When you're going on a date...

 Before you date anyone, keep certain things in mind.
  
 Everyone has their own distinct language for expressing and receiving love. If someone doesn't love you in your grammar, even though you love them in yours, don't let it sadden you. Just keep in mind, or try to understand, whether they love you or not. Don't fuss too much over the manner of expression. People get irritated when someone tries to extract a specific kind of love from them in a particular way. Love isn't some money-debt that you need to try collecting.
  
 You're going on dates three or four times a week, roaming about constantly, going to movies, spending hours upon hours in restaurants, dreaming colorful dreams—all well and good. At the same time, keep in mind that best friend of yours, the one you'll need to embrace and cry with when, for whatever reason, you break up. Call them occasionally, meet with them. In this life, friendship is a greater thing than love. You can't tell your beloved everything; you can tell a friend. If your friends miss you, give them some time too. Some people, when they fall in love, turn their friends into in-laws, rarely showing their faces!
  
 Keep in mind: relationships give as much joy as they do pain, but when they cause suffering, it's a thousandfold greater than that happiness. Your heart might break, theirs might break too. If you observe carefully, you'll see that when hearts break this way, people blindly blame their beloved and keep on blaming—but almost always, the real issue lies elsewhere. I mean, the pain people experience in relationships has its source somewhere that doesn't even catch their eye! How could it? People keep hurling accusations like mud at their partners! It doesn't take long then for love to turn into mud and clay!
  
 If you don't have the strength to bear sorrow, stay single—that's better. In this world, there's no happiness without sorrow. Not a single one—go ahead and look. Love is such a thing that if you have enmity with someone, cleverly make them fall in love, then sit back and enjoy the show!
  
 Before entering a relationship, everything seems dreamlike, and even for some time after, it feels the same—then the real story begins. The real world isn't so simple. Love isn't your online exam that gives you an automatic pass just for sitting, nor is it SSC-HSC exams where someone comes to your ear asking "Will you pass or not?" and forcibly makes you auto-pass without any examination at all!
  
 Love requires care, sincere effort with great earnestness. Even after all this, love can flutter away like a sparrow! You could tear out every hair on your head and still not understand where your mistake was! Humans are strange creatures indeed. They suffer, yet keep all the pathways to suffering wide open. Humans gaze toward love like absolute beggars. At least real beggars get some coins when they sit on the street with their bowls, but humans get only sorrow! Humans are creatures addicted to sorrow.
  
 One more thing. Don't go looking for perfection in your beloved. Cut the nonsense—you're not perfect either! Anyone who wants to see you as perfect, understand that they have issues. Say goodbye to them before it's too late. Otherwise, you'll find yourself sitting there later, crying your eyes blind. Love doesn't happen by seeing perfection; when someone loves another, they see them as perfect. There will be mistakes, flaws, fears, crazy affairs—but most importantly, there will be a certain tenderness. This tenderness is the greatest thing. Love doesn't arise until this is born. If you have no tenderness for someone, you have no love for them either—very simple, remember this.
  
 If your beloved eats chicken fry with ice cream, what's the point of laughing about it? That's just how they eat! You eat chomchom with khichuri over there, and they don't say anything about that. What's your problem exactly? Tell them what you like. Ask them to tell you what they like. Whether you accept it or not, whether they accept it or not—these are later concerns; first create that space for sharing feelings between you two. Gradually, you won't even notice when your preferences merge or become quite tolerable! As time passes, you'll see that love is a strange bird indeed—it eats everything itself and makes you two eat everything too!
  
 By the way, in this piece's opening sentence by 'dating,' I meant dating with love. Without love, casual dating doesn't require all this; in fact, besides some social awareness and mutual consent, not much else is needed there.