Dear Sara: I am 37 years old, and I am single. I have had two long relationships but have been single for a while now. Sometimes I feel great about my life, and sometimes I feel very depressed about being single. Sometimes people are really supportive toward me, and sometimes they are not.

I discovered that my strength is that I go on dating sites, follow dating coaching, and go to networking events, etc. But I find it difficult to allow feelings of sadness to just be instead of doing things all the time to desperately change my single status. I realized that, underneath all this, I feel that I am not good enough the way I am. One date mentioned that I was too sweet. Another guy gave me the feeling that I was not rich or trendy enough. I had the feeling that in order to make us fit together I had to change the interior of my apartment into a more modern style and come across as somebody who loves to socialize a lot just as he does. (more…)

I’ve had the opportunity to have a lot of fun conversations on podcasts and other outlets. Here they are:

I had a blast talking to Jacqueline Raposo and Ben Rosenblatt on Love Bites Radio:

It’s Not You! You’re Single in Your Thirties? Enjoy It!

It was also great to talk to Janelle and Rob Alex on the Mission: Authors Talk About It podcast:

27 Reasons You’re Single

And while I didn’t always agree with WABC’s Errol Gluck, I really enjoyed talking to him:

http://glucksolutions.podomatic.com/entry/2016-01-15T09_56_03-08_00 …

On the non-audio side, M.M. Finck at Women Writers, Women’s Books asks me some really interesting questions. Here’s our Q&A.

If you’ve recently created a dating profile for yourself, you’re not alone. This is the busiest time of year for online dating sites.

Along with your height, eye color, and favorite films, you’ve probably attempted to include language that informs the reader that you’re worth a look. You want to distinguish yourself from all of the other 5’10”-inch brown-eyed men who like movies and the outdoors. More to the point, you want to convince the gentle strangers reading your profile that you’re a winner–smart, successful, well-rounded, good-looking. You want to set yourself apart. (more…)

This will be the year: that you start getting up at five a.m. to go running, that you go on two dates a week, that you develop a system that keeps your closet clutter-free.

There’s a funny optimism that occurs at the beginning of a new year. Somehow, despite all evidence to the contrary, many of us become convinced that we’ll be able to alter fundamental aspects of our personalities—or at least become upgraded versions of ourselves.

And every year, sometime around mid-March, we realize we’re still hitting the snooze button, still weeding through overstuffed closets, still spending way too much time with our Netflix queues. We didn’t become shinier, happier or more popular versions of ourselves. We’re still basically working with last year’s model, and we see that as a problem. (more…)

After I asked readers to describe their feelings about the holidays, many expressed frustration. They wrote of nosey relatives who grilled them about their romantic lives, of being relegated to air mattresses while married siblings received guest-room accommodations, and of wanting to vaporize during New Year’s Eve kisses.

But perhaps the largest source of grief was the simple understanding that a time that is supposed to bring joy so often brings pain instead.

(more…)

Whenever people ask Buddhist teacher Lodro Rinzler to talk about love and romance, he asks them a simple question: “When you go on a date, do you bring your most authentic self?”

“Ninety percent of the time, the answer is ‘Hell, no,’” Rinzler writes in How To Love Yourself (And Sometimes Other People): Spiritual Advice For Modern Relationships, which he co-authored with Christian spiritual teacher Meggan Watterson. (more…)

Dear Sara: I recently met a guy on a dating app, and we had an online thing going on for about two months. Despite our distance [we live on different continents], we talked every single day, almost non-stop through text, phone calls and Skype. I tried (not very hard though, I must admit) to slow things down but was won over by his open-heartedness and sweet words.

We recently had a sort of fight and he seems to have disappeared on me. I’m devastated, because this is not the first time a guy has disappeared on me just as things seemed to be taking off. My question is: how do I trust my feelings and intuition when this keeps happening to me? Whether I am reckless or cautious with my feelings, it seems like I still end up getting really hurt. Will I ever become a “smarter” dater? Is there ever a “correct” way to love somebody? — L (more…)

I’m looking forward to visiting Chicago next month for two events. If you’re in the area, stop by:

Oct. 8, 2015. 11 a.m. Chicago Professional Women’s Network’s Annual Smart Chicks Lunch panel discussion. Balagio Ristorante, 17501 Dixie Hwy, Homewood, Illinois 60430.

Oct. 8, 2015, 6:30 pm. With Jenniffer Weigel: Reading at City Lit Books, 2523 N Kedzie Blvd, Chicago, IL 60647