When it comes to dating, the more things change, the more they stay the same. There may be new technology these days and no one meets in person, but everyone has regrets when it comes to who they’ve loved and lost. Here are 10 dating mistakes you may have made that you likely regret:
- Letting that second date slide. We’ve all been there: hallelujah, we have a good date. He says it was fun and wants to do it again, and we agree… only to never hear from him again. We don’t reach out and ask him because we’re not sure if he even likes us — and we have our pride, after all. If we like this guy, why not take the chance?
- Lying about our intentions. We all have ideas about where we want something to go: super chill and casual or true love. We’ve all pretended we wanted something low-key when we didn’t or claimed we were ready for a relationship when the opposite was the case.
- Dating someone just to date. There’s nothing worse than saying yes to a first, second or even third date when our heart just isn’t in it, and yet many of us have done this at least once. It’s so hard to be single for a long period of time that it’s tempting to rack up the number of dates we go on just to feel like we’re doing something. At some point, we have to ask ourselves whether we’d rather go on a lot of dates or wait until we meet someone we’re actually into.
- Being scared of leaving the single life behind. Being single is difficult at times and it can also be the most fun thing ever. We’ve all wondered if we should take a chance on a new guy or stay within our comfort zone. That fear, though, is probably telling us that this might be for real, so we should start listening to it.
- Bragging instead of examining. There’s a huge difference between showcasing our supposedly amazing new relationship on Instagram and figuring out whether this is the right thing for us. It’s pretty easy to social media brag without even thinking about it, but we should stop this annoying and unhelpful trend.
- Not having The Talk. Instead of regretting bringing up the possibility of making things official too soon, we often let things go completely and never bring it up at all. That’s how most almost relationships seem to end – the slow fade, ghosting, each person becoming more and more busy until things totally disintegrate. It sucks to never have any closure.
- Rejecting a guy based on one small detail. Here’s a not-so-news-flash: no one is perfect. And yet a lone comment from a guy is enough to ruin an otherwise good first date in our eyes. We’ve all judged someone unfairly because of their likes, dislikes, jobs, place of birth, etc. Unfortunately, once we reject someone, that date is essentially over, so this is one regret that totally stings.
- Letting a new love crash and burn. We get so excited when we finally click with someone that sometimes we tend to move way too fast. We know that relationships take time to grow, but we just don’t care — we’re too busy with our new guy. Then, surprise surprise, it’s over before it even truly begun. Later, we’re staring at old text messages, wishing we’d been a bit more careful.
- Letting our feelings show. This should never be a regret – it’s so much better to be honest – and yet it is, because sometimes when we tell a guy that we actually like him, he runs away. It seems to give him permission to ghost us or make it perfectly clear that he’s terrified of a relationship.
- Telling the dating app lie. We all do it — swear we never use Tinder or whatever our app of choice is. Yet we all know we’re big fat liars because obviously we use it or we wouldn’t be on a date as a result of that app. This is one dating regret that should never happen yet it’s probably not going anywhere anytime soon.
