone say to us, He said “I love you” for the first time. And without a doubt in my mind I said “I love you too”.

I remember when he said to me “why is a beautiful girl like you still single?” The reason I was still single was because I was scared of to let anyone all the way in because of the fear of getting hurt. With Robert something inside me told me to take a chance on opening myself up to love. And I’m so glad I did because now I have the most amazing guy in the world to call mine. I have fallen head over heels for him; I swear to love him forever and always. I still can’t believe that I owe it all to Zoosk.com and my best friend for convincing me to join.

Congrats Lexie and Robert! We wish the two of you all the happiness in the world. If you have your own Zoosk success story to share, send it to us with a photo of you and your loved one and we’ll send you an Amazon (or other online retailer of your choice) gift card as a token of our congratulations.

Dear Zoosk,

My name is Becca and I wanted to tell you all about my success story. I became a premium member on Dec 10th. The very same day I met and started talking to my match. It was made in HEAVEN. He and I talked for a while, and we realized in the process that we have everything important in common.

Chris and I are looking for the same things in a friend and a lover. We only lived an hour and a half away from one another. I was planning on moving down where he lives and I thought that I would check out some of the singles before I left. Man am I glad I did! We wanted to thank ZOOSK for being there, so we could meet!!! We were meant to meet, as we both just became members, neither of us has looked at matches since that first day!!!

Here is a picture of Chris and myself with little Emma. Hope you had a great New Year!

Sincerely, Rebecca

By Juliet O

Yippee! Bring out the bells, the whistles, and the fancy trays of mouth-watering, calorie-laden sweets: the end-of-year holiday season has finally arrived! As this year (and decade) draws to a close, Zoosk wishes you the happiest holiday festivities and brightest spirits and cheer that this season has to offer.

Holidays bring with them a host of holly jolly things, from parties to paid vacation to presents, but our absolute favorite aspect of the holiday season will always be the unique excitement of holiday dating. The holiday merriment rubs off on even the most incorrigible Scrooge. Who doesn’t love an eggnog, peppermint schnapps, and mistletoe-fueled adrenaline rush?

But we know that desite the amazing rewards, holiday dating is not without its challenges. We want to make the entire process of dating during this time of year as easy on you as possible. We want you to stop stressing out and focus instead on enjoying yourself. To help our Zooskers navigate and cultivate their love lives during this special time of year, we’ve created the Singles Guide to Surviving the Holidays, a downloadable PDF that you can save on your desktop and read at your own convenience, that answers some of your most pressing questions about the rules of holiday dating.

Our guide includes holiday dating tips from relationship experts, gift-giving ideas for singles, holiday dating trends and much more. We surveyed thousands of Zooskers to find out what they really want this holiday. From what kind of gifts they wanted to what kind of date they wanted, we asked for the scoop.

Did you know that the majority — 68% — of Zooskers say that they’re looking for a long term relationship this holiday season? This guide gives you tips on how to meet someone this winter, and whether you’re just looking to land a holiday party date or if you’re on the market to establish something lasting, there are tidbits in this guide for every kind of dater.

We’ve also got expert advice from dating gurus like Rich Santos of Marie Claire, Julie Spira the best-selling author of The Perils of Cyber-Dating: Confessions of a Hopeful Romantic Looking for Love Online, and iVillage relationship columnist Sherry Amatenstein.

What holiday season is complete without a healthy dose of materialism? In our surveys, we asked Zooskers what kind of presents they hoped to receive from dating partners, and our Holiday Guide reveals their answers. We were pleasantly surprised to discover how completely unmaterialistic our user base is! Overwhelmingly, you guys responded that you were just hoping for a simple hug or kiss from your date this season.

Now that the question of what to get your partner is answered and filed away, you can focus on the more important thing: how to land said partner in the first place.

Since the week before Christmas marks the busiest time of year on our site, your chances of landing dates this month are statistically the highest of the year. This means that you should go out and work everything you’ve got. Flirt shamelessly. Message as many Zooskers as your greedy heart desires. The numbers show that people are looking for romance this month, so it doesn’t hurt to put yourself out there. If you’re still feeling shy, look in the mirror and repeat to yourself, “Live boldly.” Other people, we’re sure, are doing the same.

What are you waiting for? Go give yourself the best gift of all this holiday season: love.

For more facts and tidbits from our Singles Guide to Surviving the Holidays, download the guide here on our site! Good information is a shame to waste. Tell all your friends about it — heck, tell your date about it — and go out there and take advantage of the happiest time of the year!!!

By Juliet O

Even though winter is cold and gray, there are plenty of fun icy-weather dates to be had during the months of December through February! Instead of putting on those extra five to ten pounds to keep your body warm in the frigid chill, why not meet someone sexy who raises your body temperature without raising your utility bills (and body mass index)? So turn on your computer and go to Zoosk, where 40 million singles are all putting their icy fingertips to the keyboard this season with one solitary purpose: meeting someone to hibernate with during the short days and loooong nights with (wink wink) of winter. Kiss seasonal depression good-bye with a hot winter date.

Play in the snow: go skiing or snowboarding, take a winter walk, or play it simple and build a snowman together!

Pretend that the snow is actually sand and instead of being outside in negative ten degree weather you’re actually at a Caribbean island. Just kidding. You don’t have to pretend that snow is anything other than snow, because a white winter can actually be really romantic and gorgeous in its own right. Why else are ski vacations such a popular pastime for couples? Winter walks can be lovely if you’re bundled up and holding hands, mitten to mitten. You can give each other Eskimo kisses as snowflakes drift from the halcyon sky and land in your lashes as you gaze into each others eyes. My favorite winter walks are those that occur at dusk when the moon is big and bright, the streetlamps are lit like a vintage movie, and the stars in the night sky reflect and dance off the snow. When you get home, where it’s cozy and warm, you can make hot cocoa and cuddle together on the couch while watching DVDs of romantic winter movies like It’s A Wonderful Life and March of the Penguins.

Dine together on hot foods that are typically associated with the winter season

Imaging great winter foods, a few variables come to mind. First, the food should be warm in temperature to put some warmth in your system, like chicken noodle or savory lentil soup. To protect you through the cold, the food should help you break a sweat — feel free to add the spicy hot peppers! Second, the food needs to be satisfying and comforting — something that lifts the spirit in times of chill — so think of foods that make you feel good, like cheesy casseroles, roasted game, Christmas puddings, and steaming hot gingerbread. Mmmm. And experiment with winter produce! Winter doesn’t mean that your only food choices are cabbage and potatoes — did you know that avocados, citrus fruits like grapefruits and oranges, bananas, greens like chard and kale, and root veggies like turnips, celery roots, and rutabagas are in season during the winter months too? A root veggie gratin, sauteed greens, and a desert of banana cream pie. Mmm.

Veg out at home — nothing is more romantic than being snowed-in with your romantic somebody

Snow day? Can’t go to work because there’s a foot of snow in your driveway? Or, say you live somewhere it doesn’t snow, like California — why not pretend you’re snowed in with your sweetie, even if you aren’t? The best part about winter is that you have an excuse to be a homebody. “It’s too cold; we can’t go out.” Who says you need to leave the house to have a good time? Get in front of the television with your partner and watch that marathon of Lost DVDs. Order Chinese take-out and spend the night playing board games against one another. Spend a quiet night at home reading together. Go on a baking marathon with your date and get all your Christmas cookies out of the way in one go — making sure to use the heart-shaped cookie cutter for the cookies you bake for one another. Whatever you need to do to make your winter romantic, you can do it without leaving the house.

Find your winter love on Zoosk today!

Some other articles you might be interested in:
Having good testimonials might get you a date
Are you in love with the idea of being in love?
When it comes to love it’s worth a try

photo credit: the wicked soul

By Juliet O

Using Zoosk’s Community boards is a great way to get noticed.

Of course, Zoosk’s mission is to introduce you to singles in your local area and hook you up with potential dates, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make friends or join our Community discussions while you’re at it. During moments of downtime during your maelstrom of flirting, check out our Community boards for relevant dating tips, fun conversation, and online dating success stories from our users.

The Community is also a fun way to get to know people from all over the world. If you’re not opposed to a long distance relationship, you can even meet people on the Community boards. We’ve had it happen before! All you have to do to go to a person’s profile from the Community pages is click on their photo. The right hand side of a Community post also shows if a Zoosker is currently online, how many posts they’ve made, and how long they’ve been on Zoosk. To message a person from the Community boards, all you need to do is click the little envelope icon below their photo. See below.

Whenever you make a community post, it goes on your status feed as well, as Zoosk’s status feed that gets shown to Zooskers within your search criteria. Yet another way to get noticed — not a bad deal! We also host contests on our Community for coins and other prizes. Who doesn’t love prizes? I hope you’re convinced now that Community participation is fun! Of course, it’s totally up to you, but we’d like to to know that it’s an option, and a good one at that.

What’s a testimonial? A testimonial is a short blurb from a friend or acquaintance that says something positive about you. We publish third party testimonials on Zoosk because testimonials are a great way to give potential matches more information about you from people who know you. It gives someone who looks at your profile the chance to hear something nice about you from a third party. Because this information is coming from a source who knows personally, it gives credibility to the fact that those great things they say about you are true. It’s uncouth to brag openly about yourself, so why not have one of your friends brag about you on your behalf?

If you’re wondering about how the get testimonials for your Date Card, read on for step-by-step instructions! Log into Zoosk and go to your Date Card tab. At the very bottom, below where you enter your favorite music, movies, and books, you’ll see bold text that says “Testimonials”. If you do not have any testimonials, the page will say, “You do not have any testimonials” and show a link that asks you to invite your friends to offer testimonials for you. Click this link to get testimonials! It will take you to the next page, screenshot below.

Clicking “Invite friends to get more testimonials!” will take you to a page that looks like the image above. You can invite people from your email networks, like Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Windows Live, and AOL. All you need to do is enter your email login name and password and click “Continue.” Zoosk does not store any passwords. This feature uses the same technology that helps you locate contacts on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or other social networking sites and doesn’t store any of your or your contacts’ information. Once you click continue, the screen will pull up a list of your contacts. You can choose specific contacts and send them a request. Your contacts do not have to be Zoosk or Facebook members.

You can also invite people straight from Facebook. On the same page there will be a link, highlighted in yellow, that says “Invite your Facebook friends to write testimonials for you”. Click that link and you will see your Facebook friends pop up on the next page. Simply choose which friends you’d like to get testimonials from.

If you would prefer not to upload your Facebook friends or to load your Gmail or Yahoo Mail contacts, or if you use a different email server that isn’t listed on the sidebar, you can invite  your friends to send their testimonials by directly typing in their email addresses into the system. We then automatically send testimonial invites to their inbox. Click the link that says “or type in your friends email addresses” and you will be directed to a page that looks like the screenshot below.

Put your emails in the blanks and click “Invite Now.” You’re done!

Once they’ve written a testimonial for you, you’ll get an email at the same address you use to log into Zoosk (if you use Zoosk as a FB application, this will be at the same email address you use to log into Facebook). This is the same email where you get all the other Zoosk notifications, like notices about messages and updates on our site. The email will look just like the screencap below.

The testimonial your friend submitted will be now on your Zoosk Date Card. It will be on the side bar, to the left of your personal information. See?

Doesn’t it look great? Now potential Zooskers will be able to read awesome tidbits and compliments about you from your friends. What better way to advertise what a great catch you are than to get a testimonial from someone who knows you already? Get a testimonial today!

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.

Human beings are the only living creatures who actually weep. While weeping is uncommon among the living species, the act of shedding tears is universal when it comes to the human experience. No person on Earth has not, at some point in their lives, cried. Babies are born crying and, from the time we’re born, we cry throughout our lives for a variety of reasons. We often find ourselves crying because of grief, pain, loss, stress. We cry at movies when something sad or sentimental happens on the big screen. Songs, books, and even newspaper articles can make people cry. That we can cry at not only our own sorrows but the sorrows of other people as well shows something quite amazing about the human ability to empathize and feel for our fellow creatures.

While tears are often associated with a feeling of sadness, we also cry out of happiness, pride, relief, and elation too. Looking back at some of the happiest and proudest moments of your life, did you feel your eyes dampen with emotion and that tight constricted feeling in your chest that indicates a wave of tears? I have definitely cried out of happiness, and it felt wonderful. In our lives there aren’t many things that happen that make us so joyous that we cry, so those moments and those tears seem extra special.

These aforementioned examples show how crying is emotionally good for you. Tears are a good indicator that your emotions are working and that you even have emotions in the first place. So how, you might wonder, is crying so good for our physical health as well?

Crying is scientifically proven to be good for your body because it releases stress hormones from the bloodstream. Prior to crying, your body’s levels of stress hormones is at a peak. We often cry because our bodies can’t physically handle all those stress hormones pumping through its system.

This is why we usually feel a pervasive sense of relief — what they call the calm after the storm — after a bout of tears. Compared to the heightened emotions that lead to tears, that relief feels soothing and wonderful. There is a scientific explanation for this. When we cry, we actually release stress hormones. Those hormones are regarded as toxic and bad for the body — high numbers of them can even cause brain and cellular damage — and when we cry, our tears contain large amounts of those hormones. In effect, we’re washing those hormones out of our bodies via our tear ducts. As more and more stress hormones get released, the calmer we feel: hence, that wonderful feeling of quietude one experiences after a good long cry.

I think we should promote a National Cry Day! With all the tax payer dollars spent on public health issues, particularly because of the high incidence of heart disease and high blood pressure (that scientists and doctors know are aggravated by things like stress and distress), don’t you think that a National Cry Day might be good for not just our bodies and our souls, but also society as a whole? Rather than telling yourself to keep a stiff upper lip, let yourself release the toxic and negative stress from your body and your mind.

photo credit: laradana

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.

I feel confident saying most of us try to avoid pain when it comes our way. Our natural response to any kind of unpleasant thought or feeling is to resist even having those thoughts or feelings to begin with. For example, you’ve just broken up with someone. The thoughts and feelings you are faced with are by no means happy ones. In fact, you’d like to avoid having them altogether. So you stop going to the bar where you first met. You stop eating chicken parmesan, because it was your lost lover’s favorite dish. It hurts to be reminded, so you take a small detour when these things cross your path. If you are honest with yourself, you know that many times negative situations and the negative feelings they bring about cannot be avoided.

Nobody enjoys feelings of loneliness, but what do you do about it? You could try to fight the feelings. You could do whatever it takes to make them go away. These feelings are coming from somewhere though. So if you try to make them go away, you might just be providing yourself with a momentary distraction. It feels good and it helps for a while, but the root of it is still there.

What most people don’t realize is that we have primary and secondary emotions. I’ll use an example to illustrate what these are. Let’s say you have a million things to do and you are getting pretty stressed out about it. That’s the primary emotion. The secondary emotion would be that now you are getting upset because you hate feeling stressed out. But by focusing on the painful part of the situation, your stress level, it prolongs the stress.

What if, brace yourselves now, you just accepted the primary emotion for what it is? If you’ve broken up with someone your primary emotion might be some form of heartache. It’s normal to have feelings of loneliness, sadness, or longing, but you tell yourself you need to make those feelings go away. This puts all of the focus on the negative feelings. Why not just accept them, and remind yourself that these feelings are a normal and natural part of life? Everyone experiences similar ups and downs at some point and, as strange as it may sound, it’s ok to feel that way.

This doesn’t mean that you have to like what is happening, and it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be looking for ways to improve the current situation and move past it. It means that you have control of the impact that this emotion is going to have on your life. You can isolate it for what it is. Kabat-Zinn is a scientist, author, and meditation thought leader, who teaches that when you are mindful of these feelings, you can label them for what they are, and then focus your energy on other things. It’s a practice of identifying the negative situation, but ending your emotional involvement with it there. After all these are just thoughts and they don’t need to dictate your next move.

My friends, I’m no moth. I see the flame for what it is. I can’t change it. I can’t make it go away, but I won’t get burned.

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
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