Relationships can be a hot mess, as my nana likes to call people who are overdramatic and very opinionated. Now she normally says that in regards to my little cousins, but I also believe that being in a committed relationship takes knowing when to voice your thoughts and when to be an active listener.

I don't have much dating experience; I've only been on two with two different guys. The first one was not promising, and I left feeling vastly discouraged that he did not ask me insightful questions about myself nor did we actually do anything interesting besides walking around a mall.

On the second date, I had spent a lot of time talking to the guy beforehand to make sure he was a solid investment. Sure, he carried the conversation a lot both in text and in person. He used a lot of cute anecdotes and weird things that happened that day, which I liked.

But I also learned that I don't easily share my emotions in relationships. Maybe years of trauma, microaggressions, and silence had defined how I acted in a relationship. But he would ask me a question to which I would give a little answer and he would be okay with that. For someone who told me that he valued intellectual sparing, he didn't care to ask me questions about my thoughts.

Here's where I draw the line in relationships – when your love interest starts to usurp your narrative and declare that you should be his only interest and vice versa. This shows toxic codependency that I also sadly learned from experience. I learned that these type of people try to project their feelings onto you and don't let you have your own opinion.

For me, it's hard to find a guy that can accept many things about me, starting with me being a writer in an MFA program and in the online community. They either say, "That's not a real job," or "You're wasting money on that degree."

I hate to tell them this, but being a writer is not a career that I am pursuing to be a better wife/partner. It's for me to be a better woman, a better citizen of the world. And I hate that they feel obligated to point out to me that I am wasting my time.

Guys, if you want the girl that bad, don't negate her path and passions. This isn't kindergarten where you pull on a cute girl's pigtails and hope that means she will want to be your girlfriend. Today, in 2020, we girls want to see guys who put women first by trying to understand where they come from.

And we do pick up when you're not interested in us when we're talking. We see you look at the other girls in the restaurants or, in other words, invalidate our existence. I'd much rather be at home with my dog, watching "Schitt's Creek" by myself, and eating Chinese take-out like the movies depict us sad single women doing every Valentine's Day.

I would happily take that over being invalidated on a frequent basis, either in dates or in a relationship.