<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"There you were, happily dating through your twenties when, bam, your 30th birthday arrived and everything changed. Right? Well, no. It&amp;#x27;s mostly the same old song-and-dance of drinks, first kisses, and mixed signals. Sometimes the drinks get nicer, but honestly, a good majority of the time you&amp;#x27;re still in a dive bar. But I have noticed some subtle changes as I&amp;#x27;ve spent the past two years dating as a thirtysomething. And good news: Most of the changes aren&amp;#x27;t bad. In fact, the biggest changes I&amp;#x27;ve noticed are in my own attitude, and they come from being at, as the always cool Olivia Wilde put it in her own advice for turning 30, &amp;quot;the Cut the Bullsh-t and Go Be Awesome stage.&amp;quot; Here&amp;#x27;s what I mean: You no longer feel the need to pretend to be the cool girl. I spent the better part of my twenties trying to play it cool so as not to seem clingy. Me seven years ago: &amp;quot;Oh yeah, I&amp;#x27;m like, not all about commitment either. I&amp;#x27;m not one of those girls.&amp;quot; Me now: &amp;quot;I know what I want, that doesn&amp;#x27;t make me clingy, and what even are &amp;quot;those&amp;quot; girls? Don&amp;#x27;t patronize other women, pal.&amp;quot; (OK, this is more of an attitude. I&amp;#x27;ve never actually said that to a guy, but you get my drift.) You can take rejection better. Like the super obvious sign I got recently that a guy would not be interested in seeing me again. Sure, it didn&amp;#x27;t feel good, but after a long time in the dating world, you just accept that you&amp;#x27;re not everyone&amp;#x27;s cup of tea, and that doesn&amp;#x27;t mean you have a problem. You stop overanalyzing. If you look back through my old G-chat records from say, 2008, you&amp;#x27;d see endless conversations between my friends and me discussing last night&amp;#x27;s dates, what he said, how he acted, what we wore, how he looked at us, etc., etc., etc. unless your eyes gave up and died of exhaustion. Now that practically all of my friends have been settled in relationships for years, well, it&amp;#x27;s not that they&amp;#x27;re not interested in my life, but those obsessive conversations aren&amp;#x27;t as welcome. And that&amp;#x27;s a good thing for keeping a level head about dating. (Even though I must admit, I find a good obsession session so satisfyingly fun. Good thing that&amp;#x27;s kind of my job!) You don&amp;amp;#8217;t worry about sex as much. Maybe you&amp;#x27;re all more enlightened that this, but in my twenties, I definitely worried more about when the &amp;quot;right&amp;quot; time to have sex was and whether or not a guy would judge me if I did it too soon. Blech. Now I feel totally confident that the &amp;quot;right&amp;quot; time is whenever we both feel like it is, and any guy who&amp;#x27;d lose interest after that has the wrong idea about the best thing I have to offer anyway. You do get less attention, but that&amp;#x27;s not a bad thing. This is based on my own anecdotal experience and not statistics, so don&amp;#x27;t quote me on this, but I do find that I get hit on just a little less both in real life and online. But the positive side of that is I also get way less annoying attention. Think overly sexual messages, aggressive cat calls, etc. I&amp;#x27;ll take less quantity if it means more quality any day. You&amp;#x27;re not concerned about your baggage or flaws. I have them. People have loved me anyway. Other people will too. No sense in pretending to be perfect for any amount of time. God, this is relaxing. What changes have you noticed, Other Olds? (JK, we&amp;#x27;re not old.) A must-read:30 Things Every Woman Should Have and Should Know by the Time She&amp;#x27;s 30"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/sex-love-life/blogs/smitten/2014/04/things-that-change-when-youre>