Take it from a hopeless romantic who’s had her heart shattered a few times throughout her 20s: breakups are brutal. They often bring out the worst in us, sometimes even triggering rash decisions or compulsive behavior, like ruminating or overspending.
Typically, this behavior doesn’t actually help us heal and operates more like a band-aid over a bullet wound. In fact, a Dating.com survey recently found that 59% of respondents spent money to feel better after their last breakup, but only 28% said it helped them heal.
According to Jaime Bronstein, LCSW, resident therapist at Dating.com, much healthier ways to cope with breakups exist—methods that won’t break the bank or send you spiraling into debt. Here are three ways to protect your mental health and wallet during a heartbreak.
1. Mute, Don’t Delete
After being dumped or betrayed by someone you thought was your soulmate, you might feel tempted to delete all evidence they ever existed. However, Bronstein warns that we might regret this quick, pain-driven decision.
“If you delete photos, messages, and physical memories of your ex, you might regret it later when you’re not as emotional,” Bronstein points out. “I recommend muting or archiving them for a period of time. It could be two weeks or a month; it’s up to you. This would help you decide without their interference and with a clearer mind, and would prevent you from second-guessing any rash decisions.”
2. Set a Time Limit for Rumination
As someone with OCD, I know how powerful the urge to ruminate can be. Unfortunately, I also know how toxic this habit can become, holding us back from healing and moving forward with our lives.
“Thoughts can get overwhelming quickly,” Bronstein says. “Set aside 15-30 minutes a day when you allow yourself to be flooded with thoughts of your ex, and if you feel like writing down your feelings in a journal, that can be helpful as you heal. After that time, do your best to be productive and carry on with your day while focusing on the positive and the present moment.”
3. Wait 48 Hours Before Making Breakup Purchases
A little retail therapy never hurt anybody…but a lot of it can definitely set you back financially. Not to mention, it likely won’t fill the void you’re feeling from your breakup.
“It makes sense to want to do something to make yourself feel better; however, before you make a purchase, wait a day or two, and then reflect on how you’re feeling, and ask yourself if it is to show off to your ex or if it’s something you genuinely would like to purchase regardless of the breakup,” Bronstein recommends. “If it’s for your ex, then skip it; however, if it’s for you, then go for it and enjoy your new purchase as long as it’s within your budget.”
At the end of the day, there’s no “perfect” way to handle a breakup. Be easy on yourself as you heal, and if you’d like to treat yourself to a new pair of shoes or a little black dress, don’t deprive yourself of that joy. But don’t expect it to mend your broken heart, either. Everything in moderation.
We’ve all heard the myths about when men and women supposedly hit their sexual peak. Men top out around 18, and women don’t hit their stride until they’re in their 30s. If that were true, it would create a seriously mismatched dating pool.
Those numbers go back to Alfred Kinsey, whose reports on male and female sexuality came out in 1948 and 1953. Men in his research reported the most orgasms around 17 or 18, while women reported more consistent orgasms after 30, according to MedicineNet.
The problem is that orgasm frequency is a pretty strange way to decide when somebody is having their best sex. A teenage guy can get there with a stiff breeze and a few spare minutes. Young women are more likely to need some trial and error first, plus a partner who’s actually paying attention.
The Truth About When Men and Women Actually Hit Their Sexual Peak
Age eventually catches up with everyone. Men lose testosterone a little at a time, and women can deal with dryness and lower desire around menopause. It’s a slow slide, with no single birthday where everything goes downhill.
And sexual satisfaction doesn’t exactly fall off a cliff later in life. In one survey of more than 1,300 older women, those over 80 reported some of the highest satisfaction levels in the group, social psychologist and Kinsey Institute research fellow Justin Lehmiller wrote in Psychology Today. He later wrote on his blog that older adults “care more about the thought and effort that goes into sex than they do about how often they’re doing it.”
A 2024 study of 556 people over 60 found that a third rated their recent sex as great. Seventy percent expected an unlimited number of orgasms in their future. That’s a lot of optimism for a group we’ve been told is well past its prime.
Feeling older than you are also seems to affect your sex life. Lehmiller has pointed to research linking feeling older than your actual age with lower sexual satisfaction, even after researchers accounted for physical health. That’s one more reason a single “sexual peak” age doesn’t make much sense.
So maybe the whole sexual-peak idea was bullsh*t to begin with. Being horny at 18 is not the same thing as being good at sex, and getting older doesn’t automatically make you bad at it. The older you get, the better chance you’ve had to figure out what actually feels good.
You’ve heard of your lifespan, but what about your sexspan—aka the length of time in which you can maintain an active sex life? This term highlights an often-neglected aspect of life as we get older.
As humans age, and for a variety of reasons, many individuals focus less on their sex lives or intimacy. From health conditions and stress to ageism and partner issues, countless influences affect our sex drives. However, a longer sexspan can benefit our overall health and well-being—and vice versa.
What Is a Sexspan?
According to Dr. Mohit Khera, a urologist at Baylor College of Medicine who coined the term, “your sexspan is the portion of your life in which you will have the ability and/or the desire to engage in sexual activity.”
Many people assume sex loses its importance and benefits with age, but that’s far from true. While sex certainly isn’t everything (especially for asexual individuals or others who aren’t interested in engaging), it can contribute to overall health and life satisfaction.
“Maintaining sexual intimacy as we age has a multitude of physiological and psychological health benefits,” says Ty David Lerman, PhD, clinical sexologist and AASECT-certified sex therapist. “Physically, we see improvement in heart health, lower blood pressure, [an] improved immune system, and lower levels of cortisol, the stress hormone, [which] helps us sleep better. For women, orgasms help strengthen the pelvic floor, [which] in turn helps with bladder control, a common issue that arises as we age. For men, regular ejaculation helps with prostate health.”
Of course, the benefits aren’t just physical either.
“The psychological benefits are also impacted by the endorphins and hormones released during orgasm that act as natural anti-depressants that often last days in our system,” Lerman continues. “Beyond the physical reactions, deepening connection with a partner as we age and fulfilling sexual satisfaction is a huge part of overall life satisfaction. Not to mention, feeling desired by our partners leads to a better self-image and just generally feeling good.”
How to Increase Your Sexspan
Unfortunately, societal judgments or stereotypes like ageism can stigmatize sex among the elderly. This often leads people to shame or neglect their own sexual health.
“In truth, folks are having sex far into older age; we just don’t like to talk about it,” Lerman shares. “The stigma is so prevalent that we often neglect to teach older folks about sexual health, which is sadly leading to an uprising in STIs in retirement homes!”
As they say: Your sex life does not have an expiration date. Regardless of whether you’ve gone through menopause, battle a chronic health condition, or have been with your spouse for 50+ years, you can still find ways to enjoy sex and intimacy.
“Bodies change, and real limitations arise as we age,” says Lerman. “Adaptability to our bodies changing over time is a huge factor in expanding our sexspan. Try to take it as a challenge to get creative to meet our physical needs and limitations while we still enjoy this part of our lives.”
And, of course, as you prioritize your general health, you might notice your sexual health improving.
“Think about taking care of your sexual health the same way you go for walks for your heart, or yoga/stretching for flexibility,” Lerman explains. “Expand your scope to include sex in our overall health considerations.”
As you take care of your body and fulfill its needs, you might find you have more energy for intimacy—and more of a hunger for it.
“The only two things needed for ‘good sex’ are to be connected to myself and my partner and to have fun!” Lerman adds. “That has nothing to do with sexual functioning or ‘performance.’ When we lower the bar of expectations and stop quantifying sex, we open the world of possibilities, increase our pleasure—and yes, extend our sexspan!
From girl dinners to protein-maxxed meals, we all have our different eating preferences. So when we enter a relationship or move in with a significant other, it can be challenging to merge our food choices and find common ground in the kitchen.
I often debate with my boyfriend: should we buy our own groceries and cook our own meals, or should we share the financial burden and kitchen tasks and enjoy the same meals together?
Since we’re often on the go, we tend to do quick, separate breakfasts and lunches during the week, but for dinner, one—or both!—of us will cook a meal we can share. This balance works for us.
However, when he’s away for the night or on a trip with friends, I don’t mind returning to my girl dinners of cheese, crackers, and pickles. In fact, some people crave a more permanent meal separation from their partner, also known as a “food divorce.”
Introducing ‘Food Divorce,’ the Relationship Trend for Couples Who Hate Eating the Same Things
Contrary to how it sounds, a food divorce is not an actual divorce. In other words, you’ll still remain married or coupled up with your partner. The only separation you’ll face is during mealtime.
According to Bruce Y. Lee, M.D., M.B.A., in his Psychology Today article on the topic, “A ‘food divorce’ is [a] term that’s being used on the internet to describe a situation where you and your partner no longer shop for groceries, cook, or eat together, even though you may be living together. Instead, each of you does the meal thing independently. You are essentially separated like oil and vinegar when it comes to food.”
Reasons for a Food Divorce
Couples may pursue a food divorce for many reasons, from conflicting schedules to different dietary preferences and restrictions. If you and your partner can’t agree on dinner most nights, you might be saving yourself from an argument by eating your own meals. With a food divorce, gone are the evenings spent asking your girlfriend or wife what they want for dinner and receiving no concrete decision. (I’m guilty of this…)
Additionally, if one person is gluten-free and the other is vegan, it can feel nearly impossible to find meals that accommodate both diets.
Benefits of a Food Divorce
While eating separate meals and buying separate groceries might feel counterintuitive to sharing a life, a food divorce can ease the stress of planning around each other’s schedules, agreeing on the same food choices, and coordinating meals.
“A couple doesn’t have to do everything together in a joined-at-the-hip manner,” Lee wrote in his article. “In fact, it can be natural and even healthier to do some things separately, especially things where you have divergent preferences and viewpoints.”
And, of course, if schedules allow, you can still eat your separate meals together. Just because you’re cooking or ordering different food doesn’t mean you can’t do so as a couple.
As Lee stated in his article: “A ‘food divorce’ could be an effective solution if the rest of your relationship is peachy keen—just not peach melba keen—and the only thing salty about your pairing is food-related. As long as your relationship already has plenty of other ways to bond and communicate and remain a great pair, then it may be fine that you are not having pears together.”
If you want to hear someone complain, one of your best bets is to ask one of your single friends what the dating landscape is like right now.
You’ll hear tales of first dates that lead nowhere, conversations that feel like they were ripped from a social media feed, and more and more people resigning themselves to partnerless existence. Even what once seemed like an ever-flowing fount of new romantic possibilities has now dried up: It feels like the days of meeting The One via a dating app are behind us.
We are officially in a romantic slump. As dating coach Lily Womble explains: “Dating can be so exhausting, depleting, demoralizing, and I only think dating apps have increased that experience for single folks.” Despite how discouraging it can be, though, a lot of people still desire partnership.
Womble is the author of Thank You, More Please: A Feminist Guide to Breaking Dumb Dating Rules and Finding Love, and she spoke with Vox about how to overcome dating fatigue. “If you do want to find love in a romantic partnership, there is a more healthful and empowering way to go about it that centers you as the main character,” she explains.
So how do you center yourself? How do you take your dating life off of your phone and into the real world? We answer those questions and more on the latest episode of Explain It to Me, Vox’s weekly call-in podcast.
Below is an excerpt of my conversation with Womble, edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you’d like to submit a question, send an email to askvox@vox.com or call 1-800-618-8545.
If you’re used to dating apps and you want to meet someone in person, how do you make that happen?
Dating in person is a lost art of social connection. I think that our reliance on dating apps has made us all sicker in some ways. These apps are built like slot machines. They’re designed to keep you sitting there with a gallon bag full of quarters and a Big Gulp, hoping to pull the triple cherry and get lucky.
It’s really important to reset your brain [from] dating apps, to get in-person to build new connections. It is as simple and as complicated as three steps.
What are the steps?
Number one: joy-building. Joy is connective. You need to exit your house, get off your couch, and go do something in your town or city that brings you some amount of joy with other people.
It could be something free or something paid. The point is not to be in proximity to hotties at this event. The point is to make a new friendship, to make a new connection, to say, “Hey, how’s it going?” From there, you’re expanding your social circle. The function of a dating app is purely to expand your social circle and expand your opportunity window to meet somebody. Same with expanding your social circle with joy-building.
You never know which 70-year-old you meet at your quilting night in your small town, whose son’s boyfriend’s cousin comes to a party and suddenly you’ve met the love of your life. I met my husband through joy-building. I went to an improv class, I made a friend that introduced me to her social circle, then I met Chris, my husband. Joy-building helps you meet the right people.
Second, you’ve got co-conspiratorship: helping your friends help you better. Now, your friend might say, “I don’t know any single people.” To that, you say, “I don’t either. So let’s co-create creative solutions. We’re both smart. You have a workplace, you have a work conference. Are you looking out for me there? Here’s the kind of person that I’m looking for. Here’s the questions I want you to ask somebody.”
Two of my clients were each other’s co-conspirators. They lived in different states. That didn’t matter because one of them visited the other, and in the airport met an eligible man, asked the qualifying and disqualifying questions, found out he was single, that he was eligible, that he was a good fit, and set them up. They literally started dating. So you need to have co-conspirators, you need to have friends looking out for you. Just like your friend asked you to be in their wedding, you need to ask them to support you in this way too.
Finally, we’ve got flirting, which is the most vomitous, nerve-wracking part of this plan. The good news is that it’s a buildable skill set. It’s not just something that your favorite friend who is so naturally flirty has and you don’t. I think that flirting is essentially a joyful, courageous connection.
People overcomplicate flirting to be this game. But I really believe, and have seen in my own experience, that flirting is just simply approaching somebody, asking a genuine question, and seeing if that person wants to co-create a conversation with you. To see if it’s romantic, you just ask, “Hey, random question. So are you single?” All of this requires 10 seconds of courage to go up to somebody and say, “Hey, you’re cute. I just wanted to come tell you that.” One of my clients did that on a crosswalk with a man that she found cute and they ended up dating.
You make it sound so easy, but that joy-building, that getting out and talking to people, that can be really hard. One, it’s hard to be joyful when it feels like the world is falling apart around us. Also, some of us are more shy than others. And there are people who lost a lot of valuable flirt skill-building time during the pandemic. I hear you, but how do you do it?
We have lost a lot of social skills. Those years that we were in lockdown were reps missed, especially for Gen Z, who literally were in school during that time. I’m a millennial, so I had already cut my teeth in New York circa 2015 with IRL flirting. It does require a rejection resilience plan.
I recommend that people have in the notes app on their phone a plan to be courageous and to know how they’re going to react and care for themselves after a hard moment. There are people, when you flirt or joy-build, who don’t want to be your friend, who don’t want to talk to you, who are uncomfortable themselves. That rejection resilience plan can really prepare you to be courageous and to know that no matter what, you’re going to be okay.
It’s as simple as understanding that your brain’s going to think it’s dying after an experience of rejection. Just say, “I think I’m going to die after rejection. It’s a thought, not a fact.” Then have a plan to be compassionate towards yourself. Self-compassion isn’t just a fluffy phrase. It is a science-backed tool that decreases cortisol, and increases resilience.
I also recommend a flirting ladder to increase your distress tolerance.
How does that work?
Start at the very basic level: I’m going to make eye contact with somebody for one second and then look away. Great, boom, done. That’s the first level on the flirting ladder.
Next level, I’m going to hold it for three seconds. It’s in small steps. Plan to do it in small, bite-sized steps so that you can increase your distress tolerance window. What flirting can be is a practice that you build up gradually towards. So wherever you are on the flirting ladder, if you’ve never made eye contact with somebody, you’re super shy, you’ve never gone up to a cute stranger and said hello, just literally write down five simple steps that you could do this week: eye contact, saying hello. One of my clients did a wink and run.
When you plan to do something courageous and say, “I’m going to do it for 10 seconds and then I can bail,” you’re more likely to do courageous things. You’re more likely to have more connections in your life and you’re more likely to meet the right people for you.
There are two scenes in Jane Schoenbrun‘s “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” that I hope will be among the first things to flash through my mind at the hour of my death, somewhere right after “oh sh*t,” and just before all of my dead pets and family members appear before me to take me back home.
In the first of these scenes, Kris Williams (Hannah Einbinder) runs through the woods at night, dressed only in a T-shirt and underwear, boobs bouncing and shoulder-length hair flowing side-to-side, in dreamy “final girl” form. Kris is a queer filmmaker taking on the task of reclaiming the slasher horror film-within-the-film, “Camp Miasma,” rebooting it for the queer community to no longer be appalled by. And she herself has, as of only recently, learned how to no longer be appalled by where her mind needs to travel in order to truly enjoy sex: villain-victim fantasies.
Lord, I’ve seen what you’ve done for others; please send me a beautiful woman who looks similar to these two characters, and please guide her to match my freak in the way that Kris and Billy match each other’s.
In the second scene that I hope to mentally revisit before it’s a wrap on principal photography for me on this mortal plane — seen at the very end of Schoenbrun’s latest film — Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson) walks hand in hand with Kris through a dreamscape of pleasure and gore as the most beautiful song I’ve ever heard in my life plays: “Satan,” by Andy Shauf. Billy is the star of the original “Camp Miasma” that Kris is rebooting, and she’s just given Kris permission to be as weird as she needs to be in order to come.
The theatrical burden of faking an orgasm because you don’t feel allowed to get into the headspace you need to be in in order to have a real one is gone. That looming first common, boring day after a few weeks of new bliss is gone. The habit of saying “I love you” with the same ease and banality as “can I have a napkin” is gone. Just two women being down for whatever it takes, for however long it lasts, encouraging each other to let go.
Lord, I’ve seen what you’ve done for others; please send me a beautiful woman who looks similar to these two characters, and please guide her to be compatible with me in the way that Kris and Billy are compatible with each other so that I, too, may have someone to hold hands with while slowly walking to the gas station in my underpants to buy snacks, covered head to toe in blood.
(MUBI) Hannah Einbinder in “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma”
Schoenbrun, who directed, wrote and produced 2021’s fantastic “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair” and then cemented their name as a visionary with the release of “I Saw the TV Glow” in 2024 — which they also wrote and directed — described the somewhat hard-to-describe “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” to The New York Times as such: “In its simplest form, this is kind of a movie about two women matching each other’s freak.”
There’s a flame in my heart that wasn’t there before watching this movie, and that’s as great as a review can get.
Schoenbrun’s third major full-length release has received mixed reviews from professional critics and reactions from casual cinema-goers along the lines of “what the hell is this?” And you know what? I wish them all well. Whether this movie is a meta take on the problematic slasher genre, a delivery system for Hannah Einbinder to showcase that she has the best butt ever, or yet another chance for Gillian Anderson to give queer women what they want: Gillian Anderson; all I know is that when the credits rolled on this film, I walked to the parking lot with a twitterpated grin on my face, drove home listening to “Satan” on repeat, and then, once inside, immediately reactivated my Hinge profile and updated it to read: Looking for someone to share dipping sauces with — a reference to a scene in which Billy treats Kris to a feast of KFC, which I’m sure no one in my surrounding area will get. But if someone does . . . wedding bells!
Having recently gone from being a married woman to someone afraid of love and marriage, now that I’ve felt how quickly that can turn to vapor, I didn’t think I’d ever feel what this film made me feel again. There’s a flame in my heart that wasn’t there before watching this movie, and that’s as great as a review can get.
(MUBI) Gillian Anderson in “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma”
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In the song “Satan,” which I will never shut up about and am acting like I personally discovered now, even though it was released as a single by Andy Shauf in 2022 and is featured on the soundtrack for “Camp Miasma” (available for pre-order now via Waxwork Records), he sings:
Don’t watch yourself, watch the movie
This only happens for a little while
Because Satan is waiting
Satan is waiting with Halloween candy
And while reading those lyrics, this may not seem like a romantic song; but in the context of the scene in which it plays, it very much is. Hearing this song after watching this movie, I felt like I was in love, even though I currently have no one to love — and didn’t think I wanted to. But the feeling was better than love, because it was just mine. Something pure. Something I could tap into just myself, or choose to share, but wasn’t attached to the memory of any of the real-life ouchy stuff.
This only happens for a little while.
Admittedly a recovering serial monogamist, maybe that “for a little while” part is a new lesson for me. Maybe that part would be OK?
(MUBI) Gillian Anderson and Hannah Einbinder in “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma”
As a divorced lesbian who lives alone with her dog in a southern state she doesn’t feel attached to, a mix of slim-pickins and general heartache has led me to feeling like maybe I’ll just never meet the right woman for me — and working from home doesn’t make the whole situation any easier, in terms of putting myself out there, if I’d even ever wanted to.
Watching “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” changed my tune, immediately, because it made me feel something I hadn’t felt for a long, long time: passion. And more so, the exciting possibility of passion for passion’s sake, without rushing to mold it into anything more, unless it proves itself to actually be something more, which only time can tell.
The true gift of a film like this — films in general, really — is that even though what you’re watching isn’t real, how it makes you feel is.
I will likely not encounter my very own Kris Williams or Billy Presley on a dating app. There is no Camp Miasma to autofill as my location on Hinge. But passion is waiting . . . with Halloween candy. And like Billy says to Kris in the film, “If it gets too real, you can always turn it off.” But I like the feeling of leaving it on, for now, just to see what the next scene may bring.
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