Dating & Relationship Advice

If we’ve been away from the dating scene for months or even years, it can be a challenge to start again. Maybe online dating feels like a minefield that we’re not equipped to navigate. Perhaps the process feels alien to us. Maybe we’re impatient to find love or doubtful that it’ll work out. Dating after a break can feel like a big step but there are many things we can do to make it easier.

One of the challenges of dating or starting a relationship is knowing how much personal information to disclose and at what point. It can be tempting to over-share or to hold things back. So, how do we strike a healthy balance? How can we avoid under- or oversharing in dating?

Trust is a very important issue in all of life, and that’s especially true in the online dating world. We message and arrange dates with people we’ve never met, we show up and spend time with a stranger and have to decide how things will develop from there. We have to be wise, savvy and make sure we are safe, and we need to know if we can or can’t trust someone for the long term. Dating is about opening up, telling people about yourself, being vulnerable – we can only do that if we truly trust someone, otherwise we will be guarded, have a barrier up and the dates will grind to a halt. But we also need to balance our boundaries and sensible self-protection. So how we can take those first impressions of someone new and grow trust while dating?

When it comes to romantic attraction and finding our match, we all have our preferences, ranging from height to hair colour and from career to relationship history. But these dating preferences can shrink our dating pool, and they may keep us single. Is it time to broaden our dating horizons?

If you’ve been single for a while, you’ll have noticed your dating and relationship priorities might have changed. The chances are, what someone is looking for in their early twenties is quite different from what they’re looking for later on, into their late twenties, thirties, forties and beyond. We all change as we get older, and our priorities when it comes to dating and relationships are likely to change too. So, how might what you’re looking for in a life partner change over time? What might you encounter at different dating life stages? And how can you plan for an amazing future no matter what your age?

Holding on to ourselves and being who we truly are in romantic relationships can be a huge challenge, especially if we’ve been waiting a long time to find love. But if we lose our personalities in the process of dating, it can be hard to find ourselves again, leading to unhealthy attachments. Wait a minute, you say. Surely, it’s called ‘falling in love’ for a reason? Isn’t it natural to lose parts of yourself as you look to join your life with another person? Like anything, it’s about balance.

Sometimes when dating, you just know someone isn’t right for you for the long term and letting down gently is the next step. You find your conversations going through the same small talk – again; you seem to be too different in key areas; practically it won’t work; the timing isn’t right, or that all-important growing connection just isn’t there. However, if you decide not to pursue a relationship, it is healthy to give someone closure, to finish well and be honourable in your actions. How can you do that safely and well?

Life happens. This very common saying means that you could be happily going along your day and suddenly, life throws you a curveball – some sort of unexpected problem or event. For most of us, we just deal with it as best as we can and carry on. But what do you do if ‘life happens’ when you’re dating, or getting to know someone for the purpose of a relationship? How do you navigate life changes when someone new is in the picture?