Most people who've had a pattern of bad relationships get the same advice: raise your standards. And usually it's good advice. The problem is that it's incomplete, because it doesn't address the other failure mode: standards that are high, but pointed at the wrong things.
People with genuinely low standards stay in relationships that diminish them. People with unrealistically high standards — or standards focused on attributes that don't predict relationship quality — end up alone in a different way. Neither outcome is good.
The useful question isn't "should I have higher standards?" It's "what should my standards actually be about?"
What low standards look like in practice
Low standards aren't always obvious from the outside. They often look like flexibility or open-mindedness. What distinguishes them is the pattern of what you're willing to accept over time.
Signs you may be tolerating more than you should
You apologise for behaviour that upsets you. You make excuses for repeated patterns you don't like. You stay because leaving feels harder than the problem. You've normalised being treated in ways that, described to a friend, would prompt concern. You've adjusted your sense of what you deserve based on who you're with, rather than the reverse.
Low standards often come from anxious attachment — a deep belief that this is what you can get, that you're lucky to have this, that the alternative is worse. They're not usually conscious. Most people with low standards don't identify as having low standards. They identify as being "not picky" or "realistic."
What unrealistic standards look like
These are also worth naming, because the advice to "raise your standards" can inadvertently push people here. Unrealistic standards typically involve one of the following:
Standards focused on characteristics that don't predict compatibility
Height requirements to the centimetre. Salary thresholds. Exact physical type. These characteristics are completely unrelated to whether you will have a good relationship with someone — and holding them too rigidly means eliminating large numbers of potentially excellent matches.
Expecting a fully-formed person with no rough edges
Real people are complicated. They have their own histories, struggles, and patterns to work through. If your standard is someone who is entirely emotionally sorted with no baggage, you're looking for a person who doesn't exist.
Treating preferences as dealbreakers
A preference is "I find it easier to connect with people who read." A dealbreaker is "they must read." Treating large numbers of preferences as non-negotiable requirements collapses the pool to near-zero.
Standards built on what actually predicts compatibility
LoveCertain matches on values, life stage, attachment style, and communication — the factors with the strongest evidence for long-term relationship success. Not superficial signals.
What should standards actually be about
The research on what predicts relationship satisfaction and longevity points to a fairly consistent set of attributes. These are worth holding firmly on. Other things are more negotiable than you might think.
Shared core values
What matters to them at a fundamental level: how they treat people, what they prioritise, what kind of life they want. Research consistently shows values alignment is one of the strongest predictors of long-term compatibility.
Emotional availability and capacity for intimacy
Are they actually capable of being close to someone? Do they take their own emotional life seriously? Are they working on their patterns or avoiding them? This matters enormously for what a relationship will feel like over time.
Basic respect and kindness
Not grand gestures — the ordinary daily register. How they talk about you to others. Whether they listen. Whether they're reliable. This is a reasonable non-negotiable and should not flex based on attraction or desperation.
Compatible communication style
Research on communication styles in relationships shows that major mismatches in how people express needs, process conflict, and handle difficult conversations create chronic friction that doesn't resolve with goodwill alone.
Specific physical attributes, income level, career type
These carry less predictive weight for relationship satisfaction than most people assume. Not irrelevant — but probably weighted more heavily than the evidence supports.
Shared interests and hobbies
Shared interests are useful for dates. They're much less predictive of long-term compatibility than shared values. Two people with completely different hobbies who share the same fundamental orientation to life tend to do better than two people with the same hobbies who conflict on everything deeper.
The Certain Letter
What relationship science actually says. No advice column clichés.
The fairness test
One useful check on your standards is what researchers sometimes call "mate value symmetry" — roughly, are you looking for someone whose overall profile matches your own? This isn't a calculation you should do explicitly, but as a general orientation: people tend to have more success when they're looking for a genuine peer rather than someone significantly "better" than themselves on dimensions they care about.
"The most reliably matched couples aren't those where one partner is objectively the best available option — they're those where both people feel they've found someone who genuinely fits who they are."
— Based on mate preference and relationship satisfaction researchThis isn't a reason to settle. It's a reason to think carefully about what you're actually looking for and whether the standards you hold reflect your genuine values — or a more surface-level idea of what impressive looks like from the outside.
If you're working on your overall approach to dating, the piece on what compatibility science actually says is worth reading alongside this. It gets into the specific attributes with the strongest evidence — which tend to be exactly the ones worth raising your standards about.
