If he looks like a jerk, sounds like a jerk and smells like a jerk ...

Why is it that when we like someone, we tend to ignore and even makes excuses for their bad qualities?

When a guy is a jerk to our friends, we say, "It's not his fault. He was just nervous." When a guy cheats on us we say, "He couldn't help it. I wasn't giving him what he needed." When a guy treats us badly we say, "I can't blame him. His momma never taught him how to love a woman."

It's part of a woman's analytical nature to look past immediate experiences and find out why someone acts the way he does. Sometimes there are legitimate reasons why people don't live up to our expectations. But sometimes we just need to call 'em as we see 'em: jerks.

I think that we make excuses for people because we want to believe in them. We already have found some characteristic that makes this person great, and when we he lets us down, we refuse to believe that he is anyone other than the wonderful person we built up in our minds.

So we make excuses.

Explaining the behavior in our minds, is better than accepting the fact that someone doesn't live up to our expectations. Sometimes we explain away the behavior because we're lonely and don't believe that anyone else will have us. We hope the other person will change.

Unfortunately, he usually does not, and all this does is keep us in bad situations longer than we should be. We need to learn that some people may seem great at first, but then not live up to the hype. And when the let us down, we need to let go.

Have you ever made excuses for the bad behavior of someone you dated? Have you ever stayed with someone longer than you should have, hoping they would change?