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
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

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 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

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?

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

By Juliet O

Why do we search for love? I might as well ask you why the sun shines or why water is wet. We don’t always know why we search for love; we just do it. Perhaps the only answer to such a complex question is simply “because.” Most of us hope that one day we will find someone we love who will love us back, with whom we can grow with in an affectionate, positive relationship of the sort that fairy tales describe as “happily ever after”. We don’t really question why. We feel an almost subconscious drive, and in our search most of us encounter a lot of false alarms, dead ends, and failures before finding the person who makes all our struggles worth the effort.

I recently posed to our Zoosk community a question, “Why do you search for love? What are your personal reasons for continuing along the path towards relationship fulfillment?” The answers I received were a surprising and poignant study on the depths of the human heart. It seems that our community is a romantic bunch, and they’re looking for love because, in the words of one Zoosker, “I am looking for hope.” Here’s what some of our other Zooskers had to say. Get out your Kleenex.

“My life would not be as happy without love, and I know I need some kind of romantic love and intimacy to feel content, but other than that, I suppose I search because someday, I hope to really find the puzzle piece that I have yet to grasp my fingers around!” -Carly

“I myself am fine being alone but it’s instinctual to want to connect. Humans by nature are communal. Most of us just want to connect with others. We want to share our lives with someone because it brings purpose for our being.” -Brian

“Looking for love is more about finding someone worth sharing all of these wonderful and beautiful things in life with at a level that friends just can’t. Not to mention there’s nothing like coming home to the open arms of someone special when you think you’ve had more than you can take.” -Shannon

“‘I’m looking because life is too short to waste away. It’s best shared with someone special who fills in the gaps. Someone to share the little things and big things with. Someone to laugh and joke around with… someone who will for no reason smile and out of the blue rock your world just because it feels good. Someone to be himself and you be yourself. What more can you ask for??? Love is special and should be shared with that someone.” -Angelina_Ace95

“I’m looking for love because I want that special connection. I want to be some gal’s man and for her to be my gal.” -Jason

“My reasons are to have someone to connect with, especially emotionally and mentally. I do not think you can find that in this world a lot, but it’s rare also. I definitely miss every little thing about being in a serious relationship, the hugs and kisses, the falling asleep together, being your natural self around someone totally different from you, it’s an amazing feeling. The main thing is I want to have someone that I can be myself completely, and we both can receive what we want from the other person equally and respectfully. I want to be in love, that real love.” -Reana

“My reasons? In some way I’m not entirely sure… I guess it’s for that feeling of warmth of having another person around. I guess love to me is what happiness is. To see the one you love’s smile once more, there is nothing more wonderful than that. I would do anything, to have that feeling again. That is my reason to be here. In the hope of finding someone who would smile everyday for me.” -fight_for_freedom_12

“Taking a drive to admire fall color, or Christmas lights, or what have you without someone is just really not worth the bother. Cuddling is simply impossible without someone to share it with, I’ve had nobody to give a foot rub to since she left and it’s driving me nuts. I also miss having somebody around whose back needs scratching. Not having an outlet for this stuff is much harder than I anticipated, nobody to send camera phone pics of flowers or blue sky, nobody to share the little details of our days. It’s enough to make a guy take up blogging even if nobody reads it just to get it out!” -rollerdave

“Loneliness would have to be the most heartbreaking experience one can go through. I believe that it is a very slow and painful death. The desire to share and connect with another is intense. Essentially the longing to share a meal, conversation, laugh, drink, cuddle…perhaps more is a drive that rages in the pit of out subconscious whether we like it or not.” -pip_squeak

“Looking for my other half gives me insight into people, them and myself. It lets me see the bright and dark side of so many people, the grey areas and how they all tie together and work. In an odd way, it helps me see how bad habits or bad intentions can be used for good things.” -S H

“I have always dreamed of making a family, being a father, being a husband, etc. It’s been one of my long term goals since I was sixteen years old. I was never one for ‘casual flings’. That sort of thing always seemed like a waste of time, energy and emotion to me.” -Jes

“I look for love because its just one of those beautiful things you can’t replicate. You can’t force it and you can’t do it alone.” -Lascial

Everyone searches for love for different reasons. Some of us don’t want to be alone. Some of us want someone to share our experiences with. Some of us like the security of having someone there who will stand by us no matter what. Regardless of our reasons, the drive or desire for love is something that is innate to the human experience and is as complicated as the emotion of love itself.

Photo credit: aussiegall