They say hindsight is 20-20. That’s kind of true, but sometimes it’s pretty dangerous. Looking back into history can be helpful, but only when you take in the ENTIRE history.

There’s all kinds of movies where people go back in time and change one simple thing with disastrous results in the present.

When people reminisce about the past, it’s common to wish one or two elements were different, and everything else was the same. This is pretty impossible when you really think about it. Every incident in human life is the culmination of billions of random variables all operating according to different principles.

Since the human brain is limited in its understanding, we often perceive things that are much simpler than they really are.

For example, a lot of guys would like things to be the way like they were in the “old days.” Maybe they imagine their grandparents hooking up, dating a few times, and then having a relationship without much issue.

They compare that to their experiences today, and see a huge difference. The conclusion is usually that women today are much different than women of yesteryear.

There’s a couple things going on here that makes that seem correct, when it’s not true at all.

One thing is something called “survivorship bias.” This means we focus only on the few people that were successful, even when they are the exception to the rule. If you only focus on your happily married grandparents, for example, you’re ignoring all the people on planet Earth their same age who aren’t so happy.

Another problem comes when guys hook up with girls and have sex. Then there emotions get involved, and they try to turn a short term fling (based on how it was created) into a long term relationship.

Unfortunately, long term relationships only really work out when people genuinely like each other beyond those feelings of lust.

Anybody you meet under the cover of lust  may or may not fit that description. Sure it can happen, but when you consider how diverse people are, it’s unlikely you’d meet your soul mate the same way you’d meet a short term fling.

So, what’s the answer?

All this can easily be take care of with criteria. Find out what kind of relationship you’d like. Find out what kind of person you’d like it with. Find out a way to determine if they are a close enough match BEFORE you get too physical and your emotions get involved.

Sure, in the short term, it’s not a lot of fun. But in the long term, you’ll be much, much better off.

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Girlfriend Generator