Relationship non-negotiables: pineapple on pizza is negotiable, kids are not

Some things you talk through and give ground on. Others, you don’t. Knowing your non-negotiables in a relationship is one of the most useful things you can bring to a first date.

Preference or non-negotiable

• Preference: you’d like it, but you can live without it. Them loving horror films, being an early riser or hating pineapple on pizza.
• Non-negotiable: if it doesn’t fit, the relationship doesn’t work, even if everything else does. Wanting kids or not, for example.

The test is simple: imagine everything is perfect except that one thing. If it would still hurt five years from now, it’s a non-negotiable.

A preference can be negotiated. A non-negotiable, as the name says, can’t.

The six that weigh the most

These are the ones that hurt most when they come out too late:

• Kids. Having them or not is hard to split down the middle.
• Ambition. How much room work takes up in your life.
• Pets. For lots of people, the dog comes as part of the package.
• Space as a couple. Doing everything together or needing plenty of time to yourself.
• Politics. You don’t have to vote the same, but you do need to respect each other’s values.
• Spirituality. Believing or not, and how much that weighs in your day-to-day.

A 2015 study by Peter Jonason and colleagues found that, when choosing a partner, reasons to rule someone out weigh more than reasons to pick them. Non-negotiables call the shots more than we think.

How to use them without overdoing it

• Few and real. If you’ve got twenty, they’re just pet peeves. Three or four well-chosen ones are enough.
• Say them early, no drama. “I want kids” isn’t a demand, it’s information.
• Check them now and then. Some change as life does, and that’s fine.

On blind bottle you can mark some questions as non-negotiable: if you don’t match someone on them, your affinity drops. That way you don’t find out on the third date what you could have known before the first.