Are you inflexible when it comes to dating?

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Building and maintaining a relationship requires plenty of compromises, so if you can’t be flexible in the beginning stages of dating, how are you supposed to make it to…living with a partner? Or getting married? Or having children!? If you’re someone who is set on having things your way, you’re going to have a very hard time finding a relationship. Correction: you’re going to have a hard time finding a healthy relationship. You might find a relationship with a totally spineless man who is willing to bend to your every whim, let you walk all over him, and enable your emotionally abusive behavior. But you won’t find a man who respects himself (hint: those are the ones you want). How you approach dating says everything about how you’d approach a relationship. Take a long, hard look at your actions: are you inflexible when it comes to dating?

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You won’t go if parking is difficult

If it’s a first date, you won’t approve of the restaurant unless parking is easy. Should you need to park a few blocks away and walk, or pay for parking, you aren’t going. If you’re already at the sleepover stage, you won’t go to his place after a certain hour when it’s hard to find street parking.

Guys have to drive to your neighborhood

You make guys drive to your neighborhood to take you on a date, or see you once you’ve started dating regularly. On the rare occasion that you drive to them, you make them feel guilty about it.

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You won’t change your (arbitrary) schedule. At all.

Men have to plan dates around your arbitrary routine, like around the time you like to jog or take naps. These are not rock solid, immovable plans. But you treat them as such.

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You reject guys’ date spot ideas

You’ve actually rejected guys’ date spot ideas. Men will come to you excited about a date they’ve come up with, and you’ll say, “Mmmm. No. What else ya got?”

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You have rigid communication rules

You have rigid, unforgiving communication rules. Like if a man takes more than two hours to respond to a text, you’re done with him. And if he doesn’t make a plan with you at least five days in advance, you won’t go out with him.

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You can’t take a note

When men attempt to give you a small note on your behavior—a note like “You’re rather picky…”—you don’t entertain the idea that they could be correct for one moment. You immediately go into the attack mode, and call them rude.

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You micromanage favors

When a guy wants to do a favor for you—like wash your car, walk your dog, or make you dinner—you stand over him, micromanaging how he does it.

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You won’t go if it’s “not your thing”

It doesn’t really occur to you that when a guy invites you to do something, it’s because he wants to spend time with you—it’s not about the activity itself. And, as such, you’ve turned men down because the activity they suggested wasn’t “your thing.”

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Last minute changes irritate you

If a man has an emergency or gets caught up somewhere and has to push back your date by thirty minutes, you become irritated, and threaten to cancel the entire thing.

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You freak if you run into his friends on a date

You like to control everything, down to who you see when you’re out. So if your date runs into a friend at the restaurant, you become annoyed, cold, or awkward. You hadn’t planned to meet one of his friends.

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Your friends say, “Give him another chance” a lot

You often hear words like “Give him another chance” or “Don’t be so difficult” from your friends and family.

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You refuse surprises

Men aren’t allowed to surprise you. Guys you’ve dated have tried to surprise you, but you refused to go unless they told you what the surprise was.

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He must be single for X amount of time

You have strict rules regarding how long a man must be single before dating you. You make no allowances for the fact that some men are, for example, separated from their wives for years before getting a divorce, and quite ready to date as soon as they sign the divorce papers.

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You require an instant spark

If you don’t feel like you want to jump a guy’s bones within the first 15 minutes of meeting him, you assume it will never work out. Your brain cannot make room for the idea that some chemistry takes time to build.