Everyone wants to believe that their relationship is perfect. You love your partner, and your partner loves you back. You tell yourself you both got a pretty fair deal. But what are the odds of that? What are the odds that two people of the exact same level of looks and personality got together, and are equally in love. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it's pretty low.
So now you know, you're not the love of your partner's life. You are just the best option they could find so they weren’t the last of their friends to get cuffed. Where do you go from here? How do you look them in the eyes, how do you look yourself in the eyes? By following these tips, that’s how.
1. Don’t think about it too hard.
The first step to solving your problems is ignoring them. Thinking about how your love is a pale imitation for social clout and family holidays will not help you. A happy couple is a couple that ignores what’s wrong with them.
2. Realize you were still the best available option.
It doesn’t matter if the other options were their cousin's best friend or that 40 year old on tinder. You still beat ‘em. Could they have found someone better if they really looked? Probably. But they didn’t look now did they. You are the creme of a very shitty crop, and that's gonna have to be good enough for you.
3. Lie and say “love grows with time”
No it doesn’t. People know off the bat. Complacency grows with time though, and enough people have confused the two to allow baby boomers to exist so you have a pretty good shot.
4. Do something nice for your SO.
Leave town for a weekend. Look the other way when they post to social media from someone else’s bed. After all, they are giving you the gift of someone putting up with you. It is the least you could do in return.
5. Pick up saying affirmations.
This isn’t for you. This is for them. It will make it easier for them to pretend to be happy in the relationship if you can fake self-confidence well enough to act like someone they would be okay with dating. So hold your head up, if you don’t you are just deadweight.
6. Convince yourself you actually settled for them.
Who can really prove who settled for whom right. With enough self illusion you could convince yourself you were the one that settled. That laugh can be pretty annoying sometimes, clearly you are the only person who would date your SO. This one might be hard to pull off at first, but if Adam Sandler can make an entire genre of movies where people like Jennifer Aniston fall in love with him, then you can convince yourself you were the settler.
7. Delete all your dating app accounts.
You will see your SO looking to upgrade. You don’t need that. You know where you stand. You don’t tell students when they are failing a class, why would you tell yourself that you are failing your love life.
8. Try Drugs.
You can’t notice the way they cry at night or hold back vomit after you kiss if you can’t even tell where you end and your socks begin. The secret to a healthy relationship is to spend as little time perceiving reality as possible.
9. Join a Support group.
Support for Settlees AnonymousTM is a fantastic group therapy session dedicated to people with your problem. Together you can lament on why you aren’t good enough for your partners just like you weren’t enough for your parents. The group is mostly smelly men in fedoras, and it’s a stretch to believe any of them have talked to a romantic partner, not to mention that anyone decided they were worth settling for. But the therapy is still good and they call you king when you cry, so show up anyway.
10. Admit you will take what you can get.
So they don’t love you. That’s a them problem. As long as you are loyal to the relationship and remember their birthday, you are fulfilling your end of the deal. Not your fault they made a bad trade.
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