12 Lessons You Need To

Learn Before
Settling Down
AUG. 7, 2012

By NICO LANG

1. You dont have to get married right now. I know a lot of people
who are friends with me on Facebook disagree about this, but no one is
forcing you to get married right now. I get it: We were all sold the fantasy
offalling in love in college and getting married after you graduate. Its
romance and heteronormativity and a lot of things that Amurrica really
loves, and for a lot of people it works. But youre 22 and not dying of
leukemia: the fantasy wont be any less fantastic if you give yourself three
or four years before you I dont know make the biggest decision of
your entire life just because its what society expects you to do. Instead, you
need to make life decisions that match your responsibility, commitment
and maturity levels, and if there are still Facebook pictures of you halfnaked and passed out drunk on your bathroom floor, you might not be
there yet. Would you trust Lindsay Lohan with a marriage?
2. On this note: LTRs arent a prison, and you dont have to treat
them that way. You know what pisses me off? That rhetoric at Bachelor
Parties that the day before you get married is the last day or your life
because life is somehow over after you get married? (Poor you.) Ill make
sure to inform Zsa Zsa Gabor of that, who has been married eight times
and keeps going back for more. No one wants to go to prison that many
times, except for maybe Martin Sheen.
3. And, no getting a dog, getting hitched or having babies wont
fix your relationship. I think that Nicole Richie was a bad life example
in this respect. If you flash back to 2003, Nicole Richie was a classic wild
child of the Drew Barrymore variety. In and out of rehab, Richie was just
as famous for tabloid photos with Paris Hilton and getting arrested for
heroin as she was for being Lionel Richies daughter. However, after having
a baby in 2008, the hard-partying starlet quickly turned her life around,

releasing her own jewelry line and becoming something of a fashion icon.
And while its commendable that she was able to stop flashing her vagina
and become an adult, having a baby wasnt the single thing that did that.
Life is not Juno, and everything wont fall into place for you after you push
a giant screaming flesh ball out of your vagina like the boulder in Indiana
Jones. Teen Mom and Courtney Love prove this, conclusively.
4. One person cant be everything to you, and if you expect that,
you are going to be miserable for a very long time. You know what
phrase I really hate? The One. I hate it because it pins unrealistic celestial
expectations on whatever person you by happenstance happen to be
connecting your genitals with. If you live in a village with 20 other people
and two are of marrying age, its statistically impossible. It doesnt take
skinny Jonah Hill in Moneyball to figure that out. More than that, you
shouldnt just have one person in your life. You should have lots of
people: friends, family members, co-workers and baristas who act as a
community that affirm you every day. In particular, coffee proves that I
cannot get every pleasure I need from my partner, and I shouldnt expect
that. I need to be as in love with the rest of my life as I am with them, or my
incessant neediness and co-dependency is going to turn the relationship
into Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf? You can most easily avoid this fate
and be happy and fulfilled in your relationship by being happy and fulfilled
outside of it.
5. Bridget Jones lied to you: you need to change. I think that the
central message of this movie is nice that you should find someone who
loves you just the way you are but theres a danger there. As the film
suggests, we should find people who can accept our faults but must also
find people who love us enough to call us on our bull and help us be better
people. Think about your best friends. Are they the kind of people who let
you walk all over them? No. Theyll fight you when they think you are being
unfair or being a bad friend and demand the best from you. Find a partner
who does the same thing. Youll love them for not putting up with your
crap.
6. Love means having to say youre sorry. Love Story was another
terrible influence: Youre going to say youre sorry all the time. Youll say

sorry when youre wrong, when youre right, when you dont want to say
youre sorry, when you dont really want to make up or even look at the
other person, when you think you cant, when you just want to go to bed,
when all you want is this stupid fight to just be over. Youll say it on a
plane, in the dark, on a train, in a car, up a tree and places humans havent
even discovered yet like Jimmy Hoffas burial site. In life, youre going to
be wrong at least 50% of the time and if youre George Bush a lot more
so just get used to it now.
7. If you cant take care of yourself, you cant take care of
someone else. Too many people get into relationships as a way to fix
themselves or avoid fixing themselves by fixing someone else. You dont
have to think about your own emotional wellness when youre focused on
someone elses. But there are a lot of problems with that, because you will
take any problems you already had with you into the relationship; you
carry your anger, your baggage and your brokenness. How can you make
someone else whole if what you are giving to them is broken? The only way
to do that is to acknowledge that neither of you is perfect or able to be
perfect. Instead, all you can do is try and enjoy the broken grace that
lifeoffers you and work on being the best that you can be. The only way is
to try and do so together.
8. Not everything is about you. Have you ever read those Freud
journals? People have issues, lots and lots of issues. Do they seem cold and
distant one day or in a weird mood? Thats not always your fault, so dont
assume that it is. I know far too many people who will always blame
themselves for anything thats wrong with their partner or anything thats
wrong in the relationship. And its good to be accountable for someone
elses feelings, but you need to be open enough in communication to find
out what those are. All you have to do is ask. Remember that in all things
because as Galileo and Bill Nye taught us, you arent the center of the
universe or even their universe.
9. Sometimes they really are thinking about nothing. Remember
that time you asked them what they were thinking about and they said,
Oh, nothing, and you got upset because you felt like they werent being
honest because Isnt everyone always thinking about something? Well,

they probably were, but when someone says they arent thinking about
anything, that means they arent thinking about anything interesting or
worth mentioning. And you can spend every minute of your life
overanalyzing that or picking your entire relationship apart, or you can just
accept that they dont have to tell you everything. Accept the mystery in
your relationship. As Benedict Cumberbatch proves, mystery can be sexy.
10. You dont have to have everything figured out at
once.Relationships are tricky and take a lot of figuring out, especially in
that crucial stage where you are trying to figure out if youre even in a
relationship. However, in the rush to label everything and skip to the part
where youre all settled and have everything set, you squander a lot of the
things that make relationships so exciting. Sure, we talk about the first kiss,
but what about the time before the first kiss, when you are waiting to be
kissed, just hoping that they will finally just lean into you? So much of a
relationship is like that, that sensual waiting, and thats what makes them
both so frustrating and wonderful. I know we all want to skip to the ending
the parts where you host game nights together and do the Sunday
crossword in bed but dont forget to just enjoy the ride, even if that
means you arent Facebook official yet.
11. Dont try to date someone who is exactly like you or
completely gets you. The worst dating advice was told to me a couple
years ago, right after I was getting out of my longest relationship, trying to
navigate the single world again and not having much luck. The advice giver
told me that if I want to get a guy, I should become the guys I want to sleep
with and change myself to be more like them. I think thats silly. One of the
great things about life is getting to know people who arent like you, who
have opinions that excite you, challenge you and piss you off sometimes.
They can teach you new things about the world and help you discover a
new side of yourself you didnt even know existed. If you only ever date
yourself, youll never change. And thats not a relationship, thats
masturbation but a lot more expensive and time-consuming.
12. No relationship is going to be perfect, close to perfect or even
in the ballpark. And thats okay. Look at Brad and Jen. Sometimes

perfect doesnt turn out so great. Dont strive for perfect. Strive for what
feels right.