Chelsey Sterling Dating Science & Strategy

Hot Take: If you feel the need to go on and on about decentering men, you’re being male-centered. 🤷‍♀️

When have you been hurt by emotionally unavailable partners?

When have you hurt a partner by being emotionally unavailable?

Friendly reminder that if you only feel attracted to the guys who text all day and come on super strong before they slow fade and disappear, then you probably have an insecure attachment style which makes you a magnet for emotionally unavailable men.

Frustrated that people on the dating apps can’t carry on a good conversation, aren’t looking for anything serious, or ask you inappropriate questions?

It’s actually a gift.

The point of chatting in the app is to learn things about the person and see if you want to continue getting to know them (or not!).

If they’re asking you inappropriate questions, they can’t carry a conversation, or they tell you they’re just looking for something casual — great! They’ve told you everything you need to know about them. Mission accomplished. You can unmatch them now.

Think of how much time you just saved yourself on a dead-end date.

But making the choice to keep talking to them and then feeling resentful is unproductive.

Resentment as an emotion is meant to teach us that we need a boundary. Use it as a tool to save yourself energy in the future.

Happy Mother’s Day to the mothers in our community here. ❤️ Thank you for all you do.

🚩 RED FLAG ALERT! 🚩

Did you know that research shows that the MORE trusting you are, the more you’re likely to spot when somebody’s lying?

Weird, right?

But that’s exactly what researchers Nancy Carter and J. Weber found in their research paper, “The Pollyanna Effect.”

Counterintuitivelty, the very reason that trusting people seems to work in exposing lies is that people who trust often aren’t looking for “tells” that aren’t there — so when one shows up, they’re ready to spot it.

Because they aren’t distracted by being suspicious of every little thing, when they see a REAL sign that someone is untrustworthy, it sticks out like a big red STOP sign.

Can you see how this might be useful in dating?

In dating, sometimes it can feel safer to look for hidden “signs” that the men you date are out to get you, or to assume the worst and wait to be proven wrong.

We think that when we assume the worst, we’ll be safer because then people will not make it through our filters by default.

But research shows that actually, assuming the worst makes us LESS safe in the long term: Because when EVERYTHING looks like a stop sign, we won’t be able to spot the REAL spot signs.

How can you use this information to help you to spot the REAL red flags the next time you date?

Sometimes we make “boundaries” that are really walls.

These “boundaries” might look something like:

“If he asks X question, that means he doesn’t respect me and I won’t date him.”

“If he does Y, that means that he isn’t a good guy.”

“He should know better than to say/do . . .”

These “boundaries” require the other person to read our minds, which we justify by saying “it’s obvious” or “it’s just common courtesy.”

Sometimes, it IS common courtesy. Other times, it isn’t.

Mind reading can feel “safer” to some people than verbally setting a boundary because it doesn’t require anything from us: if we grew up in a home or were previously in a relationship that punished us when we set limits or had needs, it can feel scary to state what is and what isn’t okay for us.

We might want other people to “just know” what our needs are, so that we don’t need to state them directly.

But healthy relationships require that we learn to speak up and advocate for ourselves.

Nobody can read our minds. Even the healthiest, most considerate partners need us to communicate what we want and need.

This is how we do our part in creating healthy relationships.

So called “low effort first dates” (coffee, walks, boba tea) are a great way to keep YOURSELF from investing too much too soon in someone who might be wrong for you. 🙏

We subconsciously invest more in someone who we have a romantic first date with. That’s bad, not good. We don’t know them yet.

Charmers and players plan great first dates. Charmers and players do not make good boyfriends and husbands.

We call it self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and “doing the work," but too often it's a performance designed to protect us from the deeper fear of being truly seen, by others and by ourselves.

Real growth, real self-care, and real self-love are about turning inward, confronting the parts of yourself you'd rather avoid, and then using that awareness to actually change how YOU relate to other people and move through the world.