Lowering Your Standards Will Lower Your Happiness

Your standards should be higher than I want someone who texts me back within a reasonable amount of time. 

Your standards should be higher than I want someone who won’t cheat on me.

Your standards should be higher than I want someone who is done playing the field and ready to settle down. 

Your standards should be higher than I want someone who actually treats me with respect, who actually cares about my thoughts and opinions, who actually wants me around for more than sex. 

You’re allowed to have high standards. You’re allowed to stay single until you find someone who checks off all your boxes. You might have been called too picky in the past — but there’s a difference between wanting someone worthy of your love and wanting someone unrealistic.

No, you shouldn’t have shallow standards about the amount of money your person needs to make each paycheck or what hair color they have or how tall they are, but you’re allowed to have standards about core values, about personality traits, about what matters the most in a relationship. It’s good you know what you want. It doesn’t make you a bitch. It makes you self-aware.

Lowering your standards isn’t going to help you find love. It might help you find a relationship — but you shouldn’t be settling for any old relationship. You should be searching for THE relationship. The relationship that is going to uplift you. The relationship that is going to better you. The relationship that is going to make you feel completely at peace.

Lowering your standards is only going to make you miserable. It’s better to be alone than in a relationship that isn’t a good fit for you. Do you really want to be in a relationship with someone who cannot rise to meet your basic standards? Do you really want to force yourself into a relationship where you’re doubting whether you could do better?

Lowering your standards is dangerous, so you have to ask yourself why you’ve even been thinking about doing such a thing. Is it because you’re worried you’re running out of time and are never going to find love? Because you still have plenty of time. You don’t have to settle down right now, even if all of your friends are already walking down the aisle and cradling babies. You’re not on a timeline. You don’t have to rush.

Wouldn’t you rather wait a few more years to find the perfect person for you than settle for someone today who isn’t a good fit, who doesn’t make your heart race, who doesn’t make you excited about what the future has in store?

Being alone isn’t as bad as you think. As long as your standards aren’t unrealistically high, you shouldn’t lower them for anyone. Not for the family members who are pressuring you to settle down. Not for the guy you kind of like but wish treated you better.

Keep your standards high. Otherwise your happiness is going to lower.