Everything you ever wanted to know ON Dating!
Submitted by Lisa Steadman on August 29, 2007 - 4:40 pm
Check it out — my good friend Andrea Syrtash hosts these fun and fab online videos about dating. Some of the topics she covers include…
E-Cheating
Online Dating (featuring the Uber-fabulous Dr. Ian Kerner)
Blind Dates
Andrea’s invited me to be a guest on the show in the near future. I can’t wait!
Top 5 tips for getting over a breakup
Submitted by Lisa Steadman on August 28, 2007 - 2:09 pm
According to a new scientific study out of Northwestern University, breaking up isn’t so hard to do. However, in case you need a little help getting over your ex, here are five tips that should do the trick:Â
1. Get rid of your ex’s stuff The first step in moving on after a breakup is to get rid of the evidence, i.e. your ex’s stuff. This is especially important if you lived together. Once you have parted domestic ways, there may still be remnants of your ex lying around. The first order of business is to get rid of any remaining reminders. That includes his alma mater mug in the cupboard, his boxers in the hamper, his 2-in-1shampoo in the shower, and even his name on your auto insurance policy. Remove any and all evidence that your ex actually existed ASAP.Â
2. Give your bedroom a makeover It may seem insignificant, but your bedroom holds the key to how quickly and easily you move on after a breakup. That’s why it’s necessary to give your bedroom a bit of a makeover. Buy new sheets or a new comforter, move the bed to another wall, invest in a new set of pajamas that your ex never saw you in, invite a new scent into the room with candles or air freshener. Do whatever it takes so that every time you enter the bedroom, you’re not reminded of your ex and instead are able to focus on celebrating you and your ability to move on! 3. Give yourself a makeover Go ahead, live a little! Invest in that cut, color, and highlights. Re-vamp your closet. Stop by the makeup counter at your fave department store and get a new look. You deserve to celebrate the new you that’s emerging after the breakup!Â
4. Shake up your routine Does your post-breakup routine go something like this – work…home…eat…late night TV…sleep…work? If so, it’s time to shake up your routine! Put on your most bootylicious jeans and after work stop by the bookstore. Hang out in the section that interests you, i.e. travel, home decorating, etc. Make eye contact with the cutie across the aisle, or recruit your Woo-Hoo Crew and go out for cocktails after work. You may even opt to sign up for a class that interests you at a local college. Do what ever it takes to shake up your routine so you’re less focused on what’s missing and more focused on what’s around the corner.Â
5. Throw yourself a Movin’ On party
To celebrate your new and improved life after the breakup, throw yourself a Movin’ On party. The party is not so much focused on celebrating the breakup as it is celebrating the life that’s now waiting for you, a life that promises to be more authentic and inspired now that you’re free to be true to yourself. Let the party begin!
Top 5 tips for getting over a college breakup
Submitted by Lisa Steadman on August 24, 2007 - 12:26 pm
Like the song says, breaking up is hard to do. And it can be even more difficult in close-knit communities like college campuses where social activities may just keep your ex close by. As college students head back to school this fall, the following tips should help them handle a breakup during the school year:Â
Create new boundaries with your ex
Because of the close-knit college setting, it’s not always easy to cut your ex out of your life. But that doesn’t mean you can’t heal and move on. Instead, create new boundaries with your ex. Don’t call, email, or seek out your ex. And if you run into your ex — in class or in a social setting — be friendly and courteous but don’t fall into your old pattern of familiarity and intimacy. Don’t talk about how you’re handling the breakup or if you’re dating anyone, and definitely no booty calls.
Â
Recruit a Boo-Hoo Crew
Your Boo-Hoo Crew is the key to surviving and thriving after a breakup. These are your friends who will be there for you 24/7, who will keep you from calling your ex in a moment of weakness, and will remind you why you’re better off without him or her.
Â
Find healthy ways to fill your free time
While emotional eating, crying, and moping are all common survival tactics following a breakup, you should also fill your free time with healthy activities. Go out with your girlfriends for a night away from where you might run into your ex. Join a new club or organization that’s in no way affiliated with your ex. Just do something that makes you feel good about yourself. That’s the most important thing right now – to remember that you are fabulous, and there are plenty of fun ways to fill your free time now that Mr. or Ms. Ex is no longer in the picture.
Â
Avoid rebounding and/or revenge
Nothing makes you look like more of a sore loser after a breakup than a blatant rebound or revenge tactic. Skip the drama, and instead focus on your recovery. When you need help, ask your Boo-Hoo Crew for support.
Â
Become a breakup rock star
Above all else, stay strong. Don’t let the breakup be the thing that defines you and your college experience. Let it be the motivation for becoming the best “you†possible. Give yourself permission to heal and move on and become a true breakup rock star.
Â
NEW FEATURE – The Target-Rich Report
Submitted by Lisa Steadman on August 22, 2007 - 3:21 pm
Mr. XY and I recently moved to a new neighborhood that we both absolutely adore. One of the things we really like about it is that it’s so pedestrian friendly, which is unusual in Los Angeles. We walk to the grocery store, the bank, post office, our favorite coffee place, etc. And not only do we walk, but plenty of other people do, too. Young, old, single, families, and everyone in between. Which got me thinking…
Oftentimes after we’ve healed from a breakup and are ready to move on, we don’t exactly know how to get back out there. While we’d like to date again, we may be stumped for where to go to meet potential love interests. Sure, the internet’s a good tool. But it shouldn’t be your only resource. I’m a big believer in the in-person approach, i.e. striking up a conversation with a cute stranger in a comfortable environment. To increase the odds of meeting someone you’re compatible with, I encourage my coaching clients to identify the type of person they’re looking to attract, and then put themselves in target-rich environments on a regular basis.
TARGET-RICH ENVIRONMENT: Any location where single and ready to mingle individuals can find a decent selection of potential single and ready to mingle candidates of their desired caliber. For example, a dive bar may be target-rich, but is that the target you’re aiming for? If not, adjust your sites accordingly. Think charity fundraiser. Evening activities at your local museum. Volunteering for a good cause.
Introducing The Target-Rich Report, a new blog feature where I’ll regularly share a potential target-rich environment. I encourage you to share any you discover as well. Without further ado, here’s the first installment…
Your Local Coffee Shop
When I was single, I enjoyed numerous flirtations with gentlemen I met while standing in the latte line. Better yet, stop by your favorite local coffee shop on a Saturday morning looking casual and cute. Instead of ordering your cup of Joe to go, stay awhile. Read a magazine, flip through the paper, and be sure to smile at any cuties you make eye contact with. If nothing else, it’s great practice!
Outdoor Festivals
This past weekend, my neighborhood was taken over by a two day music festival. Everywhere you looked, there were interesting and attractive people, all with a common interest – Indie music. Why not seek out an outdoor festival that caters to your interests and then recruit some friends to join you for a weekend of fun in a target-rich environment?
Bookstores
Ladies, take note. Well-read single guys tend to frequent bookstores, and you should, too. Spend some quality time in a section you enjoy, like travel or cooking or at the magazine rack. Casually keep your eye out for any cuties, and if they meet your gaze offer them a friendly smile. Can’t hurt!
Stay tuned for the next installment of The Target-Rich Report. And in the meantime, share your own target-rich environments!
As featured in Zink Magazine…
Submitted by Lisa Steadman on August 21, 2007 - 3:54 pm
Exciting news! The September issue of Zink magazine includes a shoutout for my book. Here’s what it says…
Clean Break
“We’ve all woken up next to a half eaten box of Oreos and an empty pint of chocolate chip ice cream, only to fall back in bed after realizing the reason behind our binge: a heart wrenching breakup. Luckily, there is a new survival guide to help us move on (and avoid a diabetic coma). It’s a Breakup Not a Breakdown by Lisa Steadman, creator of BreakupChronicles.com, treats breakups as an opportunity for growth, change and personal empowerment. Face it, staying positive about a breakup always trumps wallowing in our Cheetos-stained sweats for two weeks.”
Scientific study claims breaking up isn’t so hard to do
Submitted by Lisa Steadman on - 8:27 am
According to Science Daily, breaking up may not be so hard to do. Here’s the press release…Â
Breaking up May Not Be As Hard As the Song Says
Science Daily — the devastation caused by a broken heart has been a dominant theme throughout the ages of great literature and pop culture alike. But a new Northwestern University study shows that lovers, especially those madly in love, do much better — almost immediately — following a breakup than they imagined they would.
In other words, participants who forecast how badly they would feel over a breakup with a partner actually felt much less distress than they had predicted in the days prior to the relationship’s demise.
Those most in love really got it wrong. Though the love-crazed participants may have felt the ecstasy and anticipated the despair immortalized in “Romeo and Juliet,” their level of actual distress following their real-life breakups came nowhere close to the agony suffered by Shakespeare’s tragic young lovers.
“Our research shows that a breakup is not nearly as bad as people imagine, and the more you are in love with your partner, the more wrong you are about how upset you are going to be when the dreaded loss actually occurs,” said Eli Finkel, assistant professor of psychology in Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and co-author of the study.
The people most in love did experience a little more distress over their breakups.
“But the overestimates of the most-in-love participants, of how badly they would feel after a breakup, were much greater than the predictions of participants less in love,” said Paul Eastwick, the lead author of the study and a graduate student in psychology at Northwestern. “Their levels of distress were nowhere near their catastrophic predictions.”
The study “Mispredicting Distress Following Romantic Breakup: Revealing the Time Course of the Affective Forecasting Error,” will be published online today (Aug. 20) in The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Besides Eastwick and Finkel, the co-authors include Tamar Krishnamurti and George Loewenstein of Carnegie Mellon University.
The study adds to a growing body of literature that shows that people demonstrate remarkably poor insight when asked to predict the magnitude of their distress following emotional events.
In anticipating a breakup, for example, people might not take account of the good outcomes that follow a breakup, such as the benefits of being single.
Whether the discrepancies between people’s predicted and actual distress are caused by their inability to foresee positive life events on the horizon or their inaccurate theories about how quickly they can recuperate, a romantic breakup seems to be less upsetting than the average individual believes it will be, the study concludes.
To qualify for the nine-month longitudinal study of dating behavior, each participant needed to be involved in a dating relationship of at least two months duration. Participants still involved with their partners from study entry completed a set of questionnaires every two weeks for 38 weeks, for a total of 20 online sessions, to measure predicted and actual stress. The study utilized the data of 26 people (10 female and 16 male) who broke up with their partners during the first six months of the study. The forecasted distress reported two weeks prior to the report of the breakup was compared with actual distress at four different time points covering the initial weeks and months following the breakup. The questionnaires also included a measure assessing how much participants were in love.
“People tend to be pretty resilient, often more so than they realize,” Eastwick said. “No one is saying that breaking up is a good time. It’s just that people bounce back sooner than they predict.”
Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Northwestern University.
This week’s advice (8/20/07)
Submitted by Lisa Steadman on August 20, 2007 - 4:16 pm
Anonymous writes: Well I’m with this guy and in all of my past relationships I have been cheated on and this guy that I’m with now just seems to good to be true.  I ask him all the time if he is seeing other girls and stuff like that and I know it makes him upset but he is still with me. How do I get to the point where I can trust again?
The Relationship Journalist says: I know it hurts to get cheated on, especially repeatedly, but you shouldn’t make your current boyfriend pay for your exes’ bad behavior. He is not the one who cheated on you. It’s up to you to trust him and work through your own insecurities and fears. But to keep torturing him? That’s not fair. Give this guy the chance he deserves or do him a favor and cut him loose.
Â
Baby Boomer Launches Online Magazine to Help People Live a Passionate Life
Submitted by Lisa Steadman on - 3:51 pm
Looking to live a passionate life? Read on…Â
Sacramento, CA (PRWEB) August 20, 2007 — Passionate for Life Magazine – Baby Boomer, Dana Hall, has launched Passionate For Life.com, the online magazine for readers striving to live the passionate life, and she is helping visitors find their passion through her magazine’s content.
Says Dana Hall, founder and editor-in-chief, “Contemporary media addresses the hunger of people in our society to get out of their ruts and live a more passionate life. Passionate for Life Online Magazine delivers articles and advice and inspiration to help visitors discover their passions and live passionate lives.”
Passionate for Life’s content includes inspirational sections on Living the Passionate Life, Career, Spirit, Single Life, Marriage, Family, Travel, Health, Women’s Interest, Helping Others, Baby Boomers and more.
Teaming with Hall as the editor, is a rich spectrum of talented authors, writers, and life coaches. Each one addresses a key element of living life with passion. The writers explore the power of passion; how to discover one’s passion; how to live a life of purpose, authentically and with passion; the law of attraction; finding your dream career; and reinventing oneself mid-life and more. The Life Coaches provide advice in overcoming the obstacles to living a passionate life, and sustaining pursuits enthusiastically and energetically. For example, Single Life author, writer, and coach, Lisa Steadman writes “Passionate for One: A Crash Course in Living and Loving Your (Fabulously) Single Life”. Lisa appeared on the NBC Today Show recently, publicizing her current best-selling book titled, “It’s a Breakup, Not a Breakdown”.
Passionate for Life invites readers to share their passions and read other’s passions.
This week’s advice (08/13/07)
Submitted by Lisa Steadman on August 15, 2007 - 9:19 am
Violet writes: How do I exorcise my ex from my life and move on? What about if he owes me a lot of money or a valuable item?
The Relationship Journalist says: When a relationship ends, unfortunately we don’t always walk away with everything we walked into the relationship with. Often times, money and/or valuable property becomes a casualty of the relationship ending. And while that’s a less than desirable result of your breakup, you may have to accept the fact that you’ll never get your stuff or your money back. Of course, you can try talking to your ex and trying to get your things back but I’m guessing you’ve already done that without success. If the items are that valuable to you and your ex isn’t willing to negotiate you can always take him to court but that doesn’t necessarily have a happy ending either. I guess what I’m saying is that like it or not, you may lose money and/or precious items as a result of your breakup. While it can be an expensive and/or painful lesson, it shouldn’t keep you from healing and moving on with your life.
A modern day breakup story, a.k.a. Fairytale Turned Horror Story
Submitted by Lisa Steadman on August 10, 2007 - 9:18 am
Anonymous writes: My relationship was straight out of the fairytales until it turned into the mystery/horror novel of the century! New Year’s meeting, through friends/family, the perfect kiss after 12. I remember sitting with the women that I hold in high regards saying, “do you think he’ll call?” Sure enough by the next weekend we were going on dates and he was talking about traveling with me. After a few weeks we had a magical weekend together in a desolate cabin. We shared new experiences, he loved winter extreme sports, we shared dinners, wine, stories, romantic steamy baths, and he said the big three.
“I LOVE YOU.”
A couple of weeks later this wonderful, thoughtful person, landed the avalanche on me. I was at work, in an environment full of the utmost morals and just filled with great people, when a colleague asked, “How everything was going with this guy?” Well, just as the six degrees of separation warrant he knew him. It seemed they had some common friends. As the week went on Friday approached, it was the end of the work day, and my colleague asked,”so how old is his kid now?” I instantly felt that woman’s intuition that I knew too well and said, “Oh his sisters both have children but he doesn’t.” At that moment I felt like the fool, the one that flashed a sign “LOSER” like a gas station sale on beer.
Immediately I ran back into a closed room and made the call. When Mr. Perfect answered he was standing beside the family member that had originally been the mastermind behind our blessed union. He said he would call me right back and did quickly. This was followed by his 15 minute drive to my door, which was typically 1/2 hour, the on his knees begging for forgiveness, the sobbing, the begging.
Finally the story came out that this choir boy, from the small town, from the perfect family, had a secret that not even his best friend knew about. It was his one night stand that ended in a child that he didn’t want to claim, didn’t know about, didn’t have a relationship with until 6 months previous to my entrance into his life. Gratiously I finally accepted his blunder and explained that I needed time but he was still there, he basically got away with it all and didn’t feel any real consequences. Hell it wasn’t anyone’s business and we weren’t children, right? So I thought.
This folly was followed by the sleigh ride into the snow covered hills on a most romantic Valentine’s and a vacation to a 5 star resort. WOW!! Big deal because when I had a health complication this guy had a “business meeting” out in a small town known for the fun time to be had. That he did! While I was lying in bed wondering if I would end up in an emergency room Mr. Perfect was in a bar drinking. The next month came (only month 3) and I figured hey why change all of my habits when it is obvious that he isn’t?! I remained in contact with friends, males, some of which were ex-boyfriends. Finally one night paranoia took over and my boyfriend scrolled through my phone. He found messages about sports, music, and oh my they were from males!! Needless to say he flipped and held it against me. I was the one in the wrong now, didn’t that release him from any guilt? Of course it did! The accusations, the namecalling, the yelling started and didn’t cease. He even decided to get violent, he put his hands around my neck, and beat up my dashboard one night. Wow that’s when I knew this was a person that had control issues.
We had weathered storms, we had traveled numerous times by now, he had professed his love, he even had me try on rings. I told him I didn’t want him to think that this was my idea someday when he looked back and his reply was,” I want to see what we like because it is going to happen.” The vacations and the love story came to end though. We, of course, had sex the last week of our relationship. On the night that preceded the demise of our union I got out of bed because he was on a rampage. I went out to my car and I told him, “I live in fear of you and I walk on egg shells!” He stood there in boxer shorts, getting eaten alive by the mosquitos and said,”please don’t go, stay, please, I don’t want you to feel like this.”
When he woke about 6 hours later, instead of letting me rest, he sort of woke me too. I knew that I was leaving and sure enough on his two hour treck to the office he called to state his feelings. That was one of the final conversations that we had. Of course he did talk to me when he needed a shoulder to cry on but needless to say he was done with me. Imagine that: HE WAS DONE WITH ME!
I guess it’s all for the best. While my ego hurt that I let the sky breakup with me rather than be breaking up with him, I’m glad he’s gone that I can now move on with my life. Some days are easier than others but I know that I just need to stay strong. Life goes on, right?
Older Posts »
