A surprising trick to stop dating jerks

Here’s the problem: douchebags are going to continue to walk the earth, fooling women and passing for ordinary guys, at least superficially. It’s not your fault, ladies: identifying them is an art form that has been written about extensively. They’ve developed excellent wooing tactics after thousands of years of practice- otherwise, they would have died out long ago.

So how do you combat this menace? What one tool will help you identify jerks early, leave them if they got past your first line of defense, and love dating yourself so you aren’t so desperate to be with someone that you ignore the signs?

The surprising answer is meditation.

You might think that meditation is just cheap therapy for hippies, but the fact is that meditation improves your decision-making abilities and relationships. Here’s the rundown:

Helps you identify jerks

It’s best to identify a rapscallion (that’s fun to say, isn’t it?) quickly so you spend as little of your precious time interacting with them as possible. Unfortunately, no guy is going to just say “Hi, I’m Brock. I’m going to treat you like dirt, cheat on you, try to seduce your friends, and dump you like smelly leftovers once I get bored”.

Fortunately, meditation has been shown to improve your empathy, which helps you read between the lines of someone else’s spiel. That way, the next time you hear “Get out- I love animals too!” you’ll know whether he means it or not.

Makes it easier for friends to tell you when the guy you’re dating is a manbaby

Your second line of defense is your friends. They’re on the outside looking in, so sometimes they see the warning signs of douchebaggery when you can’t. However, some of them might not feel comfortable enough to tell it like it is, and if your friends are more in the frenemy category, how do you know they are telling the truth?

These can be solved by improving the quality and quantity of the relationships you have between you and your posse. Meditation has been shown to increase and improve your social support system. After an 8-week course, participants reported significantly more positive emotions and positive relationships with others.

Makes you more okay with not being in a relationship

Have you ever started or stayed in a bad relationship just because you don’t like being alone? You might not even realize you’re doing this- you can subconsciously lower your standards without even knowing it.

A recent study shows that mindfulness meditation reduces feelings of loneliness, letting you be more selective in your choices. In other words, being okay with dating yourself gives you the freedom not to say yes to every random shlub that comes your way.

Increases pool of potential guys

They say there are plenty of fish in the sea, but if this is true, why is it so hard to meet potential mates IRL? The problem is that, while our social network overall is expanding, our circle of close friends outside of our family is shrinking. It stands to reason that fewer friends, both male and female, leads to fewer chances of meeting someone through a mutual friend.

Increasing your number of close, honest-to-goodness friends is another thing meditation helps bring about. You can increase your feelings of connection and positivity towards new people with a little loving-kindness meditation. And by a little, I mean a little- it only took one short session for significant changes to appear.

Makes it easier to reject bad behavior

When you don’t feel sure about yourself, you’re more likely to accept asinine behavior from others without comment. This includes the savage guy you just met who seems like an ass, but you have difficulty tuning out because it just feels so GOOD to have someone paying attention to you.

Meditation increases your self-esteem, which makes you less dependent on others to be in a good headspace. The better you feel about you, the better your choices are going to be, because you’ll KNOW that you deserve better.

Of course, it won’t be that you meditate once and Poof! You’re handed a fully developed, 100% accurate jerk radar (jerkdar?). These benefits take time to manifest. However, each meditation session, no matter how short, gets you one step closer.

Do something amazing for future-you and start meditating today, even if it’s just saying ‘F*ck That’ for a couple minutes.