I’m married now, but these are the things I would never tolerate:
-No drugs
-Not bright (you can tell the people that just don’t “get” things - what a nightmare)
-Nudey pictures on their walls and/or nudey calendars adorning their kitchen - gag
-Intense/anal-retentive (that’s me, so I can’t have someone LIKE me)
Drinking beyond the social level
Anger issues
Speaks poorly of family/ex’s/children, etc.
CHEAP
Has roommates - GAG!! I wouldn’t even tolerate it in my 20’s. I’m fiercely independant and would not date a man who couldn’t afford his own pad. Shallow? Maybe. Reality? Damn right.
I am SO glad to be out of the dating scene. Hated every ounce of it. Thank God I found someone to put up with me.
Political conservative, sometimes to my own chagrin.
I’m thinking about a super cute and laid back dancer/cocktail waitress who was working at a club where I was playing. We had a great initial connection and I took her out, but her politics turned me off – she hardly talked about it, but the fact that she was republican really bugged me (this was in 1999/2000).
Hmmm, looking back, I wish I had been able to get over that.
I am married and have been for more than a quarter of a century (yikes!) but here is what I used to have as a list of ‘turn-offs’ (which is what we called them back then since deal-breaker was WAY too ‘establishment’).
Currently married or involved.
Children. I never wanted children and I sure didn’t want anyone ELSE’S children.
Conservative (either politically or religiously).
Fanatical about her cats or dogs (or guinea pigs or ferrets or wombats or sloths or…)
Obese. I mean literally obese which wasn’t that common 30 years ago but sadly is now.
Hung up on prior relationship(s) with former lovers, spouses, or her parents.
But, of course, when I met my lovely bride, I threw out requirement #1 because… well because I couldn’t imagine NOT being married to her and the children didn’t dislike me.
Given that list, I am lucky as all get out that I found ANYONE.
I mean, honestly, I am not that much of a catch.
The funny thing is, women who believe in that stuff are exactly my type. They have personality traits that I really like. The trick is to find someone like that that likes that stuff but really tones it down – much like your wife’s Catholicism.
A couple of weeks ago I met a nice woman in the new age section of bookstore. It was going great until she recommended a book about the end of the world in 2012. That was too much for me.
[ol]
[li]No smoking (occasional pot is a-okay)[/li][li]No Red Sox fans (trust me, it’s for the best)[/li][li]No kids. I’m just not a kid person.[/li][li]Things I’ll call “The Obvious” = needs to be attractive to me, not a dumbdumb, has a job and a place to live, isn’t racist/sexist/homophobic/assholic/actively addicted to drugs and/or alcohol.[/li][li]Talks about sex or us as a couple too early[/li][li]Wants to be around me all the time. I’m a “me time” kind of girl. I don’t need to see or even talk to my SO every single day.[/li][/ol]
My mate was dating this bloke. After a while she wasn’t. I had to get her well drunk to hear this one: They decided to go for the naughty. She gets undressed, so does he, apart from his tee shirt - or so she thinks.
Don’t you want to take the tee shirt off? She asked cheerily. Turns out the guy had been fat, lost a load of weight and had this not-visible-with-clothes-on flap of skin that looked like a tee shirt hanging down.
Well, with the proliferation of internet dating (MySpace angles ahoy!), or getting set up by mutual friends, it’s quite common to not know what a person looks like, or at least just not what their body looks like, until you meet them in person.
Just to weigh in on the roommates thing - I live in San Francisco, and I don’t know anyone who lives by themselves. Anyone. Granted, I’m mid-twenties, but one of my roommates is turning 30 in a few months, and I know a lot of her friends, who also all have roommates. It’s just kind of a granted around here.
Having a car, too - I know a couple people with cars, but the majority definitely don’t. Actually, my other roommate (late twenties) won’t date anyone who has a car, because most of his recreational activities are bike-related.
As for me - well, I’m young enough, and have dated little enough that I don’t really have set rules for this - I still just go case-by-case. The only major one for me is party girls - I seem to have a major thing for girls who smoke, and go out drinking a lot, but let’s face it - I don’t, and I’m not interested in starting, so as hot as they may be, it’s probably not going anywhere.
Not in the dating pool anymore, but I’ve found I’ve developed a really strong aversion to women who curse frequently. It’s one thing to do it if you hurt yourself or someone/something makes you mad. But when you can’t fucking talk without every other fucking word that fucking comes out of your fucking mouth? No fucking way.
Here it’s 6 months for a default. There’s no requirement that you’re separated for any length of time before you can get a divorce, it just boils down to how fast you can move through the system. I wouldn’t want to date someone less than 6 months after they’d gotten out of a marriage anyway. Wounds are way too fresh. And I would never date someone currently going through a divorce. Especially a messy one. I just don’t want to deal with that.
As far as the living alone thing goes: unless you’re living in San Francisco or New York (I’ve lived my entire life in the SF Bay area, average rents where I am are about a grand a month for a one bedroom, which I don’t consider “crazy expensive”) no roommates. Like someone else said, it’s a matter of living an “age appropriate lifestyle.” For a man in his 30s, living with roommates is not age appropriate, in my opinion.
Attesting to this in 'frisco proper. Lawyers have roommates, there. I’ve only known one person who lived in the city of SF without roommates, and she was a computer programmer who made a metric fuckton of money. (She just moved to Kansas, btw, to be with her BF. I cannot see her being happy in Kansas, but she said a bunch of things I don’t understand about Django or something, and I nodded and smiled.)
Aw man, I swear like a fucking sailor. At my place of employ, if you don’t use “fuck” at least once in every sentence, you will be looked at with suspicion. Perhaps you are a spy sent down from the D.As office.
My S.O. (who, incidentally, had two of his own cats when we moved in together. I also had two cats. Together, we have a whole lotta cat. Fairly certain he’s not gay.) told me once he was really making an effort not to swear too much on our first couple of dates, in case it turned me off. I was also trying to tone down my potty mouth. When we realized what we were doing we looked at each other and said “fuck that!”
This. I’d like to say it’s a generational thing, but I’ve seen it in grown adults way too often. I get annoyed when a cab driver carries on a conversation through his BlueTooth during my ride, so I’m not about to let it slide with a friend or date. Perhaps worse than the behavior is complete ignorance as to why it might be considered rude.
