Posts Tagged local singles
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
Why don’t you give yourself a boost today?
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? (more…)
2 comments November 4, 2009
Having a positive outlook will get you more dates
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. (more…)
Add comment November 2, 2009
It’s my Zoosk in a box
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? (more…)
2 comments October 30, 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
Promoting your online dating profile via social media tools
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. (more…)
1 comment October 27, 2009
