Dr. Duana Welch
Have you ever found a promising relationship—only to have it fall apart? Finding someone wonderful is only part of finding lasting love. The decisions you make before, during, and after meeting someone can make or break your love life.
If you knew you could have any kind of loving relationship you wanted, and it would work out beautifully, what would you choose?
Marriage? Living together without marrying? Keeping separate homes but spending most nights together? Perhaps a duplex, with each of you on one side and a connecting door you can open when you’re feeling romantic and close when somebody’s snoring?
Or maybe you’d prefer a committed relationship without sharing an address, a bathroom, or custody of the remote.
The possibilities are especially interesting after 50, when you’ve probably built a life you’re rather fond of.
Yet many singles at midlife and beyond haven’t decided what kind of relationship they ultimately want. They know they want love. They know they want someone wonderful. But ask what their shared life should look like, and things get fuzzy.
Imagine getting into your car for a vacation without deciding where you’re going. You might enjoy the scenery, but you probably shouldn’t be surprised if you never reach the beach.
The British have a saying: Begin as you mean to continue.
And when it comes to choosing a partner, that’s excellent advice. Knowing where you’re headed changes who you choose.
So here are three questions I use with my clients to help them figure out their destination.
1. If you found your perfect partner, would you marry them?
I’m not talking about someone who’s almost right except for a few troubling habits. Imagine someone who meets your standards, shares your values, treats you beautifully, and makes you gloriously happy.
Would you marry this person?
If yes, why? If no, why not?
Maybe you want marriage because you value a lifelong promise and the security of a shared future. Or you loved being married before. Or you’ve never been wed and want to.
Maybe you don’t want marriage because you genuinely prefer greater independence. Or you want for-now, not forever. Or maybe you’ve been hurt before and are determined never again to risk your freedom, finances, or favorite armchair.
Those aren’t necessarily the same reasons. It’s worth knowing whether you’re choosing based on what you value—or what you fear.
2. What does an ordinary Wednesday with your ideal partner look like?
Close your eyes and picture it.
Where do you wake up? Your house? Their house? Our house?
Do you eat breakfast together? Spend the day doing your own things? Reunite for dinner? Go to sleep beside each other—or kiss goodnight and head to separate homes?
Maybe you’re picturing a traditional shared household. Maybe you’re picturing two houses with a connecting door and a very clear policy about when it’s open.
Neither vision is wrong. But they’re different lives.
And someone who wants to combine households, finances, and futures may not be a good match for someone who wants companionship while keeping nearly everything separate.
Love is wonderful. But it doesn’t magically settle disagreements about where to put the furniture—or whether there should be shared furniture at all.
3. How much interdependence do you really want?
This is where marriage and cohabitation deserve a closer look.
People sometimes think living together is marriage without the paperwork. But research could not be more clear: marriage and cohabitation are separate institutions with separate benefits. And these arrangements can involve very different expectations.
Marriage generally means a promise of permanence, along with legal protections and obligations. Cohabitation can offer companionship, shared expenses, and flexibility without that legal commitment.
But living together isn’t necessarily marriage-lite, or even low-risk. Combining households without marriage can intertwine finances and daily lives in ways that make separating difficult and riskier, sometimes.
And moving in together to find out whether you’re right for each other can backfire. And research shows that sometimes people marry because they’ve already combined their lives and getting out seems harder than staying in. “I chose you because inertia” is not the best reason for saying I Do.
That’s why I recommend screening for compatibility before sharing a home, not relying on shared living to reveal it.
Of course, you may want neither marriage nor cohabitation. You may prefer separate homes. The important thing is to understand what each arrangement offers—and what it doesn’t.
And then comes the question that can save you an astonishing amount of time and heartache:
Does this prospective partner want the same destination?
You can have wonderful chemistry, shared interests, terrific conversations, and sex that makes you forget where you left your reading glasses—and still be incompatible about commitment.
If you want marriage and they never intend to marry, that’s not a little detail to work out later. If you want separate homes and they dream of waking up beside you every morning, neither of you is necessarily wrong. But this is not a small matter, and it can be a giant incompatibility.
Now, I’m not suggesting that on your first date you whip out a floor plan for the duplex you’ve selected.
But it does mean asking, “If you could have any kind of relationship you wanted, what would that look like?” And asking it from the very start. The first call, or even before that. It means knowing what you’re screening for, so you don’t spend months—or years—falling in love with someone whose vision for the future is going someplace you aren’t.
And if you’re worried that commitment means risking the life you’ve worked so hard to build, remember: You can screen carefully, protect your finances, maintain boundaries, and make thoughtful choices before intertwining your lives.
You don’t have to choose between love and alignment.
You can choose the kind of relationship you want, understand what it requires, and find someone who wants to build it with you.
Because when you know where you’re headed, you’re far more likely to get there.
Want to find your person without settling or repeating old patterns? Watch my free 10-minute training: https://LoveScienceMedia.com/consult
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Quick: if someone you were excited about decided not to date you, how would you prefer to find out? What words (if any) would you want them to say?
In my own research, people revealed a pattern. And that pattern led me to the one sentence that will let you end things easily, clearly, cleanly, quickly, kindly, and without ghosting or drama.
And we’ll get to that.
But first: why do we vanish without informing the other person? In a word: bwakbwakbwakbwaaaaak! (That’s supposed to be a chicken.)
We fear conflict, or hurting the other person, or having to deal with their difficult emotions. We tell ourselves that avoiding conflict will be kinder; a 2024 study found that some people ghosted because they cared about the other person’s feelings and wanted to spare them the pain of rejection.
But what ghosting really avoids is closure, and it creates scars that we can’t see but that research shows are there.
Back in 2009, when breaking up by text was the hot new way to avoid an uncomfortable conversation, I decided to ask people what they thought about it. The most interesting finding wasn’t about technology, though. It was what they wanted to hear when someone didn’t want them anymore.
Their answers were remarkably consistent. They didn’t want a critique of their shortcomings or a detailed explanation of why they weren’t good enough. They wanted something positive, followed by a kind, clear statement that the relationship wasn’t a match or that the necessary feelings weren’t developing.
They wanted honesty without brutality. And an ending they could recognize as an ending.
That last part matters more than you might think.
Imagine you’ve had a promising conversation with someone. You laughed together. They seemed interested. Maybe they even suggested getting together.
And then—nothing.
Did you say something wrong? Were they never interested? Did something happen to them? Should you reach out again?
A 2025 study found that ghosting caused more prolonged emotional distress than explicit rejection. In other research, people who’d been ghosted remained more emotionally attached to the person who disappeared, even checking their online activity.
Think about why. If someone says a clear but kind No, you may be disappointed, but you know where you stand. And your energy can flow back to yourself and your search. But if someone simply vanishes, you may spend days or longer trying to solve a mystery that the other person already knows the answer to. And a piece of you is wondering if they’ll return.
Now, before you create a colorful slide deck on why this one isn’t The One, I need to present a tiny caveat: Don’t tell them, specifically, why this isn’t going to work for you.
Don’t tell someone that you like them except for their personality, that you find their relationship with Fluffy to be enmeshed, or that their idea of romance is jogging together and your idea of jogging is hell. Never say, “I just don’t find you attractive enough to go out with.”
Those may be perfectly valid reasons not to move things forward. But giving a targeted, specific, or detailed reason can create the very awkwardness, pain, drama, and fallout most of us want to avoid. And in an online-dating study in 2024, some people reported more pain from rejection accompanied by an explanation than from ghosting! We don’t know how tactfully those explanations were delivered, but the finding raises an important distinction:
There’s a difference between giving someone closure that lets them move on, and giving them a critique they can’t unhear and will have to get over.
Most of the time, this other person has not committed any social crime; they just aren’t a match. Don’t scar them—just as you don’t want others scarring the person you find and fall in love with. Let this non-match go back into the dating pool with as much of an open heart as they had when you met.
So please don’t explain what’s wrong with them. Instead, use this one sentence to communicate what’s true for your emotions:
“I enjoyed talking with you, but I’m not feeling the connection I’m looking for.”
And if you’d like, you could add,
“I wish you all the best in your search.”
Bonus! Your feelings are not up for debate.
So that’s it. There’s no detailed explanation, no false hope, and no invitation to negotiate.
For someone you’ve only exchanged messages with or spoken to once, a brief text is generally fine. A more established relationship deserves a more personal conversation—although even then, keep it focused on your feelings, and decide beforehand at what time you’re ending the meeting or call. And if someone is threatening, harassing, or refusing to respect your boundaries, blocking without first informing them is absolutely appropriate. Kindness doesn’t require risking your safety.
But when someone simply isn’t your person, a gracious goodbye takes very little time.
After that, it’s perfectly appropriate to block, delete, and move on with your life. You’ve given closure; what they do with it is up to them. And you’ve earned, by your clarity and kindness and the basic right to determine who is and isn’t in your life, the prerogative to simply move on, yourself.
Dating necessarily involves rejection. You can’t find the right person without discovering that some people are wrong for you—and that you’re wrong for some people, too. That’s not failure. That’s the process working.
And having that one sentence in your hip pocket makes that process so much easier: for you and for them.
Want to find your person without settling or repeating old patterns? Watch my free 10-minute training: LoveScienceMedia.com/consult
Research and further reading
Photo by Ozkan Guner for Unsplash
How many first dates does it take? I recently saw a New York Times piece called “40 First Dates and Still Searching.” The lead-in described a man investing in pricey matchmaking services as he searched for The One, and asked: Would it help him find love?
My first thought was: Maybe, but probably not. For two reasons.
First, you’re your own best matchmaker.
Nobody knows you as well as you do. Nobody cares more than you do about getting this right. And you can learn to fish for yourself instead of having it done for you—for far less money, and usually quicker and better too. I know, because I’ve been helping clients with their fish-finders, bait, and tackle—aka their clarity, selection, and commitment choices—for 30 years. You can do this.
Second, I got stuck on the other part of that headline: Forty first dates.
There’s a popular idea that finding love is a numbers game. Get on two or three apps. Keep meeting people. Keep getting out there. Go on another date. And another. Eventually, surely, one of them will be The One.
I knew a woman who believed this so much, she went on 800 first dates and still hadn’t recognized her person. I knew a man who dated for five decades and thought he had never met someone right for him—until he understood his patterns and changed his process.
And I know someone who at age 52 met only four people, and married one, and they’re very happy.
So while it’s necessary to encounter other people, you don’t have to personally meet everyone who’s pleasant with a pulse. Dating isn’t a numbers game—it’s more about what you know and how you apply that.
The problem? People routinely confuse volume with progress.
You can work very hard at dating without getting any better at choosing. Forty first dates certainly represents effort. It may represent persistence, optimism, and an impressive dry-cleaning bill. But if most of those 40 people were never genuinely viable candidates for you, or one was but they got lost in the shuffle, you haven’t necessarily gotten 40 steps closer to finding your person. You may simply have gone on 40 first dates.
The antidate to fishing every pond is this: stop treating the first date as the start of screening. It should be where screening continues.
However you find each other, you can often learn quite a bit before your first date, from whether they smoke, to whether they’ve got kids at home, to whether they want the same kind of relationship you do. If you’re online, that information is usually right there on the profile!
Of course, you won’t yet know whether this person is Your Person; that takes time. But knowing they aren’t can be the work of moments to minutes—it does not need to take weeks, months, or years. Usually, it does not even need to take a date.
So the purpose of that initial before-the-date screen is to decide whether to have the date at all. Is this person a sufficiently promising candidate that you’d like to learn more? Date time!
Now you can find out what happens when you’re sitting across from each other. Do you enjoy talking with them? Do they listen? Are they kind to the server? Do you feel comfortable? Curious? Is there a baseline attraction that could become more? It could be time to set another date and learn even more.
So ignore some popular advice. Don’t date ‘em till you hate ‘em. Don’t give everyone a chance. Don’t set the goal to More Dates (unless you have No Dates. In which case, yes, you’ll need more than zero.). You don’t need a vast number. You need quicker, better screening, so your dating time is spent on real prospects.
Of course, sometimes you’ll still go on a first date that goes nowhere. Some important information, like whether you can tolerate their scent (which is a thing!) can’t be known until you’re in their presence. And sometimes you’ll find a dealbreaker. And that’s ok. That’s what the date taught you.
But there’s a difference between discovering incompatibility that couldn’t reasonably have been known beforehand, and repeatedly going out with people whose incompatibility was sitting right there in their profile, messages, or phone call before you put on real pants and left the house.
I know this can sound a little theoretical, so remember the 52-year-old who met four people for a first date, and married one of them?
That was me.
When I was dating, I screened carefully before meeting anyone in person. I used what I knew about my own personality, history, and patterns, what I needed and wanted in a partner, and specific strategies for finding out whether someone was likely to be a good candidate before agreeing to a date.
It worked because it works.
Now, I’m not promising that if you follow the process, Person Number Four will become your forever mate, or that total clarity will arrive by the end of Date 1; even in my case, I knew Kerry seemed like an amazing match, but I could not have known, so quickly, that we were each other’s person. Really knowing someone takes time even if they show up right away, and even if they’re right for you.
But you are largely in control of every factor aside from when they show up, and 40 first dates aren’t an inevitable toll you have to pay on the road to love.
This is doable with the right screening process. That process should be specific to you: your history, your patterns, your needs, your wants, and the information you need to gather before attraction has a chance to start making excuses for incompatibility.
So if you’ve been going on date after date after date, I wouldn’t automatically conclude that you need to try harder, swipe more, hire somebody to produce more candidates, or expand the pipeline. I’d ask a different question: What’s my screening process, and is it working for me?
Because the goal isn’t to gather first dates. The goal is to stop needing them.
Dating gets a lot easier when you know whom to meet—and whom to screen out before the first date. If you’re 50-plus, I’ve made a free 15-minute training to help you find and choose the right person without settling or falling back into old patterns.
You can watch it here:
LoveScienceMedia.com/consult
Photo by Duana Welch
Share Article Print Article Permalink tagged DDating advice for women, Dating advice for men, Dating at midlife and beyond, dating burnout Clutch your pearls and adjust your monocle, because I’m about to recommend a piece of dating technology many people apparently believe went extinct sometime around the fax machine.
The telephone.
Not texting on it. Calling someone.
I know. So 1900s.
But when my clients are dating, I encourage them to get off texting and onto an actual phone call before meeting.
Texting is terrific for “I’m running five minutes late” or “I had a wonderful time tonight.” But as a way to get to know someone? Notsomuch.
Here are five reasons I don’t recommend it.
1. Texting makes hiding easy.
A scammer can text you. So can the already-partnered. So can someone who’s talking with eight other people and sending some version of Good morning, beautiful to all of them before breakfast.
A phone call doesn’t prove someone is single or sincere. Married people own phones. Players have vocal cords. But real-time conversation requires time and attention, and makes hiding harder.
You can send five people a text while you’re waiting for coffee. You can’t have five 30-minute conversations at once.
Time and attention cost something. See whether someone will spend some on you.
2. Texting creates false intimacy before they’ve earned the real thing.
You’ve never met—or you’ve met once—but suddenly they’re in your pocket all day.
Good morning!
How did your meeting go?
Sleep well ❤️
It feels intimate. And that’s the problem.
Texting can make someone feel familiar before you’ve earned familiarity with each other. Soon you’re accustomed to their availability.
They usually text by eight. It’s 9:15.
Yesterday there was a heart. Today there is no heart.
What does it MEAN?
Congratulations: A near-stranger can now alter your mood from across town.
I call this the electronic leash, or e-leash if you prefer (Perhaps Apple will trademark the iLeash? I digress.). You’re not partners yet. You don’t need continuous access to each other.
3. Texting creates misunderstandings nobody needed to have.
Quick. Tell me what this means:
Fine.
Human beings communicate through tone, timing, emphasis, pauses, laughter, hesitation, warmth, facial expression, and body language. Text strips most of that away, and your brain helpfully fills in what’s missing.
Sometimes incorrectly.
The joke looks insulting. The brief answer looks dismissive—angry, even. The period at the end of the sentence looks ominous. The lack of a period looks illiterate.
On a call, you get considerably more information, including whether misunderstandings can be repaired while they’re happening.
4. Texting lets someone audition. Calling lets you meet them.
A text can be written, deleted, rewritten, sent to a friend for review—and now, handed to AI with the instruction, “Make me sound warm, witty, and emotionally available.”
But you aren’t choosing someone’s texts as your life partner. You’re choosing the (we hope) human being who writes them.
Can they sustain a conversation? Listen? Follow a thought? Understand your humor? Think on their feet? Are they curious? Warm? Interesting? Do they recall what you’ve said from one conversation to the next? Do any dealbreakers emerge? Do you enjoy talking with them?
Because you want to know the real them, not the curated text version. Plus, if they annoy you in 20 minutes by phone, you probably don’t need two hours in person to confirm it.
5. Asking for a call gives you instant information.
Tell someone:
“I don’t really get to know people by texting. I’d love to talk by phone—how about tomorrow at 8 pm?”
Then watch.
“Sure! I’ll call you then” is good; so is, “Sounds good, but is 7 a possibility?”
But if they dodge, refuse, or pressure you to communicate the way they prefer, you don’t need to diagnose why. You’ve already got useful information.
Sooner or later, every relationship requires two people to navigate different wants, needs, and preferences. If a simple phone call becomes a point of contention before you’ve even met, pay attention. You just learned something about their willingness to hear what matters to you and respond with care.
You’re not really screening for whether someone likes phone calls. You’re screening for whether they can do relationships.
So use that handheld computer we call a phone—as a phone. Set up a call. You may learn more in 20 minutes than you would from 200 texts.
And isn’t that the point?
Dating gets a lot easier when you know what to notice—and what to do with the information you’re getting. If you’re 50-plus, I’ve made a free 15-minute training to help you find and choose the right person without settling or falling back into old patterns.
Photo by Fumiaki Hayashi on Unsplash
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