Setting Your Dating Standards

From the moment we start dating as young adults we are constantly making choices and refining our understanding of the qualities we find compatible in a partner. Sometimes we get into relationships which seem highly compatible at the start but later we realise that there are areas where we have very different views and attitudes. If we are unable to resolve those incompatibilities then the relationship often breaks down.

Many of us find repeating patterns in our relationships, choosing the same types of people and falling into similar patterns of behaviour which have a certain feeling of safety because they are familiar but then repeatedly resulting in a series of broken relationships.

Patterns by their very nature are repeated many times and it takes some of us quite a long time to recognise the patterns that do not work best for us. Setting your dating standards is a tool to help you to think about past patterns and to try to make choices based on that experience in the future.

Obviously there are no clear rules or right and wrongs, but if for example in your past, you were attracted to exciting, risk taking people but you later realised had a tendency to gamble and the resulting money worries led to the breakdown of your relationship, then it may be worth actively watching out for this trait and avoiding gamblers in your search for a new partner. In this case you may put tendency to gamble as a quality you want to avoid in a new partner on your Dating Standards Chart below.

Qualities you want to avoid at all costs should appear in the section titled Deal Breakers and in order to avoid repeating the past you will need to stick with those standards, however difficult.