Indigo’s website offers 592 books on relationship advice. If you’re looking for a book on how to get in to, get out of, stay in or fix a relationship, there’s a book for you. Some of them are based on psychological studies, others on personal experience, and some others on a mix of the two. One thing they all seem to contain is a list of rules. Always do this. Never do that. Rule after rule after rule as if every relationship were a simple formula of person + person and all other variables are to be disregarded. Often these rules are based in long-standing religious and moral principles and/or beliefs about what men and women want and need and how they behave.

The single largest issue I have with relationship advice is that people do not fit into neat little categories and therefore relationships cannot be simplified to a list of rules and regulations to follow according to the sex/interests/age etc. of your partner in order to achieve relationship success. What I’ve learned, from my relationship and from observing the relationships of others, is that successful relationships are the result of hard work, compatibility, sheer dumb luck and following your own rules.