5 Texting Fails You Won’t (easily) Recover From

I recently became the Global Ambassador for Tinder. It’s a side gig. I’m still a shrink. Still blogging. Actually, blogging more than ever – just for other publications in addition to ADD (<- Ask Dr. Darcy, though the acronym is ironic given that I have ADD).

I signed on with Tinder because of the appeal in reaching/teaching millions of swipers dating and relationship skills.

The experience has reinforced many of my instinctive beliefs about what attracts and repels people, and it’s also turned me into something of an online dating guru:  I can tell you if your profile and app interactions are encouraging left or right swipes, and why.

But matching is just the first step.

How you interact after you match is where the rubber meets the road.
Click below for my list of texting DON’Ts and WHYs:

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Just forward this to the adults coming to Thanksgiving. You’re welcome, in advance.

Dear Well-intended Adult:

I don’t know how long it’s been since you were a kid, or a young adult, or a human with the painful awareness that your life is imperfect. 

If this was forwarded to you, I’m guessing it’s been a while since the thought of an approaching holiday like Thanksgiving sent a chill up your spine, or made your stomach lurch, or made you pray you’d miss your flight home.

Maybe you’re surprised to hear that a holiday could provoke such a negative, visceral reaction in anyone.

As a shrink in her third decade of practice, I can confirm with authority that dreading the holiday season is something of a universal, young adult experience.

In the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, my office is bursting with 20-somethings and 30-somethings who are flooded with anxiety at the thought of facing loved ones.

It’s not that they don’t love you. They adore you. They just dread talking to you.

Actually, it’s not talking to you that they abhor so much as the insensitive cross-examination, I mean, the questions that they find themselves on the receiving end of.

Questions which, no doubt, are intended to help you get to know these young people better.

The problem is, the questions you tend to ask suck.

They really don’t spawn deep insights into the Millennials in your life.

But the answers to your questions, now those leave the kids feeling naked at the table.

Naked in need of a wax. And a workout.

Their answers underscore where they rank on the Young Adult To Do List.

The Young Adult To Do List is more conceptual than it is real.

 Even so, everyone knows what’s on it:

  • Graduate high school.

  • Go to college.

  • Pick a lucrative, employable major.

  • Begin a serious, heterosexual relationship.

  • Be offered a job before graduating or within a month or two of graduating.

  • Become self-reliant (read: stop taking money from your parents) the moment you begin working.

  • Work your ass off at your job. Also, remain in that long-term, heterosexual relationship.

  • Get promoted. A lot.

  • Get engaged.

  • Get married.

  • Make babies.

The achievements on this list are sequential. If you achieve any of them in a different order, they count against you.

Also, while you’re busily crossing off the above-referenced successes, you’re expected not to wind up in jail, on drugs, in debt, or in trouble.

All of this is to say that Millennials approach the Thanksgiving dinner table with the same level of enthusiasm that a dog who’s being led to a poop accident feels.

Every year I write a list of SAY THIS INSTEAD OF THAT’s, hoping you’ll read it.

This year I’m feeling a little snarky, a little sassy, so I’ve decided to provide you with an incomplete list of Douchebag Questions, which, if asked, will make the young people at your table feel less-than, not good enough, and generally, really shitty.

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What My Assistant Taught Me About Communication – Personal

I don’t expect professional relationships to work effortlessly – particularly when they’re mine.

I say that because, as a relationship expert, I encourage the people I work with to check in with me about how our relationship is going. And I remind them to do it pretty often.

The result, not surprisingly, is that every couple of months, I find myself on the receiving end of ‘feedback.’ 

I place ‘feedback’ in proverbial air quotes since it generally makes me cringe – because although my fantasy involves my phone blowing up with declarations of how amazing I am to work with, the reality of those conversations generally plays out differently.  Click here to see how my ‘feedback’ generally goes.

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When Your Relationship Loses its “New”

Q:

Dear Dr. Darcy:

Lately, my girlfriend and I fight constantly. I don’t know how this happened because we used to get along so well but suddenly like within the last couple of months, everything she says pisses me off and judging from the way she snaps at me, I’m guessing I evoke the same feeling in her.  She’s constantly criticizing what I do and then complains when I don’t want to touch her at night. How am I supposed to forget what a bitch she is during the day and have sex at night?

Now she’s saying that if we don’t start having sex daily, she’s going to break up because she didn’t sign up for a sexless relationship and we’ve only been dating 7 months. She’s totally threatening to abandon me at this point. I’m not sure this can be fixed but I’m paralyzed with fear over losing her. And did I mention she refuses to go to couples counseling?  Is this hopeless?

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