Women need to get out of fairy tale ideas about men and vice versa. Humans are messy, complicated humans with their own strengths and weaknesses. I’d like to see more media about people who figure out what their core values are, what aren’t but where they’d like to grow, and finding a way to individuate and self actualize, with or without a partner.

Choosing a healthier partner may look like dating long enough so the hormonal love potions wear off and months or even years longer to see what a potential partner actually demonstrates as cute core values, secondary values, and how much effort they are willing to put into growing, individually and within the relationship, what each are willing to do to lay a strong relationship with self and partner, and agree on the direction a relationship is wanted to grow, then building it.

I wish I’d learned this much sooner instead of trying to make relationships work and putting up with stuff because “it’s what’s expected,” within family and society. And I wish I’d learned the cornerstone to all that was building a deep, trusting relationship with myself, again not based on what that was expected to look like within family or society.

In general, I don’t care for Hallmark/Lifetime garbage, because it’s fantasy that has ourselves keeping ourselves trapped in air castles and painting roses red, rather than formulating plans, digging in the dirt of ourselves, plucking out stones, roots, weeds, raking, grading, tilling, packing the land, laying foundations, placing each brick with love and attention to detail, picking out what roses we like that are amenable to the conditions, planting, watering, pruning, until it resembles something satisfactory (because things often look differently in our heads than in materiality). And if the hero or heroine doesn’t find a suitable partner, they’re good on their own.