Don’t settle / “because I deserve it” mentality. I don’t believe you should settle because it’s a recipe for misery, but people have changed the meaning of the word settling. Now it means having anything less than “because I deserve it”. Millennials as a generation mostly have a “because I deserve it” mentality for everything in their life, from work to relationships. Why do you deserve crap? Life doesn’t owe you anything. This mindset makes people emotionally unavailable for meaningful relationships, because they are always holding out for Mr/Ms Perfect (imaginary). It makes people unrealistic, uncompromising, selfish and too self-interested to succeed in a meaningful relationship.
“Cool chick/cool guy” syndrome. Taking 3 months to establish a relationship. I don’t understand how you can date someone for 90 days or 1/4 of a year, see them 24–36 times (if you went out 2–3 days/week), and it takes you that long. It’s not marriage to put a boyfriend/girlfriend title on a relationship, and there is zero legal, physical or financial commitment behind it. You can literally break up with them tomorrow with zero consequence. Why is it so hard to just call someone your boyfriend or girlfriend when you are sleeping with them, constantly seeing them, and obviously have feelings for them after 3 months. Stop trying to pretend to be so cool and nonchalant. It’s normal to have feelings for someone as soon as a few dates, it’s definitely normal to have feelings after sleeping with them. This doesn’t make you clingy or desperate, it just makes you emotionally healthy. Stop trying to be a cool android… you’re only human.
Give all divorced people the scarlet letter. I get it if you’re 24, but I don’t understand 33 year old people who refuse to date divorced people. I feel like they’re delusional. When you are close to 30 a good amount of people in your age group will be divorced, and the percentage dramatically increases as you go into your 30s. By mid-30s probably nearly half of all people in your dating pool are divorced. Not all divorced people are bitter and have tons of baggage. Some people who were never married are even more bitter with more baggage, from failed long-term relationships even though they never married. Divorced people have also in the past made a commitment and are some are more emotionally available than their never married counterparts. A lot of never married people never got married for a reason.
Cast a wide net, go out with as many different people as possible, do online dating. This is a recipe for becoming emotionally traumatized. We are not robots that can process that many emotional experiences with people (yes a date or two in my eyes is an emotional experience— you are putting yourself out there and being vulnerable) and not be affected by it. It creates a mindset where you view people as objects and products to consume. Serial dating.
Opposites attract. Go out with someone totally different from you. Having different strengths and weaknesses is good, because you don’t want to be good and bad at the same exact things. But I don’t believe opposites attract when it comes to values, beliefs, opinions, goals etc. The relationship is most likely to succeed when you have as many values, beliefs, opinions and goals in common as possible.