Begin a dating detox to reset your metabolism.
Whether you need to lose weight or simply want to get healthy, it’s always good to start with a thorough intake. Most women I know have a giant invisible calorie counter hanging above their heads at every meal, and they apply their own set of accounting rules. It’s food math, and don’t tell me you don’t do it. You wave the bread away and hold the fries so you can have two mojitos instead and feel virtuous. Sound familiar? You skip carbs but then double down on protein and chocolate and find yourself still hungry, with a headache. Out of balance.
We lie to ourselves about our emotional intake, too. You reason that sleeping with an ex doesn’t really count because it’s not as though you’re increasing the all-important number of men/ women you’ve slept with. What you don’t calculate is that it still adds up to emotional calories—your inevitable inner conversation about what his new girlfriend would say or about why you split up in the first place. It’s not moving you forward; it’s taking you backward. And it’s all energy that could be better deployed elsewhere.
A good nutritionist will want to know your daily food habits. Do you applaud yourself for your self-restraint around all food until 4:00 p.m. and then become unhinged, scarfing whatever you can find until you feel so depressed you renounce food forever—until you start the cycle up again the next day? Do you restrict yourself to one chaste glass of wine a night, which you sip obsessively on the quarter hour? Or do you convince yourself that splitting a bottle is so much more economical than buying by the glass?
Nutritionists will also grill you to find out if you actually consume enough healthy calories to keep your body satisfied and functioning properly. And they will certainly ask about your medical history—such as, does obesity run in your family? Have you ever had an eating disorder? What is your BMI?
Do the same thing for your love life.
In your real (or digital) notebook, answer the following:
Have you ever been in love?
Who was your first love? Was it mutual?
Did he (or she) treat you well?
Did you treat him (or her) well?
How many people have you dated? For how long?
How did each relationship end?
What types do you go for?
How many long-term (more than three months) relationships have you been in?
Do you like monogamous relationships?
Have you ever cheated (be honest)? Why did you cheat? How did it make you feel? How did it end?
What is the happiest you have ever been in a relationship? What about it made you happy?
When is the last time you felt that way?
The next step is to take an inventory of all the partners you have had in your past. Include the ones that didn’t work out as well as the ones you had successful relationships with. Open all the cupboards to your past. Clean out the deep freezer. Do you stockpile Diet Cokes but then sneak Ben & Jerry’s ice cream bars on your way home from work? Do you say you are going to exercise and then decide that you feel a cold coming on and might be better off taking it easy? Some of us prefer salty, gorging on bread and cheese; others go for cake pops. Others pride themselves on eating only cottage cheese and carrots for lunch but then devour donuts as 4:00 p.m. comes around.
All these patterns apply to relationships as well.
Just swap relationships for food.
Whether you like the bad boys, or you have a soft spot for the supersensitive ones, or you ping-pong between girls and boys, or perhaps you’ve only had unrequited crushes, you likely have a relationship pattern that you need to examine in order to determine the right habits going forward. You need to admit your weaknesses and cravings—and single out your strengths, and moments of happiness, too.
Most diet books promise a thinner, fitter you in ten weeks. This book doesn’t promise that, but if you want a chance at finding a happy or fulfilling relationship, then you have to first recognize your patterns. Include every one-night stand, every online dalliance. Don’t ignore the unrequited crushes, either.
If you want a chance at finding a happy or fulfilling relationship, then you have to first recognize your patterns.
Write it all down—every person you have hooked up with, spent hours obsessing over, or cheated on. Just as you have to get on a scale every morning or look at yourself in the mirror at the start of every diet, you must begin your dating detox by being honest about your past relationships.
And that includes your role in each relationship. It is time to ask yourself why you are single.
An understanding of how you present to the rest of the world is key. Before you begin the dating diet, imagine what it would be like to go on a date with yourself. How do you come across to others? If someone Googles you beforehand, what will they find? What image do you present to the world? Consider the following:
Do you only post photos of yourself when drunk? Or with other drunk friends? Or doing exciting things that other people might not have access to?
Do you keep up with the news?
Do you find yourself to be the best topic of conversation? In other words, do you only talk about yourself?
Are you compassionate?
Are you a good listener?
Do you come across as bone-crushingly ambitious?
Take a selfie and for a moment get outside yourself.
What would it be like to date you?
And if this is too hard, then ask your parents or sister or a friend. Treat this like a 360 review at work. Ask people you trust to kindly tell you what your strengths are and what you could work on doing better. You don’t have to agree with them, but they may give you insight you can build on.
Next, compile a list of the blowouts that you’ve had with any of your exes. Does a pattern emerge? Is there a narrative thread? A common complaint about you in relationships? Too selfish? Too messy? Irreverent? Too thrifty? Too harsh? Not enough fun? Too much fun?
Is there a consistent criticism that keeps coming up? Something that you are supersensitive to? If so, perhaps it indicates an element of truth.
This reminds me of my friend Danielle*, who did not realize that she was lactose intolerant until her early thirties, when she got terrible food poisoning that landed her in the ER and then in the hospital for several days. The culprit was a pork chop at a Chinese restaurant, but as she slowly started to eat again after three days with no solids, she discovered that she was having a strong reaction to milk and dairy products. The reaction to the bad pork chop revealed her growing intolerance to dairy. “I had forgotten what ‘good’ felt like because I was so used to being uncomfortable and bloated,” she says. “It was only after I had stopped eating entirely and then started reintroducing foods that I could tell immediately what threw me off.”
Food intolerances are a good parallel for dating.
Following the notes you have already made, go back and add all the unrequited loves, including your very first crush in kindergarten. Mine was Andrew, whom I met in primary school. He had a blond pompadour and had somehow appointed himself class leader, and we basked in his attention. I can still remember the thrill of being rose queen to his king at the annual summer pageant. He was confident and funny, and until writing this book, I hadn’t thought about him since—and I am sure he hasn’t thought of me! But looking back, he unwittingly set the template for the guys I found attractive, and I went out with several like him. It’s important to remember every person you have fallen for because you will likely see a pattern of the types of people you find attractive—quiet, noisy, funny, retiring; rabble-rouser, outsider, rule-follower, leader—emerge.
Write down your first crush’s name. Was that a he or a she? How old were you? How did the attraction begin? How did it end? Then answer the following questions:
How would you sum up your dating history?
Are you a serial monogamist?
Someone who can’t commit?
Do you think of yourself as lucky/unlucky in love?
How many people have you had sex with? How many of those from online encounters? How many sexual encounters with total strangers?
What is the best part of having sex with someone you don’t know?
What is the most enjoyable part of having sex with someone?
If you are currently in a relationship and unhappy, why do you stay?
What are you scared of?
How much do you change your personality around your boyfriend or girlfriend?
Have you ever had an experience where you were not sure if you had been assaulted? If you have been assaulted, write that down, too. It is far too common and one of the reasons I wanted to write this book.
Write down every encounter you can remember. Include each obsessive Facebook crush—note how many minutes you spent going through his vacation photos or counting how many times that other girl liked his Instagram photos, too. While you’re at it, add up all the time you spend waiting for your boyfriend to want to (a) move in, (b) propose, (c) move out of his mother’s house into his own place, and (d) take you somewhere you actually long to go.
Stop complaining about how dating sucks and start analyzing what is actually going on in your love life that makes it feel like it sucks.
Look at the data.
Just as it’s easy to get into bad food habits, it’s easy to get into bad love habits.
Take Sally, the daughter of a friend and a sophomore at a smart liberal arts college. One evening over dinner, I asked her what her weekends were like. I wasn’t expecting her answer.
“Well,” she replied casually, “my friends and I all go out on Friday nights, get drunk, and hook up. And on Saturday morning, we go down to the health center together to get Plan B.”
I knew the over-the-counter drug was easily available—sold in vending machines on college campuses and handed out at wellness centers—and that many young women are not taking birth control pills because they worry that the regular intake of hormones is bad for their health. But I was still gobsmacked by Sally’s blasé admission, and worried for her. Here was a highly educated and intelligent girl I had known since she was skipping off to primary school in the mornings. Now she was admitting that she and her friends go out together knowing that any one of them may have sex with a stranger and without protection, leaving them open to both STDs and pregnancy. “Plan B” almost sounded like a badass badge of honor, as in, “Oh God, I was so drunk last night, I don’t even know if I had sex!”
I was also unsettled by how grim those Friday nights sounded. Pregaming and then having passed-out sex—was this the new fun on the campus? #SquadgoalsPlanB&brunch! Did no one in her crew say, “Actually, this isn’t fun, and it’s probably not doing us much good”? I stuffed it in my mental drawer to unpack with the Cosmo staff later, and then over the next few weeks, I started asking other young women if that scenario sounded familiar.
It did.
It sounded very familiar to the interns at the office, to readers, to women who wanted to tell their stories about what many relationships are really like for women in their twenties. And to Leah Fessler, who based her senior thesis at Middlebury College on hookup culture and then wrote a remarkable essay on her findings for the online journal Quartz titled “A Lot of Women Don’t Enjoy Hookup Culture—So Why Do We Force Ourselves to Participate?” It went viral.
That was May 2016, and the line that stood out was “The fact that most of these guys wouldn’t even make eye contact with me after we had sex or would run away from me at a party was the most hurtful thing ever.”
As we commissioned more and more stories at Cosmo, I found myself asking: Where are the good sex stories? Where are the stories of glorious obsession? The stories of blissful romance, of longing, of waiting for the person you can’t stop thinking about to notice you or text you or—dare you even think of it—agree to meet?
And most important, why wasn’t there any mention of the word that haunted my own teens and twenties—love?
There is so much talk of connecting these days yet such little trust in those connections. There is so much ease to hooking up yet not always much pleasure in it. The goals women are under pressure to accept have changed from love to sex. We live in a world where men and women can say, “I want to have sex tonight. Let me go online and figure out who’s out there.” There have never been more options available in finding a partner, whatever your age or stage. This is a new moment.
There is so much talk of connecting these days yet such little trust in those connections. There is so much ease to hooking up yet not always much pleasure in it.
And in this new world, women need to be very clear with themselves about what they want out of the deal.
So in your relationship diary, record each Snap that leaves you feeling breathless, every Tinder swipe that has you hopeful, every coffee shop flirtation that gives you butterflies. They all matter.
You’ve already begun the process of writing things down, and my guess is that some early emotional relationship truths have emerged as a result.
Do you always fall for the guy who ignores you?
Do you stay with people who make you feel bad about yourself?
Do you find yourself suppressing what you really want for fear of frightening him or her away?
Do you expect more from your love interests and pretend that you don’t mind when they don’t deliver?
Once you have thought hard about your past, think to your future.
Who do you think is truly the best type of match for you?
What are the characteristics you feel you need in a partner?
Does he or she need to be good looking? Kind? Financially stable? Artistic?
Make a detailed list of the ten qualities that you are looking for and don’t forget to include your thoughts on children. Do you want them, have them already? Are you someone who has never had a pang and is happy to be child-free? Whatever your stance is, state it in ink (or tap it out on a keyboard).
What are your requirements? Your deal breakers? And why?
Do you always go for the moody introverts who get jealous when you want to see your friends? Do you develop mad crushes at work but are too shy to even talk to any of them? Or do you keep hooking up with your ex because he lives in the same apartment building as you and it is easier than having to put yourself out there?
What are your patterns?
Identifying your unhealthy patterns is the first step to breaking free of them. Just like you might crave a brownie to go with your skim latte every day around 4:00 p.m. Or you cannot imagine seeing a movie without inhaling a large tub of popcorn doused in fake butter.
What are those cravings and weaknesses when it comes to love? And how can you break them?
And while you are at it, this is a good moment to take stock of your friends and do a friend cleanse:
Analyze all your relationships—not just the exes who left you feeling devastated or the compelling but infuriating FWB who refuses to take it further than sleeping with you on Tuesday and ignoring you the rest of the week, but also the friends who assure you, as you angst over whether you’re doing the right thing, that “at least you’re having sex.”
Friends really do come and go throughout your life. And friendships do change as you develop. Cut out the friends who make you feel good in the moment but bad on your way home or the next day. Instead focus on those who make you feel good about yourself and give you good energy, the fruit and veggies of your life.
It’s okay to shed people.
Someone who sustained you at twenty-two does not necessarily have the same appeal at thirty-five. This applies to both love interests and good friends. Our female friendships are hugely important, the stuff of life, but they do not necessarily help in the romantic space. They can also thrive on your drama. Friends can get jealous or insist they know what is best for you. They can even sabotage potential partners. So do a friend check: Do you have friends who support your bad decisions? Who are enablers? Or commiserators? Who make you feel out of control? Do your friends collude with you to claim you are just too intimidating for most men, when in fact you can (on occasion) be loud and boorish?
Extend your detox to your friends.
So extend your detox to your friends. I’m not suggesting one of those extreme cleanses where you’re supposed to survive on water infused with cayenne pepper for ten days and you end up delirious. But it’s worth suffering the headaches that come from a decent detox as your system rebalances itself without the usual junk you have become reliant upon.
It’s time to move you forward.