Man if I believed these sooner and that I wasn’t the exception to the rule, I would have saved myself a lot of time and pain!! 1. Someone can love you and still not be capable of loving you WELL. Those are two different things. You deserve both and the latter is not your burden to teach. 2. There’s NO SUCH THING as a bad texter. You’re either a priority or you’re not. You jive or you don’t. It doesn’t matter how well you click in person if you feel disconnected when you are apart. 3. The man you get in the beginning is the man you’ll have forever. Who he is on day one: stressed, flaky, not ready, or ‘in a weird place’ isn’t a phase. That’s who he will always be for you. 4. Don’t trust what they say. Trust what they do. If it happens more than twice, it’s a pattern and the best indicator of future behavior is past behavior. 5. If he needs time to figure things out or distance during hard times it’s a hard NO. Anyone worth being with wants you close when life gets heavy because your presence makes it lighter. If your presence makes things harder for him to handle, that’s your answer. 6. When a man is confused about you, that’s your answer. Clarity is non negotiable. Confusion is a red flag. 7. You teach people how to date you. What you allow, what you tolerate, and what you walk away from becomes the manual for how they show up. 8. Your nervous system tells the truth first. If he makes you feel anxious instead of safe, trust that. 9. The hunch you had in the beginning is always right. The thing you ignored at the start always becomes the thing that ends it in the end. 10. You don’t have to be perfect to be loved. You just have to be you and the right people will never ask you to be anything else