Are you trying to get over your ex? Or ready to get your dating game on and meet your perfect match? Are you ready to date?
Our guest blogger, Renee Slansky is an Australian TV presenter, writer and professional blogger who’s love for romance and heart for women compelled her to start her online community www.thedatingdirectory.co
From a young age she started leading and counselling women and was often called on by strangers and friends for relationship advice. With no professional training but rather what she picked up in experience, teachings and observation, her writings offer a witty and relative outlook with practical advice on life and romance in the 21st century.
Check out Renee’s advice below.
Are you ready to date, and for the right reasons?
Are you dating for the right reasons and from the right mindset so that you can actually get the progress in your love life that you want?
Watch Renee’s video below (11:27 mins). It’ll help you think about whether your ready and gives you things to consider before diving straight to the dating pool.
Just because we have a desire to meet someone and to date doesn’t necessarily mean that we should. A lot of the time we act on our feelings without first assessing where is this feeling coming from?
Is it healthy and is it something that I should actually be doing?
Before ploughing ahead, consider Renee’s expert advice below, or you may find yourself:
- hating the process
- getting hurt
- falling for the wrong person
- being exhausted by the whole process
1. Dating mindset
Now, if you’ve watched any of my trainings or if you’ve worked with me, you’ll know that I talk about your dating mindset, because your mindset is basically where you make your decisions from and our decisions result in who we engage with and what we do with that person.
And if you’re just throwing yourself out there, you’re just like, “I want to date. I’m just going to go date,” And you don’t have any intention, you don’t have any purpose, you don’t have any strategy and you’re doing it from a place of fear.
Whether it’s fear of missing out on love or fear that you’re never going to get over the ex or fear that you’re not going to have children or fear that you’re going to die alone with 52 cats, then you will attract feedback or you will attract the result that will solidify that fear.
And that’s something that’s actually called self-prophesying-where we become so focused on this terror that hasn’t even happened. This fear that we then go and act out of that fear and then we make it a reality.
And again, it solidifies that conviction that all men are like that and that’s how love is and love hurts. And it just becomes this really sort of toxic cycle.
So what I would do is I do a little bit of a self-audit and I’d ask yourself:
- Why do I want a date and what I want to get out of this dating process.
- Am I dating just because I want a casual fling?
- Am I dating to find love?
- Am I dating because I’m bored?
- What are your intentions behind it?
2. Take it slow
Throwing yourself into the deep end isn’t really going to do you any justice. It’s just going to make you freak out.
And if you go to an extreme, you’re always going to get an extreme reaction.
If you just go all into your next relationship when you know that you’re probably not ready and you love-bomb that person or you move too fast and too soon.
So what I would do is I would just test the waters a little bit. Definitely there’ll be some clear indications if you’re not ready to date.
Indication 1 - Comparison
Are you constantly comparing your ex to the person that you’re dating?
Are you finding that at the end of the day you go back home and all you think about is your ex and then you’re over-romanticising what you had with them even though it obviously ended for a reason. So comparison’s a big one.
Indication 2 - Fear and anxiety
Do you have fear about dating? Do you have anxiety when it comes to going on dates? Now we all get a little bit nervous and if we’re putting ourselves out there for the first time in a long time, then of course you have a little bit of anxiety.
But if you are literally paralysed about the thought of meeting someone else or the thought of falling in love or the thought of getting hurt or the thought of dating, then you probably need to do a little bit more healing before you actually go out there and date.
Because you have to remember it’s not just about you. You’re also affecting the person that you are dating and you don’t want to go around hurting other people because you’re hurting yourself.
Indication 3 - Ghosting
If you’re ghosting your dates or benching your dates as in kind of putting little investment in but not really a lot because you’re too scared, then you probably shouldn’t be dating.
Indication 4 - Low investment
If you are finding that you’re going on dates but you’re just not making the effort and you’re kind of just going, but you’ve got low energy, you’re not really engaging.
And low investment is an indication that you’re not really in it for the right reasons and it’s obviously being reflected through your actions.
3. Get clear on the why
As I was saying at the beginning of this video, why do you want to date? Do you want to date because you are trying to move on from the ex and you think that if you date somebody else you will eventually just forget about him?
Are you dating because everyone else is doing it or because you can because you’ve got access to dating apps?
The clearer that you can get on the why the more then you will know your intention. It’ll help you work out, “Okay, am I doing this for the right reasons or do I actually need to take a rain check for a little bit longer?”
4. Enhance, not heal
Closure is something that I believe happens in stages. Closure needs to be based on facts, not feelings. If a relationship ends, obviously it ended for a reason and waiting till you feel like you’re in a certain position is not a reason to hold out on closure.
Closure needs to be a choice. But I also believe that healing and full closure is something that will happen in stages.
It’s normal to still be thinking about an ex if they’re a big part of your life and sometimes meeting a new person really can help you get over that ex because you can realise that, “Hang on a second. There’s someone else that makes me feel this way.”
There’s someone else that I can love or have the possibility of loving and have them love me back.”
But if you’re purely dating to just try and get over someone rather than dating to enhance someone else’s life and have them enhance your life, that’s a different story.
Don't date for distraction
You shouldn’t be dating to try and get over someone or heal something in your heart. You have to first work on that baggage and that issue and that hurt first so that you aren’t then dating from that place of fear and lack, which is just going to cause you to either invest into the wrong people or hurt someone in the process.
5. Are you guarding your heart or blocking love?
When you date and when you’re putting yourself back out there, there is a difference between guarding your heart and blocking love.
Guarding your heart is about going, “Okay, I’m going to have certain standards in place. I’m going to pace myself.
I’m going to make sure I make wise decisions instead of emotionally reacting to how I feel,” as opposed to blocking someone.
Blocking them because you obviously have this fear of getting hurt is usually representative in the way that you don’t reciprocate much.
You set your expectations so incredibly high that they can’t even achieve them because they’re not even healthy.
And then you push people away and you don’t want to date and push people away, because obviously that kind of contradicts the whole point of dating.
Yet, at the same time, you don’t want to be so open that you fall for someone that you don’t really know and then you get hurt.
