ADVICE
Love and Dating Lessons You’ll Wish You Learned Earlier
The road to wisdom is paved with mistakes. And we make a lot of them!
Our relationships are no exception. For every great match comes a bad one we’d rather forget.
Are they embarrassing to look back on? Absolutely! It’ll be hard not to cringe at our mistakes. But as bad as they are, they do have lessons.
As we realize these lessons, we can’t help but knock ourselves and say, I wish I knew this earlier! No wonder people say that hindsight is 20/20.
And with that, these are the love and dating lessons most of us wish we knew back when we all started dating:
You attract what you release.
We’ve all heard of the law of attraction, right? We catch the attention of people who are on the same wavelength as us. So, if you had a history of being with the wrong partners, or just had a lot of bad luck dating, you may have been emitting bad vibes.
You can’t change the past, but you can change your dating future. Whatever negativity you have left should be replaced with healthy optimism. We can’t change things we aren’t aware of, so look in the mirror and see your areas for improvement.
It’ll take work to put good energy out to the universe, so don’t get too frustrated if you can’t get to a great place right away. And when you reach it, you may start seeing equally pleasant people come to you.
Signs send you a message. Don’t ignore them!
Whether you believe in divine intervention or not, there’s some merit in following signs.
Let’s say you met someone on a dating website. Your match had all the things you wanted in a partner: attractive, financially stable, and self-assured. What more could you want, right? You got giddy whenever he struck up a conversation online.
And when you finally met up, they initially lived up to your expectations. But whatever hope you had started to diminish when they brought a friend during your meetup.
It wasn’t great, but you continued pursuing them anyway. But whenever you sent a message, you didn’t notice their disinterest. Sure, they replied, but they weren’t engaging responses.
And when they stopped messaging you back, you ended things right then and there.
Those signs may seem obvious, yes? To some of us, they’re not. The lesson here is that when signs show themselves to you, you may want to take the hint and follow them. The potential thrill isn’t worth the heartbreak!
Chemistry alone won’t cut it.
Chemistry is one of the easily addicting things about dating. For example, you and a cute stranger encounter each other in a bar. Small talk turned into a full night of flirty banter over a few bottles, with your night ending with an exchange of phone numbers and promises to keep in touch.
Who wouldn’t want to come down from that high?
As great as it feels, chemistry alone isn’t enough to make someone love you. It plays a part in relationships, but it’s not the primary driver. If that person doesn’t feel the same way you do, no amount of great chemistry will make things happen.
People experience love differently.
When we are in our twenties, we tend to be a little naïve about relationships — especially people who haven’t been in one. And with that, we mostly had a narrow perspective on love and dating.
Media has played a part in shaping our romantic outlooks too. How? Movies and TV shows usually portray relationships as a magical experience. That may explain why many of us had a limited view of the subject in our formative years.
The lesson to learn here is people have different experiences of love. Just because you saw one relationship play out in a specific way doesn’t mean it’s applicable to other ones.
As we get older and navigate relationships, we learn these love and dating lessons. Even though we wish we learned them sooner, don’t knock yourself for late realizations. It’s better late than never, yes?
