Don’t Be The Woman Who’s “Down For Anything”—Be The One Who Has High Standards

I remember a guy I liked once described the woman he was into as being “down for anything” and he loved that. She was fun and mellow, always ready to try something new. I felt bad for not being that way, but then I realized that I have standards—here’s why you should too.

1. You really don’t have to be the easygoing girlfriend. If you feel pressure to be the girlfriend who goes along with anything and always has a smile on her face, then you’re aspiring to be a robot. Isn’t it better to be someone real, with raw feelings that are genuine? That’s a woman of quality right there.
2. Men don’t respect the woman who tries too hard. If you come across as being OTT with your niceness and eagerness to please, people will start to lose respect for you because you seem like a doormat. Instead, be the woman who sets boundaries for herself and doesn’t put up with crap when someone crosses them. That’ll earn you respect.
3. You don’t want to look desperate. By being the chilled, laid-back woman all the time, you might start to seem desperate. Maybe on some level you are desperate to be liked. By stepping back a bit and holding onto your own worth, you won’t need it from other people so much.
4. You start to seem fake. No one can be happy all the time. Even the Brady Bunch members had their bad days. Although the fun-loving woman seems to have all the attention and looks like she’s having a blast, sooner or later she’ll start to seem fake. She has to have bad days, right? Be real. It’s so much more rewarding and will help you make genuine connections with people.
5. You should be about more than having a good time. Yeah, it’s fun to party up a storm, but that’s not the only thing you should be after, so why pretend to be? If you’re not a party monster, don’t be one. Focus on what makes you unique and special. And remember, just because the men go home with the fun-loving woman, it doesn’t mean they stay with her. She’ll quickly become boring if she doesn’t have other personality traits to follow that party girl tendency.
6. You want people to be there for you when things get real. If you’re not genuine and real, how can you expect people to be there for you when life throws you a curveball? There’s something so much more attractive about someone who isn’t afraid to be who she is and doesn’t buy into the pressure of always slapping a smile on her face.
7. You don’t have to say yes all the time—in fact, you should say no. Saying yes to anything and everything is a recipe for disaster. It tells people that you’re always willing to put yourself last on your list, which not only makes them lose respect for you but it makes you exhausted AF because you’re always tending to other people’s needs.
8. Let him come to you. When you set boundaries and stick to your dating standards, you show people what you’re about and you also encourage them to meet you halfway. The woman who’s always down for anything is really doing all the work, but realizing you don’t have to puts you in a powerful position of self-love.
9. It’s impossible to be down for anything. There’s no way you can like every single thing your partner likes, unless you really are clones from a sci-fi movie. That’s not what dating is about. It’s about finding magic in each other’s differences and quirks and being able to find common ground without either party feeling the pressure to be something they’re not.
10. Jumping through hoops won’t guarantee that the person likes you. Even if you scratch out your standards, become available 24/7, and say “yes” to everything, that still won’t make someone like you. In fact, the opposite tends to happen: they feel like you’re trying too hard or being OTT because you have a hidden agenda. It really does backfire if you try too hard to be super nice all the time. Plus, you’ll get a cheek spasm from all that smiling.
11. What matters is how you see yourself. So much focus is placed on how you should appear to others in the dating game but honestly, it’s how you see yourself that matters the most. When you look back on these days, you want to feel proud about how you stood up for yourself and had standards. You don’t want to cringe because you tried so hard, so be the person you’d want to date.