When we, women and men, reach the age of majority and the maturity that allow us to make a more or less informed choice of our life partner, or at least of the idea we have of one, we set standards, otherwise known as "criteria".
Standards, or criteria, are a set of rules and guidelines that we define at a given moment in our life and that allow us to have a plan. In other words, those criteria represent an abstract, pictorial version of what we do or do not want in a partner. That is where we tell ourselves that we want a man who is tall, Black, faithful, intelligent, generous, well brought up and ambitious; or a woman with curves, well brought up, light-skinned, who holds family life dear and whose values are in the right place.
It is good to have standards, for without them you are like a leaf dragged along by the wind, drifting at the mercy of the seasons. To move through love without defining standards is the same as wanting to get from point A to an unknown city without a GPS: you do not know which road to take, chance decides in your place, and you move forward blindly, with no idea where you are going.
If we agree that it is good to have standards in general, we must recognize that in love it is downright vital to have them. And not merely standards: high standards. The reason is quite simple: having high standards means respecting yourself, granting yourself worth so as not to accept just anyone into your life. In a society such as ours, where sex is to be had on every street corner and men have no trouble finding themselves a one-night stand, it can be tempting for a woman to lower her standards, or simply to have none at all.
The question that arises is this: for a woman, is the most important thing simply to live in step with her times and be with a man, any man at all, or is it really to have a healthy relationship with a man who matches her criteria?
The answer, for any woman who has clear ideas about what she wants for her life, seems obvious to me.
It is important to understand that having high standards will keep you from going on a date with a man who meets none of your criteria, from going out with a man because you are bored on a Saturday night, or from granting importance to a person who does not deserve you. They will help you to gauge and to assess whether or not you should grant your time and your investment to this man you find attractive. They will spare you the loss of self-esteem that comes of finding yourself in the bed of a man who was not worth it. In fact, do not allow loneliness to lower your standards, and rise above it. But then again, to achieve that, you, as a woman, would first have to know your own worth.
In truth, can we really complain about our love life if we decide to let ourselves go with the first comer, or with the gentleman who happens to be "within reach"?
Having high standards is one thing; having the capacity to hold to those standards is another. The first without the second amounts to having a vehicle at your disposal but covering every distance on foot. We are no further ahead.
All in all, standards are the lever on which the quality of your relationships and of your life is hoisted. The higher they are, the better your chances of coming across people of quality who will propel you upward. On the contrary, the lower they are, the more you will be led to flit from one thing to the next, to suffer setbacks, disappointments, pointless soul-searching and fruitless introspection. These will end up tarnishing the positive image you yourself have of you, breaking the self-confidence you spent years building and, not the least serious of all, driving away those close to you who had raised you and held you in the very highest esteem, but whose trust has been destroyed, often for good. Suffice it to say that your not having high standards can have outrageous consequences for those around you, and you will come out of it deeply devastated, abused, periodically left alone and going from man to man, with no bearings.
M. Z.
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