Many people use some kind of dating checklist when it comes to “filtering” people out they meet. This is especially true with regard to women, many of whom have their own very unique dating checklists and lists of deal breakers.
It is important to know what you want exactly out of all aspects of life, including what it is that you are after in your love life and dating partner partner. It is also important to know what you find completely unacceptable in another person, as this will save you and other people how you meet a lot of time and effort in making a certain relationship work, which cannot and probably is not supposed to be working.
However, you should only rely so much on your dating checklists of the things you want and the things that you consider to be deal breakers in other people. This works both ways. Just because someone seems to meet all of your criteria, doesn’t mean that that’s the right person for you to love and be with. I can’t remember how many times I have heard a woman say: “I don’t understand. This guy is perfect in every way. He is everything I have been looking for in a man, and yet I just don’t feel it for him. I am crazy about this other guy, who has all these things that I don’t like, and who doesn’t treat me all that well, but I still want him, and not Mr. Perfect. What’s wrong with me?” I am going to spare you the cliche reasoning that women like jerks. I don’t really believe that. A woman might have a stage in her life when she is into “bad boys” but for most women it’s a quickly passing phase.
On the other hand, you might fall madly in love with someone who seems to have one or more of the really bad deal breakers that you never thought you could accept. Perhaps that other person has other “redeeming” qualities that make up for the flaws that you thought you found unacceptable, or maybe the things that you thought you couldn’t accept aren’t that big of a deal to you after all. Conversely, your judgment might be clouded with the passion or physical attraction toward that man or a woman, and you refuse to recognize the deal breakers that will be a serious problem to you later in a relationship. Whatever the case might be, your dating checklists and list of deal breakers is also not as reliable as you thought it was.
It is evident, therefore, that there is something other than the qualities that we can articulate that make us care about someone, love someone and generally have a romantic and sexual interest in another person. I am not sure it’s possible to explain what it is. Perhaps it is one of the nature’s secrets that it doesn’t want us to know why exactly we find someone so desirable and against what we believe we should be wanting.
Regardless of what the reason is, being aware that there is that other arguably inexplicable element that must be present for you to want to be with someone, because it will remind you that you should rely on your dating checklists and lists of deal breakers only so much, and it will likely make you listen to what your heart, rather then mind, says more attentively – for better or for worse.
I have a list.
Why don’t you share it with us, if it’s not too private.
I’m too shy.