baileygenine:

I don’t want to meet someone who thinks my bad habits are “adorable”. I don’t want to date a person who goes out of their way to have stuff in common with me. If I chew my gum too loud and it annoys you, tell me. If I’m a bitch, say I’m a bitch. I don’t have patience for people who compromise, who conform, or who are passive just for the sake of getting along. Realistically, you can’t keep it up.

What is annoying about me really is annoying. It annoys me, and it’ll annoy you. In a few months you’ll start speaking up and saying, “hey, could you not do that?” or, “I don’t know why you can’t just eat a meal without picking it apart and throwing half of it away.” If you spend the first couple of months actively trying to be the perfect match to someone, you’ll soon realize that it was a waste of time to begin with. Trying to be the ideal partner for someone is the same as lying, whether you’re ready to admit that or not. Once you can’t keep the charade up any longer you’ll notice a few things. One, you’ve changed who you are, and you hate yourself for it. Two, you just wasted your time and mine. And three, there really is someone out there that is your complement and when you meet them you won’t have to fake it.

A good relationship is an easy one. You don’t have to convince the other person that you have stuff in common. When you meet someone who loves a band as much as you do, you just know they do, you don’t have to convince them of it. You don’t have to agree on everything, and you don’t have to have the same book collection. There’s a difference between loving a person and loving the things they love. The times when you love both, though, that’s the person you need to hold on to.

This will be the advice I give my kids when they decide to start dating…