Please share your tips on staying objective during courtship

This was so hard in my earlier days due to raging hormones and that “urge to merge”. So grateful for menopause. Totally agree with this: keep a record. Set a low minimum number of mistakes you’ll tolerate (2-3 for me and explanations matter and must make sense). These days also being older, don’t see him that often. Throw yourself even more into your own hobbies and interests so you don’t over-share and bond too quickly. Slow it down, give it time. Evaluate how you feel before each date, during it if you have the presence of mind, and after the date.

Nice one - it’s good to have a record of what they’ve done wrong. I have a couple, but I’d love for us all to share! 1) if he makes you feel unstable or uncertain, especially if you feel this way more often than not. 2) if you wish you could find a better guy #scarcitymindset

Objectivity is your best friend. Detach yourself and look at your feelings from the perspective of a bystander with zero skin in the game.

My go to is to logic it out. Pros and Cons, a good old-fashioned list. All his behavior gets sorted into one of the columns, I see which one is longer.

I also like to take stock while I get ready for dates. During the ritual primping before a date I take my notes on the relationship with me and mull it all over. Is getting ready a chore or am I excited about it? What do I feel about the guy? Am I eager to continue the relationship? Do I feel like I must walk on eggshells around him? What's bothering me about him? This is where trusting your gut and knowing what it's trying to tell you come in.

If I'm still unsure, one of my favorite tests is to set a 'ridiculous' boundary when I start to get comfortable. The one I usually use is that he must still ask me for permission to touch me, even after we've started to get comfortable with each other. I am told this is ridiculous, A LOT. But I have my reasons, beaten into my psyche in such a way that I have an immediate visceral reaction to any man that violates that boundary. Any man that respects my boundaries, even the supposedly ridiculous ones, is worth more of my time. If he doesn't, or if he tries to push intimacy on his terms or argues with me about it (not in an 'I want to understand where you're coming from' way), then I know it's time to drop him.

my ultimate one is: pay attention to how he elaborates about the women in his life. the last date i went on, he talked positively about his exes. however, not name-calling your ex is the bare minimum, so after that listen to how he describes the cirumstances of their breakup whether it's how they're still friends or one of them didn't want to settle down. pair that with how he handles his work-life balance and you'll understand more than what he wants to directly tell you.

i highlight this because quality time is a priority for anyone who wants to be in a relationship.

Keeping notes is crucial. Review those notes to pattern-spot and lie-detect. Verify every material fact he tells you, and immediately leave him and :::disappear::: at the first lie. Women need to be the ones controlling the pace of the relationship. Abusers tend to rush into secretly one-sided commitments - behind most “We got engaged 6 months into dating!” scenarios is a covert abuser waiting to drop his mask once he feels he has the women sufficiently locked down and isolated. Meanwhile, he never stopped dating. If she never looks through his phone, if he has more IT skills than her, she’ll likely never detect this until it’s been going on for many years and he gets sloppy. Loads of marriages are ending at the 14-17 year marks after the woman has been baby-trapped a couple times over. He has a secret little pipeline of naive side pieces waiting, including his “work wife” fallback girl, but it’s the future stepmommy bangmaid who first appears during the separation while the divorce is pending (later if in a fault state for adultery, ofc). He gets her to do his heavy lifting to keep the 50/50 no child support custody train running. Tale as old as time. So we have to ruthlessly vet for true good character at the outset.