1. You deserve someone who treats you like you are a treasure. You deserve someone who never fails to treat you with respect. He absolutely never belittles, undermines, or gaslights you.

2. You deserve someone who takes care of themselves. They can’t expect you to be their everything. It’s one thing to support someone, but it’s another to know that they’d completely fall apart without you.

3. You deserve someone who cares about you, even while you’re fighting. If they raise their voice, belittle you, call you names, undermine your intelligence or threaten to harm you, they aren’t worthy of your love.

4. You deserve someone who doesn’t play games with you. If you’re in a committed relationship, you should feel secure in his love for you. If he doesn’t text you back, you don’t stress because you’re not worried that it “means something”. If he tries to make you jealous or won’t tell you how he feels, you can’t thrive in that kind of insecurity.

5. You deserve someone who talks you up, not down. His friends like you because he has nice things to say about you when you’re not around. Similarly, your friends like him because they can tell he cares about you and doesn’t undermine you or disrespect you.

6. You deserve someone who likes you the way you are, today. He doesn’t need to change you in order to want to be with you.

7. You deserve someone who makes you happy. If he doesn’t make you feel excited about your life and your future, you need to find someone else. If he feels just so-so, you might be settling.

8. You deserve someone who consults you on big decisions. He should value your intellect and help weighing the pros and cons of something major. Your relationship is not a dictatorship, you can’t be with someone who treats you like you don’t have anything valuable to add.

9. You deserve someone who loves you for who you are, not for what you can do for them. You aren’t their emotional crutch or sex object or wallet. He loves you because of your personality and your brain and your heart — not for selfish reasons or because of how you help him in his life.

10. You deserve someone who values the same things you do. It’s okay to disagree, even on the big stuff — but not with the person who is your partner for life. You need to wait it out until you find someone who wants the same things out of life.

11. You deserve someone who trusts you completely, and vice versa. You never feel paranoid that he’s going to cheat on you, you feel totally comfortable giving him space when he needs it. Likewise, he doesn’t badger you about your male friends or who you’re texting when you pick up your phone. No one needs to live with that kind of drama.

12. You deserve somebody who spends quality time on you. It’s a limited resource, especially today with screens always competing for our attention. You deserve someone who puts down their phone for you, listens to what you have to say, and spends time just being with you.