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By Terrey L. Hatcher

If you’re looking for answers about dating and relationships, you may get confused at times about the contradictory guidance you hear.

Instincts vs. Change
“Trust your instincts!” This advice has a lot of merit. Your body, your mind, and your heart should all play into your instinctual feelings about whether someone is potentially a good partner for you.

“Change your patterns.” If you’ve had a series of relationship fails, you and all your friends are going to think that you should try doing something differently in terms of how you’re approaching dating.

If you’re following your instincts but your dating patterns are not working out for you, what’s a disappointed dater to do? Doesn’t changing your pattern require going against your instincts? If you go against your instincts, aren’t you saying that you aren’t worthy of making your own relationship decisions?

Wallowing vs. Partying
“Spend time alone and work through your grief.” This common guidance says your heartache won’t go away unless you face it and process it. You can’t change unless you spend time figuring out what went wrong. Get back in touch with yourself and your needs. Give yourself space to recharge and be a better you.

“Go out with friends and forget about your loser ex.” This advice says to distract yourself from the breakup pain by getting out of the house and having fun. Who says you can’t run away from your problems? And you’re more likely to meet someone sooner.

Both of these make some sense. Can you combine them and do a little of both while your heartbreak heals?

Openness vs. Focused Vision
“Give someone different a chance.” This theory is that you never know the kind of date who might end up being a good match for you. Open yourself up to unexpected possibilities. You hear stories from friends about not being all that into their spouses until several dates in. They say that attraction can grow on you.

“Know what you want and don’t settle for less.” Friends will tell you to focus on the type of person you want in your life, see the red flags that don’t match up and end the relationship early if your date doesn’t rate. Stop continuing to date someone for their possibilities. If they don’t treat you the way you want in the beginning, they’re not going to improve later on.

If you’re not attracted to someone right away, should you really date them just because they seem like a good person and they like you? What about chemistry? Maybe the answer is levels of attraction. You clearly need to have some level of attraction to be interested in dating someone. But if it’s not super-strong at the start, maybe you should give the potential pluses a chance to materialize.

Decisions, Decisions
Which piece of seemingly good guidance do you trust when all this sage advice is contradictory? Your family members are telling you to just be yourself. Your friends are telling you to be more open. You hear that you need to be more selective, less picky, less flirty or more friendly. You hear that you need to be more focused on the positives in your relationship and your partner’s needs. You hear that you need to focus on self-love and speak up about having your needs met.

How do you make sense of all this sensible but confusing advice? Maybe you have to think about all of it, look at ways to grow, but stay true to yourself and what you want in a relationship. Give more, but take more too.

And remember the old adage: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again!