Dating Anxiety: Learning to Cope and Thrive
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AUMany of us have experienced dating anxiety in some form throughout our romantic lives. For some, these feelings can be overwhelming and tend to dominate their dating. This is more than butterflies in your stomach and can manifest as excessive fear and concern before, during and after a date. It can negatively affect other aspects of our lives, causing many to avoid dating altogether. Let’s unpack dating anxiety, its causes, some ways to overcome it and how to stop thinking about dating to an unhealthy degree.
Table of Contents
Signs and causes of dating anxiety
You can experience dating anxiety for many distinct reasons. It may just be nerves due to time off the dating scene after a long relationship or it may be associated with a larger social anxiety disorder. Love anxiety is common with 34% of Americans believing that relationships are the main cause of their mental health concerns1.
Many people often feel a desire to come across as perfect or ideal to their date, to the extent that they overthink it and become stressed. A 2011 study suggested it may be heavily associated with a fear of rejection2.
Here are some possible symptoms of dating and relationship anxiety:
- Lack of self-worth or confidence
- A preoccupation with what the other person is feeling
- An avoidant or anxious attachment style
- Abandonment issues
- Dating inexperience
- Being overly accommodating on dates
- Worries about body image3
- A pessimistic outlook on dating and relationships
- Obsessively comparing your dating life to others’
- Sabotaging plans or social interactions
- Compulsive over-analysis of words and actions
- Easily becoming possessive
- Sex-related anxiety
According to a 2022 study published by the National Institutes of Health, people with dating anxiety experienced the following:
- Greater appearance orientation – a measure of the importance placed on how you look and the attention you pay to it
- Greater social physique anxiety – when you believe you are being judged by others based on appearance
- Higher appearance-based rejection sensitivity – fear of being rejected based on how you look
- Lower self-compassion – the ability to turn acceptance, understanding and love inward
Now let’s look at some practical solutions to your anxiety.
Avoiding dating anxiety and overcoming your fears
Dating anxiety is not officially recognized as a mental illness. What you are experiencing is likely a combination of issues but these vary from person to person.
Let’s look at some tips to tackle your anxiety, which may help you answer how to stop caring about love for its own sake and dating for yourself.
- To boost your confidence, make a list of all the positive things you bring to the table on a date and that are going well in your love life. Focus on those during your interactions
- Don’t let past dating experiences make you jaded. Look at every date as a fresh opportunity and don’t let your emotional baggage tag along
- Take mental stock of what is and isn’t under your control on a date. Only one is worth focusing on
- If you’re wondering how to stop thinking about dating negatively, maintain a positive and constructive attitude before and during dates. This will help with self-doubt
- Avoid the topic of dating with overly critical friends and family
- Remember that your value as a person is not decided by your love life
- Go into your date with a mindset of having fun rather than looking for love
- Take good care of your mental and physical health to enhance self-confidence and help you feel calmer on dates
- There’s no rush to find someone. Let go of any urgency and appreciate dating for the experience itself
- It’s okay to not date. If you don’t feel in the right mental space it’s fine to just take some time off for yourself
The effectiveness of online dating for relationship anxiety
Online dating is useful and convenient tool for those wondering how to stop worrying about finding love. It’s a low-pressure format for interacting with singles, while having an intermediary between you and the other person – in the form of the platform and the text-messaging format – reduces the social anxiety of one-on-one interactions.
A large part of dating anxiety is a desire for greater control. Online dating lets you curate your profile and how you come across in communication. It also gives you the chance to get to know the person beforehand, making first dates less uncertain.
However, it’s important to not tie your value to these efforts. Remember that online dating takes patience and some change-ups in approach as you get the hang of it.
Learn to date without fear
eharmony makes online dating straightforward and tailored to you as an individual, ideal for people who experience dating anxiety. For over 20 years, we’ve focused on connecting people based on their compatibility and our results speak for themselves: every 14 minutes, someone finds love on eharmony.
We help you find dates with people you don’t have to feel anxious around. By connecting you with eligible singles through compatibility rather than swiping, we ensure more positive interactions with like-minded people, paving the way for dates that are natural and authentic. Give eharmony a try today and see for yourself.
Q&A – Expert backed answers to your questions
Do you have a burning question, personal story, or problem related to this topic? Send it in! The more details you share, the better we can understand your situation and offer meaningful guidance. Our relationship experts and editorial team may select it and respond with their advice. All submissions are anonymous. For product or account-related questions, please reach out to our Customer Care team via the Help pages.
The responses provided here are for informational and entertainment purposes only and do not constitute professional advice. Any advice shared is not a substitute for mental health services or counseling. We encourage you to contact a licensed therapist or support service for any urgent or sensitive issues you are experiencing. We do not provide real-time or personalized support, and we will only provide responses to submissions if we can offer valuable, helpful, and topical answers.
Thanks for sending in your question! Due to the volume of submissions, we’re unfortunately unable to reply to every single one. If your question gets answered, you’ll find it displayed below. — The eharmony team
How can you move on from someone you have feelings for when they only want to be friends? It’s confusing because they sometimes act affectionate and say things that don’t seem purely friendly. They seem happy to see me and we can talk for hours, but I’m not sure how to handle my feelings.
Laurel Houseeharmony Relationship ExpertAffection without intention creates confusion. If you want more and they don’t, staying close keeps reopening the wound. That’s not being chill — that’s being stuck. Have an honest conversation. Ask how they feel. You deserve clarity. Choose clarity over closeness. It may hurt now, but it heals faster later.
What advice can help widowed singles in their late 50s and 60s return to dating after losing a long-term partner? I feel ready to find companionship again, but grief has affected my confidence and self-esteem, and I’m anxious about putting myself out there.
How can I approach dating with more confidence?
Dr Lalitaa Suglanieharmony Relationship ExpertReturning to dating after losing a long-term partner can bring up a complicated mix of emotions. You might genuinely want companionship and intimacy again while also feeling grief, guilt, anxiety or a loss of confidence. And all of those feelings can coexist. But wanting a new relationship doesn’t diminish the love you had for your partner or the significance of the life you shared. It also does not mean that you are ignoring the love you had together.
One of the biggest psychological adjustments is to do with rediscovering yourself as an individual away from a couple. Becasue after decades as part of a couple, your identity can become closely connected to being someone’s partner and being intwined in a life with them. Whereas when that is no longer there, dating asks you to think about what you need? Who you are? What you enjoy? And what kind of a relationship with fit the version I am today.
So don’t put pressure on yourself to immediately feel confident. As confidence is more often built through experience than something we need to possess before we begin. The first time we do anything can be daunting so why would this be different. So start gently. That might mean creating a dating profile, having a conversation with someone new or agreeing to a coffee rather than approaching every encounter as a potential relationship.
It can also help to redefine what a successful date looks like. Instead of asking, “Could this person replace what I had?”, ask yourself, “Did I enjoy their company? Did I feel comfortable being myself? Would I like to see them again?” A new relationship isn’t there to recreate your previous one. It has the opportunity to become something different.
Grief can also make rejection or disappointment feel particularly vulnerable when dating, so, again, remember to be compassionate with yourself and take breaks if dating starts to feel emotionally exhausting.
Most importantly, remember that you’re not starting from scratch. You’re bringing decades of life experience and a deeper understanding of love and partnership with you. And most importantly you don’t need to erase your past to make room for somebody new. Both can have a place in your life. Instead see it as a new chapter.
