How to Date with a Busy Schedule Without Feeling Overwhelmed
A Guide for Busy Professionals Trying to Keep the Connection Alive
Ready to prioritize dating, but it feels like your life won’t let you? Maybe you’ve met someone great, but your busy schedule is making it hard to plan a date?
These days, life is just busy, and like our personal needs, dating is easily put at the end of our priority list. Yet, it can be constantly frustrating when we do desire a relationship, and our lives won’t slow down for a minute.
These days, everyone is busy. We are being pulled in multiple ways and caught in our own unique adulting priorities. However, like everything else, dating requires priority and effort. And much of that effort is time. Time, we feel like we don’t have… but we do.
If your schedule is actually busy… not the “I’m busy, and that’s my excuse to not date.” If you truly want to put effort into dating regardless of your tighter schedule, then the first thing to do is accept that your dating strategy is going to look different than the stereotypical timeline that you see online or on social media.
Everyone’s dating life looks different; you just have to accept the one that you have, and that’s dating on a tighter schedule. The silver lining of it is you will be forced to take a slower pace and… communicate more with the people you date. Some may not align or understand your busy schedule, but if you are putting in the effort and communicating to your best of your ability, that’s all you can do.
Now, what does that actually look like for someone like you who has a busy schedule?
The first is communicating your tight schedule from the beginning with an intentionality that you are interested in them and going to be intentional about seeing them when you can. Bonus points if you invite them to share anything that concerns them about your busier schedule and put you both on a team against the challenge.
Next, a crucial thing needed when you are trying to keep a connection alive in the early stages of dating is making a pre-planned date for the next day you are free. Even if it is 2 weeks out. This allows both you and the other person to feel secure in knowing when you’re seeing each other next.
In between now and the next date, you want to stay consistent with communication. This does not mean texting 24/7, but sending dai;y check-ins once or twice a day, suggesting a phone call once a week, or even planning a FaceTime before the next date.
Dating with a busy schedule isn’t impossible. It takes some creativity and a lot more intentionality, which isn’t what we want to be in dating in the first place.
Busy isn’t an excuse to not date. You can emotionally not be ready to date or prioritize other parts of your life at this moment. But when you DO feel ready to date, don’t let being busy become an excuse. You can still honor your time and the other priorities in your life. It just takes being communicative and intentional about how you build a connection with someone new.
If you’re on the opposite end of this conversation, aka the person who is dating someone with a busy schedule, you also need to practice communication. Take time to understand their reasoning, while also sharing what you need to stay secure as you both figure out your schedules. Continue to honor your time and communicate when things don’t feel right.
The start may get bumpy, but if you are both interested in keeping he connection alive, you will learn to work together to see where this thing goes!
P.S. Read how to soothe texting anxiety (in case this one comes up in the early stages of dating!)
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