Who is this guide for?
This guide is for adult women who are dating, or thinking about dating, and are not sure what to expect from the people they meet. Some readers have never been shown what respectful treatment looks like. Some are back on the dating scene after a marriage or a long relationship and find the ground has shifted. Some have noticed that they keep ending up in the same kind of relationship and want to understand why.
It is written for women because that is who asked for it, but almost everything here applies whoever you are and whoever you date. Where the pages say "he" or "a man", it is because the question was asked that way, not because respect works differently for anyone else.
None of it is a set of rules. There are no scripts for getting a text back and no tests for a date to pass. The aim is simpler: to describe what healthy looks like clearly enough that you can trust your own read of a situation.
What does being treated well actually look like?
The National Domestic Violence Hotline describes a healthy relationship as one where both people are communicative, respectful, trusting, honest and equal, where boundaries are respected and where consent is talked about openly. That list is not romantic, and that is the point. Good treatment tends to look ordinary. It is someone who does what they said they would do, who is kind when it costs them something, and who can hear "no" without making you pay for it.
The Hotline also describes relationships as sitting on a spectrum, with healthy at one end, abusive at the other and unhealthy in between. Most early dating experiences are somewhere in the middle, which is why they can be confusing. The first group of pages is about the healthy end of that spectrum.
- What a gentleman actually is today: respect, consistency, kindness and accountability, rather than who pays or who holds the door.
- Green flags when you are dating someone new: the quiet, good signs that are easy to overlook.
- Having standards or being too picky?: how to tell a standard that protects you from a checklist that narrows your options.
How do I read the early signs?
The start of dating someone is full of incomplete information. People are on their best behavior, feelings run ahead of facts, and a lot is left unsaid. The Hotline notes that it is not always easy to tell at the start whether a relationship will become unhealthy, because warning signs often emerge and intensify over time.
That does not mean being suspicious of everyone. It means knowing which signs deserve attention, and giving a new person enough time for a pattern to show.
- Red flags early in dating: control, pressure and contempt, and what to do when you notice them.
- Love bombing or genuine interest?: when intensity is a warning sign and when it is simply enthusiasm.
- Situationships and mixed signals: how to ask for clarity without an ultimatum.
What if dating itself has become painful?
It is common to find dating hard. In a Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2019, 67% of adults who were single and looking for a relationship or dates said their dating life was going not too well or not at all well, and 75% said it had been difficult to find people to date in the past year. If dating feels harder than it seems it should, you are in large company.
Hard is different from harmful, though. Some of what hurts in dating is the ordinary cost of being open to another person. Some of it is a pattern that is worth understanding, because it keeps repeating.
- Being ghosted: why silence hurts as much as it does, and what helps afterward.
- Dating anxiety: nerves before a date, overthinking after one, and when anxiety is asking for more attention.
- Why do I keep choosing emotionally unavailable partners?: what attachment research says about familiar patterns.
- Dating again after divorce or a long relationship: pacing, readiness and a changed dating scene.
Where can I get support?
Friends are often the first people we talk to about dating, and they matter. But friends are on your side, which can make it hard for them to help you see a pattern you are part of. A therapist is someone outside your life whose job is to help you think, not to tell you whom to date.
Laura Bass is a psychotherapist in Charlotte, North Carolina, who works with adults in individual counseling and with couples. Women come to individual counseling about dating for many reasons: to make sense of a relationship that ended badly, to understand why the same thing keeps happening, or simply to have a steady place to think out loud. No counselor can promise that therapy will lead to a relationship, and Laura does not. What it can offer is a clearer sense of what you want and what you will and will not accept.
- Dating safety: online and on first dates: practical steps for apps, first meetings and romance scams.
- When to talk to a therapist about dating: signs it might help, and what the conversation is like.
If someone you are dating frightens or controls you
Most of this guide is about ordinary confusion. Some situations are not ordinary. If a person you are dating monitors you, pressures you sexually, cuts you off from friends or family, threatens you, or makes you afraid to say what you think, that is not a communication problem and it is not something you caused.
The National Domestic Violence Hotline is confidential and open around the clock: call 1-800-799-7233 or text START to 88788. Its advocates talk with people who are unsure whether what they are experiencing counts, not only with people in emergencies. If you are in immediate danger, call 911. If you are in crisis or thinking about harming yourself, call or text 988.
Common questions
Is it normal not to know what a healthy relationship looks like?
Yes. People learn what to expect from partners mostly from the relationships they grew up around and the ones they have had since. If those were unkind, chaotic or distant, a respectful partner can feel unfamiliar, even boring at first. Not having a clear picture is not a flaw. It is something that can be learned, at any age, by reading, by noticing how you feel around different people, and sometimes by talking it through with a counselor.
Is this guide only for women who date men?
No. It was written in response to a question about women dating men, and some pages use that language. But respect, honesty, consistency and safety are the same in any relationship, and the warning signs described by the National Domestic Violence Hotline apply to partners of any gender. If a page's wording does not fit your situation, the ideas underneath it still should.
Do I need to be in a crisis to see a therapist about dating?
No. Many people use counseling to think through ordinary questions: whether a relationship is right for them, why dating leaves them anxious, or what they want after a breakup or divorce. You do not need a diagnosis or an emergency. If you would like to ask whether individual counseling with Laura Bass would suit what you are dealing with, you can reach the practice through the contact page.
Will this guide tell me how to get someone to commit?
No. There is no technique that makes another person want what you want, and advice that claims otherwise tends to leave people feeling worse. These pages are about seeing a situation clearly, saying what you want plainly, and deciding what to do with the answer you get. That is less exciting than a strategy, and far more within your control.