Fall is here, which means couples will be out in full force doing your basic couple activities. Apple orchards, haunted houses, pumpkin picking, the whole nine yards. Oh, me? What will I be doing? You can find my a** planted firmly on the couch watching football, kissing not lips, but the brim of a beer can. As love spreads in the air, like COVID, it’s time to buckle up, because you’re gonna get advice from a single guy.

Now you may ask yourself, why would I listen to someone who’s not in the game? Well, to be completely honest, I pride myself on being someone you can turn to for giving a solid, objective take/piece of advice, but am also the person who doesn’t listen to his own advice.

With this, I base a lot of how I live my life, on many different philosophies and morals, and after listening to a certain political podcast (who’s name I will not mention, for the fear of the impending cancel culture), I couldn’t agree more with their message and wanted to expand on it more and apply it to the dating world.

The dating world these days is a multi-headed dragon. Some date for marriage, some date just to mess around, and some just date for companionship. But this single fella, is gonna tell you on what to look for if you truly value someone, and you want to be their partner and how to know they really are the one. How will I do this you ask? Well let’s break it down into two separate categories.

Interests

What originally attracts us to someone, where we want to start to get to know them, and get that initial conversation going? We can call these interests.

This is usually your foundation to getting to know someone and see how compatible you are to find some common ground. With that, however, I will explain why you should not base your entire feelings off of pure interests.

If I’m swiping my life away on Tinder or Bumble, there are several factors that are gonna want me to swipe right on a girl. This may include me being a huge sports fanatic, and I see she has a picture of her at a sporting event, she has a dog and I also have a dog, we went to the same school, or the most common but often considered shallow, going based off of looks. These are all points of interest, that is gonna get my foot in the door, in starting the initial conversation where I’m like “hey I see you’re a big fan of Chipotle, so am I, we should grab some Chipotle sometime and talk”.

Like I mentioned earlier, it’s all about building that foundation, however, you can only have so much in common where it almost turns into a stalemate, because okay, you found your common ground so where do you go from there? This leads me to my next and most important stage in finding someone you really want to build a long-term relationship.

Values

Both liking the same kind of music is cool, but just because you both like Tame Impala, doesn’t mean that person will make a good life partner. So what does? You have to go beyond the interests and take it a step further, to find out what they value in life.

This, in my humble opinion, this is the secret sauce to any long-term relationship, because what someone values answers many questions to what they want out of a relationship and how your relationship will play out in the future.

Do they want to start a family? If so, do they want kids? How will you raise those kids? Will you raise them strict or will you be laid back? I don’t want to say these types of questions show someone’s true colors, but it will get an honest look about how someone views life and the relationship.

There’s a classic Dr. Dre lyric that goes, “you can’t make a h*e a housewife”, and while as bold, vulgar, and no filter as that is, I feel like that applies to a lot of relationships today. They value the companionship, the intimacy, and the interests, rather than asking themselves “is this someone I want to build around and live my life with?”

What I mean by this is, in todays day-in-age, people get to caught up in the interests and not in the values. Yeah, this girl I’ve been with for a few months now is cool, we like the same stuff, but I wanna eventually wanna have kids, but she’d rather just adopt a dog. Values matter, especially when it comes to major milestones like starting a family, because when it comes to having kids, the whole point of having kids (other than, so grandma and grandpa can pinch their little checks) is to to teach them and pass on a set of values, standards, and morals they can be raised on life,so they can grow up on those and eventually pass it on to their future family.

To wrap things up, to not sound like a broken record, and to not be as corny and sappy as I’ve been this whole article. I’m not trying to sound like your parents, do whatever makes you happy. But if you’re really to find your Prince or your Princess, make sure you take the time to find out what’s really important to them.