Settling or being realistic? A UK relationship coach breaks down how to tell the difference, the questions to ask yourself, and the trap most daters fall into.
Naomi, 34, from Sheffield, has been seeing someone lovely for two months. He’s kind. He texts back. He plans the dates. And she lies awake wondering whether “lovely” is enough — or whether she’s about to talk herself into something she’ll regret.
She’s not alone. It’s one of the most common things daters quietly agonise over, and almost nobody says it out loud. So we asked relationship coach Priya Anand, who’s worked with UK singles for over a decade, to settle it.
How do you actually tell the difference between settling and being realistic?
“Honestly, it’s the question I get more than any other. And here’s the uncomfortable answer — they can feel identical from the inside. Both involve accepting that someone isn’t perfect. The difference isn’t in what you’re giving up. It’s in why.”
Go on.
“Being realistic means you’ve let go of a fantasy — the idea that there’s a flawless person out there who’ll never irritate you, never disappoint you, never load the dishwasher wrong. That’s growth. Settling is different. Settling is staying with someone when something core to you is missing, and quietly hoping you’ll stop noticing.”
So what counts as ‘core’?
“It’s specific to each person, but it’s usually about respect, attraction, values, and how you feel about yourself in their company. If you genuinely don’t fancy someone, that’s core. If you feel small around them, that’s core. If you want children and they’re certain they don’t — core. Those aren’t preferences you can negotiate away. People try, though. They try all the time.”
What’s the trap most people fall into?
“Confusing ‘core’ with ‘cosmetic’. Someone will walk away from a brilliant match because he wears the wrong trainers or she didn’t laugh at the right joke. That’s not standards. That’s fear wearing a disguise. We use tiny flaws as an exit because the real thing — intimacy — is scary.”
How is that different from just having high standards?
“High standards are about how someone treats you. ‘I won’t accept being messed around’ — that’s a standard, and a good one. ‘I won’t accept anyone under six foot who didn’t go to a redbrick uni’ — that’s a filter, and filters are where great people get binned for no reason. The clue is whether your dealbreaker is about their character or their CV.”
Naomi says her match is lovely but she doesn’t feel butterflies. Is that settling?
“This is the big one, and I’ll be blunt — no. Butterflies are not a measure of compatibility. They’re often just anxiety, or the thrill of someone you can’t quite read. Plenty of people feel calm around the right person and mistake that calm for boredom. We actually see this in the data — on Wisp, couples who describe their early dates as ‘easy’ rather than ‘electric’ are more likely to still be together six months on. Calm isn’t a red flag. Sometimes it’s the whole point.”
So how should Naomi decide?
“I’d ask her three questions. Do I respect him? Do I feel more like myself around him, or less? And am I staying out of hope, or out of fear of being alone? If she respects him, feels like herself, and isn’t running from anything — that’s not settling. That’s a relationship worth giving a proper chance.”
And if the answers go the other way?
“Then she has her answer too, and she should be kind enough to both of them to act on it. The cruellest thing you can do is keep someone around while you wait to feel something you already know isn’t coming. That’s not realism. That’s just delay.”
What’s your one piece of advice for anyone stuck on this?
“Stop running the audit in your own head at 2am. You can’t think your way to clarity about a person — you find it by spending real time with them. Go on the actual date. Have the dinner. Notice how you feel on the walk home, not how you feel scrolling their profile. The answer is almost always in the ordinary moments, not the analysis.”
Naomi’s seeing him again on Saturday. She still doesn’t have butterflies. She’s starting to think that might be fine.
If you’re tired of overthinking and want to find out how someone actually makes you feel, Wisp is built for getting you off the app and onto the date — where the real answers are. You might be surprised how quickly “lovely” starts to feel like enough.