LOVE: WHAT I LEAVE FROM MY LAST RELATIONSHIP

PEOPLE ARE NOT PROJECTS.

God, I’ve learned this the hard way. I’ve dated people in the past because I thought I could rebuild them, make them faster, stronger…etc. Do you know how fucked up that is? Getting into a relationship out of a place of judgement? Looking at someone whose tastes you could colonize like a White Savior? What this does is set you up as the superior in a relationship or the teacher, and if you’re dating someone in order to change them, you’ll find out the hard way that people don’t change, so your entire raison d’relationship is a total lie, and you’re in it for wrong reasons that will go nowhere. Besides, people who are only willing to change someone aren’t going to be that willing to change themselves or allow another person to push them to be a better and more caring person. You think that you’re doing it because you care about other people, but if you’re engaging in this dating behavior, honey, you’re the one who needs to change.

They are not their job.

Have you ever dated or been attracted to someone based solely on what they do for a living? Of course, we all have, or else Charlie Sheen and Janet Reno would never get laid. It’s not a money thing. We’re attracted to someone we think is making a difference in the world and doing something with their lives. But the thing is: it doesn’t matter if they’re the CEO of a non-profit, the director of the CIA or a waiter at a Stookey’s. All of these people have equal potential to be a good or bad partner for you, and just because they are technically doing good in the world doesn’t mean that they’re a good person. I’ve dated plenty of young, upwardly woman with cool jobs at saving-the-world non-profits who couldn’t even figure out how to text me or call me on a regular basis. These things do not correlate.
So, don’t worry so much about what they do. Focus on who they are. Besides, that Stookey’s waiter could open their own restaurant someday, and everyone knows there’s nothing sexier than someone who cooks.

Pay attention to the major red flags.

Whenever we’re dating someone, we have a tendency to ignore major warning signs like the fact that they always bail on you while you’re sleeping, refuse to meet your parents, own a lot of realistic life-size dolls or have their dead mother in a rocking chair. It’s because we want to believe the best in other people and are very good at lying to ourselves.But after awhile, you need to wake up and smell the rotting corpse. These things are easy to ignore —  the fact that they never introduce the two of you as a couple or that they never seem to return your calls or texts right away — because we don’t want to give up or go back to being single, which can be difficult. We’ve invested all this time and energy in finding a mate and it’s depressing to think of being fed back through that cycle again or ever going on another bad  date. But it’s better to be honest and deal with it now. Not only will it help you to be more realistic about your partner’s limitations as a human being (who might just be busy and still loves you!) but it will also save you from a lifetime of frustrations

Are they a jerk to other people? They’re probably also a jerk to you.

 if they’re not that nice to everyone else around you, they’re not that nice to you. It’s not that you’re special or different from everyone else. It’s that they hate the world, and that someday will include you, if it doesn’t already. Selfish and mean isn’t sexy. Selfish sucks.