Laura Tong is here to teach us new dogs some old tricks! Take note of some dating advice that helped our grandparents be so successful in love.
Despite our most mindful of efforts, sometimes daily life can be so madly full on it feels like we’re plunging into free fall with our adrenals on fire. Exhausting! And somehow amongst the craziness, you still need to find the headspace to hit dating as anything but the rather frayed, unravelled piece of humankind you see in the mirror. Try adding to this the need for enough puff to actually enjoy the experience and…Agghh!
Chill a moment. Take heart. Breathe. The answer lies in some seriously radical dating advice from some old friends who had this stuff nailed way back when…our grandparents.
Hop aboard my time machine and take a ride with me, back to the future of truly successful dating.
Radical Dating Advice from the bunch who were young and horny in their day too—our Grandparents
The Wisdom of Time
Let’s just be clear for a moment, don’t be fooled by erroneous, rosy-tinted images that our grandparents lived in a mythical era where everyone strolled rather than screamed through their day, where the world span slower because ‘progress’ hadn’t sped up the pace of life—tosh! Life’s been super busy forever, but it definitely unfolded at a more human pace until just before you and I popped into being.
Granny and Pops certainly knew that dating is a process and that it takes time. There are stages that simply are never worth trying to skip when seeking a genuine, sustainable relationship even though we’d all like to manifest that wonderful person into our life like now! Time invested in getting acquainted with the real person behind the profile before careering into hastily meeting will significantly reduce the heartache of finding out you’re seriously mismatched when you do hook up.
Radical Dating Advice Step One:
Discard any ideas that there is an overnight dating success waiting for you if whip through it all super fast. Instead, sign up for dating being an experience, a journey, an adventure…that requires good old fashioned patience (and yes, it does hurt a little to write that).
Intuition Can Be a Poor Traveler
One positive sign of our 2015 times is how incredibly global life can be: travel, business, international friendship, hey…greater integration of different cultures—fantastic. All this means more great mindful minds to meet and build relationships with—love it. There is, however, a radical dating advice caveat to this: don’t let all that you can see in the world cloud your intuition when chancing across your heart’s desire.
Our grandparents were mostly more grounded by the practicality of there being less information, less profiles, less options available—lucky them—for they also had fewer dating distractions, less conflicting pressures on what they should value.
Radical Dating Advice Step Two:
Conscious awareness of what you truly value in a potential partner needs to be sufficiently forefront to guide you through the myriad characteristics you’ll have the opportunity to encounter on your exciting dating journey.
Old Fashioned Dating Habits Rule
Now just to add some perspective in here, no one is suggesting we adopt our grandparents’ full on rituals of courtship—please! But let’s show our elders some respect by grabbing their greatest ideas and running away with them.
Practice doing as our grandparents did so successfully—before you hit the green light on your date, be mindful of your personal ground rules, and, more importantly, your honest intentions and share these with your potential date. Lay out with integrity why you’re dating, what you’re looking for and what you really wish for as an outcome.
Sound too old school? I hear you, but finding the courage to be totally upfront and truthful at the outset will save you from many misaligned dates that will only dent your confidence, purse and stamina for dating.
Radical Dating Advice Step Three:
Being open and honest about what you’re looking for is the only way to attract those confident they fit the bill.
Keep The Noise Down
Life was undoubtedly simpler back when chicken actually tasted like chicken (something my grandparents always cited as the epitome of ‘the good old days’). Well, clearly savoring a chicken dinner was a highlight!
This simpler time was irrefutably our grandparents’ greatest dating advantage, however, as their dates absolutely thrived on simplicity. They blossomed because the date was quiet enough to focus far more on each other than on any number of our modern day distractions that we so mistakenly incorporate into our date plans. Savoring the moment is far easier and more genuine when there is just one moment unfolding at a time.
Radical Dating Advice Step Five:
Swap any worries you have that the date will seem boring or unmemorable for the chance to let your full personality be the ultimate distraction.
Let the Only Fool Be Your Fruity Desert
Dating today has loads of rules and plenty of conventions, many of them great. There is one, however, that can seriously leave you out in the cold when dating: playing it cool is for fools—oh yeah.
This is definitely an area where the grandparent gang had the upper hand in dating. Smarten up your dating act by stealing one of their old fashioned habits and substantially increase your chances of getting to know your date better by warmly enthusing how great a time you had and how much you’d love to do it again. Waiting for ‘that call’ is going to consume you.
Radical Dating Advice Step Six:
Be honest and speak up about wanting to pursue this relationship if you do, thus eliminating any doubt that they should call you. Dating nerves aren’t exclusively yours after all.
Who’d have thought Granny and Pops’ radical dating advice could be so relevant in 2015. What else do you think we can ‘borrow’ from their dating rule books?
[image: via Bill Hartmann on flickr]
Laura J Tong inspires women to transform their relationships into real life love stories. Visit her at Rekindle The Love Forever to find out what it really takes to have a lifetime of loving.
About the Author:
