A friend called me for romantic advice. As should be clear by now, I have plenty of terrible experiences under my belt, and am obviously not wise. People insist on being deluded, though, and I always oblige. Here’s what I told her:

• It’s all right to go to bed with them early in the relationship. If sleeping with someone ruined a relationship, all marriages that saved sex until the ceremony would fall apart right after the honeymoon.
• That one person who told you not to sleep with him, because he wouldn’t want you afterwards? What kind of relationships does she have? Huh? Huh? Yeah, I thought so.
• The most important question is (a) do you like him? and (b) does he like you? (at least most of the time?)
• People like to read about passionate romance in books and movies, but it’s not terribly important in real life. I was passionately in love with my future husband for, oh, months. It was wonderful.
• The checklists people have for romantic partners are ridiculous. I always dated tall, dark, handsome men, but the man I was married to for 46 years (as he described himself) was “short, light, and gruesome.”
• Ditto for shared interests. The only couples who agree on everything and share all those interests? Those are the people who wear the same outfits and hold hands all the time. I couldn’t live like that. My husband liked to watch TV, and liked to have me with him when he did. I didn’t like TV at all. I wanted to read. So he rubbed my feet and watched TV, while I read books and glanced up from time to time. We also had our own work spaces in every place we lived.
• Stop worrying about how you should act in order to make him like you. That’s manipulative. That’s pick-up artist bullshit. Just be kind, for god’s sake, and be yourself.
• Pretend that he is a human being who has ordinary human emotions, and that he’s not some mythical creature called a “man.” Social media–hell, culture in general–has done a terrible disservice to both genders.
• People love to warn you about “red flags.” If a guy is trying to control you, or gets unreasonably angry, or is violent or manipulative, those are red flags. You can put up with a lot of other things. My husband had bad teeth, bad feet, a bad back, and a pack-a-day smoking habit when I met him. I made him smoke outside, because that was the only thing that affected me.
• Sure, it might not work out. So what? Are you having fun now?
• If it works, don’t fix it.

People keep thinking because I was married a long time, I know something about relationships. I don’t. I do know a hell of a lot about one relationship, and I extrapolate. What the heck. Why not? My husband’s not here to contradict me any more, so I can get away with it.