Have you ever thought about keeping a date journal? 

You might already have a journal or paper diary – perhaps you write in it every day or once a week, or perhaps it hasn’t been opened for a while and has a thick layer of dust over it. 

Whatever your relationship is with journaling, we recommend that you keep a date journal right from your very first date on fuse™. Date journals can help you navigate, understand, and grow from the sometimes messy and complex business of dating – with all of its ups, downs, and false horizons. 

It’s your space to keep anything and everything related to your dating journey; you might want to treat it like a scrapbook, and keep tickets from shows or events, or hold photos, or even to press a flower between its pages, but one of the things we find that date journals do best is help you understand your own feelings. 

As we all know, dating is rarely a straightforward process, and neither are your feelings. Having confused or conflicted feelings is perfectly normal (some people would say that’s what makes dating exciting!) but keeping track of those feelings can help you make sense of them, and give you a moment to reflect on your dating experiences. 

Things you can write about, and reflect on later, are: 

• Your thoughts and feels about the person before you meet up
• What you did on the date and how you felt about it 
• Whether your thoughts and feelings around this person have changed 
• What you loved about the date 
• What you’re looking forward to next 
• Your likes and dislikes about the person

One of the ways you could manage your date journal is by having a separate page or section for each person you’re dating (who doesn’t love highlighters and post-it notes?) so that you can easily look back on the things you’ve written as you progress in your relationship with that person. 

By being able to look back, you’ll be able to see how your feelings have changed, save memories of all of the things you’ve done together, and also check for patterns of behavior in yourself or the other person that you might not like or want to carry on into your relationship. 

All in all, we think that keeping a date journal is a great way to keep yourself on track while you’re dating and looking for the one. If nothing else, it’ll give you something to look back on during your first wedding anniversary. 

Do you already keep a date journal? Have you found it useful? Let us know!

Oh, and if you haven’t yet, don’t forget to create your fuse™ profile! It only takes a couple of minutes whether you want to be a Dater or a Fuser.