7 Signs FOMO Is Ruining Your Dating Life

An expert gives some much-needed real talk.

21 March, 2018
7 Signs FOMO Is Ruining Your Dating Life

That awful feeling of FOMO usually pops up when you're scrolling your Instagram feed and see your friends' super-cute holiday parties and exotic vacations, leaving you devastated and left out. But renowned relationship therapist Esther Perel says that FOMO is creeping its way into your relationships, too — and hurting them in the long run.

"I have yet to hear a lot of people come to me say, what I really want is a Tinder life," Perel joked to the audience at the Summit at Sea conference. "They want a Tinder phase, but a Tinder phase is not a Tinder life." Young people are often hindered by a crippling fear of missing out, constantly wondering what other options they have and "beta testing" relationships rather than committing. "You think you need to find that person rather than that you need to choose that person, and that's a very different program," she said.

Perel sat down with Cosmopolitan.com after one of her popular talks to explain why twentysomethings are getting in their own way when it comes to finding love. Here are seven signs love FOMO is ruining your love life.

1. You're overwhelmed by too many choices.

And not just with online dating — you likely don't live in a tiny town with the people you've known all your life. And even if you do, you're not limited to dating those people. "You have the ability to connect with an enormous amount of people that you would never have been able to meet had you just continued to live in your village," Perel says. "At the same time, you don't know who they are. So you have to trust, you have a leap of faith, you have to imagine that they have integrity, and you don't know." With a world of options comes a lot of doubt about whether you're seeing the right person.

2. You're terrified of picking the wrong person.

If you log onto Tinder, you'll find dozens of people who could potentially be right for you within minutes. But who has the time to filter them out — and what if you make a mistake and miss the perfect person? "The paradox of choice is one of the most crippling psychological things these days," Perel says. "This FOMO, this paradox of choice, this beta testing is really making it much more difficult to actually just accept that of two people who engage in something is the biggest adventure, the biggest scary adventure ever." It can seem impossible to make the leap, but it's totally essential.

3. Your expectations are too high.

Despite the fact that twentysomethings are often the "children of the divorced and the disillusioned," Perel says a lot of her younger clients have more romantic expectations than ever when it comes to love. Not only does your significant other have to be a supportive companion, but he or she also has to be your best friend, intellectual equal, passionate lover, you name it. People are relying on one person for what they used to rely on their entire community for. "And if you don't do it for me, darling, then I'm going to find myself someone else," Perel said during a presentation. "I'm not going to question the model, I'm just going to think that I chose the wrong person and I'll do better next time." Since there isn't one person who can fulfill literally everything people need, they start wondering what else is out there — and missing out on cultivating relationships with great people.

4. You expect your "soul mate" to also be the perfect life partner.

Perel says that there are lots of people in this world you can love, but very few you can actually create a life with. You might feel an Earth-shattering connection with someone, but if you believe you should marry your soul mate, you leave out the fact that all people have flaws, and that sometimes you have to compromise to make a relationship work. That bad-boy artist might make you feel all fluttery inside every time you see him, but is he going to eventually want to move in, get a dog, and dedicate some serious time to Netflix? The key to finding a person you can set a life with is sharing values, Perel says. If you want to travel the world, and your potential life partner doesn't, that's something that's way more important than feeling like you're in The Notebook while you're in your 20s. Sadly, even Ryan Gosling might not have the same feelings about sharing the holidays.

5. You're stuck in "nomad mode," dating aimlessly without an endgame.

Because we don't have to get married in our teens anymore, most of us get to date around for a while. For Perel's clients, that's a period of around 15 years that she calls "sexual nomadism." After dating around, nomadism makes settling down a feather in your cap that you can worry about after you get your life together. But the lessons you learn as a nomad don't often translate to life as a "sedentary" person, Perel says, because you haven't learned what it takes to make a relationship last.

6. You're obsessed with your exes.

Most people have a Plan B: the person in the back of your mind, often an ex, whom you can text if your current relationship doesn't work out. But Perel recommends not obsessing too much over your backup plan, and just view it as a sign of freedom. "The most beautiful Plan B today is Facebook," Perel says, since checking in on old flames can give you the novelty you need without getting too attached. "From the moment that marriage became a free choice enterprise, I choose a partner, but all those other people I haven't chosen continue to live in my imagination," she adds. "Plan B means that I'm not stuck and I choose to stay."

7. You need to work on yourself before finding The One.

Perel says many of her clients think that finding the right person will help cure their own personal issues and "fix" them. But nobody but you can deal with your feelings of self-doubt or insecurity. The bottom line is this: If you're looking to change another person, change yourself first. "There is no ideal person who is so fantastic that they're going to make you stop looking left and right," Perel says. "If you're going to stop looking left and right, it's because you're choosing to not look left and right. And generally it has to do with the fact that you're ready."

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Credit: Cosmopolitan
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