Dating

Where has the year gone? Summer might have blown by fast, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have time to get your date on before the holiday season. Autumn is a great time for pursuing love, or maybe just meeting some new people. There’s a chill in the air, the nights are longer, and there’s more than enough pumpkin spice to go around.

So for your next Tinder date, maybe it's time to venture outside the coffee shop and get a little more creative. Check out these fall date ideas:

Halloween Costume Shopping. Stores start decorating for Christmas in August, so why not begin thinking about your Halloween costume in September? Take your date to some local costume shops and go through the racks together. Try on a costume or two if you are feeling brave. There's something cool and sexy about Halloween, of course! If you enjoy each other’s company, you can talk about your Halloween plans without feeling pressure.

I know a lot of women who are attracted to men who have exciting careers. They envision dating someone successful, since they have achieved their own independence and success and want someone who strives towards the same goals. However, the men who have the exciting careers that they envision – chef, musician, studio executive, or city councilman, for instance – tend to be beholden to those careers and don’t put enough time into their relationships.

The problem isn't that most men and women have different priorities as far as career ambitions - but that their timing is not always in sync.

Many women, especially if they are interested in starting a family or getting married, crave more connection and time together with a partner, especially when men are trying to build their careers. They want to spend time with a new love interest. Men in demanding careers might crave chemistry and connection as well, but might not have the same priorities of starting a family or being so committed to a relationship. Instead, work might come first – even at the expense of a relationship.

Sometimes an impending breakup is as obvious as Donald Trump's comb over. Other times it creeps up slowly, leaving you in a long period of uncertainty and doubt.

Should you give it a chance? Maybe if you hang in there, things will get better.

Should you move on? Maybe it's better to end sooner rather than later. Why waste precious time and energy on something you know is doomed?

Here are five signs it's time to seek out new prospects.

The same nagging concerns keep coming up. It's not only natural to ask questions about a relationship, it's healthy. All relationships must be evaluated at critical steps in order to determine long-term suitability. But if the same questions and concerns keep popping up, they're probably trying to tell you something. Take them seriously.

You don't feel free to be yourself. A relationship can only reach its full potential if both partners are completely authentic. If you do not feel free to express your true self, or your partner does not, the relationship will never be satisfying. Instead you'll feel stifled, suffocated, and prevented from personal growth.

You can't resolve conflicts. It's impossible to escape conflict in a relationship, so you must be able to handle it with grace and maturity. A healthy relationship is built on a solid foundation of communication – at all times, but especially when things get challenging. A relationship is guaranteed to fail if conflicts can't be resolved.

You don't feel supported. There's no place for narcissism in relationships. If your partner has a bad me-first attitude, or shows little regard for your interests and ambitions, they're not the right partner for you. In a healthy relationship, your partner will actively express interest in your life, your thoughts, your feelings, and your goals. You will not have to question their support for you.

Someone is stuck in the past. You can't get where you're going until you leave where you've been. Before you can build a future with a new partner, you have to be done with the past. If either of you is holding onto something, the weight of the baggage will drag your budding relationship down. Remain single until you're ready to live in the present and plan for the future.

Your life plans don't intersect. There's no way around it – if your life plans don't match, you're not a match. Someone who wants to be childless in a big city will never be a suitable partner for someone who wants a big family in the country. A relationship that is otherwise good will still crumble if your ambitions aren't complementary.

I spent a lot of time single fantasizing about what my life might be like with a partner. Specifically, how much better everything would be. I thought about road trips and vacations we’d take, driving up the coast - or settling into a bungalow in Bora Bora, sipping cocktails as we watched the sunset.

I thought about how having a partner would be an answer to the problems I was grappling with. I thought it would make me happier in my career, feel more secure financially, and give me companionship (not to mention sex on demand). Of course I knew there would be problems, but with the right person, we could address them.

Because of my “grass is greener” approach to being single, I missed out on a lot of opportunities. Thankfully, a couple of years before meeting my partner, I decided to take a different approach – to embrace my single status and to really enjoy the moment. It made me a happier person, and as an added bonus made me more attractive to the men I did meet. Dating became fun.

Here’s how you should enjoy being single and embrace the present now:

Pursue your passions while you date. I could have done a lot more with my time than binge-watch Real Housewives or sip cocktails with friends. I love hiking, and thankfully, I started to do more of it on my own until it became part of my routine. Do you write, play volleyball, ride horses, or garden? Are you looking to start your own business? Use this time to begin now – because in a relationship, you won’t have your schedule all to yourself.

Travel on your own. There’s nothing more liberating than being in a foreign country on your own schedule, and seeing what can happen. If that is too adventurous for you, then try a smaller trip – a drive up the coast or a weekend getaway. When you travel alone, you are more likely to strike up conversations with strangers and act with more spontaneity – not to mention making new friends to visit again.

See a movie or have dinner by yourself. Again, it can be liberating. Plus, you get to eat desert for dinner and watch an avant-garde art film if you want, no judgment.

Do something spontaneous once a week. When you’re in a relationship, you tend towards routine. Mix things up when you are single by trying a new coffee shop, exploring a new neighborhood, or trying your hand at surf lessons. It doesn’t matter what it is – trying new things keeps us curious and engaged (and happy).

Own your schedule. One of the perks of being single is that you can do what you want, when you want. Make plans with your friends. Work on that novel. Go hiking. It doesn’t matter what you do, just enjoy the fact that you have choices.

By now you've probably read – or at least heard about – Vanity Fair's recent takedown of online dating. The lengthy article is essentially an obituary for traditional courtship, which writer Nancy Jo Sales says is long gone thanks to online dating sites and mobile apps.

Tinder responded with a very public Twitter meltdown and tongues have been wagging about the state of modern dating ever since. Some agree with Sales, while others believe it's simply moral panic and anyone who hasn't jumped on the Tinder train is probably just too old to understand it.

The good news is, a growing body of scientific research is dedicated to online dating and the social change that comes along with it. The bad news is, even the scientists can't seem to agree with each other.

A 2012 study called “Searching for a Mate: The Rise of the Internet as a Social Intermediary” found no difference in relationship quality or strength between couples who met online and couples who met off. It also suggested that marriage and partnership rates may increase, as people with smaller pools of potential mates use dating services to cast wider nets.

Another 2012 study, headed up by Eli Finkel, concluded that most matching algorithms don't work. However, it also noted that “Online dating offers access to potential partners whom people would be unlikely to meet through other avenues, and this access yields new romantic possibilities.”

A 2013 study on marital satisfaction and breakups deemed online dating an unequivocally good thing. The research was sponsored by eHarmony, which rightfully has given some readers pause, but was reviewed by independent statisticians prior to publication.

A second study from 2013 examined sexual behavior and the “hookup culture” supposedly propagated by apps like Tinder. After examining a nationally representative sample of more than 1,800 18- to 25-year-olds, the study concluded that today's youth aren't substantially more promiscuous than previous generations. In fact, they may actually be having less sex than their predecessors.

Things got weird in 2014. Using the same data from 2012's “Searching for a Mate” study, a Ph.D. candidate at Michigan State came to the opposite conclusion about online dating and relationship quality. According to her findings, online daters are more likely to date than marry, more likely to break up faster, and more likely to break up more often.

How could two studies using the same statistics arrive at such different conclusions?

The answer is something we've always known: love is messy, contradictory, and confusing. Try quantifying that and you're bound to be disappointed.

The dating app market is flooded, so new companies entering the field and looking to make their mark have to differentiate themselves. For some app developers, it’s taking a female-centric approach, like with Bumble. Others look to social networking connections to make people feel more secure about meeting strangers, like Coffee Meets Bagel or Hinge.

The latest grab for online daters’ attention comes in the form of creating a dating app that is as exclusive as possible.

In other words, a new crop of apps are taking a completely different approach from acquiring the most users, like with Tinder. The success of an online dating company or app has always been evaluated by how large its database of users is. But these apps are banking on another measure of success - that is, how coveted the app is. They are driving demand for the app, and then being selective about who gets to use it.