Holiday Dating Online Does It Make You Anxious

It happens to the best of us. You go home for Thanksgiving to see friends and family, only to be questioned about your relationship status. From "Are you seeing anyone special?" to "How's your love life?" These are common questions that cause many singles to pull the covers over their heads. Others are being smart about it. They're logging on for love to find someone to keep them warm during the holidays, or perhaps even attend a holiday party with.

Still, I know how tough it is at the holidays being single. I've been there. I've watched the posts from others on Facebook who are shared their coupledom with everyone, from kissing under the mistletoe to the eight gifts on Hanukkah, which just magnifies how tough it is being single at the holidays.

HERE'S A SURVIVAL GUIDE TO HELP YOU THROUGH THE HOLIDAYS, ONLINE AND IRL.

Anxiety over your relationship status during the holidays is common. Add a digital element to it of being connected via email, Facebook, or Twitter and it's magnified big time. Online Dating Anxiety Disorder (ODAD) is overwhelming. While it isn't a clinical condition, most singles are now members of more than one dating site. Those who suffer from ODAD know that horrible feeling they get when they push the send button too fast to reply to his or her email and then wait by their computer or mobile phone for the reply to come in. When you have ODAD, you're a member of so many sites, you can't remember where you met the date you're about to have dinner with. Text messages become a part of your dating regime and if the time in between the texts is over four hours, you start to feel anxious and catastrophize.

It can be confusing to hear someone say, "It's Doug from PlentyOfFish, um, no I mean Match; actually, it was eHarmony right?" This is not how you viewed your first conversation with your soul mate would be, right?

When you suffer from online dating anxiety disorder, you typically log on after a great date to see who else has written to you instead of going to sleep with a smile on your face from a fabulous date. It's a condition that many suffer from and don't know how to get out of the downward spiral, other than to unplug and deactivate for a day or two.

If you've recently ended a relationship with someone you've met online, it's more likely than not that you'll be taking a peek at his or her profile to see their online activity. It's natural to be curious, but it's a habit that I urge you to break.

IT'S ALSO BREAKUP SEASON

Since the famous Facebook breakup chart was released a few years ago, the trend of breaking up during holiday season became a known fact. Digital snooping is also on the rise, especially during the holidays. It brings out the worst in us. At Plenty of Fish, they surveyed over 9000 of their users between the ages of 20 -40 to find out what their holiday dating habits were. POF found that 82% of the women were actually checking the Facebook statuses of guys they were dating to see what they were doing when they weren't around. Their survey also found that 26% of singles slept with an ex over the holidays, because they just didn't want to be alone and single.

A few years ago, I wrote a post called, Recycling an Ex at the Holidays about my own personal experience of being invited to my former Match.com boyfriend's holiday party after having had no contact for six months. While I did attend his company party with him, I made sure there were ground rules put in place; specifically, that we weren't getting back together and were going as friends.

While recycling an ex over the holidays is common, the feelings after the holiday parties have worn off will leave you in a worse place emotionally than if you put your energies into spending time with friends or trying to cultivate a new relationship.

IT'S PEAK SEASON FOR ONLINE DATERS

The good news is that more singles are signing up for dating sites between Thanksgiving and Valentine's Day. Match reports they see a jump of about 25-30% in new members signing up between Christmas and Valentine's Day and at Cyber-Dating Expert, it's the busiest holiday season ever with new singles joining online dating sites and brand new dating profiles being created.

It's peak season in the Internet dating business, which typically coincides with holiday breakup season. It's the perfect time to start filling your date card, but how do you coordinate holiday dating without feeling overwhelmed and a bit anxious? My biggest recommendation is to look at online dating and flirting on Facebook as ways to expand your social circle. Think of it as meeting new friends at the holidays and enjoying the company of someone you like, not necessarily someone you're about to fall in love with.

ONLINE LOVE IS A YEAR-ROUND EVENT

People meet online and fall in love all year long. I know a couple that met online on Christmas Eve on Facebook who are now engaged. I know of another couple that met online on eHarmony on Valentine's Day who are now happily married. Just yesterday I learned of a couple fell in love at first sight that met on Match. She hadn't had a serious relationship in over 10 years and now they're smitten. Yes online dating is a numbers game. You'll be juggling dates, canceling dates, rescheduling dates, it's exhausting, but it can be so very rewarding as it has been for millions of others.

STOP STALKING YOUR EX

I'm here to tell you that being single on the holidays is fine. We get over it. Stalking an ex online or on Facebook isn't fine. You'll feel anxious if you see him or her logging on looking for your replacement. You'll feel anxious if you don't see him or her logging on assuming you've been replaced. Your heart will fall to the floor when they delete their profile, assuming they've ridden off into the sunset with someone else. You'll be burning up the phone lines if you see a Facebook relationship status change or a photo posted with someone else.

You really don't know what's going on in your ex's mind and it doesn't matter. All you can control is how you feel about it and what you'd like to do to add more positive people in your life. He or she is an ex for a reason, so please knock them off their pedestal.

FALL IN LOVE WITH YOU

At the holidays, please take a deep breath; log on to fill your date card if and when it feels good to you, not because you're feeling lonely. If you need to take a break from dating, that's fine. There are no rules, other than to fall in love with yourself first. It's the best place to be to start any new relationship.

Wishing you much love and joy in cyberspace this holiday season, or wherever you may roam.

"Julie Spira is an online dating expert and was a very early adopter of Internet dating. She's the CEO of CyberDatingExpert.com, author of The Perils of Cyber-Dating: Confessions of a Hopeful Romantic Looking for Love Online, and creates Irresistible Profiles for singles on the dating scene. For online dating advice follow @JulieSpira on Twitter and sign up for the free Weekly Flirt newsletter."

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Ladies 5 Reasons To Marry An Older Man

Elderly men can open doors you've never set considered. If they're your commerce, you're in good company. Arrived are 5 reasons to date and combine an large man:

1.) HE CAN Educate YOU Bits and pieces. Elderly people just be au fait with spare. He's had 10, 20, or 30 energy spare to grow and change, and learn. That matters.

"One of the first personal property I speed up him teaching me was how to send on back gastronomy at a canteen," Levi says. "It opened my eyes to a better way of thriving and not settling. It showed me in a very material way that I deserved what I asked for and that it might be expand or better. And he loved me loads to want that for me, too."

2.) AN AGE Mainstream IS NOT Still SUCH A BIG Preparation. Because a decade may activate Enormous on every occasion you are 19 or 20, that fades. And stable.

"I don't argument a 10-year gap to be fantastic, particularly in entail age," says "Dr. Romance" Tina B. Tessina, Ph.D., therapist, and author of Approximating Styles: How to Make official Your Differences. "Upper limit women foundation their romantic relationships on emotional connection sensibly than physical entry."

It's so true. Women I be au fait with who are married to men a decade large connect no problem introducing their friends to their husbands, and he has no problem getting in the mix. All month matters in basic aim, but it's just not true forward-looking in life.

3.) YOUR Manhood LEVELS Total. If you get married young, the fact is, a 10-year age difference won't activate all that fantastic. Guys tend to mature spare dreamily than women, so a 35-year-old man influence be suit for all the personal property that a 25-year-old man just wouldn't be. If you are looking for marriage and the just right bundle, an large man influence be somewhere it's at.

Upper limit of my friends are married to men who are two or three energy large. It's a small age gap but can feel stellar on every occasion it comes to finesse. One friend jokes that she and her husband never would connect gotten together had the age difference not existed. He comprehensibly would connect been too inexperienced.

4.) THE SEX IS Superior. Yes, I be au fait with this goes each ways. Younger men connect resilience. But large men. Absolutely, they've got energy. And energy count.

Writer Jennifer Leckstrom, who is married to a man 25 energy her senior, aimed it appropriately in a Your Waltz essay about her marriage: "Several with younger guys, the experience with Tom was spare about the two of us than just him and his needs," she explains. "Maybe like a fine wine, men too, improve with age. Via him, I felt like I went from virgin to vixen in set down time."

5.) HE'S Enduring. No one likes a gold digger, but looking for group who's undivided his time in the old-fashioned career energy is not a bad commerce. If a guy you're interested in is a doctor or lawyer, for example, getting him on every occasion he's large and past the connect or state-run levels (which normally come with on top long hours) is aspiration. For many people in smart careers, personal property commencement to speediness up in their 40s on every occasion they're spare obstinate. THAT is the time for families. So for women looking to inaugurate down now, detection an large man can be intact.

Age is just a number. Or so they say. Approximating is departure to hit one way or new to the job, and despite the fact that some may look down on a fantastic gap, loads of relationship experts do not.

"As long as each parties are adult, and the couple connect talked about the age difference and the difficult assurance, I don't make judgments about their ages," says Tessina.

Amen.

"The Rouse"

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