Standards and Non-Negotiables Worksheet
Tick the standards that are truly yours, add your own, and decide what you will not accept before your next talking stage. Print it or keep it on your phone. It saves on this phone.
Your safety first
This is about choosing well, never about tolerating harm. If a partner frightens you, controls you, isolates you, or hurts you, that is not something to manage or fix yourself. Please reach out to someone you trust and a domestic-violence helpline. You deserve to be safe.
How to use this worksheet
- Write down everything you think you want, without editing. Twenty items is normal at this stage.
- Cross out anything you would stay in the relationship despite. That is a preference. It belongs on a different list.
- For each one left, write the behaviour you would actually see. For example, write he keeps the commitments he makes to me without being chased instead of he must be responsible.
- Keep the three to five that survive. Anyone with twenty non-negotiables has a wish list.
- Save it somewhere you will reread. The list only works if it is in front of you on the day you need it.
How to read your result
If your list is long, you are probably mixing preferences with standards, and that makes the real ones harder to defend. If it is very short, check that safety, honesty and direction are all covered somewhere.
If most of your items describe qualities rather than behaviour, rewrite them. A standard you cannot observe within a few months is a standard you will end up asking him to self-assess, and everybody passes their own assessment.
Do this before you are attached
Standards set while you are single are clear. Standards set three months into something are negotiable by definition, because you are now writing a rule about a specific person you do not want to lose. Fill this in during the talking stage at the latest.
For Nigerian women specifically
Your list is rarely only yours. Tribe, church, denomination and what your family will accept are all in the room, and some of those are genuinely your values while others are somebody else's preference you inherited. Mark which ones are yours as you write, because defending a standard you do not actually hold is exhausting.
You will also be told, sooner or later, that your standards are why you are single. They are not. Having none is how people end up married and miserable, and that lasts a lot longer.
Common questions
What is an example of a non-negotiable?
How many non-negotiables should I have?
What is the difference between a non-negotiable and a preference?
When should I write my non-negotiables?
Go further
More than a tool: The Wife Material Blueprint
The full plan to heal, meet serious men, read character early and have the talk, with word-for-word scripts. Start when you are ready.
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