Category Archives: Relationships

Dating, Getting Your Ex Back, Relationships, Sex

Why Being Together Is Not the Same as Being Present

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Why Being Together Is Not the Same as Being Present

The strange loneliness of a room with two people in it.

“Attention is the beginning of devotion.”

— Mary Oliver

It is entirely possible to spend an enormous amount of time with someone and have almost no contact with them. Couples do this for decades. They share a bed, a kitchen, a calendar and a mortgage; they are in each other physical company for thousands of hours a year; and they are, in every sense that would matter to either of them, alone. Nothing has gone wrong. There has been no betrayal and no fight. There has simply been a slow, unremarked substitution of proximity for presence, and the substitution is so nearly invisible that most people never realize it has occurred.

The confusion is understandable, because togetherness looks like presence from the outside and it is measurable in a way that presence is not. You can count the evenings spent in the same house. You can point to the holiday, the shared meals, the fact that you are together nearly all the time. What you cannot count, and what the counting therefore quietly obscures, is whether either of you was actually there.

Proximity Is the Easiest Thing to Mistake for Intimacy

Physical presence has an enormous advantage in this confusion: it is legible, it is verifiable, and it feels like it ought to be enough. If you are in the room, you are there. If you are there most evenings, you are a present partner. This logic is so intuitive that it is almost never examined, and it allows an entire relationship to be conducted on the basis of a metric that measures none of the things that actually matter. Two people can accumulate a thousand hours of shared physical space in a year and generate, in all that time, perhaps forty minutes of genuine mutual attention.

The reason this passes unnoticed is that both people are usually doing it, and a shared illusion is much harder to see through than a private one. Neither party feels neglected, exactly, because neither party is expecting more, because the current arrangement is what being together has come to mean for both of them. It is only when something forces the question – an illness, a crisis, an enforced week without devices, a conversation that unexpectedly goes somewhere real – that both people feel a strange jolt of recognition, and understand that the thing they just had for twenty minutes was something they have not had for years and had entirely forgotten was available.

The Specific Loneliness of Being Unseen by Someone Nearby

There is a category of loneliness that has nothing to do with being alone, and it is considerably more painful than solitude. A person by themselves in a quiet house is not necessarily lonely at all. But a person sitting beside someone they love, saying something that matters, and watching that person eyes move to a screen is experiencing something that a person alone never has to endure – which is the direct, immediate evidence of not being chosen in the very moment they reached out.

This is why so many people in long relationships describe a loneliness they feel guilty about, since by every external measure they are not alone. But the guilt is misplaced. The loneliness is entirely rational, because it is not a response to an absence of people. It is a response to an absence of attention from a person who is right there and could give it, which is a fundamentally different and much sharper experience. Solitude is neutral. Being unattended to by someone within arm reach is not neutral at all. It carries a message, and the message is received in full, no matter how kindly the person delivering it would have wished it otherwise.

Why Shared Activity Is Not the Same as Shared Attention

Couples who sense that something has gone thin very often reach for activity as the remedy. They plan more. They book the trip, take up the hobby, fill the calendar with things to do together, on the reasonable assumption that more shared experience will produce more connection. Sometimes it does. Very often it does nothing at all, and the failure is bewildering, because they did everything right and came home feeling exactly as they had before.

The reason is that activity is not attention, and can in fact be an extremely effective way of avoiding it. A busy shared schedule provides a continuous supply of things to focus on that are not each other – the itinerary, the logistics, the meal, the view – and it is entirely possible to fill a week with wonderful experiences during which neither of you looks directly at the other for more than a few seconds at a time. The couples who recover something usually do so not by adding activity but by removing it: by sitting in a room with nothing to do and no device to reach for, which is uncomfortable, which is meant to be, and which is the only condition under which two people who have drifted have any real chance of finding each other again.

Presence Is a Decision, Not a Location

The distinction that saves relationships is the recognition that presence is something you do, not somewhere you are. It has a behavioral signature that is entirely observable: you put the thing down, you turn your body, you look, and you stay looking while the other person finds their way to the end of a thought. It does not require a great quantity of time, and this is the genuinely good news, because most people cannot supply a great quantity of time. Fifteen minutes of real presence outperforms an entire weekend of proximity, and it does so reliably, and anyone can find fifteen minutes.

What it does require is that you stop counting the wrong thing. Stop measuring the hours in the same house and start asking, honestly, when the last time was that you gave the person you love your entire and undivided attention for a sustained stretch, with nothing else running. For many people in long and outwardly happy relationships, the honest answer is months, and the honesty of that answer is uncomfortable precisely because nothing is wrong and everything is quietly thinning. You are not failing to spend time together. You are spending a great deal of it, and almost none of it is landing, and the difference between those two things is the difference between a relationship that lasts and one that also stays alive.

 

đź’ˇ Key Takeaway

Proximity is the easiest thing in the world to mistake for intimacy, because it is legible and countable in a way that presence is not – you can measure the evenings in the same house, and that measurement quietly obscures whether either of you was actually there. Two people can accumulate a thousand hours of shared space in a year and generate perhaps forty minutes of real mutual attention, and the reason this passes unnoticed is that both are doing it, and a shared illusion is far harder to see through than a private one. What it produces is a specific loneliness that is sharper than solitude, because being unattended to by someone within arm reach carries a message that being alone never delivers. The instinctive remedy – more shared activity, more plans, more trips – frequently fails, since activity can be an extremely effective way of avoiding attention while appearing to invest in it. What actually works is the recognition that presence is a decision rather than a location: you put the thing down, you turn, you look, and you stay looking. Fifteen minutes of that outperforms a weekend of being in the same room, which means the resource you are short of was never time.

 

 

Dating, Getting Your Ex Back, Relationships, Sex

Why Divided Attention Feels Like Rejection

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Why Divided Attention Feels Like Rejection

What the people you love actually experience when you are physically present and mentally elsewhere.

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”

— Simone Weil

There is a particular expression that crosses a person face when they realize you have not been listening. It is not anger. It is something quieter and more damaging than anger – a small withdrawal, a slight retreat, a decision made somewhere below the level of thought that this is not a person to whom the real thing can be said. You will usually miss it entirely, because you were not looking. And that is the whole problem. The moment in which someone discovers that your attention is elsewhere is the moment they begin, in a way neither of you will ever discuss, to expect less of you.

Most people believe that divided attention is a minor discourtesy, roughly on the level of interrupting or being a few minutes late. It is treated as a manners problem, a matter of etiquette, something to apologize for lightly and move past. But this badly underestimates what is actually happening. When you half-listen to someone who is speaking to you, you are not committing a small rudeness. You are transmitting a message about their relative importance, and you are transmitting it in the only currency that the human nervous system fully trusts. They may forgive the words you said. They will not fail to register where your eyes went.

This report examines why divided attention lands as rejection rather than as inconvenience, what the brain of the person being half-listened-to is actually doing while it happens, and why the damage accumulates invisibly across years rather than announcing itself in a single confrontation. Understanding the mechanism will not make you a perfect listener. It will, however, make it considerably harder to keep believing that being in the room is the same thing as being there.

Tip 1: Understand That Attention Is Read as a Statement of Value

Human beings are exquisitely calibrated to detect where other people are directing their focus, and they have been for as long as there have been human beings. Long before language existed, the direction of another person gaze was one of the most important pieces of social information available – it told you what they were interested in, what they considered dangerous, and crucially whether they considered you worth watching. That machinery has not been retired. It is still running, quietly, underneath every conversation you have, and it does not care about your explanations. It reads the raw data. It notices, with total reliability, whether you are actually looking.

This is why the excuse that you were listening, that you can repeat the last sentence back, that you were only checking one thing, never quite lands. You are arguing with the conscious mind of the person in front of you while their far older and far more confident subsystem has already reached its verdict. To that subsystem, attention is not a courtesy that can be offered or withheld without meaning. Attention is the behavioral evidence of value, and there is no other evidence it fully trusts. What you say about how much someone matters to you is information. Where you point your focus is proof, and when the two conflict, nobody in the history of the species has ever believed the words.

Tip 2: Recognize the Difference Between Hearing and Being Received

It is entirely possible to hear every word a person says and leave them feeling completely unheard, and this fact confuses a great many well-meaning people. They defend themselves by demonstrating retention. I heard you, they say. You said the thing about your sister. And they are telling the truth – the audio was captured, the information was logged, and if tested they could reproduce it. What was missing was not the data. What was missing was the sense, on the other side, of having landed somewhere. Of having been taken in by another mind rather than merely recorded by one.

Being received is a different experience from being heard, and people can tell the difference instantly even though they usually cannot articulate it. Reception has a texture. It shows up in the question you ask next, in the fact that you paused rather than immediately responding, in whether your face changed when the difficult part arrived. These are small signals, and they are involuntary, and their absence is what someone means when they say that talking to you feels like talking to a wall despite the wall clearly having heard them. If your listening consistently produces accurate summaries and no sense of connection, you have been performing a transcription service rather than a relationship, and the person on the other side has almost certainly noticed long before you did.

Tip 3: See Why Partial Attention Is Worse Than No Attention

There is a counterintuitive truth buried in the psychology of attention, and it is worth sitting with because it overturns a defense that most people rely on. If you told someone plainly that you could not talk right now, they would be mildly disappointed and they would go away intact. Nothing would have been damaged. But if you allow them to begin – if you let them start the story, invest in it, reach for the vulnerable part – and then they discover mid-sentence that you were scrolling, you have done something considerably more harmful than a refusal. You have let them open, and then you were not there when they arrived.

This is why partial attention produces a wound that outright unavailability does not. Unavailability is a boundary; it can be respected and worked around. Partial attention is a betrayal of an implied contract, and it happens at precisely the moment the other person had lowered their guard. Over time the effect is that people learn not to lower their guard around you. They keep the story shorter. They give you the headline instead of the substance. They stop offering the parts that require care. And you will experience this as your relationships becoming somewhat simpler and less demanding, and you will not connect it to anything, because the withdrawal is silent and nobody will ever tell you that you were the reason.

Tip 4: Notice What Your Face Is Doing While Someone Talks

A great deal of what people call listening is actually a facial performance, and it is a performance that fools almost nobody. The nodding that is slightly out of rhythm with the sentence. The smile that arrives half a beat late. The eyebrows that go up in an expression of interest that the eyes underneath do not support. Human beings are extraordinary readers of micro-expression, and the gap between a genuinely engaged face and a politely simulated one is not subtle to the person watching it, even if they never consciously register what tipped them off. They simply come away with a feeling. The feeling is that you were not really there.

The uncomfortable implication is that you cannot fake this. You can fake the words, the responses, the follow-up questions pulled from a mental script of what an interested person would ask. But you cannot fake the involuntary movements of a face that is genuinely tracking another mind, because those movements are generated by the tracking itself. The only reliable route to looking like you are listening is the tedious and unavoidable one of actually listening. This is bad news for anyone hoping to optimize the appearance of presence while retaining the freedom to think about something else. It is good news for anyone who was hoping the solution might be simpler than they feared, because it is: there is only one, and it works every time.

Tip 5: Understand the Cumulative Arithmetic of Small Dismissals

No single instance of divided attention ends a relationship. This is precisely what makes the pattern so dangerous, because each individual event is defensible and none of them is worth a confrontation. You were tired. It was a busy week. The message was genuinely urgent. Any one of these is true, reasonable, and forgivable, and the person you love will indeed forgive it, and they will forgive the next one, and the one after that. But forgiveness is not the same as no effect. Each small dismissal deposits something, and the deposits do not evaporate simply because nobody made a scene about them.

What accumulates is not resentment, exactly. It is something closer to recalibration. Slowly, across hundreds of unremarked moments, a person adjusts their expectation of what you are available for. They stop bringing you the small things because the small things were the ones that got the half-attention. Then they stop bringing you the medium things. And by the time you notice that your partner or your child or your closest friend does not really tell you anything anymore, the recalibration is years deep and there was never a single event you could point to as the cause. The relationship did not break. It was slowly taught, by evidence you supplied daily, to expect less.

Tip 6: Watch for the Moment Someone Stops Bothering

There is a specific and observable moment in the decline of a relationship that almost everyone misses, and it is not an argument. It is the moment a person begins a sentence, glances at you, sees where your attention is, and quietly abandons the sentence. Never mind. It was nothing. It can wait. They will say this lightly and mean it to sound like nothing, and it will be the single most important thing that happens in your relationship that week. Because what has just occurred is not a postponement. It is a withdrawal of the thing they were about to give you.

The reason this moment is so easy to miss is that it costs you nothing at the time and appears to be a kindness. They have let you off. They have decided not to make demands. And so you take the reprieve gratefully and go back to whatever you were doing, and you register no loss whatsoever, because the loss consists entirely of a thing that did not happen. If you learn to catch this moment – to hear the abandoned sentence, to notice the never mind, to put the phone down and say tell me anyway – you will be recovering the exact material that most relationships are quietly hemorrhaging. The never minds are not nothing. They are the relationship, in the act of being withdrawn.

Tip 7: Stop Treating Attention as an Unlimited Resource

People tend to talk about attention as though it were free – as though it could be given generously to everyone, spread across a dozen inputs, offered to whoever happened to be in front of them without any real cost. This is comprehensively false, and the falseness of it is the root of a great deal of relational damage. Attention is strictly finite. It is more finite than money and considerably more finite than time. Every unit of it that goes to a screen, a worry, a work problem, or a background hum of low-grade anticipation is a unit that is not available to the person speaking, and no amount of good intention creates more of it.

Once you accept this, the moral character of divided attention changes. It stops being a lapse and becomes an allocation. When you half-listen to your child while managing a work thread, you have not failed to concentrate; you have made a distribution decision, and your child has received the smaller share, and they know it. The value of framing it this way is that allocations can be examined and altered in a way that vague failures of focus cannot. You can ask, honestly, who is currently receiving the largest portion of your finite attention, and whether that distribution matches what you would say your priorities are. For most people the two answers are so far apart that the question is uncomfortable to hold. It is also, for exactly that reason, worth holding.

Tip 8: Accept That You Cannot Compensate Later

A common and comforting belief is that attention is fungible across time – that the presence you failed to give on a Tuesday evening can be repaid on a Saturday, that the weekend away will settle the account, that a big gesture can offset a hundred small absences. This belief is very widely held and almost entirely wrong. Attention is not a debt that can be serviced retroactively, because the thing it delivers is not a quantity of hours. It is the experience, in a specific moment, of mattering to someone who was right there. That moment does not queue up and wait to be honored later. It happens or it does not.

This is why the grand compensatory gesture so often lands strangely and leaves the giver bewildered. You booked the trip, you cleared the calendar, you made the effort – and somehow the gratitude was thinner than you expected. What you have missed is that the person was not short of trips. They were short of being seen on an ordinary Wednesday when they said something small and hoped you would look up. The ledger you are trying to settle does not accept the currency you are offering. There is no substitute for the thing itself, delivered on time, in the unremarkable moment where it was actually wanted, and the sooner you stop believing you can pay it off in arrears, the sooner you can start paying it at all.

 

đź’ˇ Key Insight

Divided attention does not register as a minor discourtesy in the mind of the person receiving it; it registers as a statement about their value, delivered in the only currency the human nervous system fully trusts. Long before language existed, tracking where another person directed their focus was how we determined whether we mattered to them, and that machinery is still running underneath every conversation you have. It does not accept your explanations. It reads where your eyes went. This is why hearing every word and still leaving someone unheard is entirely possible, and why partial attention is in fact more damaging than honest unavailability – unavailability is a boundary that leaves the other person intact, while partial attention lets them open and then is not there when they arrive. The damage is never a single event. It is an accumulation of small, individually forgivable dismissals that slowly teach a person to expect less of you, until they begin abandoning sentences mid-way with a light never mind that costs you nothing and takes from you everything. And it cannot be repaid later with a grand gesture, because what attention delivers is not a quantity of hours but the experience of mattering to someone in a specific ordinary moment – a moment that does not queue up and wait to be honored on a more convenient day.

 

Fast Action Steps

These steps are designed to make your own attentional habits visible to you, and to recover the material that the people closest to you have quietly stopped offering.

Action 1: Count the Never Minds

For one week, keep a private tally of every time someone close to you begins a sentence and then abandons it – the it can wait, the never mind, the it was nothing, the visible decision not to continue. Do not intervene at first; simply count, and note who it was and what you were doing at the time. Most people are shocked by the number, and more shocked by the consistency of the trigger. The purpose is not to induce guilt but to make visible a category of loss that has been invisible precisely because it consists entirely of things that did not happen. You cannot recover what you cannot see, and until you count them, the never minds are simply part of the background noise of your life.

How many sentences were abandoned in your presence this week, and what does it tell you that you had never noticed a single one of them before you started counting?

 

Action 2: Audit the Allocation Honestly

Sit down and write out, as a rough percentage, where your finite attention actually went yesterday – not your time, your attention. How much of it went to work, to screens, to a background hum of worry, to genuinely being present with a person. Then, on the same page, write out the priority order you would say out loud if someone asked what mattered most to you. Put the two lists side by side and look at them without softening the comparison. The exercise is not designed to make you feel bad; it is designed to convert a vague sense of being stretched into a specific and therefore correctable set of allocations.

What is the distance between the way you actually allocate your attention and the way you would describe your priorities, and who in your life has been living on the wrong side of that gap?

 

Action 3: Give One Person Fifteen Undivided Minutes

Choose one person you have been half-listening to and give them fifteen minutes of genuinely undivided attention – phone in another room, no task in progress, no waiting for a gap in which to say your own thing. Do not announce that you are doing an exercise. Simply be entirely present, ask the second question rather than only the first, and let the silences sit. Then notice two things: how difficult it was to sustain, and how noticeably different the other person became. Most people find both results startling, and the second one is the more important, because it reveals how much of the person you thought you knew has been withheld from you.

What did the person in front of you say or reveal in fifteen minutes of undivided attention that they had not said in months, and where has that material been going all this time?

 

Recommended Reading

These books examine attention as a psychological and relational resource, the mechanics of being genuinely heard, and the ways in which modern life has quietly degraded our capacity to be present with the people we love.

Recommended reading:

Reclaiming Conversation by Sherry Turkle

You’re Not Listening by Kate Murphy

The Lost Art of Listening by Michael P. Nichols

Stolen Focus by Johann Hari

The Relationship Cure by John M. Gottman

Hold Me Tight by Sue Johnson

The Art of Communicating by Thich Nhat Hanh

 

 

Relationships

The Moments Your Phone Costs You Without You Noticing

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The Moments Your Phone Costs You Without You Noticing

An honest accounting of what the device in your hand is quietly taking from the people in the room.

“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”

— Herbert A. Simon

The phone is rarely the villain of anyone personal story. Nobody looks back on a decade and says that the great tragedy was the device. And this is exactly why the phone is so effective at what it does, because it does not take anything in a way that would register as a taking. It does not demand an hour. It takes four seconds, several hundred times a day, from moments that were never going to be defended because nobody thought they were worth defending. And it takes them from the exact moments in which relationships are actually made.

It is worth being precise about the accusation here, because the culture has grown tired of vague complaints about screens. The problem is not screen time in the aggregate, and the problem is not that phones are bad, and the problem is certainly not that people who use them are weak. The problem is much narrower and much more specific: the phone consistently wins the small moments, and the small moments turn out to be where connection lives. The large moments – the anniversary, the crisis, the serious conversation – are well defended. Nobody scrolls during those. What gets taken is the unguarded middle, and the unguarded middle is almost all of it.

This report is an accounting. It examines the specific moments the phone takes, the mechanisms by which it takes them, and why the loss is so difficult to perceive from the inside. It is not an argument for throwing your phone away, which almost nobody will do and which would not be necessary if the actual dynamics were understood. It is an argument for knowing precisely what you are trading, so that if you continue to trade it, you are at least doing so on purpose.

Tip 1: Identify the Micro-Moments That Are Being Taken

Ask someone where their phone costs them and they will usually describe a large scene: the family dinner, the date, the evening spent side by side in silence. But these are not really where the losses occur, because most people have some rule about the dinner table and most people know that the date requires effort. The real losses are far smaller and far more numerous. The forty seconds while the kettle boils and your partner is standing there. The two minutes in the car outside the house. The moment your child walks into the room and hesitates before deciding whether now is a good time. The stretch between waking and getting up, when a person lying next to you might have said something true.

These micro-moments look like nothing, which is precisely why they lose every contest they enter. They have no name, no occasion, no importance that would justify defending them. But they are the natural habitat of everything unplanned and unguarded that a relationship produces – the offhand remark that turns out to matter, the confession that arrives sideways, the question a child only asks when the moment feels casual enough. Serious conversations are usually not scheduled. They emerge, and they emerge specifically from the low-stakes interstitial time that the phone has now colonized completely. Fill every gap and you do not simply lose the gaps. You lose everything that used to grow in them.

Tip 2: Understand That the Phone Wins Because It Is Designed To

It is important to be clear that this is not a failure of character, because framing it as one leads people directly into a cycle of shame and resolution and relapse that accomplishes nothing. Your phone is the product of enormous quantities of talent and capital directed at a single objective, which is to be more compelling than whatever else is available to you at any given moment. It is variable, unpredictable, and personalized. It offers a small reward on an irregular schedule, which is the single most reliable pattern for producing compulsive behavior that has ever been identified. It is, in the most literal sense, engineered to win.

The practical consequence is that you should stop trying to beat it with willpower, because willpower is exactly the resource it was built to defeat, and it has a substantially better track record than you do. The people who successfully protect their attention almost never do so by resisting the urge to check. They do so by arranging their environment such that the urge does not arise – the phone in another room, the notifications off, the device face down and out of reach. This feels like cheating, and it feels like an admission of weakness, and it is neither. It is simply the recognition that a fair fight between your intentions and a machine optimized to interrupt them is not, in fact, a fair fight, and the only winning move is to decline it.

Tip 3: Recognize the Cost of the Phone That Is Merely Present

A phone does not have to be in use to be doing damage, and this is one of the more unsettling findings in the research on divided attention. A phone sitting face down on the table, untouched, silent, is enough to measurably reduce the quality of a conversation and the sense of closeness that both people report afterwards. It does this without anyone looking at it. Its mere presence signals that the conversation is interruptible – that there exists, at all times, a queue of other people and other demands that might at any moment take priority – and that signal is enough to keep both parties slightly guarded.

What this means in practice is that the common compromise – I will bring my phone but I will not look at it – does not actually work, and the good faith behind it does not save it. The person across from you is not reassured by your restraint, because they are not responding to your behavior; they are responding to the presence of a device that represents everyone else in your life sitting quietly at the edge of the table. Removing the phone from the room is a categorically different act from resisting it, and it is the only version that reliably produces the effect you want. The distinction is inconvenient. It is also, unfortunately, real.

Tip 4: Notice the Half-Second Glance and What It Broadcasts

The glance is the smallest unit of this problem and by far the most common. Someone is talking, the phone illuminates, and your eyes flick down for a fraction of a second and then return. You have not read anything. You have not replied. You have barely broken stride, and you may genuinely believe that nothing happened at all. But the person speaking saw it, and what they saw was not a neutral event. They saw their sentence lose a contest to a notification whose contents you did not even know.

This is what makes the glance so much more corrosive than its duration suggests. A long absence from a conversation at least implies that something important pulled you away. The half-second glance implies something far worse: that the mere possibility of something, of anything, arriving on a screen outranked the person in front of you mid-sentence. It is a very small act with a very large message, and it is delivered dozens of times a day to the people who are closest to you, because they are the ones you feel safest doing it around. The intimacy that makes them tolerate it is the same intimacy that makes it land. Nobody keeps score out loud. Everybody keeps score.

Tip 5: See How the Phone Removes the Boredom That Relationships Need

One of the least discussed casualties of the smartphone is boredom, and its loss has consequences for intimacy that almost nobody anticipated. Shared boredom used to be a normal condition of being with another person: waiting for a train, sitting in a car, lying awake, walking somewhere slowly with nothing particular to say. These were not empty spaces. They were the places where conversation had no choice but to eventually happen, because there was nothing else to do and two people can only sit in silence for so long before one of them says something real.

That pressure has now been entirely relieved. Whenever a silence threatens to become uncomfortable enough to produce speech, both people simply reach into their pockets, and the discomfort dissolves, and the conversation that was about to be forced into existence never occurs. This is why couples can spend an enormous amount of time in the same room and feel that nothing is happening between them. Nothing is. The generative discomfort of shared emptiness has been engineered out of their lives, and with it has gone the mechanism by which people who have said everything obvious finally get around to saying the non-obvious thing. Boredom was not the enemy of intimacy. It was one of its more reliable suppliers.

Tip 6: Understand Why You Cannot Feel What You Are Losing

The most insidious feature of this entire dynamic is that the cost is imperceptible from the inside. You never experience the conversation that did not happen. You never sit with the disappointment of the story your daughter did not tell you, because from your perspective there was no story – there was simply a quiet evening in which everyone was on their devices and nothing went wrong. The losses in this domain are composed entirely of absences, and absences do not knock. They do not arrive with a receipt. They simply fail to occur, and life proceeds, and you feel more or less fine.

This is why the phone is so rarely identified as the culprit even by people who suspect that something in their closest relationships has gone thin. There is no evidence, because the evidence consists of things that never came into existence. The only way to perceive the loss is to run the experiment – to genuinely remove the device from a series of ordinary moments for long enough that the moments start producing things again, and then to observe what appears. People who do this consistently report the same reaction, which is not gratitude but a kind of shock: a startled recognition of how much had been going missing, silently, for years, in a life that had felt entirely normal.

Tip 7: Watch What Your Phone Use Is Teaching Your Children

Children read attention with extraordinary sensitivity, and they read it long before they can articulate what they have read. A young child who is speaking to a parent whose eyes are on a screen does not think in terms of screen time or digital habits. They register a much simpler thing, which is that the thing in the hand is more interesting than they are. They will not tell you this, and they may not consciously know it, and it will nevertheless become part of the deep architecture of how they understand their own worth. The research on parental phone use consistently finds children escalating their behavior in an attempt to reclaim attention, then eventually giving up.

The second and less obvious transmission is instructional. Whatever you do with your attention in front of your children is being installed in them as the norm for how attention works. If they grow up watching a parent who cannot complete a conversation without glancing at a device, they will not merely feel less important. They will learn that this is what listening looks like, that this is the ordinary quality of presence one person offers another, and they will carry that template into every relationship they ever have. You are not simply distracted in front of them. You are teaching them, with total consistency and considerable authority, exactly how much attention a human being is owed.

Tip 8: Trade Deliberately Rather Than Drifting

The goal here is not purity. Almost nobody will give up their phone, most people genuinely need it, and a report that ends in an unrealistic prescription simply gets ignored and changes nothing. The goal is intentionality – the difference between a person who has decided which moments belong to the device and which belong to the people, and a person who has never made a decision at all and is therefore having it made for them, several hundred times a day, by an interface designed to make it.

Being deliberate means drawing a small number of hard lines rather than attempting a general improvement, because general improvements in this domain reliably fail. Choose the moments that actually matter and make them absolutely inviolable: the first twenty minutes after someone comes home, the meal, the bedtime, the car. Outside those, use the phone as much as you like without guilt. This is not a compromise so much as a recognition that a defended perimeter around the moments that generate intimacy is worth infinitely more than a vague and constantly failing aspiration to be on your phone less. Decide what the phone may have. Everything you have not decided about, it will simply take.

 

đź’ˇ Key Insight

The phone does not take the big moments, which is why it is so rarely identified as the thief. Nobody scrolls through the anniversary or the crisis. What it takes is the unguarded middle – the forty seconds at the kettle, the two minutes in the car, the hesitation of a child deciding whether now is a good time – and the unguarded middle turns out to be the natural habitat of everything unplanned and unrehearsed that a relationship produces. This is not a failure of character, because the device is the output of enormous talent and capital aimed at being more compelling than whatever else is in front of you, and a fair fight between your intentions and a machine engineered to interrupt them is not a fair fight. Worse, the phone does damage even when untouched, because its mere presence signals that the conversation is interruptible, so the good-faith compromise of bringing it but not looking at it does not work. It has also removed shared boredom, which was never the enemy of intimacy but one of its most reliable suppliers – the generative discomfort that eventually forced two people to say the non-obvious thing. And the cost is invisible from the inside, because it consists entirely of conversations that never happened and therefore never presented themselves to be missed.

 

Fast Action Steps

These steps replace vague intentions to use your phone less with specific, defended perimeters around the moments where connection is actually generated.

Action 1: Map the Moments You Are Actually Losing

For three days, note every time you reach for your phone while another person is physically present with you. Do not judge the reaching, and do not try to stop it yet – simply record the context. Who was there. What was happening. What immediately preceded the reach. Most people discover that their phone use is not evenly distributed at all but clusters heavily around a handful of predictable moments, and that those moments are almost always transitional and low-stakes: the arrival home, the lull in conversation, the beginning and end of the day. You cannot defend a perimeter you have not surveyed, and three days of honest observation will show you exactly where the wall needs to go.

Which specific recurring moments does your phone consistently win, and what was happening in those moments before the device existed to fill them?

 

Action 2: Establish Three Inviolable Zones

Choose exactly three moments and make them absolute – not aspirational, not usually, but genuinely and unconditionally phone-free, with the device physically in another room rather than merely face down. Three is deliberate: it is small enough to actually hold and large enough to change the texture of a week. Good candidates are the first twenty minutes after anyone comes home, the evening meal, and the last half hour before sleep. Do not attempt a general reduction in phone use, which almost always fails and leaves you feeling defeated. Defend three moments completely and let the rest of your day go however it goes.

What began to happen in the three moments you defended that had not been happening there for years, and what does that suggest about the moments you have not yet defended?

 

Action 3: Run the Removal Experiment

For one full week, remove your phone entirely from the physical presence of your household in the evenings – not silenced, not face down, but in a different room with the door closed. Notice the discomfort in the first two days, which will be considerable and which is data rather than a reason to stop. Then notice what starts appearing around day four: the conversations that begin from nothing, the things your partner or children say when the silence gets long enough to require filling. Write down what emerged. The purpose is to make visible, through direct experience, the material that has been quietly failing to appear in your life for years without ever announcing its absence.

What came into existence during the week your phone was out of the room, and how long had those things been failing to happen without you noticing a single one of them?

 

Recommended Reading

These books address the engineering of distraction, the effect of devices on intimacy and conversation, and the practical work of reclaiming attention from technology designed to capture it.

Recommended reading:

Alone Together by Sherry Turkle

Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport

Stolen Focus by Johann Hari

How to Break Up with Your Phone by Catherine Price

Irresistible by Adam Alter

The Shallows by Nicholas Carr

The Attention Merchants by Tim Wu

Indistractable by Nir Eyal

 

 

Relationships

How to Give Someone Your Full Attention

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How to Give Someone Your Full Attention Again

The practical work of rebuilding a capacity that most adults have quietly lost.

“The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

Full attention is not a virtue. It is a skill, and it is a skill that most adults once possessed and have since lost through disuse, in the same way that anyone can lose the ability to sit quietly with a difficult book or to walk somewhere without listening to anything. This distinction matters enormously, because virtues are matters of character and skills are matters of practice. If your capacity to be fully present with another human being has degraded, you have not become a worse person. You have become an unpractised one, and unpractised is a condition with a known remedy.

The remedy, however, is genuinely difficult, and it is worth saying so plainly rather than pretending otherwise. Rebuilding the capacity for sustained undivided attention will feel, at first, physically uncomfortable. There will be a restlessness in the chest, an urge to reach for something, a sense that the conversation is going too slowly and that you could be handling three things at once. This discomfort is not a sign that the exercise is wrong. It is a withdrawal symptom, and it is precisely what you would expect from a nervous system that has been trained for several years to expect a new stimulus every eleven seconds.

This report sets out the practical work: what full attention actually consists of at the level of behavior, how to rebuild the tolerance for it, what to do with the mind while another person is speaking, and how to sustain the capacity once you have it rather than losing it again within a fortnight. None of it is complicated. All of it is demanding. And it will do more for the people you love than any amount of insight into why they feel unheard.

Tip 1: Start by Removing the Competition, Not by Trying Harder

The instinct, when you realize you have not been present, is to resolve to concentrate more. This almost never works, and the failure is not a failure of sincerity. Concentration is a finite and rapidly depleting resource, while the things competing for your attention are inexhaustible, patient, and specifically engineered to win. Any strategy that depends on you out-willing them will hold for a day or two and then quietly collapse, at which point you will conclude that you are simply bad at this, which is both untrue and demoralizing.

The alternative is to change the conditions rather than the effort. If the phone is in another room, you do not have to resist it. If the television is off, you do not have to ignore it. If you have finished the task rather than pausing it, the task is not humming in the background consuming a portion of your mind. Presence is far less about summoning focus than about eliminating the things that are eating it, and the eliminating is mercifully mechanical. It requires no character at all. It requires only that you do it before the conversation starts, because once someone has begun to speak, the negotiation with your own distraction is already lost.

Tip 2: Rebuild Your Tolerance for a Slow Conversation

Undistracted conversation moves slowly, and a mind trained on high-frequency stimulation experiences that slowness as something close to physical discomfort. This is the part almost nobody warns you about. You will be sitting with someone you love, they will be telling you something at the natural pace of human speech, and you will feel an urgent, almost bodily need to speed it up, to finish their sentence, to check something, to do anything other than remain here at this intolerable tempo. That feeling is not boredom with the person. It is your nervous system objecting to an input rate it is no longer conditioned for.

The way through is straightforward and unpleasant: you sit in it, and you do not act on it, and you allow the discomfort to be present without letting it move your hands or your eyes. Over a few weeks, the tolerance genuinely rebuilds, in much the same way that a person who has not walked far in years can rebuild the capacity to walk far. The conversations begin to feel less slow, then simply normal, then eventually rich. But you must expect the initial discomfort and refuse to interpret it as evidence that you are not interested. It is not information about the person in front of you. It is information about the state of your own attention, and the state of your own attention is the thing you have decided to change.

Tip 3: Stop Preparing Your Response While They Are Still Talking

There is a form of divided attention that requires no device at all and is therefore almost never recognized as divided attention. It consists of listening to someone speak while simultaneously composing what you are going to say next – assembling the counterargument, the anecdote, the reassurance, the correction. From the outside it looks like attentive listening. There is eye contact, there is nodding, there is nothing to accuse you of. But you are not receiving what they are saying. You are scanning it for the hook on which to hang the thing you have already decided to say.

The tell, if you want to catch yourself doing it, is that you feel impatient for them to finish. A genuinely receiving mind is not waiting for a turn. It is following, and it does not know yet what it will say, because what it says will depend on what it hears. This is why the practice of deliberately not preparing – of allowing yourself to reach the end of their sentence with nothing ready – feels so exposed and so unnatural. You will have to think in front of them, and you may pause, and the pause will feel like a failure. It is not. It is the sound of a person actually considering what was just said, and to the one who said it, that pause is worth more than any answer you could have prepared in advance.

Tip 4: Ask the Second Question

Most conversations die at the first question. Someone mentions that work has been difficult; you ask what happened; they give a brief account; and then the exchange moves on, having satisfied the formal requirements of an interested response without going anywhere near the substance. The first question is polite. It is also, in practice, a way of closing a subject while appearing to open it. Everyone knows how to answer a first question in a manner that requires nothing further.

The second question is where the actual conversation begins, and it is the single most powerful and least used tool available to anyone who wants to be a better presence in someone life. What did that feel like. What was the hardest part. What did you do afterwards. The second question communicates something the first cannot: that you were not merely being courteous, that you actually want to know, and that there is room here for more than the summary. People are so unaccustomed to being asked a second question that it frequently produces a visible shift – a pause, a recalibration, and then something considerably more honest than what they had been prepared to offer. It costs you eight words. It is very close to the whole game.

Tip 5: Learn to Sit With Silence Instead of Filling It

A silence in a conversation is not a problem to be solved, and yet almost everyone treats it as one. The pause opens, the discomfort rises, and someone rushes in with a comment, a joke, a change of subject, a reassurance. The silence has been dispatched, everyone is more comfortable, and something has been lost that nobody will ever identify – because silences in conversation are not empty. They are where a person is deciding whether to say the next thing, the harder thing, the thing they were not sure they were going to say at all.

When you fill a silence, you are not being helpful. You are, without meaning to, closing a door that was in the process of opening. The person who was gathering themselves to say something difficult now has an easy exit, and they will take it, and neither of you will ever know what you missed. Learning to let a silence run for five seconds longer than is comfortable is one of the highest-return skills in the whole domain of human relationships, and it requires nothing except the willingness to be briefly uncomfortable. Say nothing. Keep your face open. Wait. What comes into that space, when you leave it open, is very often the actual reason they came to talk to you.

Tip 6: Give Presence a Shape Rather Than an Intention

A general intention to be more present will not survive contact with an ordinary week, for the same reason that a general intention to be healthier does not. Intentions that are not attached to a specific occasion lose, every single time, to the concrete demands that fill a day. The person who resolves to listen better to their partner and makes no other change will listen better for perhaps two evenings and then revert entirely, and will experience this as a personal failing rather than as the entirely predictable consequence of having made no structural change whatsoever.

Presence needs a shape – a recurring, specific, protected occasion where undivided attention is simply what happens. Twenty minutes after dinner with no devices. A walk on Sunday morning. The last ten minutes of the day with the phone in the kitchen. The particulars matter far less than the existence of a container, because a container converts an aspiration into a default, and defaults do not require willpower. This is not a cold or mechanical way to treat intimacy. It is the recognition that in a life full of relentless competing demands, the things that are not protected by structure do not happen, no matter how sincerely you wanted them to.

Tip 7: Practice Attention Where the Stakes Are Low

Trying to rebuild your capacity for presence exclusively in your most important relationships is a common mistake, and it fails for a predictable reason: those are precisely the conversations that carry the most emotional load, the most history, and the most defensiveness, which makes them the hardest possible training ground. Attempting your first serious attempt at undivided listening during a difficult conversation with your partner is roughly equivalent to attempting your first run as a marathon. The failure that follows will be taken as evidence that you cannot do this, when it is only evidence that you began at the wrong difficulty.

Practice instead on the low-stakes conversations, where nothing is at risk and the material is easy. The colleague describing their weekend. The neighbor talking about the roadworks. The barista, the delivery driver, the person on the phone from the utility company. Give them, deliberately, your entire attention for the ninety seconds the interaction lasts. Ask the second question. Let the silence sit. These interactions cost you nothing if they go badly, and they build the exact muscle you need. By the time you bring the skill back to the people who matter most, you will not be attempting something new under pressure. You will be doing a thing you already know how to do.

Tip 8: Expect to Lose It Again, and Plan for That

The capacity for full attention is not something you acquire and then own. It is closer to physical fitness than to knowledge, which means it degrades whenever it is not maintained, and it will degrade fastest during exactly the periods when you most need it – a stressful stretch at work, a hard month, a season of poor sleep. You will rebuild it, feel genuinely different, believe the problem is solved, and then find yourself four months later half-listening to your child across a table with a phone in your hand and no idea how you got back here.

The people who sustain presence over years are not the ones with more discipline. They are the ones who expected the backslide, noticed it early, and treated it as maintenance rather than as a moral collapse. Build in a check – a monthly moment where you honestly ask whether the containers you established are still holding, whether the phone has crept back into the meal, whether anyone has started abandoning sentences around you again. Catching the drift at six weeks costs almost nothing. Catching it at three years costs you a relationship in which someone has quietly stopped telling you things, and by then rebuilding the habit is the easy part. Rebuilding their willingness to bring you the real material is not.

 

đź’ˇ Key Insight

Full attention is a skill rather than a virtue, which means that if you have lost it you have not become a worse person but an unpractised one – and unpractised is a condition with a known remedy. The remedy is not to concentrate harder, because concentration is finite while the things competing for it are inexhaustible and specifically engineered to win; it is to change the conditions before the conversation starts, since once someone has begun speaking the negotiation with your own distraction is already lost. Expect the rebuilding to be physically uncomfortable, because a nervous system trained on high-frequency stimulation will experience the natural pace of human speech as something close to pain, and that discomfort is a withdrawal symptom rather than boredom with the person in front of you. The behavioral core is small and demanding: stop composing your response while they are still speaking, ask the second question rather than only the polite first, and let silences run five seconds past comfort, because a silence is not empty – it is where someone is deciding whether to say the harder thing. Give presence a protected shape rather than a general intention, practice where the stakes are low, and expect to lose the capacity again, because the ones who sustain it are not the disciplined but the ones who planned for the backslide and caught it early.

 

Fast Action Steps

These steps rebuild the capacity for undivided attention as a trainable skill, starting where it is easy and ending where it matters.

Action 1: Train on Strangers First

For one week, give your complete and undivided attention to five low-stakes conversations a day – the colleague, the shop assistant, the neighbor, the person on the phone. No screen, no preparing your reply, no glancing past them. Ask one genuine second question in each. These conversations cost you nothing if they go badly, which is exactly why they are the right training ground, and they will build the precise capacity you need without the emotional load of your closest relationships. Notice how strange it feels, how quickly the other person warms, and how tired you are afterwards. The tiredness is the point. It tells you how atrophied the muscle had become.

What did it reveal about the current state of your attention that five ninety-second conversations of genuine presence left you noticeably tired?

 

Action 2: Let Three Silences Run

In the next few days, identify three moments in conversation where a silence opens and you feel the familiar urge to fill it. Do not fill it. Keep your face open, keep looking at the person, and simply wait – five seconds longer than is comfortable, which will feel considerably longer than it is. Then observe what enters the space. In a meaningful proportion of cases it will be something the person had not planned to say and would not have said if you had rescued them. Write down what came, because it is the most direct evidence you will ever get of what your habitual conversational rescuing has been costing you.

What did people say in the silences you refused to fill, and how much of that material had you been unknowingly preventing for years by being helpful?

 

Action 3: Build One Container and Hold It for a Month

Choose one specific, recurring, protected occasion for undivided attention with one person who matters – twenty minutes after dinner, a Sunday walk, the last ten minutes before sleep – and hold it for a month without exception, with the phone genuinely in another room. Do not announce it as a project or make it heavy. Simply make it the default, so that it stops requiring a decision each time. At the end of the month, ask yourself what has changed in the relationship, and ask the other person too. Most people are startled less by the improvement than by how little effort a structure required compared to the years of failing intentions that preceded it.

What changed in a month of protected, undivided attention that years of sincerely intending to be more present had entirely failed to produce?

 

Recommended Reading

These books offer the practical mechanics of presence, listening, and attention – the training rather than the theory – alongside the research on what sustained focus actually requires in a world designed to prevent it.

Recommended reading:

You’re Not Listening by Kate Murphy

Deep Work by Cal Newport

The Lost Art of Listening by Michael P. Nichols

Nonviolent Communication by Marshall B. Rosenberg

Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John M. Gottman and Nan Silver

Reclaiming Conversation by Sherry Turkle

 

 

Dating, Getting Your Ex Back, Relationships

Is 2026 The Year You Find Your Soul Mate

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Finding Your Soulmate in 2026

Times change – and with it come inevitable changes we must make in our mindsets to formulate the best life has to offer from the times we’re in.

The year 2018 is different than the entire decade of the 70s – and so are the ways you might find your soulmate.

The ways we socialize are vastly different now, and if you’re going to find your soulmate in 2018, you need to know how the system works. You should also know what you’re looking for in a soulmate and what characteristics are deal breakers.

Meeting someone in a crowded bar is nearly a thing of the past. Now, there are meet-and-greet happy hours, where groups meet at a pre-decided location and interact with each other.

The people in the groups usually have something in common such as young-professionals or love-of-boating or traveling. So you’re going into a situation where people have the same or similar interests as you.

Online dating sites and mobile apps are extremely popular and can keep you from wasting your time on people who don’t really fit your lifestyle. There is usually a photo of the person on the site and a concise review of what type of person they are and which type they are looking for.

We live in fun and exciting times when it comes to the dating process and it’s easy to meet others with the intention of finding a true soulmate to spend the rest of your life with.

Some people don’t treat their pursuit of a soulmate seriously. Instead, the let fate or chance handle the task and what usually happens is they get into a relationship that’s not right for them – or spend many years alone.

It’s better that you take control of the situation and learn how to develop a strategy for actively finding your one true match in life. It takes understand, dedication and commitment to achieve those goals because not everyone gets to enjoy a lasting love like this.

But if you put forth the effort in figuring out the best way to present yourself to others and find the best people for your life, you’ll have a better chance of being able to leave the dating scene for good and begin life with a partner who fulfills you in almost every way imaginable.

What Does Having a Soulmate Feel Like?

A soulmate is defined as someone with whom you have deep feelings of partnership, including comfort, compatibility, love and trust. You may also have strong sexual or spiritual feelings for a soulmate and want to spend the rest of your life with this person.

If you’re lucky enough to find a soulmate in your lifetime, you should consider yourself fortunate. But, it takes more than luck these days to find someone who might fit that description for you.

You might have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince or princess. In this age of social media and technology that can bring people from all over the world into your living room via computer or other device, it seems that it would be easier than ever to find that person you want to spend the rest of your life with.

But there are also problems connected with having the world of dating brought to you. There’s so many soulmate possibilities to initially choose from you might become confused – or scammed – or it might take you forever to weed out the good ones.

You’ll know you’ve found your soulmate when you notice special signs that exist between you. For example, you may finish each other’s sentences or simply know by a look or mannerism what your partner is attempting to communicate.

You’re each comfortable with each other from the time you first meet. Being honest and vulnerable without fear that the other is judging you is paramount in soulmates. You may not see every issue or challenge the same, but you should have the same values and ambitions in life.

Learn everything you can about the search process for finding a soulmate today, know what you’re looking for and know what your deal breakers are. There are certain characteristics of every soulmate that will make you know you’ve found the one.

You Get to Maintain a Sense of Self

Your true soulmate will never attempt to change who you are. If you go into a relationship with confidence and happiness about whom you are and the other person begins to finds faults and constantly wants you to change – s/he is not the one.

When you find yourself beginning to believe the person’s vitriol as s/he tries to change you or erode your self-confidence, you’re giving away your personal power and letting h/her control you.

The person who’s manipulating you will feel great about how things are going, but for you it can be tragic. This form of self-betrayal can be heart-breaking and you may lose confidence in your ability to find a true soulmate.

Don’t give up. The person exists that will make you feel more alive than you ever have and ready to take on the world. As soon as you begin to feel less-than or uncertain about yourself because of something that was said or done, stop in your tracks and reassess your relationship.

Have a heart-to-heart talk, but if the feelings continue, take back your power by getting out of the relationship and know that this person is definitely not your soulmate. Too often, we get caught up in the excitement and enthusiasm of the beginning of the relationship and we don’t concentrate as much on what’s really going on between you.

The initial feelings can be powerful at first, but are destined to wane in the future because you’re not paying attention to the underlying messages. If your partner hits you, keeps you from your family and friends, is obsessive about where you are and what you’re doing and uses words and actions to make you feel you’re not important and loved – leave now.

It’s extremely rare for a person with a narcissistic personality to change. It’s best for you to shut down the relationship immediately before you get caught up in trying to change the person or to understand him/her.

The person you choose as your soulmate should have the ability to build you up, not bring you down – to nurture you and strengthen your sense of self and always increases confidence in yourself by words and deeds.

Constant Suspicions Are Laid to Rest

No longer do you need to worry about cheating because, deep in your heart-of-hearts, you know the person is true to you. And, you’ll no longer have to worry and keep asking if something is wrong or if he or she is happy.

You won’t need to question yourself about the decision to enter into this relationship. You know you’re not missing out on someone better – because you know you’ve got the best person for you.

When suspicions are finally laid to rest in a true soulmate relationship, you no longer live in fear that you’re not enough or feel a lack of trust. And, you won’t be looking at others and wondering if you made the right decision on your partner.

The answer will be clear – you were both meant for each other and you’ll know it. If you don’t know it for sure, step back and take another look. When you see it in a new light and know it isn’t really what you want, don’t waste time.

Get out of the relationship. When you’re excited and the love you feel for another person feels effortless, you’ll know you’ve found Mr. or Mrs. Right. Be completely honest and straightforward to show h/her that you’re reliable, dependable and responsible.

Without complete trust of each other, there’s the risk of second-guessing what s/he means with words or reactions. You may also find yourself neurotically keeping tabs on the other person and even expecting that s/he will betray you.

Lack of trust may cause you to check his/her emails, texts and social media sites to track what he’s doing and saying to others. The best solution to lack of trust is to talk it over with the person and tell him/her of your concerns.

Together, you can find a suitable way to put the doubts aside and continue to enjoy your relationship. Trust in the other person should also involve being able to tell him/her confidential information and have complete confidence that s/he won’t share it with others.

You should also make it a point not to disclose confidential information your partner discloses. Trust is one of the most important building blocks of you and your soulmate’s relationship because it leads to the ultimate strength in the partnership – respect.

The Spark Never Dies

Those wonderful feelings you get when butterflies play in your stomach and the excitement when you see your soulmate are part of the fun of being in love. Those feelings should never die – it might ebb and flow, but it will never completely go away.

Even the best of relationship fires need some kindling once in a while. That means you need to guard against indifference in a relationship. At first everything is new and exciting and it’s difficult to understand how this heart-racing happiness could evolve into familiarity and discontent.

When you have a true soulmate, the spark doesn’t actually die, but turns into something rare and wonderful. You sincerely have feelings of love and respect for your soulmate and are attracted to him/her, but there are also feelings of security and a connection you don’t feel with anyone else.

There’s a danger in becoming so complacent with the new feelings of connectedness in your relationship that you may let the fun of spontaneity and passion subside. All the energy and passion that once were the highlights of your relationship can become secondary to the unique feelings you once shared.

Assess your relationship for the danger signs and give some thought to how you felt at the beginning to how you feel now. It’s particularly important for you to hang on to your individuality and not get lost in your partner’s personality.

Your partner will also retain his/her sense of individuality and you will be attracted to him/her not as an extension of yourself, but as the independent and attractive person you fell in love with.

This will keep the relationship fresh, interesting and exciting. A surefire way to let the fires die in a relationship is to feel a comfort level with the person that makes you let yourself go in ways that makes you lose the self-confidence and vivacity you once felt.

You may gain weight, begin to drink more, develop bad habits or engage in other things that are unhealthy for the relationship. Eventually, no matter how you feel about the other person, s/he will begin to pull away and the relationship will falter and die.

Remember the fun you used to share by engaging in activities you both enjoy? Routine in the relationship may cause you to lose interest in taking part in the things you used to enjoy with your partner. Taking his/her passions and interests into consideration is a loving thing to do and will keep the fires burning.

There’s a Mutual Respect and Comfort Level

True soulmates have an unshakable respect and comfort level for each other. You experience a calmness and security in the relationship that makes you confident about confiding and revealing your innermost thoughts to him/her.

There’s no doubt that you’re both in a lifetime relationship and no matter what happens, you’ll be there for each other. You may not always agree with or appreciate your soulmate’s traits and opinions, but you’re a pair and that means taking on the world together.

Your beliefs can be different than that of your soulmate, but you also need to find things in common and keep an open mind to the other’s likes, dislikes and what s/he believes. A soulmate may open your mind to may new discoveries and ways of doing things.

Feed off of each other’s knowledge and background to give you a different perspective on life. And, you should respect your soulmate’s needs and put them ahead of your own when necessary.

You will allow yourself to listen to suggestions and ideas from a soulmate, but should never let him/her views overpower your own. Acceptance of your partner’s way of doing things, even if they’re different from your own, will give you the courage needed to stay connected to your own beliefs and value system.

Confidence that the other person will never abandon you can give you the comfort in a relationship that many never have. S/he will want to share life experiences with you and can’t imagine having them with someone else.

Avoid harboring anger at all cost. Anger that isn’t addressed can leave a crack in your relationship that can become wider and you’ll be less able to fix it. Sometimes it can leave scars in your relationship that can never be overcome.

When you have the confidence and self-assurance to believe in yourself, you’ll have that same confidence to express your feelings to your partner and never let anger seep in and destroy the relationship.

Respect and comfort in a relationship is healthy, but it doesn’t mean that you should hand over your power to another person. You must respect yourself and stand up for what you believe before you can feel total respect for the other person.

Showing that you respect your partner reflects your deep feelings of love and devotion. Even though you may argue, you and your partner show that you both value each other’s opinions. Respect is freedom – freedom to express yourself. A soulmate will love and respect you even if s/he doesn’t agree.

Have self-respect too, accepting yourself for who you are, even though you know you’re not perfect. Self-respect gives you the confidence you must have to maintain a relationship with everyone in your life – especially your soulmate.

Confidence and self-respect for yourself are attractive to others and can help you find a true soulmate. Mutual respect and a comfort level that you feel for each other solidify and define a soulmate relationship.

Treat Your Soulmate Search Like a Business

The process of finding true love can be daunting, but when you think of it as a business venture, things begin to make sense and you won’t waste as much time kissing frogs. When you interview possible candidates for your business, you want him/her to match the qualifications you set up for the job.

The others don’t count. You wouldn’t give a second or third interview with a person who obviously doesn’t qualify and whom you know you couldn’t work with for the long-term. And, you don’t stop looking for a job candidate simply because you’ve interviewed so many that didn’t qualify.

Someone out there must be qualified for the job, so you keep looking and interviewing. If your choice is to be successful, you should know everything about the job s/he is to do.

You may not know much about accounting, but you need to know what is involved so you can immediately see if your interviewee is the one for the job. Getting others whom you trust to give their opinions is a good idea.

Family and friends likely know what you’re looking for and can help you choose worthwhile candidates if you open up to them and let them in on the task. Keep an open mind and enjoy the search process.

Be Willing to Quickly Weed Out the Worst Candidates

Wasting time on those you know don’t fit the job description is a bad way to spend your time and energy. Days turn into weeks and months and years and finally you act on what you knew all along – that the person you’ve spent your valuable time with isn’t qualified to be your soulmate.

Don’t get so caught up in the chase that you forget why and what you’re looking for. Doing so can make you settle for much less than you want or deserve. It’s better to be alone for the rest of your life than to settle for someone who makes you miserable.

Too many people jump to the wrong conclusions about a soulmate – ignoring the obvious flaws. Even though they don’t see the potential they’re looking for, they become afraid that perfect person will never come along.

You may want to imagine which emoji – a frown or a happy face – you would assign to how your possible soulmate makes you feel. When you assign too many unhappy emojis to your feelings, s/he isn’t the one for you.

Some people are desperate enough to rush into a relationship and concentrate on the honeymoon phase rather than think about the future. Enjoy that early time of getting to know each other, but be wary of someone who pushes you to make a commitment before you’re ready.

Take your own time to make your own decision. Don’t be willing to devote your entire self to the other person and give up other things and people you enjoy. You will eventually regret it.

If the other person demands you give up those things, they can’t be your soulmate. Those who would stifle another’s freedom and control them for their own benefit aren’t capable of true love.

At the other side of the spectrum of being controlled, there are the people who would let you run all over them. When a person kowtows to every word you say and every suggestion you make, you’re not being empowered.

Your soulmate should think for him/her and not depend on you for his/her beliefs, wants and needs. Keeping simple things from you because s/he is afraid of your reaction should also be a deal breaker.

Even if his decision or action is something you may react negatively to, you should have the choice and the other person should be open and honest about everything. Never pursue a relationship with someone who does not value you.

Disrespect comes in many forms and you’ll begin to see a pattern that should make you uncomfortable. If you see that his friends and even family always come before you in even the simplest matters, s/he will probably never see your worth.

Dedicate Your Time to Actively Searching for a Match

It may seem like you’ve been forever dating the wrong people to find your soulmate, but don’t give up. Hope is on the horizon. You may need to change you tactics a bit and find new places or methods to meet someone, but it will happen if you’re consistent.

It’s easy to get discouraged when you’re still kissing frogs and Prince Charming isn’t appearing in any way, shape or form. You shouldn’t give up after a few – or many – tries.

Take a hard look at how you’re spending your time and energy and perhaps change a few things to make it happen. You may have a list of requirements that you use to judge everyone you meet and some are deal breakers.

Look at your list with a critical eye and see where you might be too rigid and where you might compromise. The pointers you use to choose a soulmate may not be the same now as when you first began the search.

Be willing to change your mind on small or unimportant things and then follow your heart. Although you don’t want to waste your time on those soulmate candidates you don’t think will work, don’t turn down opportunities that may turn out much better than you think it will.

Love is unpredictable and can totally surprise you. To make the time you spend searching for a soulmate worthwhile, there are some things you should do for yourself to be sure you present yourself well when your true soulmate does come along.

One thing you can do for yourself is to like yourself and be happy about the person you are. If you aren’t happy with yourself, how can another person like you? So, remove the tinted glasses and see where you can spiff yourself up and be the best you can be. You’ll have more self-confidence and be more willing to take chances to find your soulmate.

Educate Yourself on Your Search Journey

As with any new job, you’ll likely have a learning curve where you’re studying, experimenting and opening yourself up to new ways of doing things when you begin searching for your soulmate.

The process is ongoing and you should always be learning until the soulmate jackpot happens. It’s not enough anymore to just put yourself out there. There are different methods available that might help – or hurt – your search and you should be aware of them.

Dating apps are popping up all over the internet and some will be perfect for you – and some will not. You must learn the good and bad about each one that you’re considering. Although the old methods of blind dates and meeting in bars are still alive, better ways to find a soulmate are definitely shining through.

Social meetings are becoming a thing of the past and technology is taking over. Excuses for not socializing include being too busy and not enough time. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have revolutionized how we meet and get to know each other.

Online dating sites are rampant and most claim that they make it easier to meet people with the same interests and values as them. But, sometimes you might meet people who aren’t really who they say they are and risk getting scammed.

It’s hard to avoid the risk all the time, but you can do your research and check out blogs and other people who have used the site – both the complaints and the kudos. Some sites are designed to appeal to people with different interests.

If you’re a sports fanatic, you may use a certain site to zero in on someone who shares that passion. Online dating sites can hold great opportunities for those that are too shy to go out and meet someone.

Meeting online gives you the chance to get to know a person before you actually meet, so you have already decided what you have in common and if the match might be a good one.

Online dating sites also provide a better chance for you to freely express yourself. There’s the anonymity that is lacking in most other methods of finding a match. All they know is what you told them in your profile.

Each site will have rules to which you must adhere or risk being knocked off the site. As you educate yourself about online dating sites or other methods you might want to try, keep an open mind and be yourself.

Surround Yourself with the Best People for the Job

Besides all the dating apps and meet-and-greet types of mingling, there are those who know you best and who may be perfect for helping you choose a soulmate. Friends and family likely understand your needs, likes and dislikes and have a good idea about who you would be most happy with.

You may not think your mom knows enough about your adult likes and dislikes to choose a mate for you, but don’t underestimate the knowledge that moms have about their offspring.

It doesn’t have to be just mom – dads, cousins, grandparents and others in your family circle have either known you since you were born or grew up with you at some point. Spend some time getting an assessment from one that you trust the most. You might be surprised at what you discover.

Friends are also valuable when it comes to finding a soulmate. When you have a best friend, you confide in that person and trust him/her to tell you the truth – not just what you want to hear.

When you introduce a possible soulmate to a friend (or family member) be sure to listen to them about their thoughts and observations on the two of you as a couple. Friends and family members can introduce you to the right people too.

They won’t simply pair you with another just because you’re both single. They’ll truly try to match you with someone they think will have the best chance to share your passions. They will have your best interests in mind.

Matchmakers are another way to gain insight into what you’re really looking for in a partner and who might be a good match for you. The matchmakers today are different from those of years ago.

They usually have a sophisticated process that includes asking you many questions from your background to your current lifestyle. The matchmakers are usually life and personal coaches and have been trained to assist you in finding the ideal relationship.

Listen to the people who want to help you on the journey to find a soulmate – but let your heart ultimately be your guide – and instincts can also help.

Know Your Measure of Compatibility

It’s important for you to know exactly how you measure compatibility with someone you first meet or try and get to know. Of course there are deal breakers that you won’t give up no matter what – but you may be measuring too rigidly.

Compatibility in a relationship consists of many things – chemistry, interests, values and more. One may not be as strong as the other, but they should at least come together to create feelings of love and admiration.

Have You Been Too Rigid with a List?

Many people have a list that includes so many must-haves in a relationship that they never find anyone. It’s good to have deal breakers such as verbal or physical abuse, but some on the list might be considered nit-picky.

It might be time to loosen up about things you might be able to live with. Think about what you put on the list that doesn’t really bother you, but would be nice to have. It’s like whipped cream on a piece of pie.

It would be nice to have it, but you could eat the pie and enjoy it without the whipped cream. Your entire list may be deal breakers to you and you may not be able to find anyone who fits the bill exactly.

Unless you reassess the list of must-haves and deal breakers and consider what you think are annoying traits compared to the real deal breakers, it’s likely to be very difficult to find a person you can live with and love.

Even if you won’t consider giving up some of your list of soulmate requirements, give people a chance. You may find that his/her other qualities far outweigh some of the small and annoying habits.

You may not notice some of the good qualities until you get to know him/her a bit. You may find you simply cannot tolerate the bad habits and they outweigh the good qualities, but at least you need to give it a chance.

If something s/he does makes you feel uncomfortable, talk about it. Don’t be afraid to open up and tell him/her just how you feel about something that makes you skittish about continuing with the relationship.

Those feelings vary with every person. You may not think it’s a big deal that s/he is late for everything, while another person might call it a deal breaker. If you talk to the person about it, s/he can either change or continue. In that case, you have to make a decision about whether or not the bad habit is too much.

At some point in the relationship everyone must decide if this person truly meets all the criteria on your list that’s most important to you. Those are qualities that can’t be compromised.

What Qualities Will Your Soulmate Possess?

A true soulmate understands you. It might take a while for this important quality to happen, but when it does, you’ll know you’ve found a person who really gets what you’re all about.

Other qualities you might consider important include a sense of humor, ambitions and career goals in life, gentleness and love of animals. You have a vision of a soulmate relationship that is unique.

One person may want to find a soulmate who wants to have children while another doesn’t. Or, you may enjoy being with a sensitive person, whereas another may want a less sensitive partner.

Whatever your vision of a soulmate is, there are some character traits that you should look for. The quality of generosity is one of the most important to look for. Money isn’t the only measure of generosity.

S/he should also be generous with his/her attention and time. Commitment is another trait that should be high on the quality list. You can tell by their words and actions whether you can depend on this person when there is sacrifice and effort involved.

Is your view of the world the same? If the world s/he wants to live in is vastly different from your view, the relationship is likely to be in jeopardy from the get-go. For example, you may be an animal lover who wants a menagerie of animals in a big home with a yard.

S/he may want just the opposite – an apartment in the center of town with no animals at all to care for. There might be allergies or fear of animals involved, but if you can compromise and keep your word, the relationship might work and evolve over time.

Are your possible soulmate’s emotions a roller coaster that tests your patience and makes you tired from dealing with it? You may never know where you stand with this type of person or what made him/her jump from one extreme to the other.

Look for a partner who is consistent in his/her emotions and can discuss with you why s/he becomes emotional in certain situations. If you’re the one who exists on an emotional roller coaster, see a counselor who can help you become more grounded.

If you prefer a person who takes pride in their appearance, stays healthy by eating well and exercising and takes care of his/her home and possessions, you won’t find a soulmate who lacks these qualities.

They shouldn’t be obsessive in their self-care, but takes responsibility for it. They will more likely care about pleasing you. There are some qualities essential to you when forming a life-long relationship. Don’t settle for less.

Deal Breakers Can Derail Happiness or Prevent Catastrophes

Sometimes your deal breakers might actually be a preference. Don’t miss out on finding your soulmate because you’re too rigid in your expectations. But, don’t dismiss a deal breaker that’s important to you.

For example, if you want children after marriage, it’s doubtful you would be happy with someone who doesn’t. Maybe you cringe when you go out to dinner because s/he’s rude to the server or always drinks too much. Annoyance or deal breaker?

Some people have a bad habit of always sending food back after they’re served. Once in a while is acceptable – especially if they really mess up your order – but what if it’s a normal occurrence?

You might see future problems if it is. What if s/he’s stingy with money? It’s one thing to be frugal, but if your potential soulmate never pays his/her fair share of the tab, it may predict trouble in paradise.

Also, beware of the person who talks trash about his/her exes. That should be a huge red flag for you. Deal breakers might include not having any friends or never making plans to introduce you to his family.

And, if s/he isolates you from others and demands that you spend most of your time with him/her, turn and run. That type of behavior could turn into abusive. When you begin to date a person and a nagging feeling that something is wrong won’t go away, it’s likely time to part.

S/he might not be him/herself because s/he’s been through a traumatic period in life such as a bad divorce or a death in the family. After a while you can tell if the person is just going through a bad time or if it’s a situation within him/her that won’t likely get better.

You might have a tendency to overlook red flags in the beginning, but at some point you must address the issues that are important to you. It’s important to trust your instincts, but it’s also important to recognize and not dismiss deal breakers that could turn into real problems in the future.

You won’t find a perfect match, but you can find a soulmate who will complement you. Never believe that you can transform a person after you enter into a long-term relationship or marriage. It won’t happen.

What to Do If a Potential Soulmate Has a Problem with You

Just as you have deal breakers for a potential soulmate, s/he also has some likes and dislikes that aren’t negotiable. If you date a person for a while and s/he clearly seems to like you and you’re falling head over heels, a rejection can be devastating.

Maybe s/he’s decided that your lifestyle isn’t what s/he wants – maybe you want to live in the suburbs and s/he doesn’t. Whatever the reason, it’s a good thing to be able to talk it out and find out how serious you both are about your deal breakers.

You may be willing to change some little things, like talking during a movie. It may seem like nothing to you, but to him/her, it could be beyond annoying. It would be a shame if you didn’t know and the relationship ended over something so small.

Make it a point to discuss anything you feel is not only just annoying, but the bigger things too. Sometimes things evolve during a relationship. For example, perhaps you were against living abroad, but you might change your mind after you travel a bit.

It takes time and flexibility to realize what each of you really want and care about in a relationship. Don’t give up until you explore how you both feel about the things that simply annoy you.

Entering into a relationship is thrilling and the tendency is to immerse yourself in the feelings of love and spend every moment with your new-found potential partner. Be sure to keep your own life on tap.

S/he may end the relationship because s/he isn’t feeling the same way and you’ll be left without the friends and lifestyle you dropped for him/her. You can’t control the other person, but you can control how you react to rejection.

It’s okay to ask why you’re being rejected, but be classy about the breakup. If there aren’t any deep feelings on the part of the other person, it’s better to go your separate ways. You can’t force love.

When you do find out what went wrong in the relationship, decide if it’s something you’re willing to change or work on. If the change will make you unhappy and unfulfilled, don’t agree to the change.

There will be days that you’re happy and confident in the relationship and others that make you wonder if it’s really what you want. Both people in a relationship may be questioning his/her choice at times, but openness with each other goes a long way in repairing a misunderstanding or putting more light on a bad situation.

Dating for Different Generations

Each generation has its own expectations about how the dating game should work and every old way is affected. The millennials, for example, have a very different idea about how to communicate with a love interest than the baby boomers.

There may be varying ideas about how to search for/ meet to each partner’s role in the relationship. Although there are major differences in dating techniques from generation to generation, there are also things that remain pretty much the same.

With dating sites, matchmakers and so many other ways to meet people today – that specialize in millennials to baby boomers, it’s good to know what the expectations are for your own generation. And, maybe you can learn a bit from another generation that could help in your search for a soulmate.

Millennials

You might think the millennials (19 to 33 year-olds) have it made with all the dating help they have at their fingertips from the internet, but it can also be very confusing. The goal for some of the millennials isn’t so much to find their life partners, but to have sex and hang out.

Dating as we used to define it just isn’t done anymore by the millennials. They consider it part of the past generation’s methods and prefer to visit in a house, coffee shop or another casual meeting place.

They get to know each other on social media and when they’re ready to have sex, it’s called hooking up. Unlike the past dating generations, having sex does not mean there is a commitment.

The next step to hooking up is to be a significant other. That happens when the couple decides together that they want a committed relationship. Dating apps is the go-to method for meeting new people to have sex or form a relationship.

There are exclusive dating sites for the LGBTQ bunch as well as for those of a particular generation. With all the sites, texting, apps and other ways of communicating it seems that the millennials would know exactly where to find love and how it would work.

But, that’s not always the case. The terms of dating for millennials are extremely ambiguous and overtures can be misleading because there are so many ways to represent themselves.

One of the most frustrating of these methods of dating is called ghosting. Ghosting is done when a person wants to break a relationship with another and simply stops all communication with the person.

They’re blocked from texting, social media sites, phone calls and emails just because they don’t want the hassle of explaining themselves about the breakup. With all the confusion within millennial dating, there is also a bright side.

Millennials are much more open to change and are more willing to accept a person for who they really are and join in more authentic relationships.

Generation X

Millennials and Generation Xs (34 to 54 year-olds) have much in common, but there are some differences that stand out in their approach to dating. Much of it has to do with how each group was raised.

Millennials are known for being tech-savvy and fight turning into adults. Gen Xers tend to be very well educated and focused on their careers, but still try to keep fragments of their childhood to remember and cherish.

These values have made a difference in how each group approach dating. Because of their devotion to work and careers, Gen Xers haven’t had much time to focus on a family and kids.

They’ve also got enough rebel in them that makes it difficult for them to bow down to what others expect of them. But, while millennials are happy in a small apartment and to make just enough money to get by, Gen Xers are more apt to go for the home and marriage at an early age.

Some millennials have more in common with Gen Xers and can gladly date a person from the other generation. They may share the same life passions and interests and millennials appreciate that Gen Xers are surer of themselves and more accomplished.

Gen Xers grew up with television and spent lots of time in front of them – especially watching MTV. An entirely different culture was formed and this culture has everything to do with their dating habits.

The Gen X group loves to try dating websites and communicate on the internet, but so many choices make it difficult for them to decide on a permanent relationship. They’ve also had many of life’s relationship lessons so they are more apt to wait until they know they’ve found the right one.

Like millennials, Gen Xers have less interest in having children. Perhaps they’ve been burned by seeing their parents in messy divorces where the children suffer – or they simply don’t want to give up an active lifestyle.

Both generations are open about sex and freely discuss their preferences when in the dating mode. Gen Xers feel less shame to discuss sex during the dating process than the older generations and feel that sex before marriage is normal.

Gen Xers also know how to disconnect from social media and attach themselves to others through personal intimacy. While they love the connections that phones, computers and iPads provide, they also desire intimacy outside technological advances.

Baby Boomers

They’re set in their ways and know exactly what they want – and don’t want — in a soulmate. Baby Boomers are the generation born after the soldiers returned from fighting World War II. They’ve learned some things about life and dating.

Having children is not likely to be a topic of conversation for Boomers, but getting along with their kids and family is an important topic and if the kids don’t get along with a potential date, it’s usually over.

Boomers have developed habits that are difficult to break, so dating can be challenging. It can also be rewarding. Most have an income and both partners contribute financially to the relationship.

Dating might include travel to exotic places or traveling together in an RV. Living together without marriage isn’t the stigma it once was, so they don’t feel they have to get married to be together.

Love and romance are still strong desires for Boomers and they want to have fun and experience new things they might have missed in previous relationships. Boomers are having sex sooner in a relationship than they once did, but they still want to have loving feelings toward their partner.

Companionship is one thing Boomers are seeking. They want someone who shares their interests and can experience life with them, but are hesitant to walk down the aisle. They love their freedom and time to indulge in hobbies and socializing.

Boomers are less apt to pressure their partners into marriage. They don’t want to begin a family, but they’re not against living together. Boomers find dates the same as other generations – online dating sites, the gym, church and friends and through friends and family members.

Among boomers, most single women would rather date a person of their own age group, while men wanted a younger woman in their lives. Boomers are still behind the younger generations in using phone apps and online dating sites to find dates, but that statistic shows an upward trend for boomers in using the power of the internet.

One reason boomers are now looking for love online is isolation. They’re more likely to be lonely because activities and work have slowed and people are now living longer. It makes sense to access technology from home to find a companion.

There are dating sites that cater to the older generation and they’re becoming more popular as time goes on.

Understanding the Lingo of the Dating World Today

There could be an entirely new college course in understanding the lingo of the dating world today. Terms like ghosting, Netflix (it’s not a movie channel in dating lingo) and catfishing are just a few of the terms used in conversation (texting) today.

Catfish is a term used to describe a scam where a person uses a false online profile to misrepresent him/herself. They may try to get another person to send money, laundry money or other illegal scams.

Bae is a term used for your significant other and it may be a form of the words babe or baby. Another term, Bot, is also a term where a person misrepresents him/herself by photo-shopping their profile pictures and making them more attractive.

Then, there’s the term, breadcrumbing, which means one person is sending flirtatious messages or texts to someone with no plans to date them – just to play them along. Ghosting is when a person you’ve actually been dating ceases all communication with you without explanation.

Submarining in dating lingo means that someone has ghosted you and now they’re back, strong as ever, with no apology and no explanation, like nothing ever happened. Deep like is a term than means you’ve scrolled through your potential date’s online profiles and liked very old pictures. This alerts the other person you’ve been researching them and that you’re interested in a relationship.

DTR (define the relationship) is a sign that you want to define the relationship. Sliding into DMs is a way to flirt online and means Direct Message. It signals to the other person that you want to privately chat with him/her.

Mention you’d like to Netflix and chill in online dating and the other person knows you’d like to have casual sex. It also has other meanings such as to come on over and hang out. Chill is a term that could also mean several things, but usually, it also means come over for casual sex.

Some online dating terms are simply flirtatious and others describe what’s happening within the relationship – or what s/he would like to happen. If you’re going to date online, you’ll need to learn the various terms to know how to communicate.

Perfect First Date Ideas

The perfect date is different in every generation. Of course there may be exceptions, but for the most part money and time play big factors in the generational dating game. A special date to millennials doesn’t have to be expensive.

They don’t feel they have to impress anyone with money and are more interested in getting to know them. Millennials don’t date as other generations did. They’re more apt to invite a person over to cook together. Visit a farmer’s market first to choose the ingredients.

Statistics show that millennials spend much of their money on food and cook four or more times per week. They also enjoy retro dating. For example, going bowling or skating and trying new experiences.

A trampoline park can be a fun first date and you can usually find one in your home town. It’s difficult not to smile and have fun when you’re having such a good time jumping up and down.

Gen Xers values include working and living life to the fullest. They may enjoy a date that involves activities such as hiking, bicycling, playing games, seeing movies and enjoying a nice (but inexpensive) evening on the town.

If there is a concert featuring entertainers you both like, it makes a good first date. Museums are also a great idea to keep a conversation lively. It’s fun to see what the other thinks about art.

Many bars now have trivia nights with a certain theme, so conversation is never lacking and you can impress the other person with your knowledge of various subjects. It’s a good idea to break the awkwardness of a first date.

For something different, try an escape room for a first date. It makes for a fun starter to the evening and they’re all the rage in most cities and towns. You’ll both try to break the code and escape from the room and it can be loads of fun.

A Gen Xer may be in better shape financially to spend money on a date and it’s expected the man will pay the first time. After that, the Gen X men are happy to let a woman take the lead in where to go and to pay for at least half of the date’s cost.

Baby Boomers run the gamut of what to do on first dates. It’s based on the likes and dislikes of both people and if they’re at the point of dating, they’ve likely established that.

Some boomers enjoy concerts, dressing up and having a great night on the town. Others prefer cooking together and enjoying a meal in front of the fireplace. The first date is a little too early to do things with friends, but subsequent dates can be social in nature.

Many bars have the old-style arcade games and some have karaoke nights which are fun for just about anyone. Or, try taking your date to a drive-in movie. Many cities are bringing back the old style of enjoying a movie from the comfort of your own car.

All three generations are more likely to plan a first date with the other person and choose something that both enjoy. First dates build a foundation for a relationship and can be important in searching for your soulmate – so plan them carefully and make them fun.

Tools, Resources and Technology for Finding Your Soulmate

The internet has become one of the best tools for finding a soulmate, but there are other methods that could work just as well – or even better. For example, use the traditional way of finding a love interest by using your friends and families as tools for finding your soulmate.

After all, they probably know you better than anyone and would love to lead you in the right direction. Also, gyms and churches are great places to meet people who have the same interests and beliefs as you.

There are other resources that might also work to find your soulmate. Don’t give up – one of them will be sure to work.

Traditional Meeting Places

The old, traditional ways of meeting people are still used and have been very successful at matching couples. Friends are great resources and are unlikely to pair you with a person who doesn’t fit your personality.

If you’re in to working out at the gym, keep your eyes open for matches there. Since you’re both working out, you obviously have that in common. Many gyms have small health restaurants where you can sit and enjoy a smoothie with someone you like.

Church has long been a traditional method of finding a potential soulmate. You likely have the same beliefs and values to begin with and can find other things you have in common after a few dates.

Cycling is a sport that has become popular during the past few years. There are clubs you can join and meet people. They usually plan biking excursions where you can get to know people and discover other interests you have in common.

Volunteering is a good way to meet others who share your values. You can find many places that need dependable volunteers, such as hospitals and shelters. If you’re good at building, Habitat for Humanity is a good place to volunteer and meet others.

Cooking classes have become so popular – and you can likely find one in your home town. Many cities and towns also have organizations that focus on cooking and dining together at each other’s homes.

Clubs, the beach, museums, church and other traditional venues for meeting others can ensure that you’ll have a better chance of meeting people who have your same interests and beliefs.

Dating Apps and Sites

Dating apps and dating sites are the go-to technology when people want to meet someone and possibly have a relationship – either long-term or overnight. There are apps and sites especially for seniors, Christians, men-looking-for-men and women-looking-for-women

Site and app developers have done their best to have something online for everyone and the most popular apps are very different. Some of the most popular apps include Tinder, Bumble, OKCupid, Hinge and Match.

Match was one of the first online apps and is for those who are serious about finding a soulmate. You’ll be answering many questions about your lifestyle, interests and beliefs so they can narrow down the candidates that would fit you best.

The Hinge dating site only matches you with those on your social network – and their friends. When you get the results from Hinge, you merely swipe to record yes or no. Tinder touts itself as being the most popular sex app and you simply swipe yes or no to accept or reject the match.

Bumble is an app that works much like Tinder. The difference in the two is that the women have to message first. Their theory is that it reduces the not-so-nice messages from the guys.

OKCupid gets a very comprehensive profile from you after asking you several questions. This will determine how much you match with another person. Like Tinder, you can swipe yes or no.

Dating sites such as eHarmony let you choose someone for casual dating or choosing someone interested in a deep relationship. You’ll take a personality test when you join and browse through photos and profiles of those who signed up.

There is such a variety of online dating apps that it would be impossible to list each one, but rest assured you’ll find one that works for you no matter what your likes/dislikes or sexual persuasion.

Social Networking Sites

Almost everyone knows what Facebook and Instagram are and how to use them. You can easily keep up with family and friends and even meet people to date. Facebook is full of photos, blogs and videos and has more than 2 billion, monthly users.

Instagram is a site where you can share videos and photos and anyone of the age 13 or older can access it. Meetup is a site offering ways and times to meet people in your own area. Those 18 and older can use this site to plan offline social meetings.

With the Twitter social networking sites you can post mini-blogs and follow others – and others can follow you. You can keep up with celebrities, friends, family – and even the President of the United States.

Tumblr can help you by providing a micro-blogging platform and helps you realize your social-networking efforts. Tylted is a networking site for playing games. While it might not be for Gen Xers or Baby Boomers, Millennials might find it interesting if they’re in to gaming.

TravBuddy.com is a social networking site for those who love to travel. It’s a great place to find someone with your travel interests and possibly build that into a romantic relationship.

Pinterest is a social media site that is a way to post various likes and dislikes under a variety of different sections such as recipes, décor, camping, traveling, fashion and more.

Remember that social media and meeting sites also attract people who are out to scam you, so don’t post any information that may compromise your safety such as your address and phone number.

Also, on the first date at least, meet the person in an open area – preferably during the day. Keep things very casual online and beware of the person who wants to rush in to a sexual or committed relationship right away.

Matchmaking Services

Some people still prefer matchmaking services to meet a person who might become their soulmates. One of the most popular of these services is It’s Just Lunch – a site where busy and active professionals can meet others from personally selected matches.

Matchmaking services keep your profile private, so you don’t have to worry about someone reading your personal information. These services usually have certified matchmakers and are proficient in creating happy dating experiences.

There are pros and cons to choosing matchmaking services. Obviously, the best reason is because you will get a face-to-face date that has been planned by a professional and you don’t have to go through the thousands of online candidates.

Another good reason for choosing a matchmaking service is that you can meet more people from all over the world. Many people would like to meet a soulmate from another part of the world and there are matchmaking services that specialize in that.

Your professional matchmaker usually meets all of their clients and thoroughly interviews them. They will guide you through the dating process both before and after the initial date and give you feedback.

They should also offer technological services so you can access them on your PC or other device. Matchmaking services offer the personal touch that can immediately weed out predators and those who might scam you.

When choosing a matchmaking service, do your research and make sure they have a reputable background and aren’t a fly-by-night operation. They should make sure the person they’re interviewing is single and run an extensive background check.

One con to choosing a matchmaking service is that they can be very expensive. You will pay a good amount to get personalized service, but if you’re busy and can’t be bothered with scanning social media online sites, it may save you time.

Finding your soulmate today is easier than it’s ever been. With all the new innovations in technology and other ways to communicate, you’re sure to find a method that works for you.