Ladies, you have to have your own place. You can’t be living with your parents or sharing a studio with a roommate.

I know this. I once made a painful mistake …

It started off casual. Our lust was only topped by our complete availability for each other. She lived with her parents, but was soon spending most of her time at my place. Within a few weeks, I was not only in a committed relationship, but she was also pretty much living with me.

Looking back, I really don’t remember how it happened. We had so much chemistry that we couldn’t help but stay together. And since she was always there, we were always all over each other. Don’t take this to mean it was only about doing the deed. I did like her. However, the fire that burns twice as bright burns half as long. Our starting point had no boundaries, so our relationship never had a real direction.

So over the course of the following year, I came up with my first dating deal breaker. Any girl I would consider dating seriously has to have her own apartment. I like the idea of being invited to her place, just as I would invite her to mine. We have to have the same lifestyle and routine to be able to get along together, but we still need to maintain our individuality. As the relationship progresses, we can begin to allow certain things to come together, allowing each other into our comfort zone. When she’s sleeping on her friends couch, or I can’t spend the night because her parents are home, it creates an uneven living situation and the potential for conflict, and I hate conflict.

I love irony. It is the contradiction we make up within ourselves. As I write this, two things glare in my face as so ironic that how this current situation has come to pass is a bit spooky.

The first thing is my mom just moved into my apartment, disqualifying me from my own standards of date-ability.

The second, the girl that I am most interested in dating right now lives with her parents.