How to Avoid Falling in Love with a Jerk ❤️
The book I could barely get through the first time... and later carried just about everywhere with me. 😂
The first time? I could barely get through it. 😂
The first time I tried to read How to Avoid Falling in Love with a Jerk by John Van Epp was before my mission.
And honestly?
I had the hardest time with it.
It felt sciencey. It felt complicated. There was a lot of research, terminology, relationship theory, and information that I don't think I really knew what to do with yet.
So I didn't get nearly as much out of it as I eventually would.
The second time I picked it up was completely different.
I had just ended my relationship with Fantasy Fred, and that breakup had left me thinking about dating in a much deeper way.
I didn't only want to date again.
I wanted to learn how to date well.
I wanted to understand relationships. I wanted to understand compatibility, attachment, trust, pacing, patterns, and why sometimes something could feel so promising and still not be right.
And this time, I dove into the book.
I took it everywhere.
It came with me in the car when I wasn't the one driving. I read it at the park. I binged chapters at home. I brought it on airplanes and trips.
I was working hard to soak up as much as I could—and somewhere in that process, dating stopped being something I was simply experiencing.
It became something I was genuinely passionate about understanding.
This book was a huge part of that shift for me.
So instead of trying to summarize the entire book, I wanted to pull out a few of the ideas that have stuck with me most—and show you how they actually changed the way I date.
What Stuck With Me 📖
Jump to one of the concepts below:
❤️ Love Thinks: My Heart Isn't Supposed to Date Alone
Feelings matter. But feelings aren't supposed to do all the deciding.
One of the biggest ideas I took from Van Epp's approach is right there in the name behind his work: Love Thinks.
I love that phrase because it pushes against this idea that falling in love is supposed to mean turning off your brain and simply following whatever you feel.
I don't think the answer is to become cold, suspicious, or to analyze every date until there is absolutely no romance left. 😂
My feelings matter.
Attraction matters.
Connection matters.
But so do observation, wisdom, time, patterns, values, compatibility, and what someone has actually shown me.
WHAT THIS MADE ME REALIZE
Sometimes I had treated strong feelings like they were information about the relationship.
But feeling strongly about someone doesn't automatically mean I know them deeply, that we're compatible, or that the relationship is healthy.
My heart can tell me, “I really like him.”
My mind still gets to ask, “Okay...and what do I actually know?”
HOW THIS HELPS ME DATE NOW
When I start getting excited about someone, I try not to shut down the excitement.
I just don't want excitement to become the only voice in the room.
I can like someone and pay attention. I can hope something works and ask hard questions. I can follow my heart without asking my brain to leave the building. 😂
What do I actually know right now?
🛡️ Strengthening My Emotional Immune System
Healthy dating isn't only about recognizing a bad relationship. It's also about building the skills that help me protect myself before I'm deeply attached.
One of the metaphors in the book that really stayed with me is the idea of an emotional immune system.
We understand preventative care in other parts of life.
We learn things before we desperately need them. We build healthy habits before there's a crisis. We try to strengthen ourselves so we're better prepared when something difficult comes along.
Dating can work that way too.
Instead of waiting until I'm deeply emotionally invested and then trying to figure out whether something is healthy, I can learn tools before I need them.
WHAT THIS MADE ME REALIZE
After Fantasy Fred, I didn't want my only dating strategy to be: meet someone, really like him, get attached, and then hope I could figure everything out from there.
I wanted language for what I was seeing.
I wanted tools for evaluating relationships.
I wanted to understand myself better too—because healthy dating isn't only about learning to identify someone else's unhealthy patterns. It's also about recognizing my own.
HOW THIS HELPS ME DATE NOW
This is honestly one of the reasons my Dating Toolbox exists.
The books, questions, Must-Haves and Cannots, RAM Model, reflection exercises, and even my Dating Detours all help me strengthen that emotional immune system.
Every time I learn from a relationship instead of only recovering from it, I carry something useful forward.
What am I learning now that could help me make a healthier decision later?
🧠The RAM Model
The relationship tool that completely changed how I think about pacing.
This is probably the concept from the book that has affected my dating life the most.
The Relationship Attachment Model—or RAM—looks at five major bonds in a relationship: Know, Trust, Rely, Commit, and Touch.
The basic idea that clicked for me was that the later parts of a relationship shouldn't race dramatically ahead of the earlier ones.
My trust should have something real underneath it.
My reliance should be based on consistency.
Commitment should make sense based on the relationship we've actually built.
And physical closeness shouldn't be responsible for creating a sense of connection that the rest of the relationship hasn't developed yet.
WHAT THIS MADE ME REALIZE
I started looking back at relationships and realizing that sometimes one of my sliders had moved much farther than the others.
Maybe I was imagining commitment before I really knew someone. Maybe I trusted potential more than patterns. Maybe closeness made something feel more established than it actually was.
Fantasy Fred especially helped me understand this.
There were still things I was learning about our compatibility, our stages of life, and whether the relationship really fit—but commitment was already moving forward.
One of the biggest lessons I eventually took from that was:
Commitment isn't supposed to create knowledge. Knowledge is supposed to help inform commitment.
HOW THIS HELPS ME DATE NOW
Instead of only asking, “Is this relationship going somewhere?” I try to ask:
“How is this relationship actually growing?”
It helps me slow down enough to let trust be earned, reliability be demonstrated, and commitment grow from something I've actually had time to observe.
💬 Time + Talk + Togetherness
Spending time with someone isn't automatically the same thing as knowing them.
Another concept that really changed the way I look at getting to know someone is Van Epp's emphasis on three ingredients: time, talk, and togetherness.
This helped me understand why one ingredient by itself isn't enough.
You can talk to someone for hours and feel incredibly close—but if you haven't experienced much real life together yet, there are still things you haven't seen.
You can spend a lot of time together—but if your conversations never move beyond surface-level things, you may not actually know each other's inner world very well.
And you can go on plenty of dates together—but if they're always the same type of date in the same kind of setting, you may only be seeing a very small slice of that person.
WHAT THIS MADE ME REALIZE
This one makes me think about Stalled-Out Stewart.
We spent time together. We went to astronomy night, played pickleball, went to Freddy's...
But time together didn't automatically turn into deeper connection.
That experience helped me understand that simply accumulating hours with someone isn't necessarily the same as building knowledge.
Knowing someone also takes curiosity, conversation, shared experiences, and enough variety for you to start seeing patterns.
HOW THIS HELPS ME DATE NOW
I want dates that actually help two people learn about each other.
That might mean talking over dinner, trying something neither of us has done before, being around friends, doing something mildly inconvenient, serving together, or simply spending enough ordinary time together that neither person can perform “perfect first-date version of myself” forever. 😂
I'm not trying to manufacture tests.
I'm just trying to experience enough real life together that I have something meaningful to base my conclusions on.
Are we simply spending time together—or are we actually getting to know each other?
🗓️ The Three-Month Rule
Three months isn't a finish line. It's a reminder that patterns need time.
This was another part of the book that made me rethink how quickly I decide that I “know” someone.
Van Epp uses roughly three months as an important early guideline because some subtle patterns may not begin showing themselves until enough time has passed.
And I think the second half of that idea is just as important:
It means that relationships need time before we make big assumptions about someone's character based only on the early dating version of them.
The goal isn't to stare at a calendar and wait for Day 90.
The goal is to let enough time, talk, and togetherness happen that patterns actually have a chance to emerge.
That also means experiencing someone in more than one setting.
- Around friends and family
- When plans change
- When they're tired or stressed
- When they're disappointed
- When you disagree
- When you set a boundary
- When something is inconvenient
- When they're interacting with strangers
- When money, responsibility, or follow-through is involved
- When neither of you is trying quite so hard to impress the other 😂
WHAT THIS MADE ME REALIZE
One great date can tell me that I had a great date.
It cannot tell me everything about someone's character.
One awkward moment doesn't automatically define someone either.
Patterns need repetition.
That has helped me become a little less interested in making immediate declarations about someone—and a lot more interested in staying curious.
HOW THIS HELPS ME DATE NOW
I'm learning that I don't have to know the ending immediately.
I don't have to decide after Date Two whether someone is my future husband. And I don't necessarily need to turn one mildly weird moment into a complete character diagnosis either. 😂
I can notice.
I can ask questions.
I can watch what happens again.
And I can let time give me information that excitement alone can't.
Don't rush to decide who someone is. Give patterns enough time to become patterns.
And I'm Still Learning From It ❤️
One thing I should probably make very clear: I did not read this book once and suddenly become an expert at dating. 😂
I still go back to it.
I reread sections. I notice things I didn't understand the first time. I connect concepts to Dating Detours I've lived through since then. And sometimes I read something again and think, “Ohhh...I get what he meant now.”
Honestly, that's one of the reasons this book has earned a permanent place in my Dating Toolbox.
It didn't give me a magic formula for finding the perfect person.
It gave me something I think has been much more useful: a framework for slowing down, paying attention, and learning how healthy relationships grow.
And that became a pretty important turning point in my dating journey.
I just want my heart and my mind to be allowed on the date together. ❤️
📚 Want to Read It Yourself?
How to Avoid Falling in Love with a Jerk is written by John Van Epp, Ph.D., creator of the Relationship Attachment Model.
If you read it, my recommendation is to take your time with it. Highlight. Make notes. Come back to sections. And don't worry if everything doesn't click on the first read.
It definitely didn't for me. 😂❤️
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