you have told me a million times is important to you". Everybody dates an asshole once in their life. It's pretty well unavoidable, so forgive yourself for being naive. However, dating an asshole is a fantastic learning experience. Once you realize that you are/were dating one, you can reflect on things that happened during the relationship, and you realize, HEY...that incident was some real assholery. And then, when you come across a similar situation in the future, you realize, HEY...I do NOT have to put up with that. And so you don't. A good trick I've always used is that you can easily imagine how s/he goes about their daily routine without you. It's both a sign of the person being open and honest enough for you to see many different facets of their personality (not just the I'm-on-a-date side), and also weeds out the people who seem to depend on you for everything. Also, @94/84: love the list, I think it pretty much all applies to me (even the cat). Don't listen to anybody who says you're being too picky--I'm 23 too, and even I know that being picky is only dating people who have brown hair, not only dating with compatible political/spiritual ideologies. Sheesh. My advice (knowing that many people don't read unregistereds, but I rarely feel the need to comment) is not about the other person, but about yourself. You have to be happy single before you can be happy in a relationship. You need to work