Dating

‘Tis the season! The holidays are upon us, which means that despite the cooler weather, our options for date ideas really open up. After all, parties and celebrations are everywhere---there’s no need to rely on the typical night of Netflix and dinner at home.

While popping some prosecco and lighting a nice fire in your living room are always good options for getting romantic, let’s think outside the box (meaning outside your apartment). What are some cool date options for someone you’re starting to really warm up to?

Following are some ideas to get you started:

Check out the lights in a cool neighborhood. No matter the city, there’s always a street or two that decorates like crazy – enough to attract small crowds during the holidays. This is a fun way to get into the holiday spirit. Do a little online research and pick a neighborhood, then go exploring – on foot or by car.

Go ice skating, sledding, or hiking. Even in Los Angeles, we have outdoor ice rinks during the holidays (as well as imported snow). So even if your city is not known for its icy lakes, chances are, there’s an outdoor ice rink to check out. (And for my friends in warmer climates this time of year, you have lots of outdoor options!) If you are blessed with cold weather options, try sledding, skiing, or hiking in the snow – or building a snowman. The point is: get outside and enjoy.

Volunteer. Sometimes we get so caught up in our own lives that we don’t make time for others. Volunteering helps us get in the spirit of the holidays and also reminds us of all that we have. It’s a great way to feel inspired with your date.

Build something together. Do you have a project you’ve been wanting to tackle? Perhaps you want to build a new bookcase, or put together a dollhouse you’d love to give your niece, or refinish the antique table in your backyard? Now is the time to take on this project – and doing it with a date makes it fun. Crack open a bottle of wine or go out to dinner as a reward.

Visit a Christmas tree farm. Nothing says Christmas quite like the smell of fresh cut pine trees. Pick out a tree together to take home and decorate, or just walk around and enjoy the atmosphere.

Go to an outdoor Christmas market. Outdoor holiday markets are big in many parts of the world, and offer a great variety of shopping, food, and warm mulled wine for the Christmas enthusiast. You can get errands done and enjoy the experience. Plus, it’s a festive way to spend the evening with a date.

Visit a sauna/ have a couples massage. Sometimes, you need a break from the holiday spirit. Why not treat yourself and your date to an afternoon sauna, or a nice couples massage? Consider it your holiday gift to yourselves.

Attend a festival. The holiday season is nothing if not festive. There are plenty of concerts and festivals – whether it’s wine and beer tasting, live music, a food festival, or holiday open houses, there’s always something to attend. Do a little research, and if you live near a big city, make it a day trip for you and your date.

Happy holidays!

Are you a Scorpio? Do you only date Geminis? If you plan your love life according to astrological charts, there’s a new dating app for you called Align.

Align works as you might assume – asking for your birth date and a few personality traits that describe you before finding you matches based on the alignment of your stars. These features are all part of the app’s design, too, which includes a galaxy backdrop.

You sign in with Facebook, as with most apps that require some sort of identity verification. Then Align offers you words to choose to describe yourself, such as “bossy,” “generous,” or “charming.” If you’re a more visual person, you can choose from a range of emojis to describe yourself, too.

Align then goes to work to match you according to your personality (and of course, your chart). And each day, Align will send you five matches that it thinks will suit you, handed to you as photo bubbles or “constellations” of varying sizes, depending on how much of a match the app thinks you are. (The bigger the constellation, the better the match.) You then have 24 hours to accept your matches, or they will be replaced the next day with another five.

The app also uses colors to identify your match in terms of personal compatibility with you. For example, yellow signifies an air sign, which means you’re matched with analyzers, intellectuals, idealists, thinkers, and problem solvers - while green covers earth signs, or those who are driven, goal-oriented, practical, and dependable, for example.

When you and a potential match both decide you like each other, you are then “Aligned” and can start messaging in the app. (Everyone you align with shows up in your “Connections” screen.)

The app was designed to appeal to people who are looking for deeper online connections without spending too much time filling out questionnaires, as you would with personality-based dating apps and websites like eHarmony. Helen Grossman and Aliza Kelly Faragher, the two creators of the app, were tired of feeling disconnected from other online daters and noted on their website that: “these soulless swipes were going nowhere.”

According to Aliza, over 45 million Millennials believe in Astrology, or at least think it contributes to a good match for dating. So, the founders decided to get Astrological when developing their app.

Astrology might not be the only thing that is important when you are looking for love online, but at least it provides a point of reference beyond a photo, and can start up some interesting conversation. I mean, who wouldn’t want to ponder why the last two Leo boyfriends didn’t work out, or why you seem to be attracted to Virgos?

Align is available as a free download in the iTunes store.

It's that time of year again. Leaves are changing color and falling to the ground. Starbucks has unleashed seasonal flavors and holiday cups. Temperatures are dropping and the sun sets before 5pm.

It's cuffing season.

For those unfamiliar with the term, let me explain. “Cuffing season” comes annually as cool weather approaches, when singletons become obsessed with finding someone to cuddle with. After a summer of low-stress dates and sexy flings, flying solo suddenly seems far less appealing than coupling up and sharing body heat.

With cuffing season comes more dates. With more dates comes more bad dates. And with those bad dates comes more people willing to settle in the name of having someone to spoon. Cuffing season or no cuffing season, resist the urge to pursue a match when intuition tells you it isn't right. Here are # signs that your date is just not that into you.

1. They take a long time to respond to your messages. Sometimes work really is hectic and things like dating slip through the cracks. It happens. But more often than not, if someone doesn't reply to your messages in a timely fashion, it's because getting to know you isn't a priority. If they're interested, they'll act interested. That means replying within an appropriate timeframe.
2. They never set up an actual date. You've messaged back and forth but there are no plans for an in-person meetup. Congratulations, you now have an internet penpal. Someone who wants to date you will, surprise, take steps to arrange an actual date. After the initial digital getting-to-know-you phase is done, it's time to ask for a phone number or plan to meet. If things aren't moving forward, it's time to move on.
3. They don't ask questions. This is Dating 101. A person who is interested in you will ask you questions because they want to learn more about you. If they're silent, there are three possibilities. One, your date could be shy and too nervous to hold the conversation they really want to have. Two, your date is self-absorbed and only wants to talk about themselves. Three, they're just not that into you.
4. They don't mention a second date. Could it be any clearer? Second dates are often arranged before the first date is over. You're just trying to enjoy your dessert and already your date is making plans for next weekend. We know when we've found a good thing and we want to lock it down ASAP. Someone who doesn't bring up your next time together within a reasonable period isn't interested in a next time at all.

Pick your ego up from the floor, dust it off, and get back in the ring. Cuffing season has only just begun.

Do you feel like your career is taking off, and yet your love life is still lacking? Many men and women find their jobs much easier to navigate than their love lives. After all, if you have a plan, work hard, and accomplish your goals, chances are you will be promoted in your job, or at least have opportunities in your career to move up the ladder.

Dating is a little more elusive. You can strive to find a partner, but it won’t necessarily happen in your ideal timeframe, or under the perfect circumstances, or even after a lot of time spent dating or “on the job” as it were. In other words, dating is often left to chance.

What you might not realize is that you have more control than you think, and there are skills that you’ve gained in your career that could serve your dating life as well. You just have to know what tools you have in your arsenal.

Following are 5 career skills that you can use to improve your dating life:

Set a goal. When you are looking to get ahead in your career, you set some goals to get to the desired place you want. When you work towards something, you feel more productive and optimistic about the future, whether it is career, a fitness goal, a hobby, or even dating.

Get organized. Who can proceed without a plan? The sooner you get organized, the better. Research your options for online dating, such as which dating apps to try. Put time aside in your busy work schedule to actually date and have fun. Enlist a friend to help set up your profile, take pictures, or keep you on track by checking in to see how your dates are going.

Put yourself out there. You can’t move forward in your dating life if you’re fearful. Dating requires a certain amount of courage, and a certain amount of playfulness – remember, not everyone is going to be right for you, so don’t take rejection so seriously. It will happen, and you move on. Instead, focus on trying to have fun, not trying to meet or be the perfect date.

Let go of old ideas and attitudes. Are you too old-fashioned to ask a guy out? It’s time to get over those old dating stereotypes. You are confident in the office when you ask for what you want, or when you manage a project – so why not be a boss in your dating life? Make eye contact with the hot guy at the bar (and hold it!), or try making the first move. Message your matches first. Don’t want for him to ask you out – do it yourself.

Be clear about what you want. In our jobs, we are aware of our goals, and we work towards them. Likely your boss knows your next steps, or at least has an idea of what you want to eventually be doing. This applies to your dates. If you start dating with an attitude of “let’s see where this goes,” you’ll end up stuck in a dead-end relationship, much like a dead-end job when you don’t know what you want. Get focused and stick to your goals. Envision a future that you want. It will pay off in the end.

Even the most open-minded dater has dealbreakers. Maybe it's bad manners. Maybe it's selfishness. Maybe it's talking too often about an ex or refusing to put the toilet seat down.

Most of us could make a list of the positive qualities we're looking for in a mate and a list of the negative qualities that will send us running. If you've spent any amount of time reading dating advice, you've been told that the best way to find a partner is to focus on what you do want rather than what you don't.

But now, new research suggests that people give more weight to their dealbreakers than they do to their deal makers. According to The Wall Street Journal, this tendency is essentially “the relationship version of the economic loss-aversion theory, which holds that people prioritize avoiding risk over acquiring gains.” People pay more attention to what's wrong with a potential partner than what is right.

In a series of six studies published together in October in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, researchers from several universities found that women have more deal breakers than men. This is most likely because the stakes are higher for childbearers, who must be pickier about choosing a mate.

The studies also found that people who believe they are a good catch have more dealbreakers, and that everyone has more dealbreakers when considering a long-term relationship rather than a short-term one. One of the studies found that, though women tend to have more dealbreakers than men, there are more similarities than differences between the sexes.

The biggest dealbreaker for both was “disheveled or unclean,” followed by “lazy” and “too needy.” Women place greater importance on having a sense of humor, perhaps because humor is linked to intelligence. Men aren't as concerned about brains in a mate – in fact, one study found that men prefer not to date women who are smarter than they are.

When it comes to hitting the sack, the sexes are divided again. Women consider “bad sex” to be the biggest dealbreaker. Men, on the other hand, are more turned off low sex drives and talking too much. It's a classic dichotomy – men want quantity, women want quality.

A discusssion of dealbreakers begs the question: are you too picky or not picky enough? And which is better? Psychologists and dating experts say it's smart to set reasonable standards and expectations, but relying on irrational ones could mean missing out on a great mate.

If you want to know if a dealbreaker is reasonable or ridiculous, try this tip from Michael Boman, a licensed clinical social worker in Magna, Utah, who counsels couples: “Ask yourself what your best friend would say. It helps you to become objective.”

Dating advice tends to fall into two categories: mostly terrible and completely heinous. It's Cosmo giving women bogus tips on how to trap a man or pompous pick up artists telling men how to seduce a woman. Either way, everyone loses.

But every once in a while, beneath the steaming garbage heap of trash dating tips, there are a few nuggets of genuine wisdom. They aren't about how to dress sexy or charm a date with pre-planned pickup lines. In fact, they aren't really about your dates at all. They're about you.

Changing your dating life means changing the way you approach dating. When you adjust your actions, mindset and expectations, you can totally transform your dating game. Follow these four tips to give it a complete overhaul:

Be willing to work for it. We cling to the idea that love is supposed to find us suddenly and sweep us off our feet. It's a romantic notion, but utterly impractical. Relationships don't just happen – you have to work for it, just like you put work into your career. Make dating a priority. Meet new people. Go outside of your comfort zone. It's the best way to increase your odds of finding someone you really click with.

Don't judge a book by its cover, or a person by their profile. Just because everyone's trying online dating doesn't mean they're any good at it. Some people are awful writers and aren't photogenic, but they're great dates when you meet them in person. Other people nail the profile but don't live up to it face to face. Ultimately, a good profile only means that you're good at writing profiles. The only way to really get to know someone is to do it in person.

Focus on how someone makes you feel. It's impossible to date without judging. In a way, that's what dating is about – evaluating people to determine if they're a potential partner. Just make sure you're judging the right thing. Picking apart someone's clothes or hairline is superficial. Instead, focus on how they make you feel. Are you comfortable? Are you happy? Do you feel like the best version of yourself when you're around them? Those are the things that really matter.

Get used to taking risks. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained” is a tired cliché, but it's 100 percent applicable to your love life. Dating means taking risks, unless you're willing to settle for whatever accidentally comes your way. Guys, approach someone even if you think they're out of your league. Ladies, start approaching men if you've always been the approach-ee. You'll begin meeting better quality partners when you put yourself out there and go after what you really want.