Chelsey Sterling Dating Science & Strategy

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.

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.

The way we show up in dating is usually the way we will show up in relationships.

If we have times in relationships where we tend to back away when things feel intense, we may have times in our dating process where we'll tend to back away from dating.

If we have times in relationships where we tend to try to control the relationship to soothe our anxiety, we may have times where we'll tend to micromanage the dating process.

At other times, our responses may feel reversed:
We may know that we tend to lose ourselves in relationships, so we'll avoid dating.

We may not trust ourselves to choose healthy partnerships, so we'll hold ourselves back from fully committing.

However our patterns show up for us, the dating process functions as a "mirror" — a blank slate that reflects the patterns that are present in our love lives.

In this way, dating offers us a twisted, messy little gift.

When we find ourselves frustrated, discouraged, and disappointed by the repetitiveness of dating, we're being given a gift.

The dating process presents us with a unique opportunity to lean in and to resolve these patterns within ourselves BEFORE they show up in our relationships.

There are no perfect partners.

There are only compatible partners, and being skilled at handling differences with grace.

According to research by relationship therapists and researchers, Drs. John and Julie Gottman, 69% of relational conflict is perpetual, not solvable. That means the conflict is rooted in ongoing differences between partners (e.g., personality, preferences).

Some people find this statistic to be disheartening.

I find it to be grounding: It means that we can give up searching for the “perfect” partner and instead focus on finding a compatible, “good enough” partner who has the skills to navigate relationships with compassion and willingness to do their part.

According to this research, the goal of relationships is not to solve all conflict. The goal is to better navigate conflict with respect and kindness, and to choose a partner who does the same.

The cure for dating burnout & exhaustion is having high standards, but low expectations.

Take care with setting expectations early on in a relationship.

Disappointment hits harder when we have high expectations, and disappointment leads to dating burnout.

And when we're burned out from dating all the wrong people, we don't keep dating long enough to find the RIGHT person. ❤️

Wondering why you feel SO STRONG when you’re single, but tend to lose yourself in a relationship?

Anxious attachment doesn’t usually show up UNTIL we’re in a relationship with someone we like. ❤️

We can be confident on our own for years and years, but when we like someone, we’ll go back to that old version of ourselves.

For this reason, we can’t really heal attachment outside of a relationship. Healing has to be done where we can practice (ie, in a relationship).