When you’ve binged on dating to the point of nausea, every profile may already taste the same to you. And everything may already seem… repetitive: “Steaming heaps of pictures of him traveling through India. At a friend’s wedding. His love of Michael Chabon. The Macbook Pro he can’t live without. The kind of whiskey he likes to drink. You can’t keep stats straight anymore. Who is looking for an intelligent woman with a wicked sense of humor and who is looking for a partner in crime again? You don’t remember. You just show up at the wine bar and figure out who he is once you get there,” said Chanel Omari, celebrity radio host on iHeartRadio and WBLI 106.1 in New York City.
No wonder that some may find themselves: restless, listless, disengaged and un-engaging.
And when this happens, “face the fact that sometimes, the dating well runs dry.”
Now comes the – perhaps – harder part: Considering what to do when you know you need a dating break.
According to Omari, “a dating break is only that first step to loving yourself for you.”
When it’s time for a dating break, and here are six ways to do it.
- Get back in touch with yourself.
While dating, so much of our mental energy is expended thinking about someone else. We are fantasizing about a blissful future together, trying to decipher the subtext of their chosen Emoji, or obsessively checking the phone for a response to a text sent five minutes ago. Instead of outsourcing your feelings of self-worth to someone you just met, think about the attributes that make you special, as well as the things you need to work on. Reinforce a positive self-image to remind yourself that you are deserving of love.
- Why do you want to be in a relationship?
Often times, most of the pressure to be in a relationship comes from external forces. Everyone else seems to be in one, so why aren’t you? Are you dating just because you feel that’s what you’re supposed to do? Are you afraid of ending up old and alone with eight cats in a studio apartment? These are highly motivating factors that encourage us to spend far too much time mining date sites in search of a suitor. Sometimes it’s because of our culture pressures, like I grew up in a Jewish Modern Orthodox home where I am expected to be married by 22 and have five kids by 26. I am 32, single, a career woman and feel the pressures that I must have it all and can I? But, am I doing it for myself or for society or for my culture? Ultimately, we need to learn how to push this noise away and do what’s best for us because that’s how we will fall in to the right kind of guy for us.
Think about the end goal – do you want to be married and start a family? Are you just looking for someone to have fun with for a while? Figuring this out can help reorient what types of dates you pursue.
- Reallocate your time.
If you’re averaging two or three dates a week, that amounts not only to the time spent on the date, but hours in pre-date communication and planning. Think about all that could be accomplished if that time were suddenly free. You could work on a novel, take up painting or learn to play the violin. By enriching your life, you simultaneously become more interesting and appealing to others. Serial dating, on the other hand, is not a hobby that anyone finds attractive.
- Reallocate your money.
Dating is expensive, especially if you’re a guy. As a straight man, you’re likely on the hook for buying dinner/drinks for both you and your date. As a girl, you’re probably buying new clothes and visiting the waxer more frequently. With this money saved, you could get an HBO subscription or buy Rosetta Stone to teach yourself Italian.
- Attract more people by not dating.
By projecting an air of self-contentedness, you may find that suddenly more people ask you out — and in real life as opposed to virtual reality. The old axiom goes that a relationship happens when you’re least expecting it. This probably occurs because when you remove the fear and sense of urgency driving you to serial date, there is an inner calm that supersedes.
- Recognize it might not be the right time.
It is entirely possible that you are not in a place in your life for a stable relationship. While you may crave the companionship and regular sex, what you may really need is a dog and a vibrator. Maybe you need to focus on your studies, your career, or you just haven’t had enough time to do the personal work on yourself to build a stable foundation for love. In this case, trying to find a relationship is premature and counterproductive.
If you can be honest about where you are in your life and you take the necessary steps to loving yourself and figuring out what you want, first and foremost, than you will have more room to be open to the right guy that is compatible with you and will adore you for who you are. Trying to be something you aren’t, will only push him away more even though you think it won’t.
TV personality and reality star and now radio host of 106.1 WBLI, a top 40 radio station in New York, which is also part of IHEARTRADIO MEDIA and has over a million listeners daily, Chanel Omari has come a long way in 30 years. After earning her bachelor’s degree in Broadcast Journalism & Communications at Northeastern University, Omari worked in television production, writing, producing and reporting for nearly a decade. Over the last ten years, Chanel worked for industry heavy-hitters including Donny Deutsch, Maury Povich, Bill Cunningham and Anderson Cooper.
