Creating a Dating Non-Negotiable List: How to Find Long-Term Love and Happiness
The one easy thing I did before dating seriously
I was sitting across from a doctor. The hard metal of the restaurant patio chair was digging into my legs, and a mosquito wouldn’t leave me alone. I was having trouble giving my date my full attention, so I was only registering surface qualities like nice, personable, doctor.
I’d just begun dating again after my divorce, and I was woefully out of my depth. Even as a relationship coach who had been helping clients find love in their lives, I felt strange and awkward and insecure trying to find my own forever someone now that I was capital-D-divorced.
As the night waned, our conversation did too. He asked to kiss me at the end, and I let him, thinking I might feel differently if he really wowed me with his mouth. He didn’t, and the night ended. Even though the date had been mediocre at best, when he later ghosted me, I couldn’t stop thinking about him and what we could have. It would have been great! I told myself.
Because I didn’t have a clear picture of what I wanted in my next long-term partner, I was willing to take mediocre. I was willing to settle for…nice. That was how low my bar was after my awful marriage: if I could just find someone who could be…
