The first one is when we first meet somebody

We project onto them an idea of who they are.
This is natural, this is normal, this is healthy, this is just part of being human.
We have to create patterns, and we take a pattern and we push it onto somebody.
We go, “Oh, we heard them say this and this; that must mean that they're like this.”

That's totally normal and natural for any human to do,
and it's important to realize that we're doing it.
As we're getting to know somebody, for us to let the real person shine through
and let what we projected onto them kind of wash away.

Okay, so what questions do you ask?
Well, that's gonna be very personal.
I think the most important questions to ask are:

What do you value the most in your own self, in your relationships, and in your life?
That's something we always have to be revising and asking ourselves.
What is most important to us?
What's my highest value?
Is it honesty?
Is it communication?
Is it playfulness?
Is it any number of things?

We have to decide what those most important things are for us.
Those are the things that we should be putting out right away when we're getting to meet somebody.
Explicitly say it.
We can't assume that they're necessarily going to have the same values that we are because they're coming from a whole different background.

The last thing I'm gonna say about this is:
There used to be, I think, rule books about how we were supposed to date.
There were certain protocols.
We could assume what was good behavior, what was not, what was going to work, and what wasn't.
It used to be more or less agreed upon in some kind of a social rule book.

From what I can tell, those rule books are torn up.
They've been torn apart, thrown around, beat up a lot,
and they kind of don't exist in a lot of ways, at least not to the degree that they used to.

As a result, everybody's kind of writing their own rule book.
Because my rule book has a bunch of things that I've put into it,
you know, some of it came from my parents, but most of it came from me and from my own dating experiences.

The thing to realize is my rule book is going to be different than somebody else's rule book.
So it's important that when you're on a first date to realize,
“Hey, this person might have a whole different set of rules and assumptions about dating that could be completely different from mine.”

It's important to ask questions to reveal how certain people go about dating.
What does it mean to be dating?
What does it mean to be exclusive?
What does it mean?
What are the rules around being sexual with somebody?

All of these things are very different with different people,
and we all think that our rules about it are probably the right ones.
We can't assume that.

We have to ask somebody else explicitly how they feel about the things that are important to us so they can share those rules with us.