Getting Back Into Dating
For getting back out there after a long gap or a bad stretch. It helps you decide what you are looking for, keep the apps to a set time, move to a short meeting early, and read a run of dead ends as the process rather than a verdict.
Dating · Self-Esteem · Relationships · 9 items · whenever you need it
The checklist
- Decide what you are actually looking for — company this month and a partner for life need different choices.
- Put one honest photo of your face up — a flattering old one only delays the meeting.
- Write a profile line you would say out loud — nothing in it should need a translator.
- Give yourself a cap on the apps — twenty minutes a day keeps it a hobby, not a second job.
- Move to a short meeting early — a coffee tells you more than three weeks of texting.
- Tell a friend where you are going — a text before and after is ordinary, not dramatic.
- Expect most of them to go nowhere — that is the process working, not you failing.
- Take a week off when it goes flat — the tiredness is real and it passes with a pause.
- Keep one thing in the week that is not dating — a full life is what you are bringing to this.
Use this checklist Free account: tick items off and keep each day's record.
How to use it
Run through it whenever you need it, honestly and without scoring yourself. A checklist is a way of noticing, not a test: an item you cannot tick is information about the day, not a verdict on you. Over a few weeks the pattern of what gets ticked and what does not says more than any single pass.
With a free Theraglee account the checklist remembers each pass, so you can look back. Without one, you can still read it here and keep your own copy.