Phoebe Fox's Blog

It’s been nearly two years since the final episode of How I Met Your Mother aired — my favorite show — and I still can’t watch the reruns.


For nine years, the primetime sitcom was nearly perfect. Original, creative and clever, with characters like dear friends, each episode was filled with truth, humor and heart. Truly, the show was a thing of genius.

Then, in the final episode, the creators negated every single honest thing they'd taught us about love — and in the process all but ruined what, until that moment, had been a nearly note-perfect series.

If you live in a Turkish bathhouse and somehow missed this cataclysmic series finale… major spoiler ahead. (Salutes: “major spoiler.”)




The titular mother dies, Barney and Robin get divorced and Ted finally — finally — shows up with the blue French horn to claim Robin, who seems to have been his true love all along.

If that recap is making you quiver afresh with righteous outrage, you’re not alone — and you’re not wrong.

Here’s why the finale was not only a shatteringly awful way to culminate the beautifully orchestrated series, but was the first truly sour, dishonest chord HIMYM ever struck.

HIMYM built a relationship with us

As with any relationship, at first viewers and the show had to get to know each other, quirks and all. What the hell, this is a story within a story? And the series is actually a flashback? That freely jumps around in the time line? With characters who have a blog or a web site selling designer clothes that exists in real life? And what the sweet Raptor Jesus is up with the goat?

As with many love affairs, gradually the very things that struck us as odd at first became the most endearing. We learned what “eating a sandwich” meant. We knew all the lyrics to the not-so-complicated “Bangety-bang." We were all on the edge of our seats waiting for the next slap.

Early in, the show seduced us, right along with Robin, into believing that she and Ted might just be the perfect fit — she had to be the mother, right? But wait… present-day Ted calls her Aunt Robin… hmmm… The juicy mystery that she clearly wasn’t was part of what kept us tuning in. Yet, their courtship was legen — wait for it — dary, the very best of sitcom romance.

Once they were finally a couple, the dynamic fell kind of flat. Like a lot of relationships, the appeal of theirs turned out to be mostly about the chase.

Problem #1: the Ted and Robin mismatch

Ted and Robin just weren’t magic together. They didn’t bring out the best in each other. Ted was too squishy and needy for someone like Robin, and she was too free-spirited and independent. Ted was a pie-eyed romantic; Robin a hard-nosed realist. Each one always seemed to want what they couldn’t get from the other. They didn’t feel, at the core, like a good fit, the way Lily and Marshall did — or the way Robin and Barney did.

Problem #2: Barney and Robin worked

When the writers (Carter Bays, Craig Thomas and a slew of others) developed the new story line of a romance between Barney and Robin, it was (sing it with me, Barney style) awesome!

It worked really, really well. The two had similar personalities, which was clear as early as season one, the first time Robin filled in for Ted as Barney’s wingman and suited up and smoked cigars. They had similar relationship MOs. Robin may have actually dated, but for the most part she wasn’t really giving any more of herself than Barney was. They had compatible sex drives — and apparently kick-ass sex — and except for a bizarre plot device in season five where they inexplicably suddenly brought out the worst in each other, they actually brought out the best in each other. Robin found someone who accepted her for who she was and didn’t want to change her — unlike Ted. Barney found someone with whom he could be himself — and with whom he could be open and genuine. Barnstormer and Ro-Ro were the perfect rough-edged counterpart to Marshmallow and Lilypad.

As Barney and Robin’s relationship developed and each of them grew and changed from it — like you do in the best relationships — Ted finally found the person who filled his bottomless love hole and calmed his relationship neuroses: with Tracy McConnell, the long-awaited Mother. She charmed the entire viewing audience from her very first appearance at the end of the penultimate season, and continued to win our hearts completely in the final season — no mean trick in a series that had gone on for eight years without her, and with that kind of buildup and such a cohesive cast of characters no less. She fit — with Ted and in the series. And in one short season, we invested in her (and in them) 100 percent.

Problem #3: Carter Bays and Craig Thomas fed us a catastrophic lie

In later interviews, the show’s creators admitted they knew all along that the Mother would die and Ted would end up with Robin. That’s not a bad story idea: how love is imperfect and tragedy can befall us is honest and real and painfully true, like most of the series itself.

No one expected the series to go on as long as it did; and as it developed and grew, the characters changed — just like real people. Maybe Robin and Ted could have turned into a perfect fit eventually if the story had ended a few seasons in; and we’d have been happy that they wound up together.

Instead, we invested in other pairings, because Bays and Thomas excel at drawing that emotional involvement from their audiences. They spent the next seven entire seasons doing it, slowly convincing us completely that Barney and Robin utterly belonged together, just as Ted and Tracy did. The story had changed, and the characters had changed.

But the writers refused to accept it.

Instead of letting the story and the characters dictate their paths organically, they bulled forward in forcing on them the ending they’d already envisioned, like an unhappy couple trying to force each other back into the mold of who they were instead of who they'd become.

In a single, disastrous episode, the relationships suddenly reverted to what they were five seasons earlier. Barney lost all the depth and layers of vulnerability he’d developed and inexplicably regressed to the shallow womanizer he was at the series beginning. Ted lost the love he — and we — had spent a decade trying to find.

In one 44-minute whiplash turnaround, Carter and Bays betrayed all the character growth and change they’d created. And worst of all, HIMYM lost all of its deft touch, its finesse and its honesty.

The disaster of the last episode was more egregious than the lackluster end some popular series have produced — like Seinfeld and The Sopranos. It was a negation of everything HIMYM had created. In less than an hour, it ruined everything they’d so beautifully built over the last nine years. The creators turned it all into a lie. The show was never how Ted met his kids’ mother — she was just a device to show how he won his real love, Robin.

The same way infidelity can destroy all the good memories of a relationship, the show’s final betrayal left a bitter taste in my mouth.

I’ll get past it eventually. There are too many wonderful memories not to. But not until I can erase that final episode from my mind and let myself believe that the penultimate episode — Marshall and Lily’s touching renewed vows, Barney and Robin’s pitch-perfect wedding and that final, glorious slap — was the last one.

Only then will I finally be able to look back at the nine wonderful years I spent with HIMYM with nothing but love.

Twelve years ago, right before my worst breakup ever, I adopted a dog.

The midsize shepherd mix that the shelter named “Slick” (because when they’d found him wandering the streets he’d been shaved to the skin) wasn’t what you’d call an in-demand dog. He was four years old and had heartworm. His ears were set crooked on his head. In the four months he’d been at the shelter, not a single person had taken him out to consider adopting him.

While every other dog in the shelter clamored and barked and jumped around like they had springs in their legs, begging for attention, this one stood quietly regarding me with bright brown eyes and a calm doggie smile.

I’ve never believed in soul mates, nor love at first sight, but the closest thing I’ve ever experienced to either one was when I took this dog out of his kennel to meet him: From that moment he was my dog. Unlike the other animals, spastic with freedom at being released from their cages, he merely sat in front of me, his attention and his steady gaze focused squarely—and solely—on me.

He came home with me, and I immediately renamed him (because Slick was far too undignified for him); I called him Brinks, because I’d had my house broken into recently by neighborhood teenagers, and my police officer brother told me that the best deterrent to burglary was a dog. He was my four-legged security system.

I was living alone at the time, struggling through the death throes of an unhealthy relationship, and days after I brought Brinks home it finally gasped its final breath. Suddenly I was single—but for the first time after a breakup, I wasn’t alone.

He had life-threatening worms wrapped around his heart and slowly strangling it, while mine was shattered into pieces, and we started working on our suffering hearts together. Brinks endured shots of arsenic into his back and six-weeks of enforced inactivity as his welcome-home to my place, and I began the always painful process of knitting together a broken heart.

But this time was different. This time I had a creature who needed me, who loved me wholly and completely. Who would stretch out beside me when I lay in bed crying, his head resting on my chest and his warm eyes steady on mine, or curl up on the sofa with me watching reruns of Sex and the City for hours on end.

He made me laugh at a time when I thought nothing could possibly be funny, with his big goofy dog grin, the way he would start the deep, rhythmic breaths I called “happy breathing” when I rolled over almost entirely on top of him—what I called a “full-body smothering”—and lavished him with too-tight hugs and kisses and endless petting. He craved affection as badly as I needed to give it, and he returned it in measures I’d never experienced from any boyfriend.

If I got up to grab another bag of Cheetos (postbreakup binge eating) or refill my wineglass (you know how that goes) or get another box of tissues, he trotted at my heels, contentedly curling into a ball near wherever I settled.

When we went into the backyard, he peed and sniffed and explored, but always checked over his shoulder to make sure he knew where I was, that I was nearby.

If I went out of the house, he eagerly jumped into my Honda and happily accompanied me, his nose jutting up out of the sunroof to take in all the scents of the areas he was still too sick to go explore any other way as his lips blew back hilariously in the wind, or his tongue lolling happily out of his mouth as he rested his head on my shoulder and watched the road as intently as if he were my navigator. Dog truly was my copilot.

It sounds ridiculous, but Brinks turned my “me” into a “we.” Suddenly I wasn’t just a single girl alone—we were a family, a household. Yes, my heart was broken, and his was in danger too, but gradually, as the poison of his treatment worked through his system, it killed off the worms strangling his heart. And as I fed him and cared for him and walked him slowly along the beach near where we lived, the pain strangling my heart began to fall away, and I started to heal too.

What we both went through seemed horrible at the time. But it made us stronger. Healthier.

When I finally started dating someone again, it was Brinks who showed me he was a good man—the first time he stayed over, this man crept out of my bed in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. As I secretly watched through slitted eyes, I saw him stop to lean over and gently stroke my dog. He wasn’t trying to impress me or suck up—he thought I was asleep. His treatment of Brinks showed me that he simply was a kind and warm and loving person.

When I’d first gotten Brinks, my best friend saw the way the dog devoted himself to me and how I basked in his constant and unconditional love, and said, “You do know you’ll never find an actual human guy like that, right?”

But as I got to know the man I was dating, I was thrilled to realize she was wrong, and I had.

When I married that man a few years later, both our dogs not only attended the wedding—they were in it. And now, twelve years after Brinks and I found each other and helped save each other, here we are still, happy and healthy and now living in a household full of love.

He’s mostly deaf now. His former puppy-like energy has mellowed, and he spends most of his days sleeping beside my desk as I work, his legs twitching in some glorious remembered run. His limbs have tremors in them, and I sit on the floor with him a few times a day and gently massage the trembling away.

I know that our time together is coming to a close.

And though it will be one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to go through—harder by far than any breakup I’ve ever had—I wouldn’t trade one second of that coming pain not to have had the life I’ve shared with Brinks.

He didn’t just get me through a breakup, or keep my house safe (I’ve never had another break-in), or provide companionship.

He came to me and taught me what it is to love completely and unstintingly.

And he proceeded to change my life.

One of my good friends is a certified matchmaker—a gay matchmaker [www.H4M.com], to be exact (she’s not gay, but her clients are). Recently we were talking about a phenomenon she’s been encountering in her business: Clients will call in reporting on one of the dates she’s set them up on, from among her highly curated and very exclusive clientele, telling her how easy the person was to talk to, how the time flew, how much they had in common, and how often they laughed.

“Good,” she’ll say. “Let’s coordinate the second date.”

“Oh, I don’t want a second date. There wasn’t a deep connection.”

What. The Hell.

Having a similar reaction to mine, my friend then asks what they mean—and out it comes: There were no fireworks, the earth didn’t move, their souls didn’t recognize their counterparts in each other.

“Do they realize they are living in a Nicholas Sparks movie?” I asked her.

Her answer? No. They don’t.

This was the moment I realized that relationships have become an endangered species, driven to extinction by hookups and hangouts and “drinks and apps” and swiping left while everyone waits for the Great Love that is waiting for them as soon as they find their perfect soul mate.

Lately the youth hookup culture has been getting a lot of press in articles like this [http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/201...], blaming the Internet or Gen Y ennui or Tinder toxicity.

But as my friend’s comments pointed out, the phenomenon isn’t limited to college kids and twenty-somethings. A woman I know, in her fifties, brushed by a man perhaps ten years older as he clearly tried to engage her in conversation. “Ew,” she said when we pointed out his interest. “He’s not hot.” She then went on to lament her flatlined dating life: “Everyone who wants to date me is wrinkly and saggy and middle-aged!” My (perhaps impolitic) answer: “So are you.”

Meanwhile this woman has spent several years with a “hot” man who treats her terribly—late-night booty calls and marginalizing her from the rest of his life and never, ever any discussion of “where this is going.” She says she wants more from him—but she’s willing to accept so much less.

She’s tired of the merry-go-round; she wants to get off this stupid circular ride with the horses going up and down, up and down and never really going anywhere. But she’s never going to find what she’s looking for.

Because what she’s looking for doesn’t exist.

Relationships aren’t Ryan Gosling and his abs lifting you over his head in a Dirty Dancing pose that leads to deep, meaningful conversation and rocking sex night after night after night.

They’re Steve Carrell wearing tennis shoes and Gap jeans and aerating the lawn in cleats.

Commitment is farting and clipping toenails and love handles. It’s paying the bills and cutting the grass and doing the laundry. It’s thinking about having sex, but honestly you’re just so damn tired, and really, you can do it anytime, so why not just roll over and fall asleep tonight? And the next night. And sometimes the next.

It’s wanting pizza and having Chinese. It’s feeling like going out with your girlfriends, but instead staying home to watch TV with your sig-O because you know he had a hard day. It’s hearing the same damn complaint about his job for the fiftieth time in a row, and having to come up not only with a new way to say “I’m so sorry,” but to actually sound like you effing give a crap.

But you know what else it is? It’s coming home every single day to someone who smiles to see you and asks how your day was—and most of the time actually cares about hearing it…even when you make the same damn complaint for the fiftieth time in a row.

It’s someone who peels all the hard-boiled eggs because he knows you hate to do it, and checks your connecting flight when you’re traveling so he can text you with the gate information as you get off the plane.

It’s loosing all your carefully contained neuroses in the occasional magnificently terrifying and pathetic showcase of insanity…and someone listening to all the crazy and loving you anyway and still seeing you as a strong, confident, capable person when you finally manage to herd the demons back into their little cave for a while.

It’s two completely different entities finding a way to coexist—and more, to complement each other, to bolster up each other’s weak spots, burnish one another’s shiny areas, hold a mirror unflinchingly up to show us clearly not only our strengths but our shortcomings, so we can grow.

It’s hard and glorious and infuriating and tender and terrifying and elevating and fragile.

And the number one requirement for finding and succeeding at it is knowing all of this…and wanting it anyway.

Knowing that you will have to work at it, and that there will be compromise, and that the payoff isn’t a shining grail of constant oneness and communion and spiritual elevation and mind-rocking sex, but just a general steady sense of well-being and belonging and happiness…and, if you’re lucky, occasional, unexpected, tender moments of oneness and communion and spiritual elevation. And yes, even mind-rocking sex.

Oh—and someone who has your back every day of your life, and walks beside you holding your hand, and thinks it’s hilarious and adorable that you cry at weddings even if you don’t know the bride and groom, and gets your endless obscure eighties TV references, and will spend ten minutes intently discussing things like why people think clams are so damn happy and why coffee makes you poop.

Maybe at the bar on Friday night, sitting in a booth with your posse and casually swiping left and right among an endless string of young, available hotties, it seems like the parade is never going to end, and why would you ever want to give up all this awesome freedom for that?

But life isn’t that epic, raucous Friday night. It’s 20,000 mundane Wednesday nights that will follow—Forgettable Wednesday [http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/02/pick-li...].

And on your 6,562nd Forgettable Wednesday you may find yourself wishing you weren’t alone, or chasing after someone who doesn’t seem to want you, or sliding out of the unfamiliar sheets of some interchangeable hot boy…that instead you were sharing it with someone who, if you are both very lucky, will be your partner and best friend and confidant and lover and cheering section, and keep you from growing old alone.

Filmmaker Doug Block learned a lot about marriage by accident. A documentarian who also works as a wedding videographer, Block visited a handful of couples whose weddings he'd filmed -- anywhere from five to 20 years later -- and interviewed them about the state of their marriage. The result is his unexpectedly revealing, tender, and thought-provoking film 112 Weddings.

The hope and uncomplicated joy of a wedding is often a stark contrast to the real-life challenges of day-to-day married life. Some of Block's couples weathered the years well, and some did not, but all reveal a lot about our relationships, the expectations and hopes we put into them, and what marriage/commitment really looks like.

If weddings are the splash and fizz of opening night on Broadway, marriage is the slog of the dozens, hundreds, thousands of performances that follow. How are couples supposed to maintain the best parts of the early days of their relationship amid the slings and arrows of day-to-day life?

I asked Block, along with a variety of others -- mental health professionals, relationship experts, as well as laypeople, both married and divorced, happy and unhappy -- for the single best piece of advice they would give to people about creating a successful, healthy committed relationship.

What is it that couples need to do right to keep things from going wrong?

1. Pick Right

Most experts and laypeople alike will tell you that it doesn't matter how hard you work on your relationship -- if you pick someone fundamentally incompatible with you and your core values, no amount of effort in the world will help.

"People often couple for the wrong reasons," says Damona Hoffman, dating expert and founder of relationship site DatesandMates.com, citing convenience, expectations, and pressure to have kids -- other common reasons can be conflation of lust and love, fear of being alone, or even simple security. Hoffman, herself happily married eight years, advocates a "deep period of self-discovery" before jumping into marriage, to make sure you're picking someone you want to wake up beside for the rest of your life.

So what are the right reasons to marry someone? "If it's love alone or passion alone I see little chance of it succeeding," says A.J., currently going through a divorce after 14 years of marriage. Her list of must-haves includes aligned goals, sexuality, and spirituality. For Kelly Harrell, 22 years into her second marriage, the nonnegotiable is humor: "Things will get rough, and sometimes the only thing you can do is giggle."

Interestingly, almost none of the people interviewed talked about specific, concrete differences as a deal breaker in picking a mate -- political, financial, religious, etc. In the right relationship, it seems, the minor details can be worked out -- as long as the big-ticket items match up.

Or as Dr. Duana Welch, author of Love, Factually: 10 Proven Steps from "I Wish" to "I Do," and founder of the Love Science blog, simply puts it: "If you can find and be someone kind and respectful, your marriage will go well, and if you can't it won't."

2. Treat Each Other Right

Unsurprising, then, that kindness and respect come up frequently when people are asked about the most essential elements of a healthy marriage. "With those two characteristics all the variables in life, good or bad, are handled with maturity, and without anger and blame," says Marcie Walter, still happily married to her college sweetheart after 33 years.

The concept comes up over and over in various forms: honor, respect, compromise, communication, lack of judgment, openness, honesty, trust.

But what all the respondents' comments boiled down to, at bottom, was friendship. Every trait cited for how a person should treat his or her partner was -- not coincidentally -- the definition of how you should treat a friend. Many people flat-out listed friendship as their core piece of marriage advice.

"Be friends, always," says K. J. Scrim. "We have been married 35 years and our friendship has outlasted every part of our relationship. Friends are forgiving, helpful, love you for who you are, support you no matter what, will laugh at you as well as laugh with you, and listen better than anyone. When life throws you to the ground, a friend is the one person you can count on to lift you back up."

3. F*** Right

But what about passion?

Friendship is awesome, but if that's all that's needed for a fantastic marriage, then most of us would be content having roommates. Yet despite the Hollywood/romance novel industry representation of love as all-chemistry, all the time, only a few interviewees even mentioned sex.

But as Anne Rodgers, coauthor of Kiss and Tell, Secrets of Sexual Desire for Women 15 to 97, says, "Sex plays a huge role in a happy marriage... It's a couple's private world of pleasure." In her more than 1,300 interviews with women about their sexuality, "Again and again I found that the women happiest in their sex lives and marriages were either gifted with fairly high libidos themselves or blessed with husbands who were committed to ensuring that their wives' sex lives were satisfying in every way. This tells me that if your libidos don't match, communication is key."

That means it's not so much how often you have it, but whether the sex you're having meets your mutual needs and desires. One respondent calls this "aligned sexuality: are we both highly sexed (toward each other) or need a month to get around to each other? Or want a menagerie of people?"

Rodgers spoke with one 80-year-old who confessed that her husband, on learning of her deep fears of intimacy on their wedding night, deferred consummating their marriage. When his wife revealed that she enjoyed oral sex, he made it a regular part of their sexual repertoire, and thereafter she was always eager, decade after decade.

"So the men who listen are the winners," Rodgers concludes.

In other words, communication, respect, and compromise -- again, friendship -- are the key core qualities of even the sexual aspect of a happy marriage.

4. Fight Right

No matter how well you're navigating the seas of marriage, storms will come. It's how a couple weathers them that can separate a successful marriage from a failed one.

After all his research and work observing couples in various stages of marriage, this was the one area 112 Weddings auteur Doug Block zoomed in on as the most important for a happy marriage: "Learn how to fight well."

Mindy Woodhead, married to her partner for five years, agrees: "Figuring out how to communicate during the hard times and the rough times is the hardest part of marriage so far for me. So I think coming up with a mode of communication to process hurt and frustration while still dating is important."

But what does "fighting well" entail?
•"Calmly, without yelling or screaming, for one thing. And don't dredge up your whole history of complaints and grievances; keep it to the point at hand. I think the hardest thing in a fight is to shut up and listen without being defensive. And be quick to apologize, which in my case is easy since I'm in the wrong disturbingly often." (Doug Block, married 30 years)

• "Be polite. It's a mark of respect and can get you through times when you want to say something really, really nasty." (Kay, married 16 years)


•"Grace and forgiveness. No one ever wins a fight." (Meg Errickson, married 21 years)


•"The fine art of compromise. I think many people believe that means you have to give in but that's not it. You're a team now and working toward goals together, whatever that takes." (Stacy, married 26 years)


•"If you need to have a yell match that's fine, but after everything settles really try and understand [your partner] and what they are feeling." (Jennifer Ojeda, married 9 years)

•"Decide the rules of engagement, e.g., how to discuss problems, what is okay to say. You can't play by the rules if you don't have any rules." (Hal Reames, clinical psychologist, married 6 years)

Getting married is easy, but staying married is a learned skill -- and as with any other endeavor worth pursuing, it isn't necessarily one we're born with. But luckily there are plenty of experts for that.

"Get a therapist," says Syd Sharples, LCSW, an expert in collaborative divorce and relationship therapy, herself divorced, stressing that marriage counseling isn't just for couples in trouble. "And don't wait until you're in crisis to visit with them!"

(112 Weddings is currently available on iTunes, and on DVD and other digital platforms on July 14)

A friend of mine has a go-to strategy for breaking up with someone who's not a bad person, just not the person for her: baked goods. On the day she's calling it quits with a man, she spends hours in the kitchen whipping up the treats he loves the most. "I think it's much sweeter to break up with their favorite," she says. "They can think of me with every single bite."

While her approach may literally offer the spoonful of sugar that makes the bitter pill of a breakup easier to swallow, it's not always practical--or desirable--to show up with a platter of the scratch-made macaroons that his mama always made to show she loved him, just as you're breaking the news of how much you don't.

Even though calling things off with a decent person who hasn't done you wrong can be exponentially harder than the dramatic dumping of a dirty rotten scoundrel, there are things you can do to ease the blow and make things a little less painful--for both of you.

How to Stage It

First, remember that a nice man who has treated you well deserves and has earned your respect and consideration, which is why you must offer him the courtesy of a face-to-face. No fair taking the coward's way out with e-mail, texts, social media, or even a phone call. You're the one who's going to break his heart (or at least wound his ego), so step up and offer him the courtesy and common decency of doing it in person.

Give him a "signal" of what's coming with the universal indicator that the ax is about to fall: "Can we talk?" Yes, it tips your hand, but it at least lets him know where things are headed so he's not blindsided, and can gird his metaphorical loins.

And do not punk out, as one friend of mine tried to do, by staging the event in a public place to avoid a scene. (EXCEPTION: If you have any reason at all to believe he may turn violent, then absolutely stay in a public place.) Just as you would want to be somewhere safe and private for the emotional meltdown that can follow an unanticipated dumping, give him the courtesy of dropping the hammer somewhere private and comfortable. It's a cheap trick to break up in a crowd or somewhere like a parking lot (as my friend proposed doing), and offers no solace or privacy to the dumpee.

One note: This place should not be your home, car, workplace, or any other location where you have to stay and are counting on him to leave. As you'll see below, a strategic exit is key in this sort of breakup.

What to Say

"You are a wonderful guy and there's so much about dating you that I enjoy. But..." (insert appropriate tactfully euphemistic reason here):

"...we want different things" (he wants to keep having sex with you, and the idea is starting to make you shudder)
"...we just aren't in the same place" (he's ready to get married, and you know he is. Not. The one.)
"...we don't have enough in common long-term" (you are in law school, and he's sparking up doobs on the sofa between bar shifts)

...etc.

Whatever the real reason, candycoat it. Nothing is to be gained by pointing fingers at this stage, and any specifics you offer only give him fodder to promise to change if only you'll give things another chance.

Finish it up gently, but definitively: "As difficult as it is, I realize that a future isn't in the cards for the two of us, and it's better to end things now, before it's harder on both of us to do it down the line."

Things to Avoid Saying at All Costs:

1. Telling him any specifics about what's wrong with him.

2. Putting it on him--"You're not happy" or "You deserve more" etc. That only gives him the opportunity to convince you it's okay with him, and there's no need to break up over it.

3. Anything open-ended or hopeful--"We'll talk more later," or "I still want you in my life," etc. If you have to chop off a leg, it's kinder to cut than saw.

How to Exit Stage Left

Say your piece (keep it relatively brief--literally like five minutes), and be sure to hear him out if he has things to say (remember he deserves that respect), but when it starts to go in circles or things get too heated or he's begging you to reconsider, it's time to go. Kindly tell him that this is exactly the reason you made this hard decision--because the differences in what you want mean you are constantly hurting someone you care about--and that it's best if you leave now. It's hard to do that without adding something mitigating ("But I'll call you," "But we can talk later," "But I do love you," etc.), but do it--just say you're going to go. It's kinder than dragging things out or offering any false hope.

Note: If you're at his place and things aren't too horrific, take time to quickly gather your things. It's so much easier to break off clean rather than having to rip off the scab before it's had a chance to heal by coming back for them later.

The Aftermath

In the immediate aftermath, DO NOT call him. DO NOT answer when he calls and have lengthy discussions about the breakup or your relationship or how he's coping. Give your phone to a friend if you must. These rules also apply to texting and email and Facebook posts and tweets and Instagrams and the day you see his profile back up on the online dating site where you met. None of that, now.

DO NOT mitigate with "I love you's" or "One day we can be friends." Maybe you can be pals once the hurt dies down, but saying it too soon offers him false hope, and that's cruel. Sever the limb cleanly. It seems awful at first, but it's the kindest and most humane way.

These types of breakup are the worst. You will feel like dirt. Call a friend afterward and have some wine and calm down, and I promise, within a few days that awful feeling will lessen and you'll begin to feel relieved to have ended a relationship you knew wasn't going anywhere--and to have done it as kindly and respectfully as a nice guy deserves.

Good luck.

1. "Do we really have to label this?"

This question is often asked in a way that makes us feel as if we're needy or clingy for wanting to define a relationship. Even early in, a woman (or a man) has a right to know what the other person is intending; are you dating, with an eye to a possible future? Is it friends with benefits? Just sex?

Often men pose this question when they are very much enjoying having sex with you, but aren't interested in anything beyond that. And unless you're into the no-strings-attached approach (and if you are, proudly fly that flag), the answer is yes, you do have to label it. Not because women are "crazy" or "needy" or "desperate," but because we value ourselves and want to be with someone who also values us. Not just someone who thinks we're good enough to hang out or hook up with; of course we're good enough for that, we're sexy and awesome, but someone who enjoys our mind, our company, who is interested in things about us that occur above our torso. Someone who offers us more than his penis, and wants more from us than a place to put it.

"Labeling" doesn't mean you're asking someone to state his long-term intentions for the two of you on the first date. It means you want to know whether you're on the same page, and you have a right to know that from date one. But it doesn't have to be an overt statement. Men make their intentions clearly known in how they treat you; a guy who sets up a date and takes you out to dinner, to see a show, hiking, etc., is sending a very different message about his feelings for you and his intentions than when he texts you at nine on a Friday to see if you want to come hang out at his place after work. Our job is to know what we want, see what we're being offered and give out a tacit yes or no in how we respond.

So "do we really have to label this?" Yes. If you know your own mind, what you're looking for and how you want to be treated, we do.

2. "Can I do that for you?"

My husband is always offering to carry my luggage when he takes me to the airport. He takes heavy packages from my hands, and invariably meets me at the car when I come home from grocery shopping to carry in the bags. I lived alone for a long time, with my own house and no one else to rely on for these tasks. I learned to be self sufficient, and I'm proud of that, so much so that when we first got together I'd wave him off: "I've got it." I was so concerned with showing him that I could do things for myself, that I was strong and independent and not helpless, that I completely overlooked the fact that he gets pleasure from helping me, not because he thinks I can't do things on my own, but because he feels it makes my life nicer if I don't have to. It's one of the everyday, non-overtly-romantic ways he shows me that he loves me.

Sometimes this can be perceived as a feminist gray area. Women have fought hard for the right to do for ourselves. But letting a man lift weight off our shoulders isn't compromising that; it's simply allowing a fellow human being to make our lives easier. More important, it's letting someone show you that he cares about you, to feel he's of value to you.

Most men don't hold the door for us because they think we can't handle the task. It's a sign of respect. If you're lucky enough to find a secure man to offer that, why not accept it?

3. "Do you mind?"

This question can be a genuine, polite query as to whether you're OK with a certain behavior or action, or it can be a wheedling passive-aggressive way to push the line of what a woman will accept. And it can apply anywhere, at home, at work, on a date:

"I'm going to meet the guys for golf again this weekend while you take care of the kids; do you mind?"

"Do you mind grabbing me a cup of coffee/finishing this project for me/working overtime or taking on more work?"

"Mind if I come inside?" at the end of a date, or, as happened to me on one lunch date literally four times, "Mind if I take this call? It's business."

It's almost an autonomic response to agreeably reply, "Of course not." But take a moment to consider whether you in fact do mind whatever's being asked of you, and be honest. As I finally did on my lunch date's fifth "excuse me" to answer his cell phone... at which point I got up and left.

4. "Why don't I treat?"

There are times when it's important to pick up at least your part of the tab: if you want to send the message that this isn't a date, if you don't intend to go out with a guy again, if you're meeting for the first time. And equitable sharing of the dating bills can be a lovely thing, but if a man insists that he'd like to pick up the tab, why not let him? Whether we want to believe in the idea of genetic programming or not, the truth is that men are hard-wired as providers.

I'm a feminist to my core, but it doesn't compromise our independence, competence or autonomy to let a man treat us. And as with insisting on getting our own doors, fighting too hard to pay our half robs a man of the pleasure of providing for a woman he is interested in or cares about.

But here's a nonnegotiable: That doesn't obligate us to anything, in any way, whether a man thinks it does or not.

5. "Want to try this?"

Maybe it's something as innocuous as a bite of his pigeon ravioli at a gastropub; maybe it's spreading yourselves with Crisco, slapping on a diaper and heading to a key party. Only you know what's way out of your comfort zone, but one of the wonderful things about a relationship is that it helps us stretch and grow. Unless you recoil from something on a truly elemental, constitutional level, why not try something new?

6. "Are you going to finish that?"

I have a girlfriend who literally allows herself six jellybeans at one sitting. Six. She counts those suckers out.

Too often women deny themselves, whether out of fear of gaining weight, or losing control, or appearing unfeminine or just making a pig of ourselves. (Trust me, you do not want to see me eat a Fat Queen pizza at the famous Pieous in Austin, Texas; it's like a school of piranha on a side of beef.) "Oh, no, no," we demur. "I couldn’t possibly."

But by always monitoring what we eat, we take the pleasure out of one of life's great aesthetic joys, good food. And the truth is, there's nothing unsexy about enjoying our food; frankly a lot of guys appreciate a girl who's comfortable with her body and enjoys eating. (Perhaps they are simply drawing their own lascivious conclusions from watching us tear voraciously into a meal, but that's no concern of ours.) Don't be ashamed of having a healthy appetite, and don't feel you have to order a salad or nibble daintily at your food. Eat it, girl! "Yes, I'm going to eat all of this (and no, you can't have my fries)."

For the flip side of this coin, read "10 Times Women Say Yes When They Should Say No" on HuffingtonPost.

In the movie Yes Man, Jim Carrey, based on the exhortations of a self-help guru, decides to say yes to absolutely everything—with predictably disastrous results. While “lean in” and “keep an open mind” can be great bits of advice in many walks of life, where relationships are concerned sometimes a bit of negativity is the more positive choice. Here are ten times the power-call answer is often a strong, uncompromising “no.”

“Want to hang out?” This question isn’t always asked outright, but it can be. More often it’s implied in casual last-minute requests to get together, nebulous offers to join a guy among a group of other friends, and late-night booty calls.

“Want to hang out?” isn’t asking someone on a date, but women often interpret it that way, because we want to believe we’re being pursued, even when it’s the most lackadaisical of courtships.
It may sound old-fashioned, but a guy who wants to see you will make plans to do it—in advance, and more formally than an amorphous offer to orbit each other’s persons.

“Can I take you out?” Whether it’s out of lust, pity, guilt, boredom, or loneliness, most women have said yes to dates with men that they knew weren’t good matches. I once wound up in a two-year relationship with one of those, my instincts overridden by my attraction to the man.

But when we finally broke up, after two painful, heartbreaking years, it was for all the reasons I’d been reluctant to go out with him in the first place: We had major lifestyle, personality, and ideological differences. If I’d paid more attention to my gut instincts at the very beginning, I could have saved myself what turned out to be two years of spinning my wheels.

If your lizard-brain impulses are telling you you’re better off not going out with someone, pay attention! It’s a lot easier to say “no” to the first date than it is after months or years of a relationship.

“Is this good enough?” This is an implicit question, rarely asked directly—but it comes up early and often in dating in how someone treats you. I once waited nearly an hour for a date to show up. Embarrassing now—although he did call around ten minutes late and say he’d overslept and would be there soon.

Overslept. For our first date.

I should have left and let him reschedule, but I didn’t—and the entire rest of our short-lived relationship was marked by this same lassitude from him.

We generally lead with the best stuff in our bag of tricks when we’re trying to impress someone. So what you get out of the starting gate is either the most someone is capable of, or they aren’t trying that hard. Either way, it tells you what you need to know to decide whether they’re worth the investment of your time and emotions.

“He hasn’t called. Should I call/text/stalk him?” The short answer here is no. No, please, I beg you.

The long answer is this: If a guy isn’t contacting you, it’s probably not because he’s shy, insecure, or waiting for you to give him the green light. Not only do you not have to chase someone who’s really into you, but it chisels away at your self-esteem to do it.

You’re also working against biology—men are hunter-gatherers. If a man wants you, he’ll go get you; he won’t take the risk you’ll slip away. If he’s willing to, he’s showing you how much he values you—which isn’t much.

According to Dr. Duana Welch, author Love, Factually: 10 Proven Steps from “I Wish” to “I Do,” [link] research reveals that although men and women have similarly high standards for a life mate, men’s standards for a hookup are pretty much baseline: “In research, men have admitted that they're open to having sex with women who are low-IQ, drunk, unconscious, and/or unattractive,” Welch explains. “So if you call a man who wasn't interested enough to call you first, he will probably say he'd like to get together. But factually speaking, it's for casual sex, not anything long-term.“

If that’s what you’re looking for you’re almost certain to succeed, but if you’re hoping for something more, why chase after it with someone who can’t be troubled to lift his phone and call you?

“Can you do that for me?” I have a friend who does absolutely everything for whatever partner is in her life—she anticipates and tends to his every need, goes over and above to make his life easier, thinking to make herself indispensable.

Invariably he doesn’t reciprocate to her level. And invariably she gets furious, hurt, and ultimately brokenhearted when the resulting tension breaks the relationship up. My friend does too much—she takes on more than she can comfortably maintain without getting overstressed and burning herself out—and without coming to resent the fact that her beaus aren’t giving the same overly attentive effort to her.

Women are notorious helpers—we’re genetically wired for caretaking. But we have to maintain sight of how much we can take on—and how much we should take on for someone else, without losing sight of ourselves. Nurturing our loved ones is a wonderful way to show them we care about them, but a candle burning at both ends and from the middle eventually leaves nothing but a used-up puddle of wax.

“Are you comfortable with this?” I know a woman whose husband suggested that they turn their marriage into an open one. Despite initial resistance, she let him make his case and tried it, and years later they both still happily embrace that lifestyle, swearing that it’s done wonders for their relationship. This woman was willing to step outside her usual comfort zone and try something that turned out to be enjoyable and beneficial for her.

But often we say yes to this question even when we know that we’re deeply, fundamentally uncomfortable with what’s being suggested—whether it’s going on vacation with his ex, base-jumping into the Amazon, or acting out every scene from 50 Shades of Gray.

Women are often raised and societally conditioned to be accommodating, pleasant, easygoing. (If we’re not, we’re labeled harpies, viragos, ball busters.) But saying yes to something our whole being shies away from for the sake of not making waves is only going to yield resentment, fear, lowered self-esteem, and possibly even worse.

Take some chances, yes. Step outside your comfort zone once in a while—that’s one of the best things about relationships: that the other person can push you and help you grow in directions you never expected. But honor your own personal boundaries, and don’t say you’re comfortable with something if you truly aren’t.

“Don’t you trust me?” This question is sometimes asked outright, but more often it’s implied in statements that push boundaries you may not be ready to cross yet, like, “We’ll just snuggle,” “I promise I’m clean,” “Just the tip.” It might be an effort to convince you to do something you aren’t comfortable with if you do have the temerity to state your discomfort, like, “Come on, just send me one little naked selfie?” Or it might be in response to your questioning, doubt, or mistrust: “I swear that was my sister—we’re just really close.”

Trust is the foundation of a healthy relationship, it’s true—but if your gut is telling you that you shouldn’t place yours in the person you’re with, honor that primal wisdom.

“Will you marry me?” Years ago friends of mine got engaged despite frequent fighting. When the woman and I talked about their relationship issues one evening, she told me she wasn’t too worried, because if things didn’t work out it wasn’t forever.

Uh, yeah, actually. It is—or it’s supposed to be. That’s why they say “till death do us part.” Granted, a hefty chunk of marriages don’t work out, but the whole point of the institution is to approach it as a lifetime partnership, not a test drive. No relationship is sunshine and roses 24/7, but if you aren’t 100 percent certain that this is the person you want beside you come rain or come shine, don’t say yes to a proposal, no matter how long you’ve been together, or how romantic the moment.

“Can’t we try again?” This one is on a case-by-case basis, but most often the right answer here is no. There’s a reason you broke up in the first place—whether it was one party’s transgression, fundamental differences, or simple disinterest. But if your relationship went awry enough that one or both of you was willing to end it, chances are they won’t be magically fixed by starting things up again. In the wise words of Greg Behrendt and Amiira Ruotola-Behrendt, It’s Called a Breakup Because It’s Broken.

Remember the definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Unless whatever element of the relationship that broke you up in the first place has been identified, addressed, and dealt with, then you’re just doing what a friend of mine calls “tipping the Coke machine”—once it gets rocking, sooner or later that sucker’s going over.

“Is everything okay?” “I’m fine” is my mantra. It should be blazoned on my forehead, monogrammed on my towels, etched into the foam of my cappuccino. It’s my answer whether I am, in fact, fine or not. And I’m not alone in that—ask most men their biggest pet peeve with women, and it’s usually this: that we say everything is okay when it isn’t. Acting as if it is doesn’t solve the problem or make us feel any better—in fact, it does just the opposite, making us feel worse and worse, unheard and unexpressed, until we blow like a powder keg.

Stating what’s bothering us doesn’t make us “high-maintenance” or naggy or shrewish. It relieves the pressure of suppressed feelings, and it honors your partner by trusting that he will hear it and not run away.

But that doesn’t mean you have a license to vomit up a litany of your partner’s wrongdoings—we can respect our own feelings and still respect someone else’s.

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In the right context, “No” can be every bit as powerful as yes—and not always a negative answer. When have you said yes that you wish you’d said no? What made you do it? Did you realize it at the time?

Sometimes the most impactful life lessons we learn from our parents don't make themselves known until many years into our adulthood. In honor of Mother's Day, here's some of the most valuable wisdom I gleaned about love and relationships that my mom never knew she was teaching me.


1. "Nothing good happens after 10:00 at night."

For an embarrassing number of years, 10 p.m. was my non-negotiable curfew, long after all my friends were allowed to stay out later. Mom's reasoning was that nothing going on after that hour was anything a "nice girl" like her daughter needed to be involved in.

As much as it chafed (and on the few times I was able to fabricate my whereabouts and sneak out till a scandalous midnight and beyond), in hindsight I will grudgingly admit that most of the things I was sneaking out to do were probably not the best idea for a fairly naive young teenager.

As an adult, I realize Mom's advice applies extremely well in one specific area of dating: A guy who calls you late at night to get together probably isn't looking to take you out for a milkshake and fries. Thanks to Mom, I managed to recognize a booty call when I got one, and save myself from leaping at it when I was hoping it meant something more.




2. "For God's sake, put on some lipstick."

I was a little bit of a tomboy as a preadolescent, and when I did discover makeup in my teens, I favored mostly sparkly nude Twiggy colors. I didn't wear makeup so much as make my face glittery. Without fail, as soon as I got ready to go anywhere, "You need lipstick!" was my mother's clarion call.

When I was an actor, I became so enamored of the magic of cosmetics I had to check myself so I didn't doll it up like a drag queen, but that's not why this was good advice. While I'm very happy with my face with or without cosmetic intervention, I have to admit that when I really want to rock it, nothing gives me the kind of confidence skillfully applied makeup can. I use it to feel sexy or professional or polished, to draw attention away from blemishes or under-eye circles when I've had a late night or just to give me a little oomph on days when I'm feeling sub-par.

Do I need lipstick? Not really. But there's something to be said for the confidence and power a woman gains from looking her best.

3. "You can't have a relationship before you're ready."

In elementary school I had a massive crush on a boy in my class, Raymond. Raymond asked me to "go" with him, and when I excitedly came home and told my mom, her answer was, "Go where?" Followed immediately by, "No. You're too young."

As "going with" a boy at that age meant little beyond bragging rights at school and perhaps some passed notes, and because my mother of course had no way of monitoring that, naturally I told him yes anyway, and we "went."

The next week at a party in the basement of my best friend's house, while her mom sat upstairs doing her best to tune out the shrill 12-year-olds downstairs, I caught Raymond kissing my BFF, devastating me on two counts, and resulting in some fairly extravagant histrionics on my part.

My mom was right; I wasn't ready to date (none of us were). But more important, I learned never to embark on a relationship before I was ready, whether it was turning dating into something sexual, getting serious too soon or because I was rebounding and hadn't yet recovered from heartbreak.

4. "Measure twice, cut once."

My dad died young, so we were largely raised by my mom on her own and she was exceptionally handy. This was a rule that stuck with me; careful evaluation and planning ahead of time saves you a lot of frustration on the back end.

If I'd followed this advice when I was younger, for instance, it would have let me stop and think twice before dating a man who was very recently separated from his wife, and wound up dumping me to try again with her (on our way out of town for a romantic weekend). It's what reminds me now, when I get upset at my husband, not to vent my feelings without a filter, but to take a moment before I speak and think about my words and the impact they might have on him, to calm my initial childish impulse to lash out and instead measure my words before I do irreparable damage.

Once you make the cut, you're committed. If you've done it wrong you've ruined your materials. Mom was right; it's worth stopping to measure, twice or even more, before you do something irrevocable.

5. "Life is a series of choices."

This was usually what Mom said when one of us was in trouble, as in, we chose poorly... and consequences were headed our way.

But the words echo in my head frequently as an adult: When I chose a guy who had no interest in anything long-term or even particularly committed, and two years later he broke my heart. When I finally broke up with someone I didn't love but had stayed with out of a sense of guilt and a deep affection for his daughter. When I met a man who was kind and genuine and funny and open, and chose to take a chance on jumping into a life with him after only a few months. (We're in our seventh happy year together, four of them as husband and wife.)

Most of all, Mom taught me that the most important choice is happiness. No matter what life hands us, we can decide to let hardship overwhelm us and color everything else, or we can accept the difficulty... and choose to be happy anyway. Of all Mom's lessons, this is the biggest lesson, the one that has most shaped not only my relationships but the entire course of my life: Choose happiness.

Thanks, Mom.

Despite all you’ve heard about the essential ingredients for a good relationship, sometimes the things you leave out are as important as what you put in. (Try adding butter to your lemonade and you’ll see what I mean.) Here are five ingredients that should never turn up in a healthy relationship recipe.

1. The Pit of Despair: Ever hear the myth of Tantalus? In Greek mythology he stands for eternity in a pool of water that drains when he tries to drink, under a bough heavy with fruit that recedes when he reaches for it. Tantalus is being punished for his evil deeds by the gods, but when we stay in a relationship where we’re constantly hungering for things just out of reach, we’re punishing ourselves—with a yawning emptiness where the love we crave is missing.

You know that pit of despair—it’s the one you feel when he says he’ll call and doesn’t; when he introduces you as “his friend”; when he cancels yet another date; when he swears he’ll never cheat again. The one that sucks out your soul as you obsess over uncertainties—Does he love me? Are we together? Will he show up for me? Is he with someone else? Will he ever leave her?—or compulsively monitor his Facebook friends.

In the right relationship, that pit is filled up with the solidity of certainty—not about every little detail (when I ask my husband whether he will install a new ceiling fan over the weekend, I am far from certain it will actually get done), but about the important core things: that he loves you. He will be there for you. He is in your corner. A healthy relationship may have occasional potholes of uncertainty, but not sinkholes.

2. Sturm und Drang: Imagine coming home every day and not knowing whether your house will be filled with a flash mob; or on fire; or gone entirely. Living with constant relationship drama is like that—you never know what you will come home to, and you can’t count on the shelter, safety, and warmth you’d hoped for.

Drama is exhausting. It’s draining. It chips away at trust and comfort and reliability. Romance novels have conditioned us to believe that great passion means fireworks—in and out of the bedroom. But constant fighting and making up isn’t a sign of how deep a couple’s love runs, but how much damage they’re willing to do to it. Hate may be the opposite side of the coin from love, but when hate’s on top, the love side is facedown in the dirt.

3. Misrepresentation and Fraud: Trying to build a relationship on lies is like trying to erect a high-rise on a cracked foundation patched with chewing gum: it’s never going to hold the weight, and sooner or later that structure’s coming down. Whether it’s little lies (“No, you look fantastic in that sheath dress“) or big ones (“No, I did not have sex with that woman”), if you can’t trust your partner’s word, what’s it worth?

Small “white lies” may seem harmless enough, but they’re not. When I check on my appearance with my husband, I’m not fishing for compliments (well, not just fishing…). I’m soliciting input from the person whose feedback I value most. I know that, like a lot of women, I have a hard time being objective about my own body. But my husband, I trust, sees me clearly, and can offer me perspective, a mirror of reality held up to my rampant neuroses. If he doesn’t give me his honest opinion, my mirror is warped (and so is my reality). That’s not a license for harsh criticism—where things like “do I look fat?” are concerned, a little sugarcoating goes a long way. But we want it sprinkled over the hard, cold truth—not to hide it, just to make it more palatable.

Lies undermine our ability to trust. They are duping your partner—whether your intentions are good or not. Even if they never get found out, you’re living one reality while your clueless partner is living another. In healthy relationships, partners trust and respect each other enough to tell the truth, even when it’s hard.

4. Covert Ops: My husband knows every deeply held secret of my past—good, bad, and ugly. I don’t keep things from him—even things as small as when I splurge on shopping. I don’t have to hide half the bags in the car so I can unpack my booty when he isn’t home and lie about putting on “this old thing?” when he notices I’m wearing something unfamiliar. We’re adults, and we’re open with each other. Keeping secrets is excluding your partner from part of your life, and that kind of compartmentalization breaks up the integrity of a relationship’s foundation.

Mystery, however, can be healthy. To this day my husband is blissfully unaware of the nitty-gritty grooming processes that yield my delicately arched eyebrows, microscopic pores, hairless bikini line, and immaculately maintained toenails. He doesn’t know the true terrifying depths of my occasional insecurity and irrational neurosis. This is healthy mystery, and a certain amount of that in a relationship creates appealing glamour. As I like to think of it, it’s just part of the magic.

5. Oneness: Jerry Maguire ruined a generation of women. No one completes you—you are complete already. Waiting for your ideal someone to come along and be the other half of you, yin to your yang, and meet all your needs implies that you are only a partial person until they arrive.

Married friends of mine built their entire world around each other—they were lovers, spouses, best friends, and each other’s social network. To the rest of the world they were the perfect couple—until suddenly they announced their divorce. No one can bear that big a burden of support, and no one person can meet all our needs. With apologies to U2, two hearts will never beat as one, and if they do, one of them is dead.

What ingredient ruined your past relationships? What’s the best thing that’s missing from the one you’re in?

The first time one of my best friends slept with a new guy she was nuts for, she said that when the lights went off and he got his junk close enough for her to get hold of, she had to stop herself from blurting, “No, thanks, I don’t smoke.” Turned out his minuscule member was a deal breaker for her—she just couldn’t handle it (pun unavoidable).

Not all deal breakers are so cut-and-dried, and often it depends on the person—not just the person you’re dating, but also how insurmountable an issue the potential deal breaker is for you. Here are six common deal breaker categories, and how to figure out whether they’re nonnegotiables in your relationship.

• Physical turn-offs: These aren’t always major issues like the above-mentioned wee willy; another friend of mine categorically ruled a guy out over his feet (she wasn’t weird about feet, just found them attractive—and his gnarly toes and peeling soles creeped her out).

I once broke up with a guy after he informed me that his family’s teeth “went south on them” and dentures were in his immediate future. Color me shallow—you have to have teeth. Is the problem something that can be fixed? (Sorry, fake teeth don’t count with me.) If not, is it something you can get over and even learn to find adorable? (Watching him take his dentures out every night and looking at his naked gums? Nope.) Two “no” answers here mean you’re probably looking at a real deal breaker.

• Major behavioral turn-offs: Is he a chintzy tipper? Does he smack-talk his exes, his friends, his family? Is his laugh like the sound souls make when they’re sucked into the bowels of hell? Does he flirt with anything with a uterus, even if you’re right next to him? Sure, you could probably address some of these issues (e.g., “Let’s just enjoy this stand-up comedian in silence”), but are you looking for a prospect or a project?

And some of these behaviors say something deeper about someone—a person who bad-mouths alleged friends behind their backs is revealing something about her loyalty and sincerity. And you can bet a guy who can’t stop bashing his ex still has some pretty strong feelings for her.

• Lifestyle turn-offs: I used to think drug use was a deal breaker for me, until I fell for a guy who enjoyed the occasional doob. I figured it was something I could live with after all—till I found the enormous tub of weed stashed in the back of his fridge. Turned out he liked to sell it even more than smoke it. For me, drug dealer = deal breaker. For some their nonnegotiable is smoking; or alcohol or drug use (or abuse…or as in my case, trafficking). For some it’s sexual habits—a woman I know was approached by her husband several years into the marriage about whether she’d consider an open relationship. Though her initial reaction was a categorical no, he persuaded her to try it, and now they happily share the love.

Only you know what you can handle and what you’ll never be able to get past. If someone is dedicated to lifestyle choices you know are firm deal breakers for you, don’t even try to overcome them; just cut your losses.

• Core traits: In my shallow youth I went out with a man so beautiful that I regularly wanted to go places where we might be photographed together, just so everyone could see this beefcake on my arm. He was also sweet, gentle, and kind—but unfortunately dumb as a bag of hair. As much as I genuinely liked him (and liked looking at him), ultimately I knew things were going nowhere, because one of my ironclad deal breakers is intelligence.

Core personality traits—humor, sincerity, ideology, energy level, introvert/extrovert, laziness, negativity, etc.—can’t really be changed. If you’re contemplating a relationship with someone whose political leanings make you stabby, consider how it will feel after ten, twenty, or fifty years. The courtship phase is when everything is seen through candy-colored glasses. Clashing core values are never going to seem more charming as time goes on.

• Cheating: This one gets a category all its own, because it’s the biggest dividing line of deal breakers. Some women (and men) can forgive, even if they don’t forget (a certain presidential candidate—or twelve—comes to mind). For others, there’s no going back (as Robin Thicke will sorrowfully tell you). This is one you can’t really know till it happens to you—but if you’re dating someone who’s in another relationship, remember the wise words of my mother: If he’ll cheat with you, he’ll probably cheat on you. If you already know you’re dating someone with fidelity issues, is it really worth taking the chance that it’s a one-off?

• Abuse: Abuse of any sort—physical, emotional—is a deal breaker. It’s not always easy to get out of an abusive relationship, but if you’re in one, or are getting into one with someone who’s showing the warning signs [http://www.abuseandrelationships.org/...], get wise, get help—but get out.

Have you ever overcome a deal breaker—or tried and failed? What are your nonegotiable deal breakers?