When I listen to women talk about their dating and relationship escapades, I wonder if we’ve been reading too many fairy tales and watching too many romcoms. They’re talking about someone that should be genetically modified and cloned for the rest of us because they are in search of the impossible–the perfect man. This means that they bin off men because they are too short, too many nose hairs, works in the wrong field, doesn’t earn the right money, made a mistake on the date, didn’t try to sleep with her on the first date, did try to sleep with her on the first date, farted, was too nice, too agreeable, did call, did buy her flowers and the list is endless.

There is no such thing as the perfect man and the sooner we pull ourselves away from this notion of perfection is the sooner that we can open ourselves up to being with a guy that ticks the right boxes mentally. If you think a guy is going to come blazing in on his white horse, rescue you from your twenties/thirties/forties and take you into marital blissdom, you’ll be sorely disappointed.

Many of us don’t see our blinkered attitude to The One as seeking perfection but make a list of all of the guys that you’ve dated over the last year or so and write down the reasons for not continuing to date them and it’s likely that you’ll come up with some entertaining reasons. The odd thing is that we’ll stay with men that mess us around like Mr Unavailables but we’ll run a mile from men who are genuinely interested in us but are human like us and prone to the odd mistake.

We aren’t perfect and the idea that there is this person out there that perfectly fits us in every way means that we’ll be forever disappointed. What happens when he does something that doesn’t fit with our projected image?

I say ditch the rigid shopping list and fly by the seat of your pants and use judgement skills to assimilate whether there are red flags that you should be running a mile from. Focus on how you feel around someone and ditch the superficial stuff and look for a person with character that shares your values because relying on looks when we want people to love us for who we are and means that we need to act in the same way because we ourselves aren’t perfect either.

Save

Add to favorites