Tinder Therapy: What Every Mom Needs

Raise your hand if “Life Balance” made your New Year’s Resolution list this year. Again. In Dr. Phil fashion, I’d like to ask, “How’s that working for you?”

Let me guess. You started a new diet, went to the gym twice, scheduled a babysitter for a date night, and bought a fancy new planner that you customized with post-it notes and stickers. You committed to one load of laundry—start to finish—every day. Email is deleted daily. 

Then the flu or some horrible intestinal virus ravaged your entire household. You’ve rescheduled so many things you’re about to chuck that adorable planner out your car window while going 65 on I-75. (That was a joke.) The same load of laundry has been through the wash cycle three times and you have more emails in your inbox than dollars in your bank account. 

You’re ready to give Life Balance the third finger salute. 

Hold up, girl. Before you trash that fab planner, try my new Life Balance approach. I call it “SWIPE LEFT”.

That’s correct, my new life mantra is based on Tinder technology. For those of you that fall into the Advanced Maternal Age category, Tinder is a match-making dating app that feeds you photos of potential hook-ups romantic partners. As each photo pops up, you either swipe your finger to the right if you find the person spongeworthy attractive or swipe left to reject. 

I’m really glad I met my husband before the advent of this barbarically brilliant scheme. But I’m in love with the idea of swiping away distractions. Being able to flick away things I don’t want to make way for what I do. Why can’t real life be like this?

A few months ago I found my introverted self-spread too thin and craving me-time. I wasn’t depressed. I had a good problem: I had too many things I wanted to do! I wanted to write and finish my Health Coach certificate. I wanted to take baths. Go on walks. Read more books. Do Spin classes. Barre classes. Nights out with my MoM group.

I had to digest the reality that I only had time for a sprinkling of these things. See, I like to run on what my husband dubs Girl Time. “I’ll be ready in 10 minutes!” means he’ll see me in 25. “It only takes 18 minutes to get there” translates to 35 minutes. I’m hopelessly optimistic about what I can accomplish in a very finite amount of time. Not being able to squeeze everything in was stressing me out. I was getting resentful. 

It was time to cut back. I needed Responsibility Reduction. Life Liposuction. I needed to take a hard look at how I was spending my time and scale things down. I had underestimated how much I needed me-time and overestimated everything else I could fit into my daily life.

Just like when I operate in Girl Time and don’t plan for the inevitable traffic jam, toddler tantrums, or the fact that I will need to try on 3 pairs of pants and 7 shirts to decide what to wear. I’ve learned I need to pad my life with mental energy to deal with sickness, snow days, root canals, broken-down cars, and leaking basements.  But how?

I needed to Swipe Left.

It wasn’t easy. The guilt crept in when I asked the preschool teacher if I was required to sign up to help with the class parties. I was sad to RSVP “no” on a few of my MoM group events. I didn’t get the kids to a fall festival this year and I barely made one batch of Christmas cookies.  I decided my 2-year-old won’t need a birthday party until he’s at least 5.  I deleted a string of Facebook friends, and I don’t jump in on conversations nearly as often.  Valentines were from the dollar store and rotisserie chicken was dinner. 

Luckily, I didn’t swipe left on one of my book club picks.  I’m sure you’d recognize Mark Manson’s notorious self-help bestseller titled something to the effect of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Rat’s Tail. He’s a big proponent of the Swipe Left mentality.  You can only give your attention to so many things in life. You have a limited number of Rat’s Tails to give. And if you are constantly unhappy and feeling out-of-balance, you’re trying to give too many Rat’s Tails and probably about the wrong Rats. 

It’s not just that you have too much on your plate.  You have the wrong things on there too.

Finding balance is not about finding a way to squeeze everything into your life. Imagine your life as an old-school balance scale. In order to achieve balance, you have to add or subtract weight from one side. You can’t tip the scales by simply rearranging the weights on one side, stacking them neatly in smart looking IKEA containers. 

Maybe it’s time for you to take some of the weights off. What can wait till later? What extra emotional baggage are you carrying around? Do I really need to worry about that? How can I be more efficient?

Before I say yes to anything or start a project, I’ve trained myself to think, “Can I Swipe Left on this? Does it matter? Is it really worth my time?”

Pretty soon all this swiping will perfect your artist’s eye for seeing what you give a Rat’s Tail about. Not that you’ll feel weightless. Small swipes to the left—even just for petty things like preschool parties—gave me more mental energy to put into more important areas, like my marriage. Small swipes are also building my confidence to make big swipes, like future career decisions.

The most powerful part of learning to Swipe Left is that it reminds me who is in control of my life balance. Me.

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Kristen
After surviving 24 years of brutal upstate New York winters, Kristen bet the farm to start a new life in the South. She worked as a High School Counselor for 8 years in Northern Virginia, where she met and married her husband, Drew. They found out they were expecting twins just a few weeks after Drew accepted a new position in Huntsville, Alabama. Kristen is now a full-time stay-at-home mom to boy/girl twins Jackson & Julie (2012) and a surprise third child, Greyson (2016), who joined the family shortly after they relocated to Marietta, Georgia. Kristen is passionate about her Northwest Atlanta Moms of Multiples group, and just rekindled her love affair with running and Barre classes. She hopes that blogging will give her the confidence to start that novel she’s always wanted to write.