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5 Best Online Dating Sites to Find Love Even in Quarantine


Really, age is nothing but a number when it comes to online dating sites and apps. As long as you’re a consenting adult you can feel free to sign up for them all. However, if you’re a person over 40 looking for matches who are over the age of 40 as well there is no better place to be than Match.

Not only is it a true O.G. when it comes to dating websites, but it also boasts an impressive over 40 userbase. In 2019, Match.com shared with The New York Post, 69 percent of its userbase is between the ages of 39 and 74. The rest, the website said, are millennials.

How it works: Like OkCupid, the user journey at Match starts by signing up on the website. Then, users fill out their profile including a photo and short bio section. Next, users are asked to fill in a questionnaire about their likes and dislikes, political views, lifestyle habits, and more.

Price: Match does not come with a free version, however, it does come with several subscription plans including $38.99 for one month, $20.99 per month for three months, $18.99 per month for six months, or $17.99 per month for a year. Picking a plan is required for signup.

3. Best for future globe-trotters: Tinder

Now’s the perfect time to find love and a little bit of wanderlust with Tinder. The famed dating app is usually well-known for its quick hookup potential with others in a user’s surrounding area, however, right now, Tinder is taking swiping global.

Tinder announced it’s now offering its premium Passport feature, which typically costs between $9.99 to $19.99 per month, for free to all of its users. The feature offers users the option to swipe left or right on anyone on the app anywhere in the world.

“Our hope is that you use the Passport feature to virtually transport yourself out of self-quarantine to anywhere in the world,” the app said in a statement. “You can check in on folks in their hometown, college town, or sister city, and find those across the world who are going through the same things. If nothing else, you can learn how to say ‘hey’ in another language.” Who knows, maybe you’ll meet the love of your life now and go on a global adventure together later.

How it works: In case you’ve never opened the app, Tinder again asks users to sign up with a name and email as well as a location. Next, users create a bio and add some photos. Then, all that’s left to do is swipe left (no interest) or right (interested) on all the people around you.



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They Didn't Find Love on The Bachelor. Now They're Relationship Experts.


For Bachelor alum Taylor Nolan, it took getting off the franchise to find her voice. “I’m someone with strong opinions who isn’t scared of speaking her mind,” she says. But she found herself changing on the show. “I was heavily filtering what I was saying out of fear of backlash, out of fear of only half of what I was saying getting aired.” So Nolan uses her podcast, Let’s Talk About It, to speak openly about her dating life and mental health. “As long as one person benefits from something that my guest shared or something that I shared, that’s perfect,” she says. “There’s a lot of connection in shared pain.”

That extends to Instagram, too. When Nolan was still engaged to fellow Bachelor in Paradise contestant Derek Peth—they’ve since broken up—she made an effort not to post happy couple-y photos when things weren’t, in fact, so happy. “Our relationship was so highly romanticized on a reality TV show,” she explains. “Not posting those shiny, romantic photos when shit wasn’t actually good was fighting against some of that pressure.”

Instagram is fast becoming a cesspool of anxiety for contestants, making outlets like podcasts all the more appealing. “You get all this fame, overnight, and you’re riding this super-high high, and then the next season comes along and you lose hundreds of thousands of followers,” Gates says. “It does something to your self-worth.” The future of the post-Bachelor world, she thinks, lies beyond perfectly curated posts. “Fans don’t want the edits in photos, they want to see you as a person, which explains the rise of video, TikTok, people doing podcasts. I think everyone is craving authenticity.”

When Unglert launched Help! I Suck At Dating, he was more than happy to serve up said authenticity but was under no illusion that he had any expertise to offer. Fresh off a disastrous Bachelor in Paradise season in which he juggled two women, he had viewers call in and give him love advice. Fast forward two years: He’s graduated from the Bachelor franchise, in a committed relationship, and surprised to find that he’s become an unexpected resource for matters of the heart (something, he notes, wouldn’t have happened in “a million years” had he not gone through the show).

“I have a lot of friends who have started confiding in me a lot more for dating advice, which I think is really funny,” Unglert says, adding cheerfully, “I always preface everything by saying, ‘Look, obviously I don’t know anything I’m saying. But I think this is what you should do…’”

Thea Glassman is a freelance entertainment writer, with bylines in The New York Times, The Hollywood Reporter, Vanity Fair, and VICE. Find her on Twitter @theakglassman.





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Spotify Wrapped 2019: How to Find Out Your Most-Played Songs of the Year


You’ve probably noticed your friends starting to share their top Spotify songs of 2019, along with their other streaming habits, courtesy of Spotify Wrapped. It is, after all, the time of year when your feed is inundated with “best of” lists, summing up the last 12 months of entertainment and culture. And with 2019, we also happen to be at the end of a decade, which means even more content.

These lists are certainly fun to read (and argue about), but what we love even more is looking back at our own lives over the course of the past year—or ten. So how are your friends finding these fun facts and graphics about their music stats?

There are a couple of ways to do it. and they both involve Spotify Wrapped. First, you can simply go to spotify.com/wrapped and log in to your account. You’ll be greeted with all your streaming trends from the past year and more. “This year, your Wrapped will include the songs, albums, artists, and podcasts you discovered throughout 2019, plus the artists you streamed the most throughout the decade on Spotify. It’s ‘Wrapped’ the way you love it—but with more nostalgia than ever before,” the company said in a release.

For the first time this year, you’ll also be able to access Wrapped via your Spotify app. Once there, you’ll discover your top artist, top song through each season, top podcasts, genres, and total minutes streamed in 2019. Plus the results are easily shareable to your social media feeds, including Instagram Stories, Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter. You can also instantly add your most played songs to your library, if for some reason they’re not already there.

Perhaps the most shocking information will come via exactly how many minutes you’ve spent streaming Spotify in 2019—even if you want to keep that information to yourself.

Next up after #SpotifyWrapped in the year-end generator line will surely be the Instagram #TopNine, right?



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I Tried to Find the Perfect Plus-Size Swimsuit With Subscription Boxes


How it works: Adore Me is mostly known for its lingerie sets, but it also offers size-inclusive swimwear. There are multiple ways to shop on the site. You can pick whatever you want, whenever, like a traditional e-commerce store. Or, you can sign up for VIP and have a “showroom” curated for you every month, with lingerie and swimsuit options based on the style quiz you take. (With that, you get $10 off every set you buy, and the sixth set is free, but if you don’t go to the showroom before the 5th of the month to select or skip, you’re charged a $39.95 fee that can be used as a credit towards a future purchase.) But wait, there’s more: VIP Elite is a free styling subscription service in which someone curates three sets (in lingerie and swim) for you; you have one week to try on or mail back, and you get VIP $10 off pricing for every set. The latter two are curated based on your style quiz and items that you favorite in a closet on the website. If you forget to mail things back, you’re charged in full after 30 days, so best to try them on as soon as you receive, since you’re only given a week with the items.

What I asked for: My “favorited” suits were mostly underwire two-pieces with high-waisted bottoms. I let my stylist know that I wanted my chest to look good, first and foremost. I liked that with Adore Me, I could select a bra size and bottom size separately, so it was more likely that I’d find that perfect fit. I ended up “favoriting” a lot more than three swimsuits, so it would still be a surprise what I ended up with. I was a little stressed by the hold on my credit card and confusion between VIP and VIP Elite and whether I’d be locked into this membership, but excited by the mix of styles the site offered.

Did I find my perfect suit? The first box I got from Adore Me was actually lingerie, by accident. They sent me two swimsuit boxes to choose from after, and out of the lot, I loved two one-pieces, even though I was pretty gung-ho about getting a two-piece. Having a long torso, one-pieces often hit me awkwardly, especially with an underwire. One plunging neckline suit with absolutely no support somehow made me look and feel great: I wasn’t pushed up and properly held in, but I felt secure enough that I could jump into a pool and not make a bigger splash than I meant to. Another had a cold shoulder made of a lacy mesh situation and more of a shelf bra than an underwire, which was more comfortable and covered my upper arms.

I found sizing up to 3X rather than 2X worked for one-pieces, but sticking to 2X was okay for bottoms on two-pieces. I loved how high-waisted the latter were, and might keep the bottoms and return the tops, which, again, even at bra sizes didn’t hold me in or support me as much as I wanted. None that I received were longline either, and I was uncomfortable with the amount of skin showing. (Maybe one day I’ll be a bikini girl, but not this summer.) I think if I used Adore Me again, I’d go for VIP and not the curated Elite boxes—I didn’t have an incredible enough experience with a stylist to want someone to work with me every month, and I definitely don’t need new lingerie or swimsuits monthly. But the idea of a showroom being curated for me to choose from at my leisure (and with an alarm set for the 5th of the month to remind me to skip if I don’t!), I could see myself picking out pieces, whether for the pool or just to feel good about myself. Because we could all use a little confidence boost once in a while.



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My Scoliosis Caused Me Pain and Shame—Then It Helped Me Learn to Find Alignment


My yoga teachers informed me that my right hip gets stuck, while the left is flexible; they’ve alerted me that my right shoulder sits higher than the left; they’ve drawn my attention to my left arm, which in straight arm poses lapses into a bend. How did I not know these things about my own body? I’d been living in a daze, letting my curve decide how the rest of me should accommodate it.

I worked closely (and slowly) with my body to become increasingly aware of my unique spine and what I could do to reduce the pain. I learned to pause and observe my mind and my body as I held poses for long periods of time. After a couple of years of attending yoga classes once a week, I revisited the doctor and to my surprise, the lower curve in my spine appeared to have diminished by three degrees. My condition was improving. People commented on my posture, but this time, positively.

Going to yoga classes once a week helped minimize my immediate scoliosis pain, but eventually I grew lazy. By the time I moved to Los Angeles in 2015 to live with my fiancé, my back pain had retrogressed. At times, the sensation was so overwhelming, I had difficulty focusing on my work. Eventually, I decided to sign up for a three-month study with Koren Paalman, certified Iyengar yoga teacher, who is a student of Elise Browning Miller, the foremost authority on yoga for scoliosis. Koren would hear my history, follow my progress, and select therapeutic poses for me to practice at home. These poses held the potential to reduce pain, strengthen muscles that weakened from my unevenness, improve balance and mobility, and propel me toward a more aligned state. She’d take before and after photos. We both hoped for change.

The author untwisting her spine in hanging sirsasana.

Photo courtesy of Lauren DePino

The first pose Koren chose for me was something she learned directly from Mr. Iyengar: hanging sirsasana—a version of headstand where one hangs upside down from ropes attached to hooks on the wall—but with a twist. Unlike classic headstand, this pose allows the neck to lengthen freely, which is especially helpful for those with a curve imbalance.

While suspended in air, I didn’t have to work with strained attention to straighten my back or decompress my neck—gravity did it for me. Koren then handed me a cold rolled steel bar to hold to one side of my body—a counter-rotation of my spine designed to bring evenness. Instead of the constant pain I carried like a lead chain draped over my right shoulder, I felt weightless relief, even enjoyment.

Koren gave me a total of seven poses to practice. At first, I had to force myself. But in time, my body craved them. I know that if I can get myself into the ropes for just five minutes, my pain will subside. My mind will quiet. The results will come with consistent conscientious practice.

My spine may never be straight and my scoliosis will never be cured. But learning about my physical alignment has made me so much more attentive to how I move through the world. Instead of ignoring the signals from my meandering vertebrae, I notice the shapes of things—of trees, of buildings, of my body.

Even when I’m not practicing yoga, I align myself. Instead of hunching, I create space between my neck and shoulders. I assert will to release my sticky right hip. I try to hold my spine as straight as a needle. These actions are becoming embedded in my muscle memory. Little by little, I have less pain. I stand taller. Change is gradual, but it’s happening.



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To Find Insomnia Cures, I Went to a Sleep Boot Camp


My beauty routine may change every time a shiny palette catches my eye, but my morning routine is consistent: I roll out of bed after little to no sleep, trip over my slippers, then blearily scroll through a new batch of unread emails. It’s been like this for eight years. On a recent Monday morning, however, still bleary-eyed and sleep deprived, my morning routine involved a medical assistant attaching electrodes to my chest while thick snow coated the Bavarian Alps outside. This was highly unusual.

The jolt in my routine came courtesy of a stay at Tegernsee’s Lanserhof resort, a wellness retreat known for its high-end detox programs. I checked in to investigate their newly-launched Lans Better Sleep Program 2.0, which promised to diagnose the causes behind my insomnia over the course of a single week. (You can opt for a longer stay, should you so desire.) The clinic attacks sleep woes through just about every possible angle, employing experts specializing in naturopathy, stress reduction, cardiology, psychology, urology, and gastroenterology, to offer sustainable sleep solutions.

Before you pelt me with helpful suggestions of like using night mode on my phone or trying deep breathing exercises, allow me to add this: I’ve had nearly a decade of dealing with insomnia to pit my sleeping problems against various cures. Still, I struggle to get enough Zs. I’ve consulted sleep specialists and relied on supplements and medication to muscle through. I’ve alternated between melatonin, magnesium, lavender pills, L-Theanine, adaptogens, Unisom, NyQuil, Xanax, Lorazepam, CBD, Kratom, therapy, a few acupuncture sessions, some admittedly halfhearted meditation, and even downing a full bottle of wine before bed. (Okay, that last one was not my best effort.) My devices switch to amber-tinted screens at night and I keep them on silent far away from my bed. I also regularly mist my pillow with an assortment of calming sprays, slip on an eye mask, and wear earplugs.

Nothing sticks. Inevitably, everything I try stops working after a month or two, tops. I end up rotating through different supplements and medications, switching back and forth when one ceases to be effective or another starts giving me side effects. (Melatonin taken too many weeks in a row gives me extraordinarily vivid nightmares featuring my own decapitation, while some of the prescription options I’ve tried make me feel foggy and disoriented the rest of the day.) I don’t mind reaching for medication when it’s needed, but I’m tired of taking increasingly high dosages and still feeling my mind stubbornly fight to stay awake. I needed a more sustainable cure.

“There are many different kinds of sleep problems, but you can build two main groups,” says Jan Stritzke, M.D., deputy medical director at Lanserhof Tegernsee. The first is sleep apnea, a nocturnal breathing issue often related to obesity, he explains. For those who have sleep apnea, frequent drops in oxygen during the night disrupt the deep sleep cycle, leading you to feel tired when you wake up the next day. “The other is a stress-related problem, when you can’t switch off and are thinking the whole night,” Dr. Stritzke says. Yep, that’s me.

After being pegged as a stress sleeper by doctors who specialize in this stuff, I was ready for a science-backed solution. Here’s every insomnia cure I tried—and whether or not it actually works.

I loathe meditation. It’s been suggested to me multiple times, but I’m even worse at meditating than I am at falling asleep. At Lanserhof, meditation was an unavoidable part of the deal. My teacher was much better than my last one—who memorably yelled at me for not trying hard enough—which made me feel at least a little hopeful. To start, she encouraged me to identify a feeling of confident calm (for me, this usually happens during one of my favorite workouts: intense contact combat sessions) and call it up when I’m feeling restless. But perhaps more importantly, she adds that I shouldn’t expect to switch my mind off or empty it during these moments—instead, I should to simply allow myself to notice thoughts and noises and let them go.



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