When, after many years of failing to convert you to her religion, she tells you that if she had it to do over again, she wouldn’t marry outside of her faith, it’s way fuckin’ over.
But sauerkraut is gross. It ruins everything it touches.
Men don’t change. If you go in to a relationship thinking to change him, you’ll be bitterly disappointed.
He will tell you what you need to know about him. If he tells you he is an asshole, he’s not lying. If he’s cheating with you, he’ll cheat on you. If all his favorite stories tell about his jerkish behavior, he’s a jerk.
If he doesn’t want sex for a year, it’s not going to change in the next 5 years.
Sharing the same tastes in food and movies isn’t the same as sharing the same vision of life.
Don’t stick your dick in the crazy.
Don’t booty call your roommate.
If he was an asshole when he was a drunk, he won’t be much better sober.
If you find that it would take more than a small suitcase for him to get all of his things out of your house, he’s moved in with you. This may or may not be okay, but it sure would have been nice for the two of you to have discussed it first.
Sometimes you DO get along better if you have seperate homes.
Never date a girl who’s only 48 hours out of some vague “institution”.
Never date a girl who calls you “Daddy” in bed or out of bed.
Never date a girl who professes to be some “professional entertainer”. She’s turning tricks.
Never fuck your opposite-sex roommate. It will end badly.
If she breaks down in tears and sobs “it’s not going to work,” don’t try to reassure her, she’s right.
If she remeniscenses about how good sex is with someone with a certain body type, and it isn’t YOUR body type, you’re in trouble.
If she doesn’t have a stable work history, chances are good she doesn’t have a stable history in anything.
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If he says he’s an asshole, well, he should know. Believe him.
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If the pain of everyday life consistently makes him take solace in drugs/booze, if he is tight-lipped about his past, doesn’t talk about or even acknowledge his family, is a moody, emotionally bruised loner, a wounded bird who needs the love of a good woman (you! and only you!), if he’s sensitive and artistic, but can’t keep a day job: if he exhibits any of these angsty, borderline bad boy traits - run. You might feel this is all romantic, that you’re like Natalie Wood hooking up with James Dean, and he needs you! and only you! to “save” him, nurture him, be his rock, forever and ever. Uh, no, it’s not your job to “save” anyone and make them grow out of it. The man is broken and it’s not up to you to fix him.
The first time that you say something which doesn’t mesh with his idea of you and he decides that he can’t have heard right… run, baby, run!
If the women in his family and you like each other and it makes him cranky, hit him over the head with a half-brick loaded sock and walk calmly out the door. Seriously, what kind of asshole gets angry because his mom and his gf have hit it off? Oh. That kind of asshole :smack: (the hate between MiL and DiL was part of His Lordship’s huge baggage of stereotypes - I’m a woman, not a cardboard cutout)
If you can’t get him to shut up and listen, because he simply doesn’t recognize that someone is trying to talk to him: come up with the Fortune Cookie-length version of what you’re trying to say, write it down on a napkin and hold it up to his eyes.
Then again, keeping your shit to yourself and not opening up is a sure way to never love again. Loving implies leaving oneself vulnerable for that oh so lovable amount of pain right in the soul. Ain’t that a bitch and a half ?
ETA: as for me, I learned to embrace La Bruyère: “Man only loves well once, on their first time. Subsequent loves are less involuntary”.
snork My 6yo niece recently stated that sauerkraut “smells like it’s made out of fried underpants.” 
Look to your man’s father and the sort of behavior, morals, and example he exhibited. Even if your man says he doesn’t want to be the sort of man his father was, he likely will be anyway.
If you broke up with him, don’t go back.
If you have vast reserves of patience, that is both a blessing and a curse. Just because you can put up with a certain thing doesn’t mean you have to.
You have more power in relationships than you think.
If he doesn’t care about seeing you more than once a month or so, he’s a cold fish. Or he’s not into you.
If you are doing all the work in the relationship (the driving, the seduction, the calling), try stopping to see what happens.
Someone who is exciting is not relationship material, yet perversely, someone who is not exciting is not relationship material. Don’t use excitement as a relationship barometer.
Ugh. I could go on.
If she is over 25 and has more than 2 stuffed animals, she’s still too immature.
Over 30 and still living with her parents? Run.
Won’t tell you why she divorced? Run.
If you’re only living together, make a “pick list” of stuff you have to get if it turns sour. Having it all in one trip is INFINITELY better than having to make multiple trips over a few months.
Even if the breakup wasn’t you, it was her… it’s also you. Don’t make the same mistake on the next one (and you WILL likely be attracted to the same qualities in the next one).
From high school days: if she cheated on him to be with you, bet your ass she’ll cheat on you too, in the same way.
Never loan money to someone you don’t live with.
How you look is, in fact, a large part of being attractive.
Advice repeated many times on the boards (second only to “Don’t stick your dick in the crazy.”):
When someone shows you who they really are, your job is to see.
Oh yeah, the converse is also true. If he in any way says or implies that he’s with you to “save” you – even if you tell him you don’t want him to – run. He’s only there because he thinks you’re needy and broken and only he can “fix” you. Once he figures out you’re not, he’ll lose interest. (Not to mention that it’s a red flag that he has some serious intimacy issues himself.)
I’ll add to that:
If that’s your philosophy of dating, stay the hell out of the dating pool so you’re not stringing your partner along when you have no actual intention of having a real relationship with him/her.
If you just want to be alone, be alone. But don’t lie to someone else about it.
I second most of what’s been said already. My only addition:
Never date a guy who doesn’t think Monty Python is funny.
Don’t ignore the red flags, those behaviors aren’t going to get better and you’ll never really be happy married to the “potential husband”. You’ll be stuck with the actual one.
Uh… that’s a good point. I don’t, actually. Er, hi!
I learned this from my sister’s exes, not mine, but yes, in general: Never date a guy who has a significantly different sense of humor than you. And in specific: Don’t try to get married to a guy whom you fight with every day! You don’t have to be stuck with that!
Also, I forgot another thing I learned from my own ex:
I can’t deal with significant others who have to spend all their time with me and do everything with me. Many women I know love this kind of relationship. I can’t stand it.
My issue was almost the same thing. Religion was part of it. General conservatism was the main issue.
Reading some of the replies reminded me of some more…
Never marry man who demands you take up his hobbies, but refuses to take up any of yours. Then refuses to allow you to maintain them.
Actually, never marry a man so controlling that he gives a blanket refusal on anything like that.
If a man turns every hobby into a way to kill something (even scuba diving), and killing things are the ONLY hobbies he has…
If he thinks your sense of humor is childish, he probably thinks you are childish. (Inspired by the reference to Monty Python.)
If he hates your family and friends and can only say mean things about them and seems to constantly be trying to bring you to his side, consider that a red flag.
Oh!: If he says he hates tattoos and he will just pretend yours aren’t there… All 14 of them… Just bad. No girl wants to be looked at by a man who says she would be beautiful if she wasn’t covered in ink. And, in my line of work, when he says all tattoos remind him of parolees…
And if he honestly believes you and he share the same religious beliefs after you’ve been married for three years, despite the fact that, before you got married, he insisted on reading books about your religion and watching you perform religious rituals… If he really thinks you’re that malleable, and you’re not… Get out. Things will get way bad fast once he figures out he doesn’t actually own you.