Having an idea in your head what you want your relationship or partner to be like is called “having values” and it’s an ever-changing, nebulous idea that shifts until you find someone who wants sort of the same thing, and then you work on compromising that idea together.

Yes it’s more challenging if you use things like social media and dating apps to try to connect with people because those platforms discourage that process of finding alignment together and make relationships feel more like amazon shopping, where what you see is what you get.