If he loved you, he’d manscape.
I recommend everyone who “can’t find love” or whatever take out a sheet of paper and fill it in with everything they are looking for in a partner. Really be honest and thorough: looks, job, family, pets, etc. Then, pull out a full length mirror and take a good, honest look at yourself in the same way. Think about your job, your hobbies, your smarts. Would the person on that piece of paper date you? If not, you have three choices:
- Try finding love in your own league
- Improve yourself and get into a better league
- Change nothing, complain a lot, get bitter, die alone.
(A combo of 1 and 2 was my personal choice. Worked out pretty well.)
Like a lot of other respondents in this thread, I don’t think having realistic expectations = settling.
I once went to this awesome parenting seminar and the speaker told us something that applies universally to adults and children. She said that kids are brought up with the notion that happiness is the end-all, be-all. There’s so much emphasis on happiness that when kids (and adults) aren’t happy, many feel like there’s something wrong with them or the people around them.
I think love is a lot like that. People are brought up with the idea of happily ever after, and both women and men seem to be brought up/expected to gravitate toward a very specific type of person. They may think they’ve found that person until they spend time with them and realize that the “alpha” male they thought they wanted to sweep them off their feet is actually kind of an asshole. Or the woman they wanted to take care of them is really irritating and smothering.
Going in to any relationship with your eyes open isn’t settling.
That said, I’ve seen settling. It works for some people, doesn’t for others. I have a couple of friends who both happened to be spouse-shopping at the same time. He had the idea of a stay-at-home wife to have his babies, along with the McMansion-type neighborhood. She wanted to be someone’s wife, to have someone to take care of her and in exchange was willing to have his kids. They found each other and married. Given the way their relationship works, I’m guessing they would’ve married just about anyone they ran into with the same general wants - it wasn’t necessarily each other that they loved, but the general idea of house and family. So they settled. They don’t have a spectacular relationship and it’s not one I would want to be in. They bicker in front of friends and yell at their children a lot. But I doubt they would ever divorce. Both got what they wanted, which was apparently good enough for both. So far, anyway.
- Stop trying to get into a relationship at all.
No comment, except that I don’t as a general rule, expect people to ‘settle’, despite a nagging suspicion that I’m a prime example of someone who would be settled for rather than considered ideal as a mate.
Chin up, bullfighter! I agree – no one should settle for anything or anyone. Expect the best, prepare for the worst, and anyone worth mating with is going to be preparing themselves to be better than worst. So no one will get the worst, because they don’t exist. QED.
Great post. I think all of us who have seen your posts about relationships on here would agree that you and your hubby seem to have an unusually happy relationship!
I think sometimes what people THINK they require in a relationship and what they really do require in a relationship are two different things. For example, I believe a lot of women THINK they require a tall guy because they see tall guys being sought after by other women and it becomes kind of a self-perpetuating thing.
When I was younger, I tried dating a guy who I regarded as very cute but also rather stupid. That experience drove home for me that looks really aren’t everything and I think I’ve been happier in life because of it. My observation of successful long term relationships is that most of them seem to be based more on friendship than physical attraction. It’s not like anyone looks all THAT hot when they’re like 75 years old. 
I feel like Ms. Gottlieb lives in some completely different universe. Her problem wasn’t that she was too picky. It sounds like she simply had no idea what things were important to be picky about, and which weren’t.
I’ll bring up my short list of necessary conditions again:
- Mutual trust and respect.
- Shared/compatible goals, values, worldview.
- You really enjoy each other’s company.
Anything less than 3-for-3 is ‘settling’ and is also pretty stupid, really: you’ll wind up divorcing or wishing you had.
But it’s also surprising just how much such a simple list narrows the field way down. Yeah, you’re being picky if you insist on these conditions, but you’re being picky in the right way.
Sounds about right to me. #2 might include some reasonable improvisation or accommodation on both sides. Having a good idea of what’s important to you is IME the important factor there.
Tell me about it. It took me a fair amount of time even to find anyone that I thought ticked all three boxes - I’d been dating on and off for two years with pretty much no results - but the up-side is, it’s been going amazingly well (so far) right from the start when I found the “right” person. “Perfect” doesn’t exist. What does exist is people who “fit”.
Good post all around.
I’m just saying doesn’t hurt to acknowledge that we all have dealbreakers, and that physical attraction is important.
Personally, I prefer men who are physically on the smaller side and can’t understand why so many women are so attracted (even exclusively attracted) to tall or otherwise big dudes. Large men are a turnoff to me (but not a dealbreaker). If a guy was attractive to me (in that he had no physical dealbreakers) and awesome yet 10" shorter than average height, I’d go for it. Hell, I’d go for Peter Dinklage and he’s not just short (he also look almost exactly like my handsome, dark-haired, green-eyed boyfriend would if he were a dwarf!). If I am ever single again, I am going to be very happy that other women being height fetishists leaves me more awesome short guys to choose from.
However I have zero physical attraction to chubby/fat men, no matter how beautiful they are inside, or physically beyond being overfat. Many women do not feel the same way. I’m just reluctant to judge other women who have height as a dealbreaker as unreasonable, when I can’t even consider banging an otherwise great guy with a beer gut.
Don’t get me wrong, looks are far from the most important thing. Every man I have ever found devastatingly physically attractive has had a personality I don’t much care for. So I haven’t so much as gone on a date with any of them. I instead found a man who is a wonderful person and who I am very attracted to, even though I didn’t even think of him in a sexual/romantic sense when I first knew him, and feel lucky every day to be with him.
That’s a very good way of putting it.
It’s been my experience that who the person is makes them far more attractive than any physical traits, though everyone’s got their threshold for what can get them turned on. I just find really general turn-offs like hair color to be on the extremely shallow end of the spectrum.
People need to check into Non-American women and women of color. Only American white women are this picky…
Me and my friends, of all races, have made this observation.
As women become more financially independent, have definitions for success that go beyond reproduction and generally have more choices in life, they are obviously going to use these choices to find a mate who is attractive, intellectually stimulating, spiritually compatable, etc. Equality can be a bitch!
Sometimes I wonder if it might be advantageous to seek out a guy with one major flaw. It would have to be a flaw that personally I didn’t care about, but which others generally rejected him for, and perhaps even which made him subconsciously improve most of his other aspects to compensate, and which made me seem like a “catch” to him, without obviously any major self esteem issues. Perhaps being short (not sure why this is such an issue for people), or one noticeable scar, or the like.
I thought it was general agreeded upon by ALL owning vaginas that scars are sexy. They make a man dark and mysterious. He could be a pirate.
No? Just me. Ok… :smack:
I guess it depends on the scar. Generally I find them sexy, but I could imagine people being turned off by them, especially in this culture on a woman’s face. Scars that were cuts especially are fine with me. Burn scars really depends on the extent and placement. Disfigurements gets even trickier. Also, no vagina. 
I feel that many people have expectations that are far too low.
I know I did.