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By Zo Watt
We all know that one person who’s never single, who jumps from relationship to relationship. Even when they’re “single,” they’re always on the lookout, always swiping on their phone, always texting someone, always going on dates. Now if you’ve never been that person because you’re a Strong Independent Woman™, that’s great but this list isn’t for you. This here is strictly for the women who, whether they want to admit it to themselves or not, need to be in a relationship. Who have, maybe unbeknownst to themselves, lowered their standards in their quest to fulfill that need. Women who have f–ked more frogs than they care to share. Women who are desperate. Women like me.
“I have the worst luck” I used to say whenever another male suitor revealed himself to be—for instance—gay. It didn’t matter that all the warning signs had been there, that I’d—for instance—met him at an LGBT fundraising event and that he’d shown no interest in having sex with me for six months. I have the worst luck, I’d insist. It wasn’t until my last relationship with a woman who made me cry on the second date and almost every week thereafter that I, to quote my mother, finally woke up to myself. The common factor in all the unhealthy, toxic relationships I’d occupied since I was eighteen, I realized, was me. I was to blame because frankly, I had no standards. Soon after ending that relationship, I sat down with a pen and paper and wrote this list because old habits die hard and sometimes you need a physical reminder that you deserve better. Here are 50 bare minimum dating standards you should have by age 30.
1. Date someone who’d rather cuddle you in the morning then scroll through their Instagram feed.
2. Who doesn’t snoop through your phone.
3. Who doesn’t fetishize people of color.
4. Who wants to know how your day is.
5. Who respects your boundaries.
6. Date someone who doesn’t borrow money from your friends to feed their gambling addiction.
7. Who doesn’t question or deny your blackness.
8. Who doesn’t belittle your efforts to get fit.
9. Who doesn’t have a Savior complex.
10. Who gives you compliments freely.
11. Who isn’t still pining for their ex.
12. Who doesn’t use you as a sounding board for all their ideas with no interest in your own.
13. Who doesn’t need an assortment of toys to have sex with you.
14. Who doesn’t shame you for having an outie vagina.
15. Who remembers your birthday.
16. Who makes time for you. 17.
17. Who can apologize.
18. Date someone who doesn’t point out other women they find more attractive than you.
19. Who fights for the relationship when things get tough.
20. Who factors you into major life decisions.
21. Who supports your life goals.
22. Who identifies as a feminist.
23. Date someone doesn’t stop during sex to wipe their hands after fingering you.
24. Who doesn’t ask you to rate their sex game out of 10.
25. Who doesn’t refer to women as b-tches.
26. Who initiates plans with you.
27. Who isn’t a pathological liar.
28. Date someone who doesn’t use the words “genius” or “prodigy” to describe themselves upon introduction.
29. Who doesn’t spend their days smoking weed in their mother’s garage.
30. Whose sexual desires and expectations aren’t informed by porn.
31. Who doesn’t let you pay for everything.
32. Who wants to meet you in person.
33. Who walks you to the front door.
34. Date someone who doesn’t need you to love them the way their mother didn’t.
35. Who doesn’t refer to your breasts as “mosquito bites.”
36. Who acknowledges your text messages.
37. Who cares whether you orgasm or not.
38. Who is self-aware.
39. Date someone who doesn’t kick you out their house for refusing to have sex with them.
40. Who doesn’t wish you wore less black or dressed more womanly.
41. Who makes it a priority to understand your mental illness.
42. Who you can sit around and do nothing with.
43. Who doesn’t need you to save them.
44. Who challenges you intellectually.
45. Date someone who wants to meet your family.
46. Who lights up when they see you.
47. Who knows how to communicate.
48. Who goes down on you.
49. Who makes you laugh.
50. Date someone who bumps Missy Elliott.
Zo Watt is a prolific zinester and sometimes freelance writer and don’t worry, no one else knows what a zinester is. Her hobbies include counting the number of talking POC in Hollywood films and eating macaroni and cheeze in bed. Zo hopes to one day sit fourth row centre at The Oscars and publish the novel she has yet to write.
