Raising a healthy yandere, part three - the right yandere for you.

Continued from part two.

Let's assume that you've found a potential yandere to adopt as a pet, hereby referred to as a prospect. What should you do next? First things first, you need to make sure that adopting this yandere is legal. As mentioned in the last part of this guide, you need to determine the age of anyone you consider a prospect, and if the information on their profile(s) isn't making it clear, then you should ask them directly. The sooner you learn how old they are, the better. If there's an age gap which would make things creepy, it's time to cut your losses and move on. I understand that creepiness in general may be seen as an endearing trait to some people who would like to have a pet yandere, but hopefully these people can understand that crossing legal boundaries by attempting to own an underage one is absolutely unacceptable.

Moving on with the initial assumption: let's say that you've found a prospect and there are no legal complications. Your next step is to find out what they look like. You've already determined that you're probably attracted to them for their personality, so now you need to learn if you're attracted to the rest of them, such as their appearance and interests. Of course, you'll also need to learn if your spiritual beliefs are compatible with theirs (and if not, can you handle how often they bring theirs up? Or do they keep their beliefs to themself? And what about you - how important is it to you that they share the same beliefs as you?), and you'll need to figure out if two of you are compatible in other areas of your life. Think of how often you interact with friends and family in real life. If your prospect somehow moved in tomorrow, how would they react to you spending as much time with your friends and family as you do now? How would they fit into your lifestyle?

The name of the game is compatibility. Not all yanderes are made equally, and you need to figure out how much you're willing to compromise in order to keep one as a pet. They don't exactly grow on trees, so if you're lucky enough to find one, you must ask yourself: "Are the unpleasant aspects of this yandere - such as our disagreements on religious matters - bad enough that I can't love them, or am I willing to love them despite what I see as negative traits?" If you need to stop and think about it for more than a minute, chances are that your love for them wouldn't be unwavering enough to make for a stable relationship, and you would only be setting yourself up for inevitable failure. Another thing to consider is, "They have flaws, just like I do and everybody else does. Am I going to try to love them in the hopes that they'll change for the better over time?"

If so: you're not going to love them for who they are. You're going to fall in love with a made up image of who you want them to be in your head, months or years down the road. If they fail to live up to that expectation, again, the relationship will fail and end in mutual heartbreak, which I'm sure neither of you would want. And, just like in the point before this one, if you have to stop and ask yourself if you could keep loving them five years from now if they haven't changed one bit, you probably don't care about them strongly enough for your relationship with them to be stable or long-lasting - you care more about the person you want them to be for you. If you can't accept your prospect for who they are now, it would be in both of your best interests for you to move along and disregard thinking of them as a prospect as soon as possible.

And there are countless other aspects to consider. Do they smoke, drink, or do drugs? If so, are you alright with that? Does any aspect of who they are or how they treat you or others make you uncomfortable or distraught? Do they seemingly try to make you feel bad about who you are, what you want to do with your life, or anything else? Do they only initiate conversations with you so they can dump emotional baggage on you, or talk about themself? Outside of those times, does it seem like you're always the one initiating conversations, or you're putting in all the effort trying to get to know them, and they don't reciprocate? Similarly, do you notice that you give them gifts and other signs of affection regularly, but they never reciprocate?

Do you go out of your way to make time for them, but they never make time for you? Do they frequently ignore you without ever saying why? Would they remain loyal to you if you were in an accident and gained some significant scars on your face, or if you were in an accident and lost all your money to pay for the bills? Do you feel like you can't really be yourself around them? In question 10 in the first part of this guide, how many points would they have lost due to their negative traits? The list of aspects you should consider goes on and on. Some of these traits would indicate that the "yandere" you found isn't really a yandere at all, if you experienced them after things progressed to a romantic relationship. There's not a yandere alive who would intentionally ignore their owner on a routine basis. That's the very antithesis of a yandere!

In any case, the person who will have the best understanding of whether or not a specific yandere is compatible with you is you, yourself. All of the above should just be a framework to reference, not a strict checklist to follow when deciding if someone could be a prospect or more than that.

Now, let's assume that you've followed the steps in parts one and two of this guide to the best of your ability, but you still haven't found a yandere. That's okay. You can follow those steps for months on end without having any luck. As is often said in yandere communities, "Don't try finding them; they'll find you," and that's true in some cases. Many yanderes have enough sense to know that they have to keep their mental illnesses to themself and behave normally around others as often as possible. Because of this, you could have passed by an untold number of yanderes throughout your life without even realizing it. If they take an interest in you, it's likely that they'll inadvertently reveal to you that they're a yandere, and probably sooner rather than later. Still, being proactive in your search only strengthens your chances of succeeding, so I encourage you to do so.

To be concluded in part four.