“I feel like men are more romantic than women. When we get married we marry, like, one girl, because we’re resistant the whole way until we meet one girl and we think ‘I’d be an idiot if I didn’t marry this girl, she’s so great.’ But it seems like girls get to a place where they just kinda pick the best option… ‘Oh he’s got a good job.’ I mean they spend their whole life looking for Prince Charming and then they marry the guy who’s got a good job and is gonna stick around.” – Blue Valentine

Rules for settling or not

• If a man wants you, nothing can keep him away. If he doesn’t want you, nothing can make him stay.
• Stop making excuses for a man and his behavior. Allow your intuition to save you from heartache.
• Stop trying to change yourselves for a relationship that’s not meant to be.
• Slower is better. Never live your life for a man before you find what makes you truly happy.
• If a relationship ends because the man was not treating you as you deserve then heck no, you can’t “be friends.”
• A friend wouldn’t mistreat a friend. Don’t settle. If you feel like he is stringing you along, then he probably is.
• Don’t stay because you think “it will get better.” You’ll be mad at yourself a year later for staying when things are not better.
• The only person you can control in a relationship is you.
• Avoid men who’ve got a bunch of children by a bunch of different women.
• He didn’t marry them when he got them pregnant. Why would he treat you any differently?
• Always have your own set of friends separate from his.
• Maintain boundaries in how a guy treats you. If something bothers you, speak up. Never let a man know everything.
• He will use it against you later. You cannot change a man’s behavior.
• Change comes from within.
• Don’t EVER make him feel he is more important than you are… even if he has more education or is in a better job. Do not make him into a prince. He is a man, nothing more nothing less.
• Never let a man define who you are.
• A man will only treat you the way you ALLOW him to treat you.
• All men are NOT dogs.
• You should not be the one doing all the bending…compromise is a two-way street.
• You need time to heal between relationships…there is nothing cute about baggage… deal with your issues before pursuing a new relationship.
• You should never look for someone to COMPLETE you…a relationship consists of two WHOLE individuals…look for someone complementary…not supplementary.
• Dating is fun…even if he doesn’t turn out to be Mr. Right.
• Make him miss you sometimes…when a man always know where you are, and you’re always readily available to him he takes it for granted.
• Never move into his mother’s house. Never co-sign for a man.
• Don’t fully commit to a man who doesn’t give you everything that you need.
• Keep him in your radar but get to know others.
• They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them and an entire lifetime to forget them.

Rules for Settling or Not

“it’s all about might. it might hurt. it might not work. it might be awful. i never think it might work. it might be good. it might be fun.” – Girls’ Poker Night by Jill A. Davis

“Ryan Bingham: Your resume says you minored in French Culinary Arts. Most students work the fryer at KFC. You busted tables at Il Picatorre to support yourself. Then you got out of college and started working here. How much did they pay you to give up on your dreams? Bob: Twenty seven thousand a year. Ryan Bingham: At what point were you going to stop and go back to what made you happy?” – Up In The Air

“there was no difficult period of forgetting him or getting over him. which made me wonder if i had ever loved him, or anyone else.” – Girls’ Poker Night by Jill A. Davis

“The word settling echoes in my head, gnawing at my heart and filling me with trepidation. It is a word I’ve avoided for months, even in my own, private thoughts, but I suddenly can’t avoid it any longer. In some ways, it feels like the scary heart of the matter–the fear that I settled when I said ‘I do’ to Andy. That I should have held out for this kind of love. That I should have believed that Leo would, someday, return to me.” – Love the One You’re With by Emily Giffin

“You know, honestly by the time you’re 34, all the physical requirements just go out the window. You secretly pray that he’ll be taller than you, not an asshole would be nice just someone who enjoys my company, comes from a good family. You don’t think about that when you’re younger. Someone who wants kids, likes kids. Healthy enough to play with his kids. Please let him earn more money than I do, you might not understand that now but believe me, you will one day otherwise that’s a recipe for disaster. And hopefully, some hair on his head. I mean, that’s not even a deal breaker these days. A nice smile. Yea, a nice smile just might do it.” – Up In The Air

“Maybe there isn’t a Mr. Right. Maybe there’s a Mr. Good Enough.”

“It doesn’t work that way. At a certain point, you stop with the deadlines. It can be a little counterproductive.” – Up In The Air

“Imagine settling for a life you can have because you don’t have the courage to go after the life you really want. That’s what makes me do it — make one of those decisions — the kind that bends your future in a whole new direction.” – Girls’ Poker Night by Jill A. Davis

“just because he’s good company doesn’t mean I fancy him, but then maybe fancying someone isn’t what it’s all about? Maybe I’ve been wrong in waiting for that sweep you off your feet feeling, the feeling I had with [him]. And, let’s face it, it didn’t exactly work with [him], so maybe I’ve been looking for the wrong thing.” – Mr. Maybe by Jane Green

“I know what I should do but I just can’t walk away.”- Jimmy Eat World

“I’m sad that this is the kind of person I am. I am a person who will stay in a relationship for three years because I know that this relationship will never hurt me. I will park my love here because here I will never experience great joy, but more important, I will never be devastated. the dissolving of this won’t be painful at all. it will just be a formality. a formal ending to something that barely or never existed.” – Girls’ Poker Night by Jill A. Davis

“it’s funny how the prospect of love is so much more interesting when you don’t actually know the person you’re fabricating a fantasy life with. i can’t allow reality to get in my way.” – Girls’ Poker Night by Jill A. Davis

“I do what most women do. I meet someone and some of it’s right, maybe he looks right, or has the right job, or the right background, and, instead of sitting back and waiting for him to reveal his other bits, I make them up. I decide how he thinks, how he’s going to treat me, and, sure enough, every time I conclude that this time he’s definitely my perfect man, and all of a sudden, well, not so suddenly perhaps, usually around six months after we’ve split up, I see that he wasn’t the person I thought he was at all.” – Mr. Maybe by Jane Green

“People who have slept in the same bed for twenty-five years may not be truly joined, and people who are many miles apart may not seperate at all.” -a return to love

“I love you, but let’s leave that out of this. I don’t want to be someone that you’re settling for; I don’t want to be someone that anyone settles for. Marriage is hard enough without bringing such low expectations into it.” – Sleepless in Seattle