Do you remember in junior high and high school how whenever a girl would talk about what her deal-breakers are, height was almost always part of the conversation? I was always one of the taller girls in school and I honestly never would have considered guys that were shorter than me. As I have gotten older I have seen that being shorter than me really is not as big of a deal as I thought. Pitfall #7 is when you narrow your pool of possible companions based on a prejudice that should not really be a deal-breaker. Everyone has preferences, but at what point is it a deal-breaker? We all must question our prejudices and deal-breakers. What about race? Culture? Age? Height? Disability? College attendance? Physical attraction? Political affiliation? People often make assumptions about people before even getting to know them and then keep them out of their dating pool because they have an image in their head of what their spouse should look like. I am not saying that these deal-breakers are necessarily invalid, the pitfall here is not when you give the relationship a try and break up with them because of their position in one of these areas. This pitfall is when you are not letting people into your circle of friends or dating pool because of a preconceived notion. What are the things you consider to be deal-breakers that should really be preferences? How are you narrowing your dating pool because of preconceived notions? How are you limiting yourself by staying in a clique or keeping yourself in the same types of social situations? Asking these types of questions will help us stay out of pitfall #7. The opposite, and more painful counterpart to pitfall #7 is pitfall #8.