Dating Someone Older: Criteria for a Successful Relationship

I’ve heard so many different rules about dating someone older, and they all boil down to a magic number: “Don’t date anyone more than ten years older,” or “Marriages never work if there’s more than fifteen years’ difference.” People love rules, telling themselves that abiding by them will cause them to get hurt less. The reality? So not true! Don’t embrace any rigid rule about age differences. The most important rule to follow is a general one: Make sure the two of you have the same goals for the relationship and for your daily life together. Do You Have Goals That are Similar Enough? Think about whether you want to get married; have a big or tiny wedding; have children; be with someone who already has kids; live in the future in the same town or city where you’ve been dating; move somewhere far or close; have extended family very involved or not very involved in your life; have a relationship where you socialize almost always together or often; have a partner who’s more of a social butterfly or homebody; and have a partner who is very involved or not very involved in extracurricular activities. Chronological Age vs. Psychological Age You’ve probably heard someone say, “He seems young for his age,” or “She’s so young at heart.” Though we all have a chronological age, we also have what I refer to as a ‘psychological age.’ How old do you feel, for example? Does your age accurately reflect how old you feel? In addition, ask yourself what the psychological age is of your prospective older partner. Does he or she: Have younger friends? Enjoy different types of music? Like to exercise? Like to dance? Like quiet hobbies, such as reading? Like to be spontaneous? If you answer these questions honestly, you’ll have gobs of good information as you try to determine whether a long-term relationship with the older individual could work well. Rather than asking him or her such questions directly, lay low and gather your information over time. You’re not going to a get a true picture about someone’s lifestyle in a month; give yourself a few months of dating to make sure that you’ve seen him or her in as many real-life situations as possible. Assess Your Respective Sexualities Though I find that most people overemphasize the importance of sex and sexual attraction, intimacy is a factor worth considering. Don’t be fooled into thinking that just because someone is older, he or she isn’t very sexual. Again, use those early months of a relationship to gauge whether your sexualities are congruent enough. (It will never be exactly the same for two different people.) Assess Your Proclivity for Indulgences While many behaviors in the extreme form represent a problem or even an addiction, some of those same behaviors can be harmless if not taken to the extreme. Consider a list of activities that fall on the hedonistic end of the behavioral spectrum: drinking alcohol, gambling, shopping, traveling, and spending, for example. Are you always up for something fun and spontaneous? Do you like to feel the occasional rush of adrenaline and stimulation? If so, you either need a partner to like the same things, or you need to find someone who is fine with you doing those things without him or her. Assess Your Social Circles Take an honest look at your friends and anyone else who is a recurring character in your social life. Think about friends, acquaintances, work colleagues, and even extended family members with whom you socialize. Now, insert a significantly older partner in that picture. How will he or she fit in with your social life as it exists today? In addition, think about everyone with whom your prospective partner socializes. Do you feel comfortable with that crowd? The most harmonious relationships involve a fairly seamless overlap of social circles. In the end, falling in love with someone significantly older can be one of the most rewarding experiences in your life – or one of the most frustrating. Though compatibility factors are important for any relationship, the stakes are even higher for relationships with major age discrepancies. Do your homework and get to know your new crush well before you let yourself truly fall in love. You’d never guess, but caution can, in fact, lead to powerful lasting love. What are your thoughts about dating someone significantly older?

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Best Practices When Reaching Out

The way in which brands connect with bloggers reminds me of real life relationships and how they can go two very distinct ways. In one scenario, the relationship moves slow and non-abbrasively and turns in to a potential long term relationship. Or there is the relationship that starts off on an aggressive foundation and leads to a really fun one night stand that doesn’t go any further. It’s up to you which way you go with your personal relationships but when it comes to your interaction with bloggers, long term relationships are the most beneficial for digital marketing and PR strategies. If you’re a brand, a long term relationship leads to advocacy from a blogger who sincerely likes you and will mention your brand more than once creating a sense of trust from their audience in their recommendation. If you’re an agency, a long term relationship means that you can reach out to the blogger for multiple campaigns when they are a good fit. The Introduction Your pitch is your virtual introduction, a blogger’s first exposure to you and your brand. The pitch should: Humanize your brand Be short and sweet Contain hyperlinks to all necessary information Tell the blogger exactly what you want and what you’ll give in return Reference a familiarity with their blog Not bore them to death Since blogger outreach should be an ongoing and non-abrasive process, I always recommend, when possible, to engage with the blogger before pitching. Share their content on your digital channels, tweet them a questions or compliment and comment on their blog. This way your email won’t be the first time they meet you and you’ll have better luck getting a response. Want to see real life examples of pitches that work? Luckily I created this ebook full of such pitches. Qualifiers Because you want your long term relationship to be mutually beneficial, set some standards or some qualifiers in place for any blogger you work with. First of all, make contextual choices. Don’t reach out to any given blogger within a genre, dig deep and find the uber specific or niche bloggers. For example, if I were doing outreach for a green, non toxic, educational toy company I am not going to reach out to any mommy blogger’s email address I can find. I am going to dig deeper and find mommy bloggers who don’t write about frugality (my toy is pricey), who have an affinity for things that are green and “hippie friendly” and bloggers who write about educational toys for young children. Next, you don’t want your brand mentions from your snug fitting contextual blogger to go unheard. So of course they should have some sort of reach but the best type of reach is brand specific. Where do you get a lot of exposure? If it’s Google then set a minimum MozRank as your qualifier. If it’s Twitter or Facebook, be picky with the social following. You get the drift… Give to Get When you meet someone, you have something to offer them. Good conversation, an interesting background and/or looks (let’s not make this deeper than it should be). Don’t think this is any different when it comes to blogger outreach. In your pitch, tell the blogger what you can offer them. Payment, free product, an exclusive post, etc. are all popular offers. Segmentation If you’re reaching out to quite a few bloggers you may want to make a list based off of context and then segment it by reach in to an “A list” a “B list” and maybe even a “C list.” This way you can customize the meat of your pitches according to what you’re offering the blogger which is going to be different per list or per how far they reach. For example, maybe you are willing to offer the “A list” payment for posts but your “C list” is a list of bloggers who are great contextual fits and you think create awesome content but they’re kind of a little blogger so you offer them something free from your brand. I think you’re catching my drift and can visualize how segmenting your bloggers may help your own brand or influencer outreach process… Include Them in the Brand No one wants to feel like they’re part of a “one and done” type relationship. In your pitch or first few emails make it apparent to the blogger that you would like this to be an ongoing thing. And fulfill the promise. Keep a list of bloggers who like your brand and have written about you. Send them email updates about your brand. Ask for their opinion on a new product. Give them exclusive information or product before the rest of the world. Keep in mind that while it’s tempting and easy, blogger outreach is no one night stand. The “spray and pray” tactic isn’t the route you want to take. Lay the groundwork. Ease yourself in to the blogger’s digital realm… When it comes to laying the groundwork for blogger relationships, do you have any additional suggestions? Would love to hear other opinions in the comments section. Cheers to a good discussion!

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Relationship Problems Best Viewed from Afar

New research suggests an effective method to deal with relationship issues is to think about the situation as an outsider would. Relationships challenges such as the discovery of a cheating spouse are emotional with an outside perspective helping to reduce internal bias and improve reasoning and decision-making. “These results are the first to demonstrate a new type of bias within ourselves when it comes to wise reasoning about an interpersonal relationship dilemma,” said psychology researcher and study author Igor Grossmann, Ph.D., of the University of Waterloo in Canada. “We call the bias Solomon’s Paradox, after the king who was known for his wisdom, but who still failed at making personal decisions.” Grossmann and Ethan Kross, Ph.D., from the University of Michigan asked study participants, all of whom reported being in monogamous romantic relationships, to reflect on a relationship conflict. They were asked to vividly imagine a scenario in which either their partner or a friend’s partner had been unfaithful, and were then asked to answer a set of questions about the scenario. The questions were designed to tap into dimensions of wise reasoning, such as the ability to recognize the limits of one’s own knowledge, search for a compromise, consider the perspectives of others, and recognize the possible ways in which the scenario could unfold. Results from the experiments indicated that participants who were asked to reason about a friend’s relationship conflict made wiser responses than those who were asked to reason about their own relationship conflict. In a second experiment, Grossmann and Kross investigated whether personal distance might make a difference. The procedure was similar to the first experiment, but this time they explicitly asked participants to take either a first-person perspective (“put yourself in this situation”) or a third-person perspective (“put yourself in your friend’s shoes”) when reasoning about the conflict. The results supported those from the first experiment: Participants who thought about their own relationship conflict from a first-person perspective showed less wise reasoning than those who thought about a friend’s relationship conflict. But taking an outsider’s perspective seemed to eliminate this bias: Participants who thought about their own relationship conflict through a friend’s eyes were just as wise as those who thought about a friend’s conflict. Interestingly, results from a third experiment that compared data from younger adults (ages 20-40) and older adults (ages 60-80) indicated that, contrary to the adage that wisdom comes with age, older participants were wiser in reasoning about their own relationship conflict than their younger counterparts. Together, these findings suggest that distancing oneself from a personal problem by approaching it as an outsider may be the key to wise reasoning. “We are the first to demonstrate that there is a simple way to eliminate this bias in reasoning by talking about ourselves in the third person and using our name when reflecting on a relationship conflict,” said Grossmann. “When we employ this strategy, we are more likely to think wisely about an issue.”

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