Pick Your Commitment Level In Three Questions

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

 

Image by Unsplash+

The One Easy Sentence To End Things Without Ghosting

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

• Welch, D. (2009). Texting Your Breakup? Whether, When, How, Why. LoveScienceMedia. http://www.lovesciencemedia.com/love-science-media/texting-your-breakup-whether-when-how-why.html
• Park & Klein (2024). Experimental research on concern for others’ feelings as a motivation for ghosting.
• Telari, Pancani, & Riva (2025). Experimental research comparing the psychological consequences of ghosting and explicit rejection.
• Szczesniak & Spielmann (2025). Research on emotional attachment and continued monitoring following ghosting.
• van der Zanden & Schokkenbroek (2024). Multiple Facets of Rejections in Online Dating: Exploring Types, Reasons, and Impact.

Photo by Ozkan Guner for Unsplash

5 Reasons Texting is Toxic to Dating

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.

LoveScienceMedia.com/consult

Photo by Fumiaki Hayashi on Unsplash

The 5 Worst Ways to Choose a Dating Site

Dating apps are dying. At least, that’s what TIME recently announced. And although I don’t think they’re actually going away, I do think some of them perhaps should. 

Because if you’re looking for a loving, committed relationship, it matters not only who you choose online. It matters where you’re choosing them. And some of the things that make a dating site sound most appealing are exactly the things I’d tell you to avoid.

1. Choose it because it’s free.

Free is wonderful when you’re getting samples at Costco. It’s less useful when you’re trying to screen for people willing to invest something in finding a partner.

Does paying for a dating site prove someone is serious about commitment? Of course not. Married people have credit cards. Players have $39.99. But paying creates a small barrier to entry. Someone had to decide, Yes, finding a partner matters enough to me that I’ll spend something on this. That’s information.

So I prefer sites that charge—or, at minimum, offer a paid membership and make it obvious who has chosen it. You’re looking for intentional people. Choose a site that helps you identify them.

2. Choose one that won’t tell you what people are looking for.

This one makes me nuts. If you want a long-term, committed relationship, why would you spend your time dating people to discover whether they want one too?

Dating intention should not require excavation. A good dating site asks what people are looking for—short-term dating, long-term relationship, marriage, casual connection—and then, importantly, shows you the answer.

Someone who wants casual sex isn’t doing anything wrong. They’re simply the wrong candidate for someone seeking a life partner. You don’t need more candidates. You need better information about the candidates you’ve got.

3. Choose one that lets people skip the photograph.

Yes, I frequently warn people about the dangers of instant chemistry. No, I’m not advocating a passionless existence. But there’s gotta be a baseline.

A photograph can’t tell you everything about whether you’ll be attracted to someone in person. Attraction can grow as you experience someone’s voice, movement, humor, warmth, scent, personality, and the way they look at you. But physical attraction matters in a romantic relationship. You need enough visual information to determine whether someone clears the initial bar of Maybe.

You aren’t asking, Am I wildly attracted to this photograph? You’re asking, Could attraction plausibly grow here? Instant chemistry can mislead you. Zero information isn’t the cure.

4. Choose the site with the most people on it.

People routinely confuse a large dating pool with a good dating pool. They’re not the same thing.

If you want a committed relationship, an enormous site disproportionately populated by people looking for hookups isn’t necessarily an advantage. You could have 10,000 candidates. If 9,950 of them want something fundamentally different from you, that’s not a win.

Choose a site whose culture and clientele lean toward what you actually want. Look at how it markets itself. What does it emphasize? What kind of behavior does its design encourage? What are people going there expecting to find? Don’t choose the biggest pool. Choose one with your fish in it.

5. Choose it because you can swipe through people on your phone while waiting for your latte.

Convenient! Also: This is your life partner we’re talking about.

And the device you use isn’t necessarily neutral. Turns out, people give more weight to pictures and what immediately feels right when they use a touchscreen, but when they use a mouse, they give relatively more weight to other information.  

Swiping on phones is exactly backward from how I want my clients choosing a partner. A photo matters, but so do the things you have to slow down and read: what they want, who they are, how they live, and whether any of that actually fits you.

So I prefer dating sites that are used on a laptop or desktop computer—or at the very least, give you that option. Plus, on a larger screen, you can see more information at once. You can read. Notice. Consider.

Most people wouldn’t research a major investment by flicking photographs of companies left and right while standing in line at Costco. Your life partner is a bigger investment. Treat the decision accordingly.

None of this means a paid, desktop-accessible, relationship-oriented dating site containing photographs and clearly stated intentions will magically deliver your person. It means something much less magical and much more useful: It gives you better information with which to choose.

That’s what I want for my clients: not the site with the most people, the one that’s easiest to use, or the one everyone else is on. I want the one that makes it easiest to answer the question that actually matters: Is this person a good candidate for me?

I don’t think online dating should die. But dating platforms that make it harder to choose well?

Maybe we should stop trying so hard to keep those alive. 

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.

LoveScienceMedia.com/consult

References: 

Barua, M. (2026). Dating Apps Are Dying. TIME, September 2026. 

Brasel, S. A., & Gips, J. (2015). Interface psychology: Touchscreens change attribute importance, decision criteria, and behavior in online choice. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 18(9), 534–538. https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2014.0546 PubMed Central (PMC)

They experimentally compared people making an online choice using direct touch versus a mouse while holding screen size constant. Touchscreen users searched more alternatives and gave greater weight to tangible/visual attributes and their own instinct, while mouse users gave relatively greater weight to intangible attributes and external information such as reviews. The authors’ broader conclusion was that interface can affect how online information is explored, perceived, remembered, and acted upon.

Photo by Devin Avery on Unsplash

They Look Like Bad News. Are They?

Sometimes somebody just looks like bad news. Are they?

He looked..snarly. Like he’d spent his life picking on people. 

I was online with a client, deciding how to reply to someone. And this guy’s photos made me think:  Uh-oh. This guy looks like bad news.  He wasn’t unattractive. But I suspected he was belligerent. 

So we replied to his note. And…yep. By the next reply, he had shown himself to be argumentative, hostile, offensive, contemptuous, and disagreeable. You could practically hear the sneer. Yikes.

And then there are the folks with soft eyes and warm smiles, who turn out to be absolutely delightful. These are the warm-hearted people who expect and bring out the very best in themselves and others. 

This has happened so often that sometimes my clients add this to their list of things they’d like in a partner: “Agreeable; looks like they’ve spent their lives smiling.” 

I’ve wondered: Am I actually seeing something? Or have decades of working with people merely given me the confidence to think I am?

Turns out, science has a surprisingly interesting answer: Sometimes, we really can tell something about personality from appearance.

When researchers show people photographs of strangers and ask them to judge their personalities, their guesses are far from perfect. For some traits, they’re better than chance. But I wouldn’t hang my hat on it. 

But a dating-profile photo isn’t your driver’s-license photo.

You chose it.

On your profile, you picked the expression, the clothes, the posture, the setting. You chose whether to smile warmly, stare moodily into the middle distance, flex in the bathroom mirror, pose lovingly with your dog-or demonstrate that somewhere nearby, a fish has had a very bad day.

Apparently, those choices tell us something.

In one study, researchers photographed people two ways. First, they standardized their appearance and pose. Then they let them present themselves naturally. When researchers stripped away people’s individual choices, strangers could accurately judge only a few characteristics. But when people got to be themselves-expression, posture, clothing and all-observers accurately perceived considerably more about their personalities.

Other research has found that strangers can pick up real personality information from people’s social-media accounts. And recent research on online dating confirms something particularly relevant: people have considerable control over the personality they convey online.

In other words, they’re showing you something.

Now, I am not suggesting you look at someone’s jawline, large forehead, or high cheekbones and announce, “Aha! Emotionally volatile. Swipe left.”

You cannot diagnose someone’s personality from their facial features or the bumps on their skull (and phrenologists of the 1800s certainly tried). But you can pay attention to what people choose to show you.

Three pictures and a big fish aren’t a scientific personality profile. But don’t immediately explain away what you’re noticing, either. These folks are 50-plus; their character may be implied by the way they use their face, body, clothing, and deep-sea gear. 

So treat your first impression as a hypothesis. Then start gathering evidence.

It probably won’t take long. 

What did they write? How do they talk to you? How do they describe their ex? What happens when you disagree with them or say No? 

Because your first impression could be wrong. But sometimes it’s effective pattern recognition.

Most folks today have dozens—sometimes hundreds—of pictures to choose from. And the ones they actually select say: Here. This is how I want you to see me.

So look.

You don’t need to convict them of anything. You don’t even need to be certain. Dating isn’t a court of law, and you don’t need proof beyond a reasonable doubt before deciding who you want to know better. And who you don’t.

Your job is simply to pay attention to the information you’re being given. And usually, you’ll know pretty fast whether that is accurate.

As poet Maya Angelou put it: 

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.

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 10-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

References

Naumann, L. P., Vazire, S., Rentfrow, P. J., & Gosling, S. D. (2009). Personality judgments based on physical appearance. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35(12), 1661-1671.

Social-media personality research: strangers’ judgments from online self-presentation can correspond with account owners’ personality measures.

Online-dating research: people have meaningful control over the personality they convey in dating profiles.

 

Photo by Andrey K on Unsplash