Regarding my description of the woman of my dreams

I’ve received several comments about my description of the woman of my dreams saying basically that I’ve described an impossible standard. Some said that I should just give up my list entirely and love whoever comes. Here’s my reply:

As I said in the statement (several times), I don't expect the real woman I meet to have all those characteristics. I was just naming all the things I appreciate about women. If I found a woman that matched what I wrote exactly, I'd think a miracle had occurred.

I largely gave up my list when I met and got involved with EA, the woman I broke up with several months ago. That was a real mistake. We were so different that she was angry at me nearly all the time. I agree that we love someone no matter what; I don't think that means we necessarily live with them and try to have a romantic relationship with them no matter what. I'm not talking about little things. One example from my relationship with EA that really didn't work is that she believes in traditional male-female roles, and I believe that everyone should do whatever they're capable of doing - no roles except ones based on ability. Another big one: she wanted to sleep together 2 or 3 times per week (even if we ever moved in together we would have separate bedrooms); after a few months of being a couple, I was ready to sleep together nearly every night. Those 2 are just scratching the surface of all the things that didn't work between us. I still love her. I don't think she's wrong. I just think we don't work together.

Notice that there's nothing in my list about what the woman will look like except that I'll be attracted to her and that she won't look a lot older than I do. I believe that there are 3 levels of things we want: the essentials, the important things, and the things that would be nice to have, but aren't really all that important. If we give up our essentials, we're sabotaging ourselves from the beginning. It’s a good idea to be happy to get 50-75% of the things we consider important, and if we get anything that would be nice to have, it's a bonus. Hair and eye color are in my "nice to have" category. Not smoking, for example, is an essential to me.

Anyway, the list is meant to give a feeling of what I want rather than to be a checklist.

How I am in love

How You Are In Love

You fall in love quickly and easily. And very often. You give and take equally in relationships. You tend to get very attached when you're with someone. You want to see your love all the time. You love your partner unconditionally and don't try to make them change. You stay in love for a long time, even if you aren't loved back. When you fall, you fall hard.

How Are You In Love?

My celebrity match - quiz

Your celebrity match is Natalie Portman. You like your women sweet and cute. Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

Well, she’s a little young for me, and I do find her attractive (personality and physically) otherwise.

My history with the personal ads

I’ve been using personal ads for a long time – first in a local weekly newspaper in Seattle and later online once I become part of the World Wide Web.

I don’t recall how many times I placed ads in the paper. It could have been a dozen times over the years. From those ads I heard from lots of women. I talked with many of them and actually met quite a few. I'm guessing I met at least 50 women and maybe as many as 100. Of those, I dated (beyond the first meeting) or became friends with 9 and would have with another one if she hadn't died before I got the chance to go out with her. That doesn’t seem like too bad a record to me.

Then over the course of about 4 or 5 years, I placed a lot of online ads. I’ve corresponded with hundreds of women all over the world. To the best of my memory, though, I’ve only met 5 of them in person. However, out of those, two became friends and another became a serious romantic relationship. I consider that a successful record.

I’ve learned a lot about using the personals ads from my experiences and from a class I took a number of years ago. Here are a dozen things that stand out to me right now:

1. It isn’t just men who exaggerate (lie) in personal ads; women do, too. One of the main things some women exaggerate about (or rather understate) is their weight. To some women “a few pounds over normal” means 100 pounds overweight. To me it means 10 or maybe 15 extra pounds. Another one I’ve seen more than a few times is “I'm involved in Unity” when what’s true is that they went to a few services 5 years ago.

2. Some women (probably men, too) either don’t really read what’s written in profiles or else don’t believe it. I’ve had quite a few women write to me even though they clearly aren’t what I'm looking for. Sometimes it isn't even clear to me why they did choose to write.

3. Some women (probably men, too) are so vague about who they are and what they want that nearly anyone could reply. I guess they’re looking for quantity over quality.

4. It works best to be clear about what’s really important to us. Otherwise we end up wading through lots of replies that are clearly not right for us. Then again, I guess some people get something out of receiving lots of replies, even if they’re completely wrong for them.

5. There’s way too much emphasis on what people enjoy doing and correspondingly too little on people’s values. Do people really think that if we both like to go to movies and take long walks that’s a good basis for a relationship? However, telling you that I especially like Spiritual Cinema tells you something important about my values.

6. Some women apparently just want pen pals because they write to me from hundreds or thousands of miles away and have no intention of moving here any time soon.

7. Many people seem to think that we can fall in love and develop a great romantic relationship from long distance without ever meeting in person. I don’t even know if I have romantic interest in a woman until we’ve met in person. Until then, I keep women in the friend category (perhaps with some hopes). It’s happened more than once that I’ve finally met someone who seemed really romantically promising and we had absolutely no chemistry at all. None. Nada. They’re still my friends, though.

8. Some women, especially women from Russia and nearby countries (in my personal experience), write hoping that men will send them money, visit and give lavish gifts, and even bring them to the U.S. A friend of a friend had experiences of that nature with 2 women, one of whom he actually went to Russia to meet. He ended up spending most of his savings on her and her family.

9. Some women are more interested in how much money I have than in who I am. I don’t want to be a money object to women any more than they want to be a sex object to me. I make a lousy money object anyway.

10. There are lots of spammers who use the personals – mostly trying either to sell sexually-oriented web sites or else to con us into financial scams (for example, the Nigerian scheme).

11. There are lots of genuinely nice women using the personals, whether they’re right for me or not.

12. There’s at least one genuinely nice man using the online personals. That’s me, in case you didn’t get it. I'm sure there are a lot more than me.

I'll say more about the personals, I'm sure, in the future. For now, I'll just summarize by saying that I’ve had lots of experience with them, some good, some not so great, but never anything horrible. I now have friends and a former girlfriend I wouldn’t have had without them. And I'm still using them as one way to meet new women.

Michael
consciousheart@earthlink.net

Where I've met women

Be forewarned that this post will only be interesting to statistics geeks (like me, I guess) except for the last 2 paragraphs. Most of you may want to skip to the last 2 paragraphs now.

Just to satisfy my curiosity, I did the research to find out where I’ve met most of the women I’ve been interested in and spent time with (whether that time was actually a date or not). Doesn’t everyone have a record of all the women (or men) they’ve spent time with? Maybe not. I do. The results were enlightening.

I met 52% in some kind of a workshop, conference, or group (not counting school). 28% were in one I was attending, and 24% were in one where I was working, either paid or volunteer. I met another 6% in some other aspect of my work, so I met a total of 30% in some work-related endeavor.

It drops way off from there. First, I don’t recall where I met 11% of them. I met 11% of them through personal ads (though the percentage would be MUCH higher if I counted all the women I went out with once and wasn’t interested in after our first in-person meeting and EXTREMELY MUCH higher if I counted all the women I’ve corresponded with via the internet or talked with on the phone but have never met in person).

I met 6% at church (though one of the women I counted as having met in a workshop I could have also counted as having met at church; it was a workshop at church). Also, some of the conferences where I met women were ones related to church.

Others: 4% were friends of friends. All the women I met at parties could also have been classified as friends of friends. I met 3% at parties. That would make friends of friends be 7%. I met 3% by living in the same neighborhood. I met 3% at school. This figure is low because I was in a committed relationship so much of the time I was in school. And the last 2% I met at their work.

So, from that, where does it look like I should be focusing my attention?

Digging into it a bit deeper, though, I decided to figure the statistics for just the women I’ve loved. Those are interesting, too.

I met 45% of the women I’ve loved in some kind of a workshop, conference, or group (not counting school). 18% were in one I was attending, and 27% were in one where I was working, either paid or volunteer.

I met 14% in my neighborhood. Isn’t that interesting? I didn’t meet many women that way, but I was more likely to fall in love with them when I did. I did fall in love with 75% of the women I met that way who I was interested in.

I met 9% at parties (or as friends of friends), 9% at church (another 9%, for a total of 18%, came from church-related workshops and conferences), and 9% in school (1 each in 2 different graduate schools).

And finally, I met 5% each as friends of friends (total of 14% if we count in the ones I met at parties), non-workshop/conference work (total of 32% if we count all work), and through personal ads.

Summary of what has worked for me: I’ve had my greatest success meeting women at workshops and conferences, through my work, at church events, and in my neighborhood. The personal ads have brought a lot of women into my life, but haven’t been real productive in terms of ones I actually met and was interested in.

On the other hand, it only takes one, and she could come from anywhere. Despite my apparent lack of success with the personal ads, I have met some friends that way, and I have had one significant love relationship that started that way. So maybe none of these statistics really make any difference at all.

Michael
consciousheart@earthlink.net

Brief history of relationships

For those of you who are curious and even more for those of you who may be interested in me and want to know this, here’s a very brief history of my significant relationships.

My first girlfriend was also my first lover and first wife. We separated when I was 24. At the time we separated I had never gone out with, kissed, or had sex with another woman. I got involved with my second wife on the rebound. We separated when I was 29. I’ve lived with 3 other women and have loved 22 women, if I’m recalling it correctly. Twelve of the women I’ve loved didn’t love me in return. In one case she didn’t even know I loved her at the time. Then we got back together years later, but by then I no longer loved her.

Some of the women I didn’t live with were more significant to me than some I did live with. Some of the women I never had sex with were more significant to me than some I did have sex with. I was sure (at the time) that more than a few of those women were “the one.” That’s a tribute to the phenylethylamine rush that lasts for up to a year, but not much longer than that.

My longest romantic relationship was my first one – 7 years and 4 months from our first date until we separated. My shortest one lasted 8 days from the day I met her until she moved on (one of the women who didn’t return my love and who I never had sex with). Yet, I still think of her as one of my greatest loves.

Some of the women I’ve loved are still my friends today. I have occasional contact with others. I’d still be friends with all of them if they were all interested. I'm not one to totally cut off contact with anyone I’ve loved. They may be out of my life, but they aren’t out of my heart. However, there’s no one from my past who I wish I could be in a romantic relationship with now. None of them is the woman I'm seeking.

Most recently, I was in an off and on relationship for a little over 2 years. We loved each other (and I still love her) even though in many ways we’re a case of “opposites attract.” Unfortunately, she’s always wanted me to be a lot more like her, and I have to admit, I’ve wished she were a lot more like me. I regret that we couldn’t overcome our differences, and, in the end, they’re just too great. Neither of us wants to give up who we really are and what’s really important to us in order to please the other. Nevertheless, I feel tremendous gratitude toward her for all the contributions she made to me, and we are continuing to be friends.

In fact, I can say that about all the women I’ve ever been involved with. They all made great contributions to me (and in some cases still do make contributions that make a difference), and I'll be eternally grateful that they were part of my life for however long it was. Each of them has a permanent place in my heart. (I'm envisioning Anasazi cliff dwellings right now.)

So, here I am again, opening myself to finding “the one,” the woman of my dreams, my spiritual partner, my soulmate. If you (that woman) are reading, I'm eager to hear from you.

Michael
consciousheart@earthlink.net

What's important to me in a relationship - quiz

Romance Romance is most important in a boyfriend/girlfriend. You need romance in your life. You love the extra dimension that romance brings to a relationship and you tend to fall in love very quickly. Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

What stands out most to me is that they're nearly all equal - all within 5% of 20%. That sounds pretty balanced to me, and I like that.

Michael