Too high, too low, just right

A lot of people are reentering the dating scene right now, so we’re going to take a look at the idea behind “relationship standards.”

Standards tend to encompass this: the quality of partner or partnership that we are looking for as well as the baseline of comparison that we may be holding people up to. Your standards are the measuring tool that may inform your expectations of a partner/potential partner’s qualities and behaviors.

Scientifically, Professor W. Kim Holford from the University of Queensland has done extensive research on relationship standards, including how they may show up with intercultural differences, in co-parenting relationships, and in same-sex relationships as well.

According to Professor Holford’s research, these standards come up as important pretty often in heterosexual relationships:

• Couple bonding (expressions of care, love, and intimacy).

• Family responsibility (managing extended family relationships, maintenance of face and harmony).

• Religion (how important both people feel about shared religious rituals, raising children in their faith, or believing that their relationship is blessed or sacred).

• Relationship effort/investment.

However, unique to queer relationships are these most common important standards:

• Relationship outness.

• Sexual openness (openness to forms of non-monogamy). 

• Dyadic coping with homophobic discrimination.

Standards in polyamory

According to our Patreon base, some common recurring important relationship standards were the following:

• Self-aware, willing to do self work, open to therapy .

• Similar views about morals/ethics.

• Partner has their own schedule, their own life, their own friends, other support systems. 

• A sense of passion, interests, a life path. 

• Kindness. 

• Can respect boundaries and also express their own.

• Already okay with non-monogamy.

As for whether or not someone can have standards that are “too high” or “too low,” many of the resources out there are extremely gendered. Typically, women are criticized as having standards that are too high, and often women are also accused of having low self-esteem, which can lead them to have standards that are too low.

Are my standards too high or too low?

Some questions to ask yourself if you’re worried your standards may be too high or too low:

1. Does this person actually exist in real life?

2. Are any of these standards actually a defense mechanism that prevents me from feeling uncomfortable or vulnerable? Is it actually protecting me? This may not actually be a bad thing, but important to recognize.

3. If I could wave a magic wand, what would be the most wonderful, ideal version of a partnership I can imagine?