My Best Tips for Dating Abroad, On and Off the Apps
Last October, I found myself in Spain, newly jobless and recovering from a bicycle accident. The accident made me ponder my mortality, while the toxic job had destroyed my sanity.
“Even though I don’t know who I am, what I’m doing, where I’m going, or what I want…could I date while traveling around?” I thought I’d at least try it. I re-installed Bumble on my iPhone 12 Pro.
For those who have stayed off the apps since they invaded the scene, changing dating forever around 10 years ago, Bumble is a dating app that follows the style of its predecessor, Tinder, in which users swipe L for “no” and R for “yes”. If both users swipe right, a match is made. The phone makes a satisfying little buzz and you’re shown a screen with hearts and images conveying that you’ve just advanced in your dopamine-inducing video game. Once matched, users have the option to message each other to see if they want to go on a date.
I began swiping in the enchanting mountain city of Granada, Spain, and soon had several matches. I ended up on a date with a Turkish guy a couple of years my junior, who lived and worked in Miami, FL, but was visiting a friend of his in Granada. We met up and had a great date, deciding to meet up again in a few weeks in Poland of all places, where we coincidentally were both planning to be. Being an American dating a Turkish guy in Spain and Poland was…thrilling! Who else could I meet?
Adding the dating app Hinge to my rotation, I ended up dating an Italian man in Portugal, an English man in Croatia, and more appropriately, a Slovenian man in Slovenia. I had not had this many matches and fun dates since recovering from my last breakup which occurred the previous summer. I’d had the apps installed for about 6 months in Boston and had no luck finding dates with men who wanted a long-term relationship. It defied all logic—Boston is a place with many educated people in their 30s—some of them must want to date me??
I returned to the US from Spain, Poland, and a whirlwind of other European countries in December of 2023 to reset and decide my next course of action. I’d had so much fun dating, I thought, could I keep doing it? Maybe “my person” is there and not here. I wasn’t sure but I knew I needed to pursue personal joy. The toxic job I’d left behind in August of 2023 had crushed my spirit. I felt like I hadn’t accomplished the things I really wanted in life: a successful romantic relationship with a committed long-term partner, starting and raising a family, and a successful career. As an elder millennial who graduated college at the height of the Great Recession, I didn’t entirely blame myself for not having the picture-perfect life many of us romanticize. Many of my close friends were also struggling to find meaning and purpose outside of these traditional dreams. But still, I wondered if there was still hope for me in achieving some of these milestones.
I thought if I followed joy, I’d be much more desirable as a dating candidate, at the very least. Happiness is attractive.
So, in March of this year, I launched the Romance by Rail project in which I would date as I traveled from Paris to Istanbul by train, writing about my experiences along the way. Read my updates here:
Part 1: Paris to Istanbul (March-May)
Part 2: Istanbul, Cappadocia, and Antalya, Turkey (May-July)
Of the 10 dates I’ve outlined so far in these posts, none of them were bad! Each guy had great qualities, even if we weren’t a complete romantic match. I met some fascinating individuals, learned about different cultures, and honestly had a lot of fun. None of these dates left me seeking to escape or checking my watch.
How did I have a 100% success rate? Many friends have been asking me to share my top dating tips—for both online dating and off.
So let me try…
Dating Mindset and Strategy, Dating on and Off the Apps, and Travel Dating
Mindset and Strategy:
Dating can test all of our insecurities while the constant cycle of hope and disappointment can break our spirit. So, it’s important to have a solid mindset and strategy to prevent getting trapped in negative spirals, limiting beliefs, and insecurities.
Here is an assorted mix of strategy and mindest—things I tried and recommend:
Date yourself
Become the most dateable version of yourself
It’s supposed to be fun!
Play - make it a game or science project
Don’t get hung up on any one person
Have a self-love and self-confidence practice
Push yourself to discomfort
1. Date yourself
Think about ways to avoid being a gaping black hole of neediness when dating, which isn’t hot. I learned the phrase “needy is creepy” in 2014 and realized that being around desperation doesn’t feel good (and being desperate doesn’t feel good to others around you).
While doing this project I took myself out on solo dates such as going to a nice place for wine and bringing a book. This way I didn't need another person to take me on particular nice dates because I was giving this to myself already. If a man took me to a nice place for a date that felt like extra on top of something already good in my life.
2. Become the most dateable version of yourself
By absolutely no means do I think we need to be “perfect” to date…but striving is sexy! An insight in my 20s that I was attracted to athletic people led me to get physically in shape for the first time in my life. The dating and attraction process can help us become the best version of ourselves—especially if we meet ourselves with compassion for where we exactly are on our journey. No self-shaming allowed! Simply identify some areas that need some work and take meaningful action.
Give yourself a score from 1-10 in each of these areas:
Finances - how much do you make, save, and how responsibly do you manage your money?
Career - do you love your career path?
Physical fitness - how fit/in shape are you?
Other physical things - do you feel sexy in your clothes? Hairstyle, makeup, etc.
Mental health - how is your emotional intelligence? Ability to self-regulate? Have you done your family of origin healing work so you know what your triggers are? Have you healed your attachment wounds at least a little bit?
Passion and creativity - are you creating things you’re excited about regularly, whether at work or outside of work?
Social health - do you have close friends you can be vulnerable with? Have fun with? Confide in? Do you let people in your life know that you care about them? Are you able to show up for your friends and family when they need you? Do you have healthy boundaries?
I’m sure there are important items I’m missing. I like this “Wheel of Life” that we often use in the coaching world.
3. It’s supposed to be fun!
Meeting new people and getting to know them can be fun! If you’re not having fun, it’s best to take a break.
If dating is chronically unfun, figure out if you’re suffering from anxiety or depression or are feeling burned out. It could be a good time to ask for help with your mental health and then coming back when meeting new people and being the flirtiest version of yourself sounds fun again.
You can take the pressure off by bringing in a sense of curiosity and wonder to the dating process. You can make the goal “learn 1 new thing about my date” instead of “get my date to like me”. This way you’ll always win each date as long as you’re curious. Even if that thing you learn is, “I really should not have said yes to this date because of x thing that I know is a red flag now,” that’s learning and winning!
“I’m excited to meet so many interesting people and only 1 of them out there is my perfect match,” is a great mindset to help with fun. My former coach, Christina Berkley taught me that “yes lives in the land of no’s,” meaning that we have to get a lot of “no’s” to find our one perfect “yes”. I love that. Make getting the “no’s” also winning.
4. Play - make it a game or science project
This is a nice follow up to #3…
Scientist mindset
With this mindset you can apply the scientific method to life projects—from designing them to running them. Run an experiment, observe the results, and make a new hypothesis/prediction based on the results. This takes the pressure off of doing this “right” or perfectly.
“Be a scientist of your life,” is something I say ad nauseam when working with someone as their personal coach.
It’s important to learn from your errors and try different, uncomfortable things. If one behavior or approach isn’t working, you should be noting that and changing quickly. Be flexible.
Game mindset
With the game mindset, you decide what the rules are and when you win. You can decide that “going on a date” is a “win” so that the date doesn’t have to go well for you to win your game. We can get hung up on the wrong things and that can keep us stuck. If “winning” is only if they like us back, we’re setting ourselves up to lose and feel discouraged over and over.
“Wow, I’m so proud of myself for putting myself out there and going on dates. I’m winning at my game. I’m going to keep playing and I know I’ll meet my person eventually.” Remember, when Jennifer Cox set out to go on 80 Dates (Around the World), 2 of the men she met felt like soul mates. 2 out of 80 (1/40) is not bad!
5. Don’t get hung up on any one person (too soon)
In the 2005 book The Game by Neil Strauss, he talks about this idea he calls “one-itis” where you get overly worried that someone you’re dating is “the one,” and you lose touch with reality. It takes time to know if someone is “the one” and it takes two people agreeing that the other is “the one” to create a healthy relationship.
Shera Seven, who I mentioned in my last RxR post, her advice to women, when they start to feel dissatisfied with the man their dating is, “go get another one.” She follows this by saying, “that’s what he would do.”
Don’t get too hung up on on anyone and especially try to hold space for the parts of you who are secretly hoping someone will sweep you off your feet and fix everything. No one is coming to do that and we have to care for our inner child first so we can show up as an adult who dates other adults.
Women especially tend to get hurt by bad behavior instead of just walking away from it. Shera is constantly reminding her mostly female viewers not to be too emotional while dating—this is good advice. If we find ourselves being overly emotional, it may be a cue that we have some childhood wounds that need our attention.
I also really like the advice I’ve been seeing on social media from dating coaches like The Flirt Coach: after the first date, the only thing you need to find out is whether you want a second date. Don’t get off to the races in fantasyland.
Check out The Crappy Childhood Fairy’s content on limerance and how to avoid it—limerence is when we make ourselves high imagining ourselves with a new person we meet, especially inventing ideal pretend circumstances and projecting an idea of the perfect partner onto them.
6. Have a self-love and self-confidence practice
One tip for this is to keep a list/spreadsheet of nice things people say about you. If someone sends you a nice text, copy/paste or screenshot it and add it to the list. On tough days when you feel down or discouraged, bring up the list and review the items. Remember that you’re valuable to other people and that you have some great relationships in your life.
Another practice is the give the love you want to receive. On your down and discouraged days, reach out to the people you care about and ask them how they’re doing. Practice attentive listening and empathy. Watch your mood shift! We can practice being valuable by showing up for others!
7. Push yourself to discomfort
Practicing getting comfortable with being uncomfortable in the past has helped prepare me for the Romance x Rail dating project. Dating can be one of the most uncomfortable things ever! There are so many missed connections, awkward moments, unfulfilled expectations, misunderstandings, disagreements, and confusion. It can be a mess of discontentment! Not to mention all of the embarrassing moments in which we feel seen or called out in our worst moments.
A daily mediation practice is great for helping us be okay with discomfort. As we sit, meditating, we may have irritating thoughts arise, or our legs or back may ache from sitting in one spot for too long—and we have to practice bringing gentle loving awareness back to the breath and let ourselves let go of our attachment to the discomfort.
A daily practice of something intentionally uncomfortable such as taking a cold shower every day can help us build resilience with other discomforts—especially practicing being in control of the discomfort and then reminding ourselves that we are safe and we are in charge of helping ourself feel safe.
Dating Apps
Which apps:
Tinder - The problem with Tinder is that it looks like a child’s video game now. I hate it. Also, there are too many users, meaning it takes more time to sort through everyone. I don’t recommend it.
Bumble - They changed this recently so that men can now message women first. I’m curious if this will change the user base at all. I find this app the easiest for finding and setting up dates. It’s worth paying the fee to save time—you can see who already likes you and go through them quickly to match. Still pretty good without paying.
Hinge - I went on a couple of dates using Hinge but found it wasn’t as easy as Bumble to use, match, and meet. What I love about it is that to match, users must comment on something specific about the person’s profile. This creates strong conversations based on mutual interests.
The League - this is a LinkedIn-based app for those who are proud of their careers. I had some great matches and shared in a previous blog post that I think they have the best dating app feature. I found that I got interesting matches in the beginning and then not so many. Small userbase.
Raya - I never pursued getting the requisite referrals to join this one but you could match with famous people. It’s for artists and influencers. They review your social media following and the referrals you get from other users before deciding if you get to have an account. Like The League, the user base is smaller so it’s maybe not that good or worth it.
OkCupid - This app has a lot of users in Europe and a good user interface. I like that it tells you how much of a match you are with others based on the percentage of questions you both answer the same. However, despite many conversations and matches, I never ended up getting any dates from this one.
There are a few other apps specific to Europe. I tried them but they weren’t better than Bumble, Hinge, or The League for getting dates with interesting people.
Dating App tips:
When you logon to swipe and chat, always be in your sexiest, flirtiest mood - you need to feel and look good. If you are feeling dumpy, you’re not going to have fun and flirty conversations. Do you hair and makeup and put on something cute.
First message—try pretending that you’re mid-conversation about something on their profile
Play “yes, and…” in the text communication
Photos—your first photo needs to be a clear headshot—not too close to the camera, not too far; photos of you doing hobbies, photos of you looking good, photos of you having a social life…they should spark conversations
Profile—be very specific about your interests and think of these items as an opportunity to start a conversation—that’s all your profile is for. It doesn’t exactly have to define your whole existence.
How to approach in person:
I was extraordinarily aloof as a late teen and 20s-something—like, so bad at reading signals that maybe I would have self-diagnosed as Autistic if that had been popular in the early 2000s.
I read a couple of books on body language to understand how to read signals. For example, if you make eye contact with someone, raising the eyebrows can be a sign of interest (not necessarily romantic interest, but friendly to approach).
I got approached by a guy in Zurich who did not wait to read any signals from me, which is not ideal. He ended up being friendly and interesting so it worked out—but it’s safer to try the old standby:
Look then look away several times to see if it’s mutual
Smile at the person and see if they smile back
If they seem warm and receptive (looking then looking away, smiling, raising eyebrows, waving or mouthing/saying “hi”) then approach
My favorite way to approach someone I don’t know is to pretend I already know them and dive in mid-conversation. Once at a party, the friend I was with mentioned that she liked a guy she saw. I grabbed her and walked up to him and said, “Have I already introduced you to my friend Jessica?” As if I’d ever met him—I hadn’t! They both laughed and started talking. I should mention that they were both theater people so they were able to play “yes, and” easily. “Yes, and…” is a great thing to learn for dating conversational skills.
“Yes, and…” is a rule in improvisational theater to keep the skit going in a forward direction. If one person says, “this hat is a fish” and the next person says, “no it’s not, it’s a duck,” they momentum and play has been ruined. It’s imperative to say, “yes, it’s a fish and we caught it while fishing today off the pier.”
Book recommendations:
Dating while traveling:
Tips:
I have yet to meet anyone who’s dissuaded by the fact that I’m not a resident of their country. If two people are meant for each other, they’ll find a way to be together.
You can be honest and direct that you’re looking to meet a long-term partner outside the US. People understand.
You will most likely come off as a little bit exotic and exciting as a foreigner. Use that to your advantage.
Try to stay in the same city for at least 1 week—it’s takes that long to find a good match to meet for a date
Don’t be afraid to go on a spontaneous date. “Want to get a drink tonight at 7?” Do it. If you’re traveling, timescales are shortened so just go with it.
A quick talk on the phone before meeting can be a great vetting process if you’re especially short on time and don’t want to waste a whole evening. See if it feels fairly natural to talk—chances are you’ll have a good date even if they’re not “the one”.
Be safe! Meet in public places with a lot of people and light. Know the country’s emergency numbers. Share your location using an app like FindMy with your friends and family members and let them know in advance who you’re meeting and when. You can ask for their full name or social media accounts. Send screenshots of their profile photo and name to your friend or family member. Better safe than sorry.
