When I left my marriage, I thought I knew exactly what I wanted to find in a man. My analytical mind had been assessing what I could bring to a romantic partner and what I wanted from them through nearly every moment of my 20-year relationship. Yet, as I dip my toes into the dating pool, I’m learning that I actually like some of the things I thought I disliked, and vice versa.
Because I’ve learned that my wishes are more likely to come true when I write them down, I’m keeping a running list of what I want to find in a romantic partner. This list currently consists of 47 qualities I’m looking for in a man. I started this list with 15, I’ve deleted at least five, and I imagine it will be up to at least 55 by the time you read this. Maintaining this list is helping me track what I am learning about myself and my ideal partner on this journey. But I’m keeping my mind open, in part because of a piece of advice I received from my mentor and friend, the relationship expert Mikela Tarlow.
“It is only when I let go of the picture of the man I was searching for that I was able to find true love.”
Mikela shared this advice on Episode 15 of our podcast, When Life and Love Don’t Have to Be Hard.
Since hearing this, I’ve been keeping an open mind. I have decided that at the end of the day, I really only have six important criteria:
- I want 90% of our conversations to feel effortless.
- I want to learn something from my partner in nearly every conversation and to feel as if they learned something from me.
- I want to laugh, and since witty humor is not my best quality, I want my partner to be much funnier (and happy to be funnier) than I am.
- I don’t actually want unconditional love; rather, I want to feel challenged to continually earn my partner’s affection by bringing my best to our relationship every day.
- However, when I do bring my best, I want to feel certain that I am enough.
- When I am unable to bring my best, I want my partner to see that I am “the best I can be for today.” In those moments, I want them to want more, but to accept me as I am and to believe that my good far outweighs my bad.
Unfortunately, these criteria are not easy to apply to a dating app algorithm, but I’m hoping that by just putting this out to the universe, something interesting will boomerang back. Stay tuned.
Wow, Elizabeth. I’m in a powerful, yet unexpected relationship for the first time in a long time and your thoughts here really challenge me. The first one is something I have said before but seldom heard back. I think it is so important because it really speaks to how comfortable my relationship is. Mutual learning is so important too. If it is all one sided, which is was in my marriage, it gets very tiring to carry that load. Anyway, good stuff, keep being imperfectly honest, you challenge us all to be better.