Whenever I see relationship discussions pop up online, far too often ashy comments directed at women surface. It’s that “your expectations are too high” and “you need to lower your standards” nonsense.

There seems to be a running narrative that women need to be more open to “giving a dude a chance” to prove that the man is actually the guy she’s been looking for the entire time.

As a man, I couldn’t disagree more.

In fact, the main reason I believe women shouldn’t ever lower their standards to accommodate a man is because most men hate the idea of downsizing their own expectations for a woman. In fact, not only do many of us hate the idea of entertaining a woman that doesn’t fit our ideals, but a lot of men actually hate even attempting to cultivate new relationships.

Before we go on, an important delineation must be made: While men hate cultivating new relationships, that doesn’t mean that we hate entering into new relationships. When we meet a woman we fall for who embodies everything we’ve ever desired in a significant other, you can’t stop us from committing to her. They are the women we draw inspiration from to be better. The women we chase down to wife up not in the colloquial sense, but in the very real, “I want to walk her down the aisle ASAP” sense. These are the women we love deeply, uniquely and proclaim to our boys that “she’s different.”

On the other hand, there are the relationships that we must carefully cultivate with women who give us a good vibe, but don’t necessarily make us feel like we’re the luckiest dude on Earth to be with. These are the women that we logically see the good in, but still need to vet to ensure that we aren’t making a huge mistake by committing to her. Cultivating a relationship can be fun for some men, but it contains one issue that can potentially be a huge drawback for many men: quasi-monogamy.

Sometimes women ask me questions like, “How could a dude go from saying he really likes me, to just falling out of my life completely?” or “Why do men come on so strong and then fade away?” (We’re talking about falling back, not “ghosting” which is a completely different level of douchebaggery.) To many women. it seems like these dudes are just flat-out liars who try to game women with “relationship talk” in order to smash and dash, and though that’s occasionally true, sometimes it’s far deeper than that.

While the dude may have been keeping it “100” about how much he likes you, the honest truth is that he was trying to cultivate his appreciation for you to the point where he fully desired a relationship with you— and it just never materialized that way. Once you get to a certain level of closeness and you start hitting the “implied date” stage, there’s an expectation of monogamy even though there’s been no verbalized commitment.

There’s a hell of a lot of things men don’t mind doing for the right woman, and that’s the reason so many men suck at dating. When we try to entertain women we don’t have strong feelings for, we vacillate between our comfortable mediocrity and wondering if there’s better out there for us. Yet, in the same breath, the ashy delegation will attempt to convince women that they need to “give brothers a chance” when we don’t do the same for women.

This isn’t my way of saying, “Go find your soulmate because YOLO!” This is my way of saying that the most important gift you can give yourself when you’re single is to avoid a comfortable mediocre relationship with someone you don’t truly mesh with. Rather than focusing on cultivating a union with someone who may just look good on paper, or someone you don’t really want but are choosing to entertain to combat loneliness, look for that chemistry that satiates you emotionally, mentally, spiritually and physically.

Don’t drop your standards, become more resolute about them. If more men and women focused on finding the people they were meant to be with, there would be a lot less people learning the horrific truth of bad relationships: there’s nothing worse than being in a relationship and still feeling lonely.

Lincoln Anthony Blades blogs daily on his site, ThisIsYourConscious.com. He’s author of the book You’re Not a Victim, You’re a Volunteer. He can be reached on Twitter @lincolnablades and on Facebook at Lincoln Anthony Blades.