Are Your Standards For A Guy Too High?

If someone has told you your standards are too high, I want to settle that for you right now. They're almost certainly not.

You've probably heard it more than once. From a friend, a sister, maybe a man who didn't measure up and needed a reason why.

And it plants a small doubt. Maybe you are being too picky. Maybe you should give more of them a chance.

I've coached women on dating since 2013, and here are 5 standards you get called "too high" for. Every one of them is you respecting yourself. Keep all of them.

You want a man who makes plans, follows through, and keeps showing up. Not once to win you, but after he has you too.

You've been told that's a lot to ask. It isn't.

A man who pursues you is just a man who's sure about you. The effort isn't a bonus on top of his feelings. The effort is how you know the feelings are real.

Wanting that isn't a high standard. It's the standard.

Click here to take the free 60-second quiz

You want a man who can say how he feels, own it when he's wrong, and stay in a hard conversation instead of going quiet for three days.

Somewhere you picked up that men just aren't like that, so wanting it is asking too much.

Plenty of men are exactly like that. The ones who aren't have simply never had to be, because women keep excusing it.

You're not asking for too much. You're asking for a grown man.

You want a man with direction. A job he takes seriously, something he's building, a life that was already working before you walked into it.

Wanting that gets you called picky, or worse.

But you're not looking for a project. You've done the work to build your own life, and you'd like to meet a man who's done the same, so the two of you can add to each other instead of you carrying the whole thing.

That's not a high bar. That's a fair one.

You want to be someone a man plans his week around, not someone he fits in once the rest of it is handled.

You've been called needy for that. High maintenance.

Here's the truth. Wanting to be chosen clearly, and often, is one of the healthiest things you can want. The men who call it needy are usually the ones who were hoping to give you less.

Keep this one especially.

The comment that had a hook in it. The plan he broke without a thought. The way he was a little short with the waiter.

You notice those, and you've been told you're too sensitive, that you overthink, that you should let the little things go.

You shouldn't. The little things are the preview. How a man treats you when the stakes are low is exactly how he'll treat you when they're high.

Noticing early isn't oversensitive. It's paying attention.

So If Your Standards Are Fine, Why Are You Still Single?

Here's the part almost nobody says to you.

Your standards are not the problem. You just read five of them and nodded along, because you already hold every one.

But look at the last few men you actually gave your time to.

There's a good chance more than one of them failed a standard you just agreed with. You have the list. You believe in the list. And you keep ending up with men who don't make it.

That gap, between the man you say you want and the man you're actually drawn to, is the whole thing.

Because something pulls you toward a certain kind of man before your standards ever get a vote. It runs in the first few dates, it's been running for years, and it quietly overrides the list every time.

That's what the quiz names for you.

I put together a short quiz that names the pattern pulling you past your own standards. Seven questions, about 60 seconds, and your result comes with what it means and what to do next.

Click here to take the free 60-second quiz

Your standards were never the thing to fix. You were right to hold them.

Start with the thing that keeps talking you out of them.

Click here to take the free 60-second quiz