I’m not sure if my standards are too high, or too low, but pretty much anything can be a deal breaker, often it’s a combination of minor things, not a single major thing.
Being unwilling to learn or willfully ignorant, this is the single biggest one that gets most people, not just women. You don’t have to agree with me, but you have to be willing to have an intelligent discussion and present your side of the case. Admittedly doesn’t come up early in a relationship.
Smacking/chewing with your mouth open/talking with food in your mouth. I can’t eat with people like that, it makes me want to vomit. Donno why.
Smaller stuff is not so easy to quantify, like not using the English language properly.
Heh, seems like respondents are disproportionately female.
Anyway, as a male:
Has kids. (not really because I’m male but because I’m young and don’t need that at this point)
Seems high-maintenance or expects a sugar daddy.
Poor or no sense of humor.
Is a prude / ultra vanilla. Not something you find out right away but ultimately I’m not gonna be satisfied with someone who isn’t remotely adventurous sexually.
Not quite on board with the room-mate thing. That depends on the nature of the arrangement. To me, living alone is lonely - I don’t want to go home to an empty house.
I also have parent living with me (not me living with parent)
Someone who treats other people badly. From berating his son to snapping his fingers impatiently at the waitress in the first attempt to call her over to not opening the door for someone who’s carrying an armload.
It’s interesting how so many people here say “Living on your own means you’re a loser and I’m not interested” and “Living with your parents or flatmates means you’re immature and I’m not interested”. That would leave “People who live with their partners”, who one would presume are not available for dating…
I haven’t seen “living on your own means you’re a loser” expressed in this thread. I have seen “NOT living alone makes you a loser” expressed, which is probably not entirely fair, but a guy without his own place is something I’m just not willing to deal with. To me, part of being a grownup is having a place that’s yours. Also, I’m not interested in making awkward chitchat with your roommates in the morning, and I’m too old to wait in line for the bathroom.
Heh, I’m a guy and I’ve been married for decades, but when I was looking, I had a ‘deal-breaker’ list long as your arm … that I totally forgot about or rationalized away the instant there was a romantic spark with someone.
I attribute ending up with a great partner to luck on my part, not to judgment. [Actually, maybe judgment on her part … though looking at it objectively I had, at the time, a bunch of characteristics that would no doubt be deal-breakers for some - I was a smoker, I smoked drugs too, I lived at home - though I was a university student at the time, so maybe understandable - I had no money and was not pursuing at the time any course that would practically earn me any … ]
I’m with you on that. I dated a guy that had two roommates and one had a baby on the weekends. It seemed like every time I had to use the bathroom the baby was in the tub. Finally I told the Dad I will make small talk with the baby if you shut the door and give me a bit of privacy. It was like that movie, “Three Men And A Baby”. Funny but frustrating.
My Brother lives in Boston and the rents are high and he has always had roommates. He is now 30 something and is having trouble keeping a girlfriend. I think it might be his living arrangements? I feel my brother relies too much on our mother and is one who refuses to grow up. He is 13 years younger then me and as the baby of the family my Mom bails him out. She is 70 and still helps him move from one apartment to another and I’m sure helps him with his security deposit. She gave him a car and he lost it because of unpaid parking tickets.
It is a challenge to live alone and be responsible and I guess I want a guy that is at least as responsible as I am. If they have not grown up by 40 they will probably always need help in that area.
It’s one thing to not want to date someone who lives with their parents because they haven’t yet had the means to live on their own. Would you date someone who lives with a parent or grandparent because said relative needs live-in support?
Probably not. At least not seriously. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, just that having just finished raising a kid by myself, I’m not looking to take on anyone else’s baggage. I also wouldn’t consider anyone with little kids, or kids of any age that live with them full time.
Yep. It’s easy to make up a list of disqualifiers, but all that really does is eliminate what might be a fantastic relationship.
Two years ago, if you’d have asked me if I would date a surburban divorced housewife mother of two who goes to church and listens to country and western, I would have called you crazy. Several months later, if you’d have asked me to break up with a certain someone who fit that exact description, I would have called you majorly insane.
I imagine this is going to vary with location. I mean, rents are crazy high where I live. I have a decnt paying job, AND a part time job waiting tables on the side, and yet I still have roommates because to live alone I would have to live a very spartan existance.
It’s nice that in some places one bedroom apartments are cheap enough that it can be reasonably expected that someone doesn’t need roommates. I used to live in a place with crazy-cheap rents…I made less money overall back then, but had more disposable income because I was paying less in rent AND utilities by myself than I am now splitting it four ways. :mad:
Edit: To contribute to the thread:
Kids…I still consider myself too young to deal with kids.
I am not in the dating pool (and hope to never be again) but for me the living alone vs. having roommates vs. living with parents issue would come down to whether the man is living an age-appropriate lifestyle. That is to say, what I feel is an age-appropriate lifestyle, since there are probably no objective criteria for this.
I am approaching 40, and would be expecting to date 35-45 year olds.
I live in the Boston metro area where rents are very high, compared to just about every other metro area other than NYC, San Francisco and maybe a couple of others.
If he is living with parents, is this a new and temporary development related to job loss (it is a terrible economy after all), divorce, geographic relocation, taking care of aged parents, etc? Or is he there because he’d rather spend his money on playthings?
If he is living with roommates, are they living in a student tenement with furniture they found on the curb, or have they made an effort to spiff up the place? Do they own drinking vessels that didn’t come from Burger King? Would I be wary of sitting on their couch in light-colored pants? Do they clean and pay the bills like adults? Do they cook meals for themselves? Basically - are they living like grownups or living in the 40-year-old equivalent of a student flophouse?
Bad cell phone etiquette. I was on a first date with a girl whose phone started ringing while we were strolling along and she immediately answered it and started talking when we were mid-sentence - no apology, no caveat, no explanation, just immediately opened it and began talking to the other person. I walked away and left her ass standing there.
