“I’m not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I’m not dumb…and I also know that I’m not blonde.” — Dolly Parton

“Whenever I date a guy, I think, is this the man I want my children to spend their weekends with?” – Actress and Comedienne Rita Rudner

We often enter the dating phase trying to decide who is right for us. We meet someone. We do our homework. We’re trying to decide if this is the right person. Or could be.

This is a mistake. We shouldn’t be trying to decide if a person is right for us. It causes too much stress, and can cause us to prematurely eliminate good prospects. This is what girls with Pretty Girl Syndrome (PGS) tend to do (see Chapter 3).

We should be trying to figure out if they’re wrong. Or not wrong. If we decide they’re not wrong, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re right. We need to move from not wrong to might be right. At that point, we can begin to move to right. From there we might cautiously consider if the person could be The One.

Yet once we’ve decided someone is wrong, we shouldn’t spend another second with that person. Fully one-third of the women I interviewed were with men they admitted had serious issues. Many of these guys weren’t working. Or they drank too much. Or they were irresponsible in their fiscal affairs, borrowing money and skipping out on financial obligations. A few of these women told me they stayed with these men because they were trying to fix them.

“I know I’m being stupid about it, but I just love him,” one woman admitted to me. I don’t think these women understand that it’s okay to not love someone who is a jerk. The typical drama plays out like this: She meets him. She has fun with him. She thinks he’s cool and exciting. The next thing she knows, she thinks she’s in love with him. And then she finds out he’s a self-centered jerk.

What she doesn’t seem to get is that at this point it’s okay not to be in love with him. There’s nothing wrong with falling out of love with a jerk. She is probably more in love with the prospect of fixing the jerk than the actual jerk anyway. I found lots of women who were acting like mothers, trying to rehabilitate their men. You just want to grab these women and shake them to see if you can unscramble their brains.

And what’s with that new couple we all know? They have been together two months and have already broken up once. When we are around them, they snipe and fuss. Trust me. If it’s not easy at first, it’s not right. Get away from it.

After we’ve decided someone is wrong, he or she should be gone—out of our lives for good. Life is too short.

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