Trust your gut and protect yourself with probiotics.
It sounds obvious, but you should date people who make you feel good about yourself—not anxious, or as if you need to improve on a few areas of your character. Yes, it really is that straightforward.
Trust your gut:
Does he listen to you? Respect your feelings? Make you feel beautiful? Or does he comment on your weight in a negative way? Interrupt you in the middle of a sentence? Make you feel that if you just try harder, you could do better? Per my previous rule, he doesn’t have to be a total narcissist; he can still be a jerk. Is he homophobic? Or racist? Either would knock him off my list. Do these things matter to you? Finding the right match means fitting this puzzle piece of a person into your larger life.
Are you a devout Catholic and he is an avowed atheist? Can you and he have a civil, engaged conversation about your divergent beliefs?
All these details are important, as too often women ignore the off-color remarks or the off-putting tics because he is good looking. Charming. Funny. Or great in bed. He can be all those things—and still not be the right match for you.
This is where you have to really home in on what makes you not only happy but also feel as the French say bien dans sa peau—good in your skin. This is a person you want to share your life with, and clear, open communication is key.
So if he makes a joke that makes you queasy, do you feel comfortable pointing it out and explaining why it bothered you? Are you worried about his reaction?
As with everything else in this diet, I am asking you to be conscious and proactive.
If you have met someone who is a potential long-termer, notice all the ways he or she makes you feel—when it is great or when it is odd. Write them all down on your pro-and-con list. If “I don’t like his haircut” or “He doesn’t have a coffee maker” are the cons, you can work with it. If they are “He makes fun of my religion” or “He gets irate when he is drunk, and that is often,” you might reconsider.
Recording potential problems will help you see the pattern clearly. (This is a good time to check the intolerance list you made in Rule #3.)
If you find yourself once again attracted to the unavailable ones or the superhandsome but not terribly smart ones or the too-cool ones or the mama’s boys . . . pause.
And before you go any further, think of what makes a good partner.
The one ingredient that you must consider is kindness, as it is the basic foundation of any relationship. And, thrillingly, it is also a love probiotic that you can produce yourself.
Study after study reveals that kindness is key to a healthy and happy life. One study published in Psychological Science, titled “How Positive Emotions Build Physical Health,” found that “positive emotions, positive social connections and physical health influence one another in a self-sustaining upward-spiral dynamic.” Another study, out of the University of California, Berkeley, found that witnessing acts of kindness produces oxytocin, occasionally referred to as the “love hormone,” which aids in lowering blood pressure and improving our overall heart health. Emory University also did a study on the effects of being kind, finding that when you perform an act of kindness, the same areas light up in your brain as if you were receiving kindness or experiencing pleasure. The phenomenon is known as the “helper’s high.”
This is the most fundamental and straightforward rule in this diet: Seek out kind partners, and be kind yourself.
So he likes to paint his face and shout from the stands during football games. Does he listen to you? Treat you well? Open doors for elderly women? Stop to pet dogs in the park?
This is the most fundamental and straightforward rule in this diet: Seek out kind partners, and be kind yourself.
Nice is good for the long haul, especially in this modern age, where women’s working lives matter as much as men’s. We used to take the focus on men’s prospects for granted—they were the breadwinners. Their careers mattered most. That is no longer the case, so it is time to flip the script, or at least split it down the middle. This is a dialogue, not a monologue. So ask yourself, “Is this someone I can have a conversation with about both my career ambitions and my parenthood ambitions?” The assumption used to be that even if you were a career girl, you would take time off from your job to have the children, that your job would be secondary to his. That is shifting. Women are not giving up their jobs the way they used to.
How does that impact the conversation you have and your relationship?
So look at the checklist of what has not worked in the past, and make a new one for what might in the future. And make sure kindness tops it. Fill the rest of it out based on emotional well-being—forget the superficial stuff—and even then, remember to be flexible. It is like going to the farmers’ market and discovering that they don’t have mozzarella but they do have feta. You can adapt. You can find flexibility and a willingness to try something new but related to what you want and need. It may wind up being even more delicious—as long as that key ingredient, kindness, is involved.
And yet, our culture has us hungering for the low-fat blue cheese–flavored dressing that does not need refrigeration because it’s so full of chemicals. The cool guys who play hard to get. The players who flirt with you on Friday and then ignore you on Saturday.
This is one of the reasons Whitney Wolfe started Bumble. “We’re trained to be attracted to meanness,” Wolfe points out. “Watch any Disney TV show—the little boy is mean to the little girl because he has a crazy crush on her. But then he goes home and writes love letters at night.” Or the cliché fairy tale of a young woman falling in love with the beast because only her love can transform him into the great prince. Wolfe wants to rewrite that story. “We’ve all heard, ‘Oh, he’s too nice,’ as if it is a bad thing,” Wolfe says. “Why is that part of our culture? You’d only be so lucky to end up with someone who’s too nice. That would be a beautiful life.”
She’s right. Nice and kind do not have to equate to boring. Nice is not white bread, milquetoast. It is curious and interested. It also isn’t threatened by a woman’s ability or intelligence. Women work as much as men; we need more help raising kids as well as running the household. And that is where kindness becomes really important—as well as an acceptance that your career matters as much as his does. If you are a career woman, then your partner must have an ability to see you as a full person and not merely an appendage to his life or someone who aids him in his journey. He must see you as a copilot.
As important as it is to ask yourself what you want in a partner, it is equally important to ask what you think he or she wants. Someone who is committed to a clean fifty-fifty balance? Or someone who wants to put their career on hold to watch the kids while you work? Someone who insists you are the one to leave your career, and they are the sole breadwinner? And if that changed, over the course of the relationship, are they flexible enough to change as you each develop? Are you?
What are the things you need for the long run? What about your partner? What is it in you that they have spotted, however subconsciously, that they feel they need in a partner?
Pay attention. Be honest. Is this a relationship between equals? Look for any huge disparities. Call them out before you commit.
And it goes without saying, the ability to have a conversation is another good indicator.
Whatever relationship you are in, there has to be a mutual respect. This means you must feel that you are able to voice your opinions, your concerns, your points of view freely. And you must be able to listen to his. The minute you stop caring what each other thinks, you have to move on.
Some relationships last fifty years or more—others don’t. But the length does not matter as much as the quality of the relationship while you are in it.
CASE STUDIES
Beatrice*, 36, on knowing whom she wanted to marry at 23.
Beatrice says that she figured out what she wanted in a relationship when she was ten years old. “My parents divorced when I was one and remarried other people when I was four,” she explains. “I was the flower girl in both of their weddings.” Both sets of parents divorced again when she was heading into ninth grade. By then, she had two younger half sisters and a half brother, and saw firsthand “what unstable relationships can do not only to the people who are in them, but to their children.” Meanwhile, she grew up in the film business in Los Angeles, where both of her parents lead seemingly “fabulous” lives. “My mother is an actress, my father a producer, and my stepfather a writer and director,” she explains. “There were a ton of distractions and a multitude of reasons to get divorced.”
Beatrice says her mom and dad were great parents, but not the best relationship role models. “I wanted the opposite of that,” she explains. After dating only four people in “her entire life,” she met Tim in college. Postgraduation, Tim moved to San Francisco, and Beatrice to New York, and the two subsequently split for six months. During that period, Beatrice tried dating and learned both that it was “really hard” and that she was “not very good at it.” Meanwhile, Tim had begun sending her long, heartfelt letters campaigning to get back together. “I realized then, this man loved me and had expressed every desire to become the person that I felt I needed in a partner,” she recalls. “Sexy people come in and out of your life, but I was focused on sustainability.” She was twenty-three when they got back together and twenty-seven when they got married.
By then, she had begun a career as a movie producer, and although counterintuitive, she decided to start her family, which was incredibly challenging. “We were married for three years when I gave birth to my first child,” she recalls. “So I was producing a film and breastfeeding.” Her daughter was three months old when the lead actress dropped out, and since all the funding was based on her participation, Beatrice had to work around the clock to keep the film from falling apart. “I was coming home at midnight, and my breast milk dried up from the stress,” she says. “It was insanity.” It also put a strain on her marriage. “Tim was like, ‘We have a child now and you are acting like this movie is more important than us!’” Beatrice says. “I did not want to hear that at the time. By the way, it’s a terrible movie and no one’s ever seen it.” She took his point to heart.
They now have three children, and Beatrice has gone on to produce award-winning movies. Keeping her family a priority has been a good ballast against getting swept up in the adrenaline rush of the movie business. It has also made her fall more deeply in love with her husband over the years. “I actually think that Tim is a better person than I am,” she says. “Not to demean myself, but he is kind. He wakes up every Sunday and takes our kids to church and lets me stay home. He’s funny, supersmart, and has an ability to see ten steps ahead, which is not something I have.” What she brings to the relationship is a gung ho attitude, enthusiasm, and a deep belief in him, and them as a couple. “He recently started his own private equity firm, and I said, ‘Do it! And if it doesn’t work, we’ll sell our house and move into a rental,’” she says. “Failure doesn’t scare me so much. My attitude is, ‘We can make it work.’”
As both are full-time working parents, their life is truly equitable, another reason why Beatrice thinks their relationship works so well. This approach was first tested when they had children. “We called it Evie Stevie. If I woke up with Rosie early one morning, then he would do it the next. Or if I had to deal with her in the middle of the night for two hours, then he’d take her to the park the next day. It was a conscious effort to even the playing field again.”
It worked. In the end, Beatrice believes, their relationship is strong because of that attention to equity. “We’re able to say what is on our minds,” she says. “And work it out.” Looking back over their nine-year marriage, she admits now that her choice was not “purely romantic or heart-driven. I acted with my head and then my heart followed. In a funny way, I’m more in love with Tim today than I was when I was nineteen.”
Cristina, on testing her professional matchmaking skills in making her own match.
Cristina founded the Los Angeles–based Matchmakers in the City with her sister Alessandra in 2012 as an antidote to online dating. “Busy professionals work hard to succeed in every area of their lives, but most have put dating on the back burner,” says Cristina, who prefers not to reveal her age. “They know the value of their time and want to avoid wasting it on those with the wrong intentions. Or they don’t want to risk seeing their interns on the same dating app.” Committed to helping people find an “old-fashioned love story,” the sisters have grown their matchmaking business to reach beyond Los Angeles, to New York City, San Francisco, and Washington, DC, as well. So she knew she was in good hands when Alessandra introduced her to Dan. “She screened him for me,” Cristina says.
Cristina also had her own rigorous vetting process. “I wanted someone who shared my faith,” she says. “That was important.”
Alessandra knew Dan from the confirmation class they both taught at their church, and she thought he was a good match for Cristina. She introduced the two at a friend’s birthday party. The next time they saw each other, Dan asked Cristina to dinner. She accepted, and that’s where she laid out for him her approach to dating. “I told him that I wanted to build a friendship first,” she says. She also wanted him to pursue her, and made that clear. “I said, ‘I won’t reach out to you, but if you want to call me, you can,’” she recalls. “And then I added that if he wanted to see me, that would be great, but the next date had to be with a group.”
She realizes that it was a lot for him to consider, yet she believes that women need to set more clear parameters and boundaries when it comes to relationships. “There are no barriers to dating anymore,” she says. “It used to be your dad at the door. Now, women are in college, in high-power jobs, and living on their own. It’s wonderful, but that becomes problematic for dating since you have to erect your own boundaries, otherwise you can be taken advantage of very easily.”
Cristina coaches the women she works with to create boundaries first simply by making a list of internal qualities they’re looking for in a partner. She did the same for herself. “Reliability was number one. A personal relationship with God was number two. And while I believe you have to be attracted to your partner, it has nothing to do with the way he looks. I wanted a good man,” she says. Another requirement was an ability to dance. “The second time that we saw each other, we were dancing with friends. He’s six five and actually a good dancer, but did not care about looking cool. He was having fun.”
After a few more outings, Cristina realized that she was being too rigid about “group dates only.” “My sister and I say that every relationship has a diamond and a setting,” she says. “Someone who sparkles, and the other who embraces that.” Cristina is the more outgoing of the two, whereas Dan was someone who “did not need the limelight.” That made getting to know him in group settings difficult. For their next date, she suggested that they go out to dinner, and then they alternated between one-on-one dates and gatherings with friends until three months later, when they officially became girlfriend and boyfriend.
Cristina says she knew from the minute she met him that he might be her future husband, but she took a year to test her theory. “I tell our bachelorettes that it is important to see this person in all four seasons,” she adds. She told Dan the same thing.
Still, she was surprised when he did propose, a year after they first met. “I was on my way to the same Adoration service that I had gone to earlier on the night that we met, and invited him to join me,” she says. “It was a last-minute thing, so when he asked me to marry him, there, at the service, I was caught off guard.”
Even though it was a surprise, she had already rehearsed her answer: yes.