Finding Love in the Time of Swipes

Esther Oon-Bybjerg

Amanda* (not her real name) sat on the couch opposite me, phone in hand, staring at the freshly downloaded dating app. Again. It wasn’t the first time she had sworn off swiping, declaring herself done with the endless loop of mismatched conversations and vanishing connections. But here she was, redownloading it after another short-lived hiatus.

 

“Maybe this time,” she said, “there’ll be better options?” Yet, a part of her knew this pattern all too well - the mix of hope and hesitation, the lure of possibility clashing with memories of frustration. Amanda’s experience is far from unique. For many, dating apps represent both opportunity and emotional exhaustion, a seemingly endless cycle of deleting, reinstalling, and wondering if meaningful connections are still out there.

 

While dating has always had its challenges, the digital age has introduced unique complexities that require a different kind of navigation. From a therapist’s perspective, modern dating offers unique opportunities for growth while testing one’s ability to navigate uncertainty and vulnerability. It provides invaluable insights into emotional awareness, boundary-setting, and personal values. By taking a closer look at the most common challenges in modern dating, we can uncover strategies to approach them with courage, curiosity and intentionality.

 

The Double-Edged Sword of Dating Apps

Dating apps are a prime example of modern dating’s double-edged sword. Take, for instance, the cycle many people find themselves in: downloading an app with hopeful optimism, swiping through matches, and engaging in a few conversations that seem promising. Then, after a string of awkward exchanges or being ghosted, the frustration sets in. The app gets deleted. Weeks later, optimism creeps back in, and the app gets reinstalled. It’s a love-hate relationship that feels all too familiar to many.

 

This pattern highlights the paradox of choice, a psychological concept popularized by Barry Schwartz. When faced with too many options, our ability to make satisfying decisions diminishes. Dating apps, while offering a wider pool of potential matches, can leave users feeling overwhelmed and disheartened. To break free from this cycle, it’s helpful to set boundaries. Limiting the time spent swiping and focusing on meaningful conversations rather than sheer volume can make the process more manageable and enjoyable.

 

Decoding Mixed Signals

Mixed signals are another frequent challenge in modern dating. Imagine meeting someone who seems genuinely interested, only for their communication to become inconsistent. Plans get cancelled, being left on read, and you can’t help but wonder whether to hold on or move on. This ambiguity often stems from the indirect nature of digital communication, where tone, body language, and intent are easily lost.

 

Studies on interpersonal communication reveal that nonverbal cues play a significant role in understanding emotional intent. Without them, misunderstandings are common. The key to navigating this is clear and direct communication. Asking straightforward questions about intentions can reduce uncertainty and help establish where you stand, sparing yourself unnecessary overthinking.

 

The Pain of Ghosting

Ghosting - abruptly cutting off communication without explanation - is a particularly painful phenomenon in modern dating. It leaves individuals questioning what went wrong and often triggers feelings of rejection. Research shows that ghosting activates areas of the brain associated with physical pain, underscoring the deep emotional impact it can have.

 

Understanding that ghosting often reflects the ghoster’s avoidance tendency as well as discomfort with confrontation rather than your worth can be a powerful reframe. It’s a reminder that closure doesn’t always come from external validation but from self-compassion and acceptance.

 

The Reality of Rejection

Rejection is another universal experience, yet it remains one of the hardest to navigate. It often prompts negative self-reflection, leading individuals to question their attractiveness or compatibility. However, resilience research highlights the importance of reframing rejection as redirection. It’s not about your shortcomings but about aligning with someone whose values and goals better match your own.

By adopting a growth mindset, rejection becomes less about failure and more about learning. This perspective not only builds confidence but also fosters a healthier approach to future connections.

 

The Pressure to Be Perfect

Social media adds another layer of complexity to modern dating, often creating pressure to present an idealized version of oneself. The curated lives portrayed online can set unrealistic standards, making dating feel more like a performance than an authentic experience.

 

Focusing on authenticity rather than external validation can help alleviate this pressure. By being genuine and present, you create deeper, more meaningful connections that are built on trust rather than appearances.

 

Navigating Dating Fatigue

The repeated cycles of connection and disconnection can lead to dating fatigue, where the process feels draining rather than exciting. To counter this, it’s important to prioritize quality over quantity and allow yourself breaks when needed. By approaching dating with realistic expectations and self-care, you can renew your energy and optimism.

 

A Practical Perspective on Modern Dating

Modern dating isn’t about a perfect formula or guaranteed success. It reflects the complexities of human connection in a fast-paced, technology-driven world. Dating apps and other digital tools are neither inherently good nor bad - they’re simply one of many resources available to foster connection. While these platforms can be frustrating, they also offer opportunities to meet people you might never encounter otherwise.

 

Rather than viewing apps as the definitive path to love, see them as one piece of a broader approach. Pair their convenience with intentionality: prioritize offline interactions, nurture existing relationships, and remember that your self-worth isn’t tied to your online presence. Modern dating doesn’t need to be a source of despair. It can be a reminder of the resilience and adaptability required to maximize the evolving ways we connect as humans

Hope and Healing Trauma : I’ve learned that hope isn’t about perfection and healing isn’t about erasing the past.

By Fitz Anugerah • September 1, 2025
When I volunteered to write this month’s note on Hope & Healing Trauma, my mind was overflowing with ideas. There’s so much to say, so many perspectives, so many lived experiences. But as I began writing, I realised I had to bring it back to basics…the simplest truth. My wish is that if you take away just one thing from this note, it’s this: At the end of hope, lies your potential. Hope is a tricky thing. It can lift you up or it can feel completely out of reach depending on where you are in your healing journey. For someone carrying the weight of trauma, hope can feel foreign, almost unrealistic. And yet, even the tiniest glimmer of it can create the spark that helps us climb out of the darkest places. I’ve been there. I’ve had to pick myself up after the heartbreak of a toxic relationship that broke down my self worth in my twenties. I’ve had to rebuild form burnout at work, restart my finances after leaving a five figure corporate job to pursue entrepreneurship and even fight through a cancer diagnosis that changed everything I thought I knew about life. Reading these words here may make them sound neat and manageable, but what’s missing are the tears, the anxiety, the worry behind the scenes. What carried me through those moments wasn’t grit or resilience alone, it was hope. Hope that the only way was up. Hope that if I kept showing up for myself, I would eventually find light on the other side. But here’s the truth: healing is not linear. It’s messy. It’s haphazard. Some days you feel like you’re making progress and other days you feel like you’re back at square one. That doesn’t mean you’re failing, it means you’re human. The true goal isn’t to avoid setbacks, but to get better at picking yourself up when they happen. For years, I lived angry; angry at relationships that hurt me, angry at an environment I didn’t feel I fit into, angry at life’s unfairness. But when I turned inward, I realised the anger wasn’t really about others. It was about me. I wasn’t showing up authentically for myself. I wasn’t giving myself permission to heal. That realisation became my tipping point. It wasn’t easy. It took years of counselling, meditation, journaling and one practice that profoundly shifted everything for me: BodyTalk . BodyTalk is a holistic healthcare system that looks at the whole person; your mind, your body and your experiences, not just your symptoms. Our bodies carry stories: traumas, emotions and unresolved memories that show up as stress, illness or pain. In BodyTalk these stories are gently uncovered and released. For me, it meant letting go of emotionally charged experiences I’d been unconsciously holding onto as my identity; stories that were taking up unnecessary space in my mind and body. When I allowed myself to release them through BodyTalk sessions, something incredible happened. I felt freer. My body felt lighter. And more importantly, my mind felt spacious again. Ready to hold, not pain, but potential. That’s where hope led me: to potential. The potential to be myself. The potential to heal. The potential to live differently, to go against the grain and be okay with it. So if you take away just one thing from this note, let it be this: hope is not about perfection and healing is not about erasing your past. Trauma doesn’t have to define you. When you stop letting it own you, you begin to uncover the space for who you are meant to be. And at the end of hope, always, lies your potential.

Hope & Healing Trauma: A Gentle Path Back to Wholeness

By Jeanette Qhek • September 1, 2025
Trauma can feel like a fracture - a sudden break in the rhythm of life. It lingers not only in our memories, but also in our bodies, our nervous systems, and the quiet ways we hold ourselves back. At first, healing can feel impossible. Hope can feel far away. And yet, again and again, I’ve witnessed that hope has a way of returning, sometimes softly, sometimes like the first crack of light after a long night. Healing from trauma is not about erasing the past, but about learning to carry it differently. It’s about reclaiming safety, connection, and trust in ourselves, one step at a time. When Trauma Stirs Old Wounds Often, what makes trauma feel so heavy is not only the event itself, but the way it awakens older wounds beneath the surface — fears of rejection, abandonment, or not being enough. These layers of pain can leave us feeling raw, isolated, and unsure of who we are without the identities or roles we once clung to. I remember this in my own journey. When life shifted suddenly and a physical skin illness pulled me away from the familiar roles and anchors of career and identity, it felt like everything I had built myself upon crumbled. On the surface, it may have looked like “just” a physical setback, but beneath it stirred deeper fears I had carried for years — the fear that without my achievements or image, I would not be enough. Like many people, I had learned to protect myself through identities: the achiever, the perfectionist, the one who blends in. These strategies helped me survive, but they also muted the most authentic parts of me. And yet, in the collapse of those identities, something unexpected happened: what felt like an ending became the beginning of something deeper. It wasn’t only a trauma healing journey — it became a path of rediscovery of myself. The Role of Hope Hope rarely arrives in dramatic ways. More often, it appears in small, almost ordinary moments. For me, it came in glimmers: Sitting quietly and realizing I could breathe again. Starting a small creative project during one of the darkest seasons of my life, just to make sense of what I was going through. Discovering the simple joy of being in nature, or feeling my body soften in therapy when I felt truly seen. The gentle presence of my therapist, who reminded me that I wasn’t broken. These moments didn’t erase the pain, but they reminded me that maybe things didn’t have to stay that way forever. Hope didn’t come as a single breakthrough; it came as tiny openings, each one widening my capacity to see possibility. And this is often how hope works. It doesn’t always arrive as a grand transformation, but as soft reminders that healing is possible. Step by step, we begin to reclaim the parts of ourselves that have been muted — the playful child who wanted to create, the intuitive self who sensed more than what could be “proven”, the tender parts of me that longs for connection without performance or perfection. What looks like collapse may, in truth, be initiation — a cracking open that makes space for authenticity. What Helps Us Heal Through my lived experience and my work as a psychotherapist, I’ve learned that healing is both universal and deeply personal. Safety comes first. Healing happens when there is enough safety — with ourselves, with others, or in a therapeutic space. The body remembers. Trauma imprints itself into the nervous system, which may keep responding as if the danger is still present. Healing means teaching the body it is safe again, so we can reconnect with who we truly are. Connection heals. True healing often comes when we allow ourselves to be seen, not hidden. Self-trust grows slowly. Over time, we can learn to trust our inner wisdom — discovering that love, acceptance, and authenticity flow naturally from it. Hope as a Practice Healing trauma doesn’t mean forgetting the past. It means weaving it into the tapestry of who we are — not as the whole story, but as one chapter. For me, hope has become a practice of unmuting — expressing myself more fully, even when it feels scary. It’s about remembering that being seen isn’t dangerous. It’s deeply healing. Hope whispers that our story isn’t finished. That we are more than what happened to us. That the same energy once used to survive can also be used to create, to love, and to thrive. Even on hard days, hope reminds us: you are not broken — you are becoming.

How Mealtime and Young Mental Health is Connected

By Claudia Correia • July 30, 2025
Do you prioritise family mealtime? In today’s fast-paced environment, where everyone often feels pulled in different directions, family meals can be easily dismissed and missed. Family meals can be truly magical; besides nourishing, they pull families into unity and support mental, physical and emotional health. The benefits span across all age groups. In teenagers specifically, a large body of research shows that families who have meals together show: • Better school performance, with a higher likelihood of achieving A’s, is in school. • Lower the risk of teenage behaviours such as smoking, substance abuse, eating disorders, teenage pregnancy and violence. • Lower risk for depression and anxiety, and higher self-esteem • Lower obesity risk and better cardiovascular health Family meals can play a vital role in strengthening family bonds, promoting stability, and fostering a sense of unity and connectedness. They also have the potential to enhance the developmental assets of adolescents, including problem-solving skills and social-emotional growth. Additionally, family traditions and routines, such as shared meals, provide a sense of consistency and an opportunity to connect while promoting healthy attitudes and behaviours related to food. Family meals are also powerful for adults, as well, with parents having better nutrition, less dieting patterns, more self-esteem and lower risk of depression – I see this happening every day in my practice. Eating meals together as a family also has a profoundly positive impact on the child’s and adolescent’s eating habits and diet quality; the more meals eaten together, the greater the impact. Number of meals together In today’s world, where schedules are packed and families barely meet, meals together can sound like quite an unrealistic task. Frequent regular family meals are usually defined as 3-7 times a week, keeping the consistency, reflect a sense of connection and priority. So, if you have only one meal a week together, consider how you can adjust your schedule to increase the number of family meals you have routinely. We have at least 16 possible times for families to eat together—seven breakfasts, seven dinners, and two weekend lunches. And let’s not forget snack time or bedtime snacks, which can also be used as a meaningful connection time over a fruit, nuts, and a glass of milk or a cup of yoghurt. Making family meals engaging and welcoming The ideal meal combines nutritious, balanced, and delicious food with fun and conversationbut not always easy to cultivate a welcoming and open environment and dining table. If keeping the conversation with your teen is hard, thefamilydinnerproject.org has some creative tips. Here are some: • Set an example and keep devices out of the dining table, and avoid getting distractedby them. • Encourage Sharing. Invite each family member to share highlights from their day or something they’re looking forward to. This sets a tone of openness and encourages everyone to participate. Start the conversation by sharing something about your day and asking for feedback from the children, e.g., how would you suggest Dad deals with his co-worker in that challenging situation? • Celebrate Small Wins . Use mealtime to acknowledge achievements, no matter how small. Celebrating these moments can boost a teenager’s self-esteem. • Cook Together. Involve your teenagers in meal preparation. This not only teaches them valuable life skills but also creates a shared experience that can make the meal more enjoyable. Play games if talking and sharing at the dining table is not something you are comfortable with yet ; games are a great way to break the ice. Here are some examples: • 20 Questions: One person thinks of an object, person, or place, and the others take turns asking yes-or-no questions to guess what it is within 20 questions. • Would You Rather?: Pose fun or silly hypothetical questions, like “Would you rather have the ability to fly or be invisible?” Everyone takes turns answering and discussing their choices. • Story Building: One person starts a story with a sentence, and each person adds a sentence to continue the story. This can lead to some funny or creative narratives! • Two Truths and a Lie: Everyone takes turns sharing two true facts and one false factabout themselves—the rest of the family guesses which is the lie. • Table Trivia: Prepare some trivia questions about family history, fun facts, or themes related to the meal or occasion. • Guess the Song: Hum or tap a rhythm of a song, and others try to guess what it is. You can even create categories like “Disney songs” or “80s hits.” • Charades: Act out a word or phrase without speaking, while the others guess what it is. This can be themed according to the season or a holiday. In Conclusion The link between family meals and mental health outcomes is clear. By prioritising shared mealtimes, families can not only improve their physical nutrition but also enhance emotional well-being through the connections formed around it. Even if it starts with just a few meals a week, the long-term effects on mental health and family bonds are profound. So, consider making family mealtime a cherished routine—you might be surprised by the positive changes it brings to your family dynamic One last note – don’t beat yourself up if family meals are not picture-perfect or don’thappen with the “right” consistency. Knowledge is power, and being aware of the benefits of family meals is important; therefore, this article. However, we also know that “life happens” sometimes, and family mealtime might be put on the backburner during these busy periods. That will not make you and your partner a failure, only human. Just restart building these routines again, step by step – these habits are utterly worth fighting for. Claudia Correia Dietitian and mother of two Accredited Dietitian of Singapore References Harrison, M. E., Norris, M. L., Obeid, N., Fu, M., Weinstangel, H., & Sampson, M. (2015). Systematic review of the effects of family meal frequency on psychosocial outcomes in youth. Canadian family physician Medecin de famille canadien , 61 (2), e96–e106. https://thefamilydinnerproject.org/ https://www.raisingteenagers.com.au/power-familymeals/