Totally Serious Relationship Advice
Ten Subtle Signs That You’re Dating the Wrong Person
Do you hate the way they chew?
We all want healthy love affairs — full of joy, affection, and mutual respect. Unfortunately, while pursuing that ideal archetype, a romantic soul can stumble into an unsatisfying relationship.
The shift from sublime to insufferable happens can catch you off guard. One minute you’re awash in amorous bliss, and then before you can say ‘I think we should see other people’, you’re lost in a cycle of anxiety, stress, and resentment.
Here are ten subtle indicators that you have bet on the wrong horse.
1) You avoid introducing your partner to friends and family.
An ideal partner is a source of pride, especially early in a relationship. Separating your new lover from your social circle suggests shame or embarrassment. It’s worth asking yourself: ‘Why don’t I want the people I know and love to meet my new love interest?”
2) You think about someone else when you have sex.
Fantasies are healthy. Tied up by Brad Pitt on a pirate ship? Meeting Margot Robbie in a hotel lobby? Go for it!
The problem comes when you choose to exclude your partner from your sexual fantasies. If you are substituting them for celebrities — or worse, coworkers — every time you have sex, it’s time to move on. Remember: if you’re losing interest, you’re wasting two people’s time.
Dump that chump and hump a nicer rump!
3) You’ve taken up smoking.
Are you using ‘I need a cigarette’ as an excuse to escape your partner? Time with your significant other should be stress relieving, not stress inducing. Seeking out hobbies and habits that allow you to disappear is a sure sign of relationship rot.
Is terminal lung cancer an acceptable price to pay for staying with this person?
4) You hate the way they eat.
Do you leave the room when your partner starts smacking gummy bears in their mouth? Are you nauseated by the way they slurp spaghetti?
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that if one reaches adulthood and still eats like an impudent pig, there is no cure. Slurping and lip smacking will be the soundtrack of your next sixty years. If you’re not okay with that, it’s not too late to find someone who wasn’t raised by a pack of discourteous hyenas.
5) You invent medical ailments to avoid Thanksgiving Dinner.
Have you memorized all the presenting symptoms of diverticulitis, appendicitis, and Alice in Wonderland Syndrome? Are you running out of digits to ‘accidentally’ lop off to facilitate a trip to the hospital? All bad signs.
When the Emergency Room staff feel more like family than you’re potential future in-laws, trouble is a-brewing.
6) You daydream about the lives of single people.
Do you ever look on with envy at that decrepit widow in the pharmacy line? Ever find yourself staring at a vagrant in a sleeping bag snoozing behind a bus stop at three in the afternoon — their one gangrenous foot hanging out, oozing in the sun — and think: that could be me?
After all, they don’t have to listen to that same god awful story about how their partner accidentally grabbed the wrong pick-up order from Starbucks and the milk in the latte made them sprint out of a board meeting with severe diarrhea.
News flash: people in healthy relationships don’t fantasize about the freedom of experiencing homelessness.
7) You’re sick of their fecal anecdotes.
Poop stories are great stories. If you’re sick of your hearing your partner explain how they lost their job because they were unwilling to admit to their colleagues that they fled the meeting with the head of finance because they were twenty-six seconds away from a truly epic backdoor eruption, then you have lost interest.
Samuel Johnson once said: “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life,” and now I’m saying “When a man is tired of doo-doo, he is tired of you too.”
I know tons of couples who have stayed together over three decades, and they can’t wait to share their irregular bowel movements.
Or maybe I just know three. Either way, they’re doing great.
8) You routinely slip Nyquil into their after-dinner Negroni.
Then, once they are asleep, the TV remote is all yours! Don’t be fooled: even though you are physically in the same space, you are still avoiding your partner by drugging them without their consent.
Why not try doing something active together? How about you both chug Nyquil and see who can stay awake the longest?
9) You’ve taken up heroin.
As with cigarettes, heroin is simply an excuse to spend time by yourself. Unlike smoking, where the break from your partner lasts no more than five minutes, heroin grants you up to eight hours of blissful isolation from your toxic partnership before you wake up on a strangers sticky couch, after nearly drowning in your own drool, and start to rehearse your ‘I swear this is the last time’ speech on the long walk back to your real life.
It’s time to choose. You partner, or that sweet sweet rush of otherworldly euphoria that slowly fills your body as you remove the needle, unwrap the tourniquet, and hope that you had the foresight to put pillows behind your head as you trust fall back into oblivion.
Unless of course you are shooting diacetylmorphine into your median cubital veins together, in which case: have fun kids!
10) You’ve mimed holding a pillow over their mouth and nose while they sleep.
Not to kill them. Just to let them know that you are capable of murder.
“Enjoying those open airholes? Well maybe you should practice a little understanding and kindness when I happen to leave my cereal bowl on the counter after breakfast!!!”
And now for something completely different:
For a funny read, check out this quickie from Robert Archero:
