Stay single until you find someone who looks at you when you speak instead of staring down at his phone. Someone who looks you in the eyes instead of down at your breasts or at another girl walking by. Someone who is present, in the moment, whenever you go out on dates.
Stay single until you find someone who texts you first, who initiates conversations, who makes it clear that he wants to talk to you. That he doesn’t want to go a day without hearing from you. That he likes having you in his life and is comfortable expressing that to you.
Stay single until you find someone who makes an effort to involve you in his life. Someone who will hear about a friend’s party and automatically invite you because he doesn’t want to have fun without you. Someone who will assume that you two are spending the holidays together because it wouldn’t be a happy holiday if you were apart.
Find someone who is an active part of your life instead of someone who uses any excuse to get out of seeing your family, someone who spends more time away from you than with you, someone who only communicates with you over text.
Stay single until you find someone who gives you attention without you having to beg for it. Someone who makes room on the couch so you can rest your head on his lap and spread your feet out. Someone who reaches across the table during dinner to intertwine your fingers. Someone who rests a hand on your waist whenever you are walking side by side.
Stay single until you find someone who gives you compliments without you having to fish for them. Someone who does the dishes and mows the lawn without you having to remind him. Someone who puts all of his energy into the relationship because he sees that you have been doing the same.
Stay single until you find someone who listens when you speak instead of nodding absentmindedly and wishing you would finish so he could talk, so he could watch television, or so he could be met with peace and quiet.
Stay single until you find someone who listens to your stories, even if you told the same one twenty times already. Someone who respects your opinion, even if he has an opposite take on the situation. Someone who actually wants to know how your day is going, who wants to hear what you have to say, instead of making fun of how you talk too much. Instead of making you feel like you are too emotional, or too dramatic, or too much.
Stay single until you find someone who treats you the way you wished your exes would have treated you. Someone who gives you all of the things you wanted since you were a little girl, but never thought were possible as you got older. Stay single until you find someone who gives you the attention you’ve been craving, the love you’ve been expecting.
By Holly Riordan for ThoughtCatalog